Thursday, June 5, 2008

Lamefest and Ultra Lamefest



The first Sub Pop Lamefest show took place June 9, 1989 at Seattle's Moore Theater. The line-up was Mudhoney, TAD and Nirvana. From Mudhoney's tourbook "There were many problems with security at this show. Mudhoney stopped playing on three separate occasions, and at one point Mark tried to kick a security guard into the audience. This was the first all-ages show that Mudhoney played in Seattle." I'm pretty sure the security group were the Fallen Angels, who used to do security at a lot of bigger underground shows. Despite the security overreacting to an excited crowd, this was a great show. This was before Nirvana was very big, they opened the show and Mudhoney were the headliners. There is some decent footage online of this show here. This was essentially a really big Sub Pop showcase after the label had outgrown doing label showcases at art galleries and small clubs.

Three years later, on April 4, 1992, Sub Pop put on another big show, calling this one Ultra Lamefest. This time it was even larger and took place at the Paramount Theater. Again Mudhoney headlined, also on the bill were Seaweed, The Supersuckers, Pond and Earth. There was actually a three gig Lamefest tour Japan in 1993 as well, featuring The Supersuckers, Fastbacks, Seaweed and Supersnazz. The tour played two shows in Tokyo and one in Osaka.

I've heard mention of a Lamefest San Francisco in 1993... anyone know anything about that?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmm... Mudhoney opened for Danzig at the horrible club downstairs on the ave. in 1988 and I thought that was their first all ages show (one of their first few shows...)

Dan 10Things said...

Ha ha ha, you are totally right. In that same tourbook the quote is from, there are quite a few all ages shows they played listed before that. The Danzig show at the Underground was in January '89, but they already played the Hub and that '88 show in the train station with Screaming Trees and Sonic Youth.

Anonymous said...

i was at that underground show - i loved it!
no stage, just some 2X4s & plywood seperating the bands from the crowd.
danzig hair whipped me, i was afraid i was gonna get an infection...