When I arrived in the summer of ‘91, Seattle was awash in music, a town in the throes of a full-blown, electric, sweat-soaked, sonic explosion. These were high times indeed, not just because we were all stoned, but because of a thrilling sense of intoxication in the air, water, trees, and rain-splashed pavement over which we trod in our Chuck T’s and combat boots. Bangs in face and guitar in hand, I had come ready to rock, desperate to dive in and gulp up as much as I could. Still, despite my starry-eyed excitement, I couldn’t quite shake the nagging sense that I had gotten there just a bit too late.

This was often confirmed by the pronouncements of certain old salts who made it their mission to declare the scene long dead. It wasn’t uncommon to endure the Rainier-slurred bitchings of some grizzled longtimer moaning about how things hadn’t been the same since Soundgarden signed to a major label or how everything had gone to shit after the sad, premature death of Andrew Wood.

“Too many out-of-towners these days,” he’d invariably croak between drags off his Marlboro Red. “You should have been here when things were really going off. You know I was supposed to be the original bassist for Green River but Mark Arm owed Jeff Ament money so he had to let him in the band. Fuck him, he’s a dick anyway… and dude… I used to sneak Stone Gossard in the back door of the Central before he could even drive.”

So yeah, I couldn’t help but feel that I was late to the party, despite the fact that this was actually my second tour of duty in the Jet City. My first stint had been for just nine months as a student at Cornish in ‘89. Only this time, rather than pass my days emoting with fellow thespians within the crumbling walls of that storied institution, I’d decided to make a go of it as a rock and roller.

I mean, everyone else was doing it. How hard could it be?

Following that first year at Cornish I’d retreated to my hometown of Olympia, where I’d promptly signed on as a bassist in a psychedelic rogue rock outfit called Brave New World. We were largely nobodies, but still supplied the bumping, shroomed-out soundtrack to numerous house parties and local festivals that were the backbone of our social scene in those days. By the late spring of ‘91, the inevitable tides of life were ripping us in disparate directions, and despite our best intentions to keep the project alive in a move to Seattle, we ended up putting the band in the dirt and largely going our separate ways.

This was undoubtedly a good thing, as the moorings of Brave New World were exclusively tied to the barnacle and mussel-encrusted pylons of Budd Inlet and the acid-tinged waters that lapped up against them.There is no way the band would have survived outside of that rarified Oly air, so now I found myself back up in Seattle in an attempt to build something new out of the remnants.

It didn’t take long for the new band to coalesce: Markus (the Brave New World singer) joined me on guitar. We had also managed to draft Patrick (from the Oly folk-rock outfit Jimmy Einstein and the Deersmen) to play drums, and on bass was my childhood friend and Brave New World keyboard sideman, Ken. Vocal duties were up in the air. The obvious choice was Markus, who had already supplied vox for a full gigging band, but Ken, it seemed, had other plans.

The four of us rented a house in the very suburbanish Wedgewood neighborhood on the north end of town, situated just south of the somewhat skeevy strip known as Lake City Way. While a bit far from the action, the place had three bedrooms, a small loft, and—like a lot of Seattle houses those days—was completely affordable for four bonafide slackers. It also contained a spacious backyard, huge wooden deck, and most importantly, a basement which we immediately converted into a jam space. 

For us this was the ideal arrangement. We would live together and play together, saving money on a rehearsal space by practicing right at home. The idea was to play so much that our music would become second nature, to get as tight as a band could possibly be.  

The basement was a crude pit surrounded by rough concrete walls. Wooden pallets topped with old carpets made up and improvised floor over raw dirt, which, during the winter, turned to muck. This basic construction did the trick, though the little cell was so dank that it turned the already sketchy electrical situation into a kind of Russian roulette of electrocution. We never knew exactly when it was coming, but each time we fired up the gear we risked getting zapped, a disturbing, yet small price to pay for rock and roll glory.

We had a full setup down there and would rehearse most every night, building our set one song at a time, recording it all on boombox cassettes, listening, and then reworking the material to smooth out the problems. We all worked minimum wage prole jobs, but come sundown we’d descend into our earthen bunker, fire up the weed, and rock out for hours. We did this week in and week out.

