Seattle Grunge

The spark came earlier than most accounts admit. Before anyone used the word grunge, before Sub Pop existed as a label, there was a band called the Melvins playing Black Sabbath riffs at half speed. In 1984, when Black Flag rolled through small Pacific Northwest towns on tour, their set had mutated from Sex Pistols sprint to Black Sabbath dirge. Krist Novoselic went with the Melvins to see one of these shows. Afterward, Melvins frontman Buzz Osborne started writing slow, heavy riffs that became the template for what Seattle would sound like. The Melvins were the patient zero of grunge, even if they'd never claim the title.

Seattle itself was an unlikely candidate for rock mecca. A mid-sized port city with cheap rent, grey skies nine months a year, and a progressive college—Evergreen State in nearby Olympia—that didn't use conventional grades and ran its own radio station, KAOS. The University of Washington had its own station too, KCMU. By the mid-1980s, a small constellation of bands had formed: Green River, Skin Yard, Malfunkshun. They played to tiny crowds at venues like the Showbox and the Off Ramp, where admission rarely topped six bucks and local microbrews cost a dollar. When Bruce Pavitt's Sub Pop zine morphed into an actual label in 1986, it gave the scene an identity before most participants knew they were part of one.