Skin Yard… those guys were one of the real foundation bands of the Seattle scene.
I first heard them around ’91 when Jack Endino’s name kept popping up everywhere. He produced so many records for the other bands, and then someone at the store put on one of their albums and it clicked. They had this sound that felt like the underground roots of everything that came later — not trying to be huge, just doing their own thing.
By the time I moved to Seattle in ’92 they were already legends in the small clubs. I got to see them live a couple of times that year, right before they broke up. One night at the Off Ramp really stuck with me. The place was packed and they played like a band that had been grinding it out for years. Nothing flashy, just solid and real. You could tell these guys helped build the whole thing from the ground up.
They started back in ’85 — Jack Endino on guitar, Ben McMillan on vocals, Daniel House on bass, and they had a rotating cast of drummers (Matt Cameron was even in the band early on before he joined Soundgarden). They were never the ones on the cover of magazines or selling millions, but a lot of us who were around considered them one of the true cornerstones. Without bands like Skin Yard, the scene probably wouldn’t have sounded the way it did.
They called it quits in ’92 after putting out a bunch of solid records. It sucked, but I get it — they’d been at it for seven years and it was time.
These days in 2002 Jack Endino is still around producing records and playing with other projects. I still pull out their albums sometimes when I want to remember the early underground days, before everything got big and complicated. Skin Yard never chased the spotlight, and that’s exactly why they still feel important to me.
They were never the biggest name, but they were one of the most important. And I’m glad I got to see them before it was over.