Despite this nearly perfect arrangement, we found early on that the band’s chemistry was clunky, to say the least. This particular ogre reared its head first when it came time to name the group. After bandying about a good dozen names, we reluctantly settled on “Naugahyde” (A reference to a kind of faux-leather popular in the 70’s. Does that mean we were playing faux rock?). This moniker was fervently pushed by our bass player and burgeoning singer, Ken. Neither Markus, Patrick, nor I was ever keen on the name, yet Ken continually fought for it, and in the end won through pure attrition (not to mention the lack of a better alternative).

Ken was big—a huge black-clad dude of nearly Tad Doyle-ian proportions—-with opinions that usually took on the weight of their subject. He was stubborn and passionate and never gave up on his advocacy, often wearing the rest of us down in the process. He ended up dominating the band as a result, which also had to do with the fact that most of us were more than often catastrophically baked. After all, no drug amplifies passivity like chronic lab weed, which meant that the three of us usually just shut up, while Ken got his way.

Markus and I had both played in Brave New World and shared a lot of the same tastes. We were hoping to move our sound in a psychedelic, Pixie-esque, space rock direction, while Ken, of course, had his own ideas. He was a dyed-in-the wool post punk guy steeped in the sounds of bands such the Cure and Killing joke, not to mention goth and industrial luminaries such as Sisters of Mercy and Nine Inch Nails. He threw his bass through loads of chorus and flange and drenched his singing in delay. He also often browbeat our poor drummer into playing rhythms that were clearly in Ken’s head but perhaps not in Patrick’s much more groove-oriented repertoire.

What was very clear is that Ken had his idea of what the band should be and while the rest of us more often than not chafed under his yoke. He gradually moved in on singing duties for most of the songs, pushing out Markus—-whose Bowie-esque sound and look—not to mention his very original songwriting, was exactly what I thought would give us an edge.

The thing is, Ken had talent. Plenty of it. He had a good ear and natural pitch and took to music easily. He picked up the bass in a matter of a couple of weeks and was writing more riffs and songs than we knew what to do with. He was bursting with a rough-hewn creativity, and I can’t blame him for wanting to convert it all into music as soon as possible. How long had he waited to have a band at his disposal? 

Still, he was raw and his methods more than often grating. While absolutely stoked to be in a band, he had yet to really develop his craft, especially when it came to singing. While always in key, his Robert Smith via King Buzzo a la Jaz Coleman-ish warblings came across as forced, overwrought, or worse, inauthentic. While Ken’s singing style often made my bones cringe, I should have also realized that he was just really finding his legs, and with enough time he may have been able to blossom into something lethal.

Markus, on the other hand, already had enough experience to have settled into a sound, not to mention a look. He was cut from a mod-ish, British rock mold and just exuded a kind of natural coolness and Euro-charisma. He was stylish and sly and wrote great, out-there, space rock tunes with surprising changes and killer hooks. Compared to the gargantuan goth hogging the mic, it was a no-brainer who should be fronting the band, but in the end Markus only got two songs out of the deal, and it should come as no surprise that they were always our most well-received.

*

While we were sweating away in our basement, the local music landscape began to properly catch fire. In late September, Nirvana’s “Nevermind” hit the charts like a hydrogen bomb, consigning legions of bespandexed, poodle-permed cock rockers to the ash heap of history. It was a tectonic shift that happened overnight, though I can’t say that I was caught completely off guard. Having caught Nirvana three times locally over that past year, I knew just how incandescent and explosive they were, but it wasn’t until I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the radio for the first time that I knew we were dealing with an unstoppable force. This was a musical and pop culture supernova, and there we were, at ground zero.

While the feeding frenzy that followed may have alienated some of the town’s aging scenesters, for most it seemed like the good times were just kicking in. Our little waterlogged city was suddenly the darling of the nation. After untold decades of neglect we were finally on the map and worth a murmur from the nation’s tastemakers. No longer were we a backwater met with shrugs or vagaries like “Seattle? Doesn’t it rain all the time there?”

In fact, Seattle was now perhaps the hippest place on the globe. Every band from Topeka to Trenton was moving to our town in hopes of scoring that coveted record deal, though in the end most of them were more likely to end up scoring smack.

Still, the A&R hyenas descended to sniff out the next “big thing.” The major labels were sitting on mountains of cash after the glimmering, oversaturated days of the 80’s, and thought nothing about throwing a bit of it around in order to amplify their haul. Pearl Jam’s 10 had come out just a few weeks before Nevermind and was beating up the charts, funnelling more cash into this dragon’s hoard. After all, nothing begets greed like more greed.

