Hey, welcome to the Grunge Underground Archive.
My name’s Nate Callahan. I’m 27, born and raised in Queens, New York. I moved out to Seattle in ’92 and I’ve been here ever since.
I work at a record store downtown during the day, which means I probably spend more money on records than I make selling them. I tend bar a few nights a week to make up for it.
This site is basically my personal archive. Nothing fancy. Just bands, records, tapes, shows and people that meant something to me back then. Some of it got called grunge, some of it didn’t. I never cared much about the name anyway.
A lot of the stuff here comes from records and tapes I’ve collected over the years. Some of it comes from shows I was lucky enough to see myself. And some of it is just stuff I remember — so don’t take every date and every story here as gospel.
I saw a lot of great bands back then. Sometimes in clubs, sometimes in rooms that probably shouldn’t have been holding that many people, and sometimes at somebody’s house with half the neighborhood packed into the living room. I didn’t realize at the time how much I was going to miss it.
I’m putting things up whenever I have the time, so this place will probably always be a little unfinished.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by.
This site is dedicated to Mia Zapata (1965–1993).
Rest in peace, Mia.
The band that changed everything. Three guys from Washington somehow ended up turning the whole damn world upside down.
Posted: March 5, 2002Heavy, strange, psychedelic and completely their own thing. And then there was Chris Cornell’s voice.
Posted: March 7, 2002They got enormous and then spent half their time fighting against what came with it. Stubborn as hell, which is probably why I still like them.
Posted: March 9, 2002Dark, heavy and painfully honest. When Layne and Jerry sang together, nobody else sounded like them.
Posted: March 11, 2002Messy, loud and impossible to ignore. Courtney could turn a room upside down before you even knew what happened.
Posted: March 12, 2002If you want to know what Seattle sounded like before the whole world showed up, start here. Fuzz, sarcasm and absolutely no interest in becoming rock stars.
Posted: March 13, 2002Four guys from Ellensburg making this heavy, psychedelic racket with Mark Lanegan growling over the top. They deserved more than they got.
Posted: March 14, 2002Loud enough to rearrange your internal organs. One of the real cornerstones of the early Seattle scene, whether the rest of the world noticed or not.
Posted: March 15, 2002Fast songs, great melodies and some of the most fun shows in town. Never needed much more than that.
Posted: March 16, 2002Fred, Toody and Andrew. Three people from Portland proving you didn’t need money, polish or anybody’s permission to make great rock ’n’ roll.
Posted: March 17, 2002Too weird, too heavy and too stubborn to fit anywhere properly. Which is probably why they ended up influencing everybody.
Posted: March 18, 2002Punk rock with heart, guts and one hell of a singer. Mia Zapata had the kind of voice you only needed to hear once.
Posted: March 19, 2002Big songs, big personality and Andy Wood right in the middle of it all. They were gone before the rest of the world really knew what Seattle was becoming.
Posted: March 20, 2002One of the bands that helped build the whole thing before anybody outside Seattle cared. Never huge, absolutely essential.
Posted: March 21, 2002Ben McMillan and some serious low-end weight. They never became stars, but around the clubs they earned plenty of respect.
Posted: March 22, 2002Carrie Akre could really sing, and the band always delivered live. One of those Seattle groups I still think deserved a little more attention.
Posted: March 23, 2002Fast, loud and sweaty in all the right ways. They helped keep the Northwest underground alive after the cameras showed up.
Posted: March 24, 2002Too polished for some of the old crowd and way too successful for others. I didn’t care — they wrote some damn good songs.
Posted: March 25, 2002One record made by friends trying to say goodbye to Andy Wood. It became something much bigger without ever needing a second one.
Posted: March 26, 2002Dreamy, heavy and a little psychedelic. They found their own strange corner of Seattle and stayed there.
Posted: March 26, 2002Before Mother Love Bone, before Pearl Jam, before anybody called this stuff grunge, there was Andy Wood being completely out of his mind. Glam, punk, noise and a whole lot of fun.
Posted: March 26, 2002Four people from Olympia who made punk feel dangerous and necessary again. Kathleen Hanna had plenty to say and absolutely no intention of saying it quietly.
Posted: March 26, 2002Four women from Los Angeles who could walk into a Seattle club and fit right in. Loud, funny and completely uninterested in anybody’s bullshit.
Posted: March 26, 2002Angry, tough and very much part of Seattle. They went through some terrible things and turned a lot of it into music.
Posted: March 27, 2002A New York songwriter and poet who became part of the Seattle scene for a while. One hell of a live performer.
Posted: March 27, 2002Fuzzed-out, psychedelic and dreamier than most bands around here. They never got huge, but they had a sound nobody else quite had.
Posted: March 27, 2002San Diego, not Seattle, and they took plenty of shit for it. I liked them anyway — and they got a lot more interesting once everybody stopped expecting another “Plush.”
Posted: March 27, 2002Definitely Chicago, definitely not grunge, whatever the magazines said. Billy Corgan just kept making everything bigger until the whole thing finally blew apart.
Posted: March 27, 2002What started as Dave Grohl making a record almost by himself became a real band pretty damn fast. Best part is, they never needed to become Nirvana again.
Posted: March 27, 2002