7 Year Bitch

7 Year Bitch formed in 1990, their first live show was opening for The Gits. The original line-up included Selene Vigil on vocals, Stefanie Sargent on guitar, Elizabeth Davis on bass and Valerie Agnew on drums. Sadly Stefanie died of an overdose June 27, 1992 just after the band's first album "Sick 'Em" came out on C/Z Records. This photo is of the band playing at The Weathered Wall just after her death in September of 1992, with a friend stepping in on guitar. Roisin Dunne eventually took over on guitar (she left the band in 1996). In 1993 their good friend Mia Zapata was killed, their 1994 album "Viva Zapata" was a tribute to her life and music. The band eventually signed to a major and released their third album on Atlantic, "Gato Negro," in 1996. The next year Atlantic dropped them and the ride seemed over, so the band broke up. In their prime 7 Year Bitch were exciting, fun and powerful. I saw them at least a dozen times between 1990 and 1995 and they always put on a great live show, Selene was a fantastic frontwoman. Unfortunately though, the band seemed plagued with tragedy, which coupled with their problems with Atlantic seemed to hold them back, when many times they seemed on the verge of busting out huge. In 2005 Selene married Brad Wilk of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.

Albums to pick up:
Sick 'Em, C/Z Records, it's a raw fun primer to 7YB
Viva Zapata, C/Z Records, their best album!
I'd probably skip the Atlantic album

There's a MySpace page up for the band, but unfortunately it only has music from their final album on it: http://www.myspace.com/sevenyearbitch

KJET

During the early '80s as a kid I totally fell in love with a Seattle radio station called KJET. Located at 1600AM and owned by the classic rock station KZOK, KJET was constantly trailblazing new alternative music for Seattle area music fans. They mostly played music that could be classified as new wave and college rock. Bands like Talking Heads, The Smiths, Joan Jet, The Dead Milkmen, Violent Femmes, Nick Lowe, UB-40, Joe Jackson, Oingo Boingo, The Police, The Replacements, Husker Du, The Cult, B-52s, Jonathan Richmond, The Lemonheads, etc. But they also played a fair amount of local bands and punk, from The Sex Pistols to The Dead Kennedys. KJET also aired special programs sometimes, like a long one on the early NYC punk scene that featured interviews with Television, Patty Smith and The Ramones. The station always seemed haphazardly run. Most of the shows were pre-recorded and sometimes the DJ bits and music tapes were off--you'd hear 5 songs and then the DJ would come on and say he just played completely different songs, which you might hear an hour later. But no matter how low-budget and low-fi AM sounding KJET was, it played great music and I absorbed it all as a kid. It's the first place I heard a lot of punk rock and new wave (and frankly it just had a more consistent format than KCMU/KEXP, which played a lot of world music that just wasn't cool to me as a kid). KJET also used to sponsor free live shows at the Seattle Center Mural Amphitheater, that's where I got the antenna ball in the photo, and I even remember going to a show they sponsored at a bowling alley in Bellevue that the Young Fresh Fellows played. The station was on the air from 1982 through September of 1988. KJET staff included Debbie Payne (who also DJed for KYYX & K-Rock), Mike Fuller, Mike "Beaver" Bell, Marshall Gooch, and Jim Keller (who later DJed for KNDD "The End").

From a 2002 interview with Jim Keller in the South County Journal:
For six hours a day, Keller was paid to sit in the production room making sure the tapes ran smoothly. "I would take my guitar into work and practice the whole time," said Keller. "I got pretty good." The timing couldn't have been better. While Keller sat in a back office jamming on his guitar, station owners were in search of a new face for their commercial AM station. Hoping to bring a younger demographic to its range of listeners, KZOK decided to switch from what Keller calls "an awful Barbara Streisand, Barry Manilow format," to KJET, a "New Wave" station with alternative appeal. Keller soon found himself promoted from lowly intern-status to program director of a radio station, a lucky break he chalks up to pure circumstance. "It was all about being at the right place at the right time," he said. "But they (KZOK owners) didn't understand what they were getting into."

