I’m sitting in the Elysian, Capitol Hill. I have few fond memories
of this bar. The idea that beer should be fancy both alienates and
repulses me, and though I’m not denying their burgers are fine, I’d be
dumb not to admit that after an evening spent on Broadway, you wake up
craving the taste of a Dick’s. A Dick’s, I said.
I’m talking to my buddy Eric Reynolds, who’s someone high up at
Fantagraphics Books—Fanta, of course, being still (relatively)
flush with the money from the Charles Schultz/Peanuts reprints. I try not to
knuckle-grip the table when Mr. Reynolds
offers me $2,000 for an “art” reprint of my old “grunge” book,
Live Through This. Frankly, I would do it for free, just for
the association—but please don’t tell anyone. It would devalue my
bargaining power. I nod casually and suggest it’d be a blast to ask Sub
Pop to supply a free CD for initial quantities… Hey, they did it for
photographer Charles Peterson; they could do it for the damn person who
invented this fucking city.
* * *
“That’s Everett, as in the nearby city they named after me,” I
instruct the Sub Pop receptionist. Mark Arm is working in the Sub Pop
warehouse. I know plenty of people who don’t believe this fact. They
think Mark Arm is some sort of a goddamn grunge guru, a pop star, a man
who lines his Converse with million-dollar bills—they think Mark
Arm still works in the Fantagraphics warehouse. They are wrong.
“Seen that TAD documentary yet?” asks Mark. A Tad Doyle documentary?
I am so there. “Charles Cross is all over it.” Charles Cross? What,
Charles Cross, that well-known TAD and Sub Pop fan? Charles Cross, the
world authority on all things grunge, especially the early years? Wow.
What a coup!
“Yeah,” remarks Mark dryly. “Charles Cross, that well-known TAD
authority.” Wow. Documentarians really know where to find the scoop,
don’t they?
I’m informed that Tad Doyle is working in a warehouse next to the
railroad tracks in South Seattle, where folks create fancy lighting
arrangements. This might not excite you. It excites me greatly. Tad
Doyle is one of the few men that your fucking overblown, overhyped city
(I’m talking music here, but you can expand this description to cover
whatever you see fit) can feel proud to have played the part of “home”
to. The first time we met, he informed me he was searching for a music
of a certain frequency that automatically made men vacate their bowels
(women, it would just leave a pleasant tingling sensation within). I’m
informed Tad Doyle is sober. This is great news. I, too, am sober. It
means we can quaff mineral water to our hearts’ content. (I have a
moment a few days after leaving Seattle where I’m asked by also-sober
Breeders frontwoman Kim Deal whether I was ever a “social heroin user.”
I am at a loss how to reply.)
* * *
I’m asked how Seattle has changed in the three years since I last
visited. More condos. That’s it. (And what’s with this perfect-day
winter weather? It took me round about nine years to see Rainier first
time round.) I
personally think the problem lies in branding: Call
condos bungalows and the problem is solved. “Hey, you heard they put up
another 50 bungalows on Capitol Hill last week?” “Another 50? Wow,
cool!”
“Twenty years ago,” states Everett True look-alike and veteran
producer Steve Fisk, “Seattle was a shitty small town with small-town
attitudes and hardly any money. At some point during the ’90s, it got
rich—very rich—and in the process, became a big city and
put up loads of condos. And you know what… I couldn’t be fucking
happier!”
Although this is of course a highly commendable attitude, I can’t
help thinking that only someone from Seattle would actually believe
this town is now a big city.
Graffiti on the windows of the closed Cha Cha reads: “Condos suck.”
My, what polite vandals you have.
* * *
I visit Charles Peterson in his Pioneer Square studio. We have a
laugh about the BBC Nirvana documentary that we both agreed to be
interviewed for last year. The director—doubtless despairing of
having to rehash the same Charles Cross interview that everyone else
uses (“The world’s only authority on Nirvana!”)—picks up
on the fact that I momentarily agreed to be interviewed on film and
gives me a ridiculously long buildup, culminating in the use of a
Smiths song over footage of my hometown of Brighton, UK. Cut to a
studio in Pioneer Square, where Peterson is asked to describe Everett
True: Charles stares at the camera, momentarily nonplussed. “What…
Jerry?” he says and starts to laugh. [Everett True is Jerry’s adopted
name; this is possibly hilarious in
England. —Ed.] It’s
quite my favorite
Seattle moment of 2007.
* * *
Sub Pop vice president Megan Jasper reveals secrets about Sub Pop
president Jonathan Poneman’s bowel movements that I’m unable to pass
along. PM me, or something. I’m ostensibly here for three days to write
a story linking the formation of Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli’s
supergrunge group the Gutter Twins with Sub Pop’s 20-year anniversary
(“Yeah, if you can’t count” says Steve Fisk), but the Twins aren’t
actually in town—they’re in L.A.—so no interview takes
place. Later, my suffering ex-intern Natalie remarks that some of the
Robert Crumb drawings at the Frye Art Museum exhibition opening seem a
little, um, racist and, um, a little sexist. Mmm-mm, I nod.
* * *
Gutter Twin Dulli e-mails me in response to my Village
Voice blog: “So nice to see you’re still a cunt.”
The Gutter Twins play Tues March 4 at the Showbox at the Market,
with Great Northern, 8 pm, $15 adv/$17 DOS, 21+.
Dull.