Weak - Seaweed

My first encounter with Seaweed came about during a period in my musical taste that is by no means individual to me. Since Nirvana's Nevermind became a touchstone of modern music in 1991, it seems almost every teenager with a passing interest in rock, goes through a phase of listening primarily to grunge. Nirvana's influence is so lasting that kids that never even shared a planet with Kurt Cobain are still wearing t-shirts with his face on. I for one made sure I had all their albums and singles and any bootlegs I could get my hands on. This, of course, failed to satisfy the record collector in me and as I looked further into Nirvana's history I decided to pick up any records I could find by other bands on the Sub Pop label (Nirvana's first home). Amongst 7 inches by Gas Huffer and B-sides collections by Mudhoney, I found Seaweed's single Bill.

Pumpkin - Wwax

With the advent of the DIY punk movement in the 80's tiny bands were releasing 7 inch singles on their own labels in small numbers more often than not only to a handful of stores in one city. It was a great way of getting your name out there without the hassle of getting signed to a “proper” label. You could record it yourself, get it mastered cheaply and then get them printed up yourself. A large number of these releases will be forever forgotten except by a few die hard local scensters and the band members themselves. On the other side of the coin, some of these tiny releases were the launching pads for some big names. Hüsker Dü for example started off releasing their own singles on their own, tiny, Reflex Records imprint before moving to New Alliance, then SST and finally Warner Bros. Wwax's single Pumpkin kind of falls in between the two. Wwax never made it big but one of its descendents, Superchunk, became a pretty huge name in the 1990's indie rock scene.