The secret was now out. Our era of splendid isolation had come to a close, and while it was momentarily thrilling to see MTV veejays sporting Nirvana and Alice and Chains shirts on national TV, we couldn’t but help but feel that our thing was now being splashed around and embraced by people who didn’t understand the first  thing about it, which lead to a certain emptiness. When flannel shirts—our Northwest uniform not out of style, but rather weather—began gracing the runways of New York, hanging like drying laundry from the sharp-hipped, count-the-ribs frames of skagged-out fashion models, I knew the gig was up.

Perhaps those aging, burnt out scenesters were right. Perhaps things had been dead for longer than most of us had even realized.

But for me, things were just coming alive.

The one thing that had prevented me from soaking up the music scene during my first stint in Seattle was the fact that I was underage and baby faced. Outside of the OK Hotel (which soon turned into a bar) Seattle had a dearth of all-ages venues. Lacking a fake ID or a doorman that would wave me through, I was effectively shut out of most of the shows going on, often just hearing about them from my neighbor Dave, a bleached-haired dude who played in a raggedy punk outfit called “The Dobermans.”

Several times I remember standing outside of local music hotspot Squid Row, longing to get in on the action. I could feel the bass drum thump and feedback vibrate in my bones as the sound waves made their way through the walls and pavement. A couple of times I nonchalantly attempted entry but was always stymied at the door.

Finally, in January of ‘92, I turned 21. I could now legally drink alcohol, which would allow me to enter so many of the sanctums from which I’d been previously barred. Not only would this allow Naugahyde to start playing out, but it also opened up a whole new world of music that I’d been gagging to devour.

I soon found myself out several nights a week, stretching my already thin paycheck at the Eastlake Zoo, the Pioneer Square Saloon, or the Comet. Booze, laughs, and women were on my mind, but music was the real thing, drawing me into clubs where I’d down cheap beer or well screwdrivers and get lost in the sweaty mayhem to bands such as Hammerbox, Flop, The Gits, Imij, 7 Year Bitch, The Supersuckers, Sage, Zeek, Gas Huffer, Sadhappy, Love Battery, as well as local luminaries Mudhoney and The Melvins. Though my memory is blurry and vodka-warped, I recall passing many nights in front of pounding PAs at the Crocodile, The Colourbox, RKCNDY, and my favorite, the Off Ramp, famous for its “Hash After the Bash,” a greasy 50-cent-a-plate breakfast buffet designed to sober up a room full of sweat-drenched drunks before they were herded out the door and staggered on home.

The Off Ramp was the first Seattle rock club I entered and remember being somewhat in awe. I’ll never forget sidling up to its bar (which was separate from the main room), and taking in the scene. Alice in Chains blared from the speakers while leather-clad hair farmers and junkie-skinny rockstar hopefuls sat elbow to elbow, sipping beers and cocktails, chain smoking ciggies and taking part in the deep, head-to-head form of a schmoozing that is unique to such a space. The sleaze was palpable, but also strangely seductive. I felt both out of my element and league, probably because I was.

Of course I too had my dreams of rock stardom, though they were decidedly local, which made them feel more realistic, I suppose. I didn’t really have any delusions that my little band was headed for the stratosphere, but I did hold out hope that we could start playing in town and even begin to commandeer coveted weekend slots at one of those cool kid clubs, and who knows, even put an album out. 

First we’d have to pay our dues of course, so we headed down to the Evergreen State College in Oly where we cut a four song demo, which we then sent out to various booking agents. While most of these cassettes surely ended up in the trash pile, we did manage to get a couple of phone calls and were quickly assigned to the bottom-feeder circuit, playing one of a few venues on a Monday or Tuesday night. 

Many of the clubs in town had music five or six nights a week (Buttrock haven Madd Doggs in Lake City hosted shows every night), and the loser slots went to the loser bands. I always thought it a bit disingenuous that Sup Pop and some of the acts on their roster ironically employed the term “loser” when they were, in fact, the biggest thing in town.

