First thing: Seaweed were from Tacoma.
Not Seattle.
Tacoma.
People outside Washington tend to throw everything from around here into the same pile, but try telling somebody from Tacoma that Tacoma and Seattle are the same place and see how that goes.
I first heard Seaweed back in Queens around ’92.
Somebody at the store put on Weak and “Recall” came blasting out of the speakers.
That got my attention.
Fast guitars, big choruses, Aaron Stauffer sounding like he was trying to get every word out before the song ran away from him.
Then “Baggage.”
“Clean Slate.”
“New Tools.”
I bought the record.
By the time I moved out here later that year, I’d figured out that Seaweed really came from a different part of the Northwest thing than most of the bands everybody was calling grunge.
Aaron and Clint Werner had grown up together around Tacoma, going to all-ages punk shows and listening to bands like Fugazi, Dag Nasty, Bad Brains and 7 Seconds.
You can hear it.
Seaweed were melodic, but they weren’t soft. They could write a chorus without sanding all the edges off everything around it.
And they’d already been doing things themselves before Sub Pop showed up.
John Atkins had this little label called Leopard Gecko that put out their early stuff. Then they did “Deer Trap” for K Records.
Tacoma. Olympia. Seattle.
That little stretch of I-5 explains a ridiculous amount of the records on this website.
Sub Pop picked them up and Despised came out in ’91, with Jack Endino recording them.
Of course Jack Endino recorded them.
At this point I’m starting to think there was a law.
Weak followed in ’92 and Four in ’93.
I probably play Four the most now.
“Kid Candy,” “Losing Skin,” “Card Tricks,” “Chalk the Cracks.”
There’s something about that record where the punk part and the pop part fit together almost perfectly.
Then Hollywood Records came calling.
Yes, Disney.
Seaweed on a Disney-owned record label.
The ’90s were fucking weird.
They made Spanaway with Andy Wallace and it came out in ’95. Bigger sound, more money behind it, major-label distribution, the whole deal.
They even ended up on the first Warped Tour.
For a minute you could imagine Seaweed becoming a much bigger band.
It didn’t happen.
Hollywood apparently had no idea what to do with them, things dragged on, and eventually the band got out of the deal.
Bob Bulgrien left around that period too, and Alan Cage from Quicksand ended up behind the drums.
Which is another one of those record-collection connections that makes perfect sense once you hear it.
Then Seaweed did something I really respect.
They went back to an indie.
Merge put out Actions and Indications in ’99.
No big comeback campaign. No attempt to pretend the previous few years hadn’t happened. Just another Seaweed record.
Unfortunately, by then they were pretty much worn out.
They played some shows, went down to Brazil, did Merge’s tenth-anniversary thing, and that was basically the end.
Aaron ended up doing Gardener with Van Conner from Screaming Trees afterward.
There’s that fucking family tree again.
I still reach for Weak when I want the record that introduced me to them, but I think Four might actually be the best thing they did.
Ask me again next week.
Seaweed never sounded much like Nirvana, Soundgarden or Alice in Chains to me.
They sounded like kids who grew up going to punk shows in Tacoma and figured out how to write really great songs without losing the reason they started playing in the first place.
And yes, I said Tacoma.
