Sunday, July 16, 2006

Earache & Sub Pop?

Question: I read in a book about the history of the sub pop label that during the early 90s earache negotiated a licensing agreement with them that failed to come off is this true and what bands were you after, i mean earth on earache would have been amazing From:

Answer: Nah it was'nt Earth- for some reason i never rated that band. Too boring and drone-y and one dimensional, listening to Earth is like listening to wallpaper or something.The band we wanted to licence was none other than --Nirvana, it was the only Sub Pop band I actually liked, the brilliant debut LP Bleach was constantly on my walkman because they had a certain intensity sadly lacking from the other more mellow Sub Pop acts.You gotta imagine, at the time, they were merely a promising up n coming Seattle alternative rock band on an up n coming US indie label.Earache was leading the way in the extreme metal scene in UK and Europe,and as far as i could tell, Nirvana fitted the bill as the next wave of extreme music,so we offered to license the next Nirvana album from Sub Pop, which would have been "Nevermind".But events got outta hand, and the major label "DGC/Geffen' bought the band out of its Sub Pop contract, Earache never had a chance to get involved at that stage, and the rest is history.
I got to hear the band very early on, and first hand, from Gary Held, the owner of Tupelo which was the tiny label in Uk which licensed "Bleach" from Sub Pop in the first place, and it was he( and the staff of Vital distribution) who was responsible for pretty much making Nirvana a big selling rock band in the UK.

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