Now Naugahyde had a smattering of friends who might show up for a gig or two, but like most of the other hopeless cases on a Tuesday night bill, we mainly played to a couple of bored bar staff, sometimes a girlfriend, and always a burned out sound guy with a thousand yard stare who actively hated us just for being there.

The result was a largely joyless string of gigs played for nobody by nobodies.

The clubs, while feeling the need to fill a ridiculous roster of live music, often seemed to resent us for showing up, slapping down a couple of drink tickets as payment if we were lucky. The Colourbox even sold a t-shirt announcing their disdain, which, in big bold letters read:

YOUR HAIR IS TOO LONG AND SO IS YOUR SET

Surely the sound guy came up with this quip. I don’t blame him, of course, because most of these dead end gigs were indeed interminable slogs. Often the order was set by the booker (who we rarely saw), but sometimes it was just a free-for-all where the bands themselves had to hammer out who played when, which on occasion nearly led to punches being thrown.

No one ever wanted to go first, because no one wanted to open, but the fact is that this slot was often the most desirable since you could at least mercifully end the illusion of a big night rather than wait around for the inevitable disappointment at hand.

Some bands realized this, especially if they brought their own posse. Maybe 20 of their friends would show up which would of course lift the rest of our hearts, since it presented the illusion of an actual crowd. This band, however, would inevitably play first or second before packing up their gear and vacating the club, taking their crew with them, resulting in yet another sad, soul-sucking empty room in which we were free to ejaculate the remnants of our dreams.  

While Naugahyde took our place firmly at the bottom of the food chain, we were still a good band to book on a Tuesday or Wednesday night. We were dependable, tight, and played a set that clocked in at around 45 minutes. We were just good enough to keep people drinking (when there were people), with two or three songs that sometimes even managed to inspire affection and, dare I say, excitement.

Most importantly, we’d almost never clear the room.

We did, however, often get billed with room clearers—bands so loud, sloppy, boring, or just plain inept that any customers who happened to be hanging out and nursing a drink would invariably flee for the exit.

One such band was called “Psychic Coffee,” who were always doing scrub gigs with us. While nice enough dudes, they were a jam trio with more noodles than a Japanese ramen joint, and never once did they bring anyone along to the gig. I doubt there was even a single girlfriend between the three of them willing to endure their endlessly meandering onslaught, yet they always seemed to go on right before us, playing sets that dragged on for well over an hour while I stewed in the corner, fantasizing about throwing them into a wheat thresher. 

As bad as they were, at least Psychic Coffee weren’t derivative hacks like so many of the other bands we shared bills with over those couple of years. Most of these were the out-of-towners the jaded originals so bristled at, a revolving door of wannabe Cornells, Cobains, Staleys, and Vedders who whipped their manes and yarled up the joints while their fellow bandmates played half-baked knocks offs what they considered to be the “Seattle sound.”

Then there were the rich kids trying to get in on the action while the going was good. I’ll never forget a show we played at Oddfellows Hall with, of course, Psychic Coffee, along with a couple of other acts. During the load in, a shimmering, brand-new black Chevy Suburban pulled up. These dudes got out and hauled up what must have been tens of thousands of dollars worth of brand new gear—Marshall and Mesa Boogie amps, a Tama drum kit with Zildjian cymbals, a custom 5-string bass, and two immaculate black Les Pauls with gold pickups. The whole setup looked like it had just walked off the showroom floor that very day, and when launched into their set, they proceeded to bore the balls off the already tepid room with a sound that can only be described as Kinkos Soundgarden, or as Ken whispered, “Trust Fund of the Dog.” 

Gear, of course, was always a bitch. None of us had any money and our setup reflected that. The brand name Peavey figured in mightily, and our tour van was a banged up early 80’s model station wagon that Markus piloted like he was composing space rock anthems in his head, which he probably was. The furthest out of Seattle we got was Olympia, where we played a largely-empty outdoor show in the parking lot of the mods at Evergreen and were heckled by a couple of horn-rimmed glasses-sporting proto-riot grrrls who looked like they had just walked out of Oly hipster Central Casting. They especially hated Ken and his singing style, who, having grown up a fat kid, already had a chip on his shoulder. Nothing caused him to go from zero to hate faster than even a hint of mockery thrown his way. 

“Fuck you K Records retard rock feebs, and fuck Calvin Johnson too,” he spat into the mic before yanking the cable from his bass. We never played Oly again.

