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By Jonathan Zwickel
Special to MSN Music
"I hereby proclaim the weekend of July 11 through 14 'Sub Pop's Utterly Lost
Weekend'!"
With those words, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels handed Sub Pop founders Jonathan
Poneman and Bruce Pavitt a commemorative plaque, and so began the
self-consciously self-congratulatory celebration of the world's scrappiest
independent record label.
See photos from the festival
Comedian Eugene Mirman on Sub Pop
Sub Pop by the numbers
Just outside the Experience Music Project, where Poneman and Pavitt were
being interviewed for an "Oral History Live" presentation, a massive Sub Pop
flag flew from the top of the Space Needle. In the 22 years since the label's
first release (the "Sub Pop 100" compilation), Sub Pop hasn't made good on its
tongue-in-cheek promise of "world domination," but it certainly holds the city
of Seattle on a very short chain.
The feting continued this past weekend as the two-day SP20 festival brought
together several thousand fans and 25 bands at Marymoor Park in Redmond, Wash.
Though sunshine is typically anathema to Northwest music fans, the weather was
otherwise perfect; show-goers tended toward the certain age of Sub Pop's older
roster and many had their Sub tots in tow. Reunion gigs were the most
anticipated: grunge godfathers Green River, playing their first show in 20
years; Scotland's overlooked fey-poppers/Kurt Kobain faves the Vaselines playing
their third-ever U.S. show; Beachwood Sparks, originators of Sub Pop's current
cosmic country revival, rejoining to perform and, rumor had it, record new
material.
SP20 trafficked in nostalgia, but it also highlighted the label's astonishing
diversity, a key behind its unlikely success. The whiplash effect of disparate
sounds was part of the fun. On Saturday, it came from Pissed Jeans and Fleet
Foxes. Hailing from Allentown, Pa., Pissed Jeans is the only current band on Sub
Pop that harkens back to the label's early, unruly days. Like Green River and
Mudhoney, their sludgy, down-tuned drone is awful on record but in the live
setting offered a brilliant collision of punishing volume and degenerate
theatrics. Early in the set, shirtless singer Matt Korvette stuck a towel down
the back of his pants; several songs later he unfurled it, dipped it in a
plastic cup of beer and wringed the juice into his mouth.
One-eighty degrees over to Fleet Foxes, who played the festival's main stage
after Pissed Jeans. The five-piece acoustic-folk minstrels were as soft and
swaying as the tall pines surrounding Marymoor Park; their four-part harmonies
had the same serene, stupefying effect as the day's breezeless sunshine. They
were antigrunge, made for the outdoors, made to feel good. Young, humble Seattle
heroes, Fleet Foxes are getting the most attention of any of Sub Pop's current
roster and proved how far-flung that roster is.
Similarly, Iron and Wine's Sam Beam played an arresting solo set at dusk,
armed only with an acoustic guitar and gently urgent voice. (Story Continues On Next Page...) |
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