Soundgarden’s first full-length album, Ultramega OK (SST, 1988), sold well, put the band on the map outside Seattle, and even got nominated for a Grammy. But it just didn’t sound right. The band always meant to redo the album but… stuff happens—grunge exploded and they signed with a major label and went on world tours and became famous and broke up and reunited… you know, stuff. Almost 30 years later, the band asked producer Jack Endino to make their first record suitable for reissue.
Endino spoke to The Stranger about the project.
What happened with Ultramega OK?
Well, the story is basically this: Right after the band made the record, they realized that they didn’t really like the mix, and nobody else really liked it that much, either. I had made their first EP, Screaming Life, with them, and I thought: “You guys went off and worked with somebody else [producer Drew Canulette], and you made a record, and it doesn’t sound as good as the stuff we did on the eight-track machine a few years before. What’s up with that? You guys went backward!”