There’s some confusion as to how this year has come to be
Sub Pop’s 20th anniversary. Sub Pop has been releasing records since
1986, and Bruce Pavitt had that Sub Pop zine in the early
’80s.
April 1, 1988, was the beginning of our first lease at the Terminal
Sales Building on First and Virginia. It’s the 20th anniversary of Sub
Pop being a full-time record label. Whether people consider Sub Pop to
be 20 years old or 25 years old, the point is that the culture that Sub
Pop is a part of has managed to endure for a couple of decades now. We
wanted to celebrate the culture, to celebrate our community, both
musical and geographical.
So why is the party in Redmond?
We tried and tried and tried; we just couldn’t get our permits
cleared [in Seattle]. Finally, the path of least resistance led us to
Marymoor Park. Not slighting Redmond or the park—it’s a pretty
setting, and we think people will be psyched. For sentimental reasons
it would’ve been great to have the event in Seattle, but we just wanted
to make sure the event took place.
Far more important than Sub Pop’s anniversary is the fact that all
of these bands are coming together to play what we envision to be a
pretty successful benefit show. Each band is choosing a charity, and
the money that people are paying is going to be broken up between
them.
Obviously, things in the music industry are
changing—high gas prices are making tours more expensive, record
sales are down—but Sub Pop is still posting profits. How? Is Sub
Pop magic?
We have a great roster of bands, we have great people who bring
artists to the label, and I think it’s a combination of luck, timing,
and people being familiar with the Sub Pop logo because we’ve been
around for a while. I have endured a couple different sorts of cycles
since I’ve been doing this, and I hope to avoid the downtrend as long
as I can, but if it were to come, then we would deal with that
accordingly. It’s just the way business works.
It’s really an exciting time to be in the music industry. The thing
that motivated Bruce and me from early on is that, more than wanting to
be record moguls, we were very enthusiastic fans of the bands that we
worked with. There’s really been no better time to be a music fan.
There’s so much music available in so many different platforms, you can
learn about and hear more music than ever before. So from a fan’s
standpoint, it’s really good.
Warner owns 49 percent of Sub Pop. Last year, it laid off
about 400 people while it “restructured its business for the digital
age.” Does that pose a threat to Sub Pop?
Well, they have no involvement whatsoever in our day-to-day
business. If they sold themselves to an arms dealer or Russian oil
moguls, we would have some interesting business partners, but they
would have to work in the terms of our agreement. Sub Pop has been able
to negotiate itself into a position vis-à-vis Warner where they
simply cannot meddle in our affairs. Period. It’s a win-win situation.
We get to exercise our expertise without their meddling and they get to
have a piece of a successful record label.
Of all the records you guys have put out, are there any you
regret?
[Laughs] Maybe I’m being a little uptight, but these artists
and their records are like my children. Calling one out as being a
fuck-up, to indict a band for having made a shitty record….
Any records that you thought deserved greater
success?
Oh, there are so many. Right off the top of my head: Six Finger
Satellite’s Severe Exposure got a little bit of underground
hoopla, but they were ahead of their time. Zumpano, with Carl Newman,
who later started the New Pornographers; they sounded
like
proto-Shins with Newman doing lead vocals. We had a band from Kansas
City called Holler, and we put out one record called Learning How to
Live—great songwriter, amazing singer, but one of our worst
sellers of all time. It got incredible country reviews, but it was at a
time when the label’s identity was ill defined, and those who were
holdover grunge fans were like, “What is this shit?”
Do you ever feel like the “grunge” thing was kind of a
double-edged sword?
If people can’t get beyond what happened 20 years ago, that’s cool.
That’s the great thing about popular culture as it exists in the
information age—there are all these nooks and crannies that one
can burrow into and become incredibly obsessive. To me, the greatest
compliment that one can pay to Sub Pop is noting that over the years we
have provided lots of nooks and crannies for fans to get into.
Krist Novoselic famously showed up at Bruce Pavitt’s house
in the middle of the night, drunk, demanding a record contract. What
would you do if someone tried that today?
I’d say, “What’s your band’s name?” and “Give me 15 minutes to go to
your MySpace page, and then we’ll talk about it.” 