*

Despite the fact that we were playing out here and there and very much sharpening our sound, things began to get demoralizing. All the time I’d spent attending shows had taught me what it was to pack of club, and of course I wanted to taste a piece of that black magic, but somehow our stuff just wasn’t hooking the folks, save that one drunk acid casualty who did the tweaky chicken dance to whatever noise emanated from the stage. You could never be stoked about that guy.

One of the problems was our dearth of connections. We just weren’t in with anyone who could open any doors or throw us on a bill where we got to play in front of more than, say 12 people. The exception was Patrick, who at the positively ancient age of 30, was already an elder statesman as far as we were concerned. This also meant that he knew people. Hailing from Bellingham, he was old friends with local impresario Daniel House, the bassist for seminal prog grungers Skin Yard and owner of C/Z Records, which at the time was the second biggest indie label in town.

“Hey Pat,” Ken implored after a particularly inspiring practice. “Why don’t you give Daniel House our demo. Hook us up, dude.”

Patrick paused and considered it.

“Nah, man,” he said through a grimace. “We’re just not good enough.”

Even if we weren’t good enough for Daniel House, we did manage to win over some fans in the form of our neighbors. Some UW students were renting a house and figured out that a band lived across the street. They were having a party one Saturday night and invited us to come over, plug in and play. We would be paid in free beer.

We were a little hesitant at first because these guys were frat guys who had moved out of their big house and we weren’t sure how we’d go down with their whole crowd. But Ken and I had spent many happy hours at the U-District fratboy haunt Lox, Stock, & Bagel (50 cent well drinks!) where we had witnessed packs of backward baseball cap-sporting  bros singing along to Pearl Jam songs. This taught us that the meathead contingent was now very receptive towards “alternative” music and we were happily proven right at that party. These dudes and their buddies went nuts for us, jumping up and down and even moshing in the living room where we set up. Once we were finished they cheered so hard that we played through the whole set one more time.

Who knew that this would be our best gig ever? It certainly taught us that the supposedly cool people we wanted to recruit to our cause usually were nothing of the sort, that they were so busy trying to maintain their “coolness” that they’d never give us the time of day. We would do better to jettison any snobbery and play instead for people who were actually there to have a good time.   

Another person on our side was Richard Pauletti, the cantankerous proprietor of the Ditto Tavern in Belltown. Originally a boozer dedicated to writers, the Ditto was legendary in the genesis of the Seattle music scene and considered a kind of hallowed ground. Soundgarden and many others had cut their teeth there in the mid/late 80’s, and along with the Central and the Vogue, the Ditto was a room that served as a proper incubator for the so much that poured forth.

We played a rare weekend show at the Ditto with our friends Chump and Weird Feeling #3 (a great lofi punk outfit that did songs about killer ants and Zen Buddhism). Pauletti, I guess, saw something in us. He especially seemed to connect with Ken; Pauletti was a native New Yorker and Ken—-large in size and attitude—certainly gave off no bullshit East Coast vibes, a breath of fresh air in flakey Seattle. Soon we were invited to play as the Ditto’s house band. We’d do a once-a-month weekend gig that we were also allowed to totally curate. We could keep the door while Pauletti got the bar. 

This sounded like an ideal way to build a following, but, like most of the rest of our shows, few people showed up. Sure we tried to promote the thing, but we also counted on a built-in weekend crowd, which never materialized. Just because you’re playing on a Friday night doesn’t mean there will be a crowd by default, and if there is, odds are that they’re not even there to see your dumb band. I got the feeling that the Ditto—-which really was the kind of pub you went with a friend for a quiet drink—was struggling, and Pauletti thought he’d roll the dice to see if he could get cool bands to bring the kids in again. With us, it seemed, he picked the wrong horse.

As time went on, the initial gleam that the big bands upon our town began to lose its luster. While a certain darkness alway percolated beneath the hair, soul patches, and big belt buckles, by 1992 it was making its tentacles felt. Stefanie Sargent of 7 Year Bitch (a band I rarely missed) died in one of what was to become a string of high-profile overdoses, followed the Gits’ Mia Zapata, who was raped and murdered while walking home late a night after her shift at Piecora’s Pizza on Capitol Hill.

I was unloading my Fender speaker cab from Markus’ station wagon when he told me what had happened. I had to stop and catch my breath, not because the gear was too heavy, but because the news ripped the air from my lungs.

