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Four Guys in Seattle Got Together and...
It started out as a set of simple ideas: Play as loud as possible, drink as much beer as you can afford, and remain oblivious to anyone or anything that did not inspire you on some primeval level. Enjoy the company of your mates, and attempt to impress them with your swagger, humor, and cleverness. Reach down in the pit of your gut and pull out melodies, lyrics, huge metallic riffs, pizza from earlier in the evening, and spill it all out on the practice space carpet.
Life was good until the confusion began with the band's desire to play outside of the practice studio. When prospective booking agents saw Blood Circus in person, they shuddered as if they were reliving some recurring childhood nightmare that involved large, hairy ape-like men and motorcycle chains. They did not return phone messages, they called in sick for previously scheduled appointments, and ran for the back of the club as the primitive, lowbrow, punch-drunk musicians of Blood Circus entered through the front door.
Finally Jonathan, the Scoundrel's Lair booking specialist gave Blood Circus an opportunity to tell their story. In mono-syllabic and barely decipherable truck-driver slang, they described a new ethos for the gestating Seattle Scene. They honestly did not give a damn how it sounded, they were perpetually pissed-off and wanted a public exhibition to provide an outlet for an unhealthy amount of savage angst. Fortunately for Blood Circus, Jonathan felt that it all made sense.
Blood Circus did not get to play Scoundrel's Lair because it closed shortly after their conversation with Jonathan. However they were booked by Dead Moon's Fred Cole to play a small hole-in-the-wall club that was located in the old home of the former punk nite spot Wrex in the Denny Regrade neighborhood of Seattle. The Vogue was starting to get a reputation for hosting some raucous entertainment, and Blood Circus fit the bill.
At first, the band played weeknight openers and took whatever they could get in financial compensation, usually minimal, aside from a bar tab. After all, this was Blood Circus and all they really wanted to do was have fun and drink free beer. Anything beyond those simple ends dangerously stoked their already-pathological egos. Bruce, a friend of Jonathan's began to frequent those Blood Circus gigs at the Vogue, Central, and other Seattle venues.
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Sub Pop and the Business of Making Money...
Dear Reader, you probably know the rest. Jonathan and Bruce were "the" Jonathan and Bruce of "Bruce & Jonathan" fame, founders of the incredibly successful record label Sub Pop. When Jonathan first encountered Blood Circus in the wee little pub that was a favorite alternative music watering hole in Seattle's University District, Sub Pop as a full-blown record label was only a dream, not yet manifested into the multi-million dollar reality that it is today.
Jonathan Poneman did not forget these uneducated itinerant, lower middle-class guys with day jobs and their formidable appetite to rock loudly. Along with his partner Bruce Pavitt, he went so far as to boldly offer them a record contract, such as it was.
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Poneman’s attraction to the Blood Circus sound was an obvious infatuation with the working-class ethic. Since he was an employee at Muzak, Poneman had a bone to pick with the musical status quo. Blood Circus songs spoke to regular folks, disenfranchised kids who lived in the less affluent neighborhoods; kids whose parents couldn’t afford the nicer things like leather jackets and $200 engineer boots that their richer friends’ parents were buying for their classmates.
Jonathan's liner notes for the post-mortem CD release of Primal Rock Therapy stated that the band was “Everclear to everyone else’s whiskey.” Off the record, Jonathan once remarked that “Blood Circus are a regular bunch of guys with truck drivers in their immediate family.” It was from this backdrop of lower middle-class Americana that Blood Circus wrote their songs about surfing, skateboarding, abusive alcoholic fathers, and girls who didn’t go for guys from the wrong side of the tracks.
Blood Circus headed straight to the place where Sub Pop had an audio recording services account. Working with Reciprocal Studios' original 8-track analog Tascam deck, Chris Hanzsek and Jack Endino labored over the console, take after miserable take, while Blood Circus drank beer, ate fudge sticks, and wallowed in what they believed was new-found rock stardom. In spite of the myriad states of mental decay and deranged attitudes about musicality, a hand-crafted song was forged into the iron landscape that was to be part of Seattle's contribution to rock history: SIX FOOT UNDER.
For more history visit Music Life Radio's podcast interview with Geoff Robinson
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