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Nirvana · S2 E1
Sub Pop
Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman run Sub Pop Records out of a tiny office in Seattle. They sign local bands, print cool posters, and are permanently broke. They hear Nirvana and offer them a single. The label cannot afford to pay anyone, but it has taste, and in 1988 that is enough
In 1988, a demo tape from Aberdeen, Washington, lands on the desk of Jonathan Poneman at Sub Pop Records in Seattle. The label has no money, no national distribution, and no idea that the cassette they are holding will turn out to be worth more than every other release in the building combined.
"About a Girl", Nirvana, MTV Unplugged in New York (1993). This is the song that proved Sub Pop right. Hidden on Bleach between walls of distortion, it was pure pop: acoustic, melodic, disarmingly honest. Kurt wrote it after listening to Meet the Beatles on repeat, and years later on the Unplugged stage, the melody Sub Pop bet on is impossible to deny.
Terminal Sales Building, 1932 First Avenue, Seattle. Sub Pop's early headquarters, where Pavitt and Poneman ran a label that could barely afford postage but had the best ear in American independent music.
The Label
Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman are running Sub Pop Records out of a tiny office in Seattle's Terminal Sales Building. They sign bands based on sound, not marketability: Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Tad, Green River. The label is permanently broke, legendarily cool, and the center of a scene that nobody outside the Pacific Northwest has noticed yet.
TAP TO REVEAL: How did Sub Pop convince the world that Seattle mattered?
“We were so broke that when we signed Nirvana, I think we gave them like seventy-five bucks. And that was a lot for us at the time.”
— Jonathan Poneman, co-founder of Sub Pop Records, various retrospective interviews
What convinced Sub Pop to sign Nirvana in the first place?
School, Nirvana
Two minutes and thirty-four seconds of the most primal thing on Bleach. Kurt screams "no recess" over and over while Krist's bass grinds underneath like a machine breaking down. This is what Sub Pop's roster sounded like at full volume: loud, repetitive, and completely hostile to anyone who was not already in on the joke.
Why Nirvana?
Sub Pop had Mudhoney, Soundgarden, and Tad, all louder, all more experienced. But Poneman heard something different in the Nirvana demo: melodies hidden inside chaos, hooks buried under noise. That combination was exactly what Sub Pop needed to break out of the underground.
Sub Pop has the band. Now it needs a single. Kurt picks a cover of a 1960s Dutch pop song called "Love Buzz" by Shocking Blue, and the label presses one thousand hand-numbered copies. Next: the seven-inch that starts everything.
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