I didn’t know Zapata. I’d never actually met her. Like most, I just admired her from the crowd, but I also couldn’t help but feel as though I’d just lost a sister.

*

Though Naugahyde spent a lot of time playing in deep trenches of the Seattle music scene, our one and only brush with greatness occurred not in a club, but in the very unglamorous aisles of the Safeway on Broadway.

I was there with Ken and Patrick after practice at our new South Lake Union rehearsal space. It was after midnight and the store appeared to be empty, bathed in the unworldly brightness of fluorescent light while the lilting soundtrack of Muzak filled the space. Towards the back I noticed a couple of people running around and laughing, but I thought nothing of it. After all, Capitol Hill, at the time, was a salt lick for local weirdos. 

As we made our way to the frozen foods section (Ken had a hankering for some Hot Pockets), a man pushing a shopping cart entirely filled with toilet paper careened around the corner and nearly slammed into Patrick. The man was Kurt Cobain. The three of us briefly took him in while he, in turn, took us in. We then continued on, acting the part of cool Seattle band dudes who weren’t going to make a bother just because the world’s biggest rock star was stocking up on a year’s supply of asswipe.

Ken got his two-liter soda and Hot Pockets and we pressed on to the store’s lone cashier. Just then, a woman in a head scarf approached. She was accompanied by two friends. From her manic smirk and pinprick pupils, she was obviously high. What was also obvious was that she was Courtney Love.

“Hey — do you know that Kurt Cobain is back there?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, soliciting nods from my buddies.

“Listen…” she grinned, leaning in. “I’ll give you five dollars if you go back there and ask him if he is the lead singer of Alice in Chains.”

I paused for a moment. While I didn’t want to bother him, I realized that this had the potential to be a great story. I was also dead broke and could use the fiver to buy some food and beer. 

“Okay,” I said.

“You really got to ask him if he’s the lead singer of Alice in Chains, okay?”

“All right,” I said.

“Meet me in the produce section when you’re done.”

I took a deep breath, gathered myself, and marched back to the aisle where I had last seen him. He was still there, examining the ingredients listed on a can of oven cleaner.

“Hey,” I said.

He turned to me.

“Hey.”

“Are you the lead singer of Alice in Chains?”

He looked at me with his massive blue eyes, eyes that for a moment seemed to absorb all of the sadness in the world.

“What’s your name?” he whispered..

My heart galloped and my tongue turned to sand. I felt beads of sweat form on my face and could make out my own breathing. Sure, I was starstruck, but I also felt like I was doing something horribly, horribly wrong.

“Adolph?” I manage to stammer.

I bolted immediately, eager to get as far away from him as possible and wipe off the sticky sense of shame that rapidly began incloak me. 

As we had arranged, I met up with Courtney Love in the produce section, and she had me re-enact the encounter, to her giddy amusement. Her eyes were aflame with a sense of malevolent glee, beaming out from her wrinkly, scagged-out babushka face. Her lack of makeup revealed the cruel realities inflicted by a life of punk rock and hard drugs.

Along with her two lackeys, she was more than satisfied with my performance and handed me my five bucks.

I bought a forty-ouncer of Rainier and two cans of Rosarita refried beans.

Cobain would be dead just a year later, which to this day leads me to wonder: How many other people did Courtney Love pay to fuck with his head?

*

Naugahyde’s final show took place at the Jewelbox Theater in the old Rendezvous, back when it was still populated by shaky day alkies, blimp-faced street winos, and Belltown hookers. Granted, the venue was small, but for once it wasn’t empty, and we played what may have been our best set ever. For once I thought that we may even have a future, but by that time I had already re-enrolled in Cornish, having made the sensible decision to give up rock and roll for the much more stable and realistic goal of a career in the theater.

After the set I unplugged, rolled up my cables, packed away my pedals, and promptly quit. As I sat alone, nursing a scotch and soda, I also learned that River Phoenix had just died of an accidental overdose outside of the Viper Room in Hollywood. I had met Phoenix and seen him in action during my week as a glorified extra in the movie “Dogfight” (my single line ended up on the cutting room floor), and the news hit me like a spear to the gut.

It was Halloween, 1993, and seemed like a good night for death.

