You Don't Look A Day Over Twenty

This past weekend Sub Pop, the only record label more influential in my late teen life than Chicago's Touch and Go, celebrated twenty years of bringing some of the best bands around to the public's ears.

And I just wanted to extend a thank you. Nirvana and Mudhoney saved me from some pretty awful music when I was sixteen. As did one of the more unsung heroes of the label, a band that I think was one of the best they ever signed: Six Finger Satellite. Here's a brief clip from one of their songs. I'm not posting a video of them playing (though such videos exist) simply because no video can really do them justice. I've never seen, before or since, a band command a room quite the way they did. (Rumor (or anyway, an article I read in a Boston magazine the last time I was on tour) has it that they're working on a new album. I'll be first in line.)



If there is an heir to the Six Finger Satellite throne of being amazingly good but relatively under-appreciated, it's another Sub Pop band, A Frames. It doesn't get much louder or better. Like a buzzsaw through your brain case. But in a good way. And it's worth noting: the frontmen for both bands look like they eat crates of chickens for snacks.




Thanks Sub Pop, for helping to save us all from boredom. Here's to the next twenty years, provided we haven't melted the planet or created a black hole near France.