Green River
The first band to record for Sub Pop, Green River featured members who would later form Mudhoney and Pearl Jam. Their Dry as a Bone EP was the record Bruce Pavitt described as 'Gritty vocals, roaring Marshall amps. Ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation' in his 1988 mail-order catalog, accidentally naming the movement. The EP's release was delayed a year after recording because Sub Pop couldn't afford to press it. When it finally came out, it set the template for everything that followed. 'We just considered ourselves rock & roll guys who grew up on punk rock,' drummer Alex Shumway told Rolling Stone years later. 'We realized that there was some music that we liked before we became hardcore kids that we were afraid we listened to, but then we admitted we liked it. And we started making music like that.' That admission—that Black Sabbath and punk could coexist—defined grunge. Green River appeared on C/Z Records' Deep Six compilation in 1986 alongside Soundgarden and the Melvins. Though the compilation sold miserably, it documented a burgeoning regional sound before anyone knew what to call it. When Green River broke up in 1988, vocalist Mark Arm formed Mudhoney, while Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament eventually formed Pearl Jam. The band lasted less than three years but their influence stretched across the decade. When they reissued their records years later, Jack Endino removed all the Eighties flourishes from Rehab Doll, stripping away the overproduced snare drum and cloaks of reverb to reveal what he'd captured in the first place.
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Dry as a Bone
The EP that gave grunge its name when Bruce Pavitt described it as 'Gritty vocals, roaring Marshall amps. Ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation' in the 1988 Sub Pop catalog, setting the template for the scene. Recorded a year before Sub Pop could afford to press it, the EP became the first release to carry the grunge label explicitly. When Rolling Stone spoke with Green River's members years later, drummer Alex Shumway explained their approach: 'We just considered ourselves rock & roll guys who grew up on punk rock. We realized that there was some music that we liked before we became hardcore kids that we were afraid we listened to, but then we admitted we liked it. And we started making music like that.' That admission—that Black Sabbath and punk could coexist—defined what Pavitt would call grunge. The EP's raw sound, captured by Jack Endino at Reciprocal Recording, set Sub Pop's sonic identity. When Green River reissued their records years later, Endino stripped away the Eighties production flourishes to reveal what he'd captured in the first place. Dry as a Bone didn't need those flourishes. It was already perfect.