*

Thousands of bands came through Seattle in those days, and like Naugahyde, most of them never had a hope of becoming anything other than a blip on the radar. But surely even that was a fate worth savoring. At least we all showed up on the screen at a time when a bit of magic was afoot. Sure it was overcrowded and overcooked and far too many people were chasing a form of stardom that even eluded so many at the top of the dog pile. Shit, a lot of the people who supposedly “made it” are now dead and gone, consumed by addiction or ambition or casualties of the very beast that birthed them in the first place. Perhaps the better fate was to have had a taste of it all without the indulgence buffet; to have savored it briefly, and then, wisely, moved on.

When I was bored and broke I would often soak up the time wandering the streets of our town, bathed in the rich, kelpy scent of Elliot Bay along with with smell of fir trees, diesel, restaurant grills, roasting coffee, bum pee, cigarettes, brewing hops, and moldy trash. The squawk of seagulls would intermingle with shouts from homeless dudes, ferry horn blasts, and the hiss and kuthump of traffic on the Alaska Way Viaduct. I’d press on through downtown and then up Pike or Pine, mesmerized by the seemingly infinite lists of band names on posters stapled to the telephone poles:

Sister Psychic, Swallow, Sweetwater, Sandy Duncan’s Eye, Cat Butt, Cat Food, Bone Cellar, The Whole Bolivian Army, Green Apple Quickstep, Hellcows, Aspirin Feast, Alcohol Funnycar, Pop Defect, Four Hour Ramona,, Blood Circus, Paisley Sin, Black Atmosphere, The Squirrels, Steel Wool, Caustic Resin, The Rhino Humpers, Coffin Break, Running with Scissors, Satchel, Hitting Birth, Sleep Capsule, Sluggo, Helios Creed, Dirt Love, Lazy Susan, DC Beggars, Diamond Fist Werny, Fire Ants, Clam Bake, My Name, Bathtub Gin, Calamity Jane, Forced Entry, Bloodhag…

The posters were plastered over each other in layer after layer, surrounding the pole in a thickening skin. Each was like the ring of a tree, marking a certain place and time with its own fingerprint; venues, dates, and band names bled into each other until the core was little more than a waterlogged, paper mache mass of congealed ink and pulp, forming a base on which each succeeding layer could build upon and try again. 

*

After Naugahyde called it quits, I pressed on with my studies at Cornish and also began performing in the Theatresports improv show at the Market Theater in front of 300 cheering college kids every weekend. I later found the local cult-recognition I had long sought in my performance/comedy group Piece of Meat Theatre, which confirmed that my decision to hang up the guitar was a wise one… at least for the time being.

Markus went on to play in several more local projects such as Christ Analogue and Surrealized, and Patrick went back to school, got married, and joined the corporate world. Ken wasn’t quite done with music either, finally finding an outlet for his single musical vision in the band Otto Pilate, a group where he called the shots. 

One night they were playing the Fenix Underground, which is where they usually gigged. Ken’s industrial-flavored rock fit the club’s aesthetic and the owner also liked him. It was a Thursday night and the huge club was largely empty, but the band sounded better than ever, especially through that huge sound system. They played a Cure cover as their closer, and Ken sang his ass off. In the ensuing years after Naugahyde he had indeed found his voice, and he sounded killer.

During the final couple of tunes, who should wander in, but Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil. He just stood at the back sipping a Rainier, taking it all in. He then approached Ken as he got off the stage.

“Dude, that was awesome!” Thayil said.

Now Ken, of course, was a massive Soundgarden fan. We all were. He was a bit starstruck, but this wasn’t him going up to Thayil in a supermarket or a bar. Kim was paying him respect. In a club, after the show.

Thayil was effusive. He went on to shower Ken with praise for several more minutes and then just talk shop for another twenty. He downed a couple more beers (he was well in his cups), but treated Ken, the singer for a nobody band, like a peer. He offered him advice on recording and touring and signing contracts and all sorts of stuff. He was the nicest, most down-to-earth guy and surely made my former bandmate’s night, if not year.

I just stood there and smiled. To see Ken get the respect, just once, that he had craved so long was extremely gratifying. Like most bands, Otto Pilate never really went anywhere, but after so many years of slogging it out in empty or apathetic venues, he finally got the nod from one of the big boys in town, and it sure was sweet to see.