Looking back now, Keller recognizes that the radio station he helped to create was truly revolutionary. "It was an amazing station because there were so few rules about what was alternative," he said. "We played Duran Duran, Ramones, the first rap stuff, African pop, Go-Go music out of Washington D.C., -- everything from California rock of the '70s to the Sex Pistols." Without a fully-developed "alternative music niche" to conform to, Keller and his fellow KJET staff of "radio brats" had very few rules about what they could or could not play. The upstart station at 1590 AM soon became one of the world's only voices for alternative music in all of its eclectic forms. Even for all its rebelliousness, KJET was one of the only stations that took the local music scene seriously. "We understood we were tapping into something," said Keller. "We were at the forefront of the creation of youth culture."

Together with KCMU, a local underground publication called The Rocket and the newly-founded SubPop Records, KJET played a pivotal role in creating a network of support for fledgling local music acts. At the time of its operation, from 1982 to 1988, KJET had a maximum of approximately 50,000 listeners, an audience considered small by today's standards. However, the unusual sound waves left lasting impressions. "

We were as taken aback by grunge as anyone," said Keller. "We were sold and signed off as that started to take off."

Amazingly, someone that taped a bunch of the the shows back in the day has put up a streaming KJET station online. If you are feeling nostalgic, check it out:

http://www.live365.com/stations/bleekswinney

Gibson's

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Christ on a Crutch

I dated this girl named Veronica Stoffels around 1987-1989. Some of her highschool friends from the Tri-Cities were in a band called Diddly Squat, who released one 7" and played around a bit. In 1988 Diddly Squat broke up, around the same time one of the members tragically drowned in the Columbia River.

Nate Mendel, who played in Diddly Squat (and later in Sunny Day Real Estate and the Foo Fighters) explained in a 1998 interview what happened next:

"Diddly Squat drummer Eric Akre and I then conspired with friends in a Washington D.C. band called Christ on a Crutch (with included Product of Rape singer Glen Essary) to reform that band in Seattle. In the six month interim between Diddly Squat and Christ on a Crutch, I moved to Seattle and played in a straight edge band called Brotherhood. This band had pretty great songs but was weighted down with burden of being a straight edge band. It was really fun, though. Christ on a Crutch got together and played for a few years, doing tours and putting out a bunch of singles and an LP. We played at an anarchy festival once. This band died in 1993."

This history is pieced together from a bunch of sources and my own memory, hopefully it's correct. Christ on a Crutch began in Washington DC in the Summer of 1983 when Jerry, Wayne, Glen and Dave performed under the name Turtles Basking in the Sun. By '84 they had taken the name Christ on a Crutch. In '85 Glen moved to the Tri-Cities the band played as a 3-piece with Jerry singing and did some recording. In 1986 Glen came back to the band as the singer and is on the first album "Spread Your Filth" on Over the Top records. Glen and Jerry both relocated in '88 to Seattle and re-formed Christ on a Crutch with ex-Diddly Squat bandmates Nate Mendel on bass and Erik Akre on drums (Erik's sister is Carrie Akre of Hammerbox fame, and Erik has gone on to play drums with a lot of bands).

When Christ on a Crutch gelled as a 4-piece in Seattle, they were completely awesome. Since my girlfriend at the time was friends with the band, I ended up hanging around partying with them a bunch and got to know them, they were totally cool guys. They played around a lot at places like Washington Hall and the Party Hall. I remember a pretty infamous show at Washington Hall where first they threw out a zillion egg cartons into the audience, then chainsawed a pumpkin on stage. The entire floor was coated in pumpkin goop and people were throwing the cartons everywhere, it was complete chaos and a super slippery pit. Another time they played a demolition party in the U-District for a boarding house that Mike from Aspirin Feast lived in behind the Wilsonian Apartments. The band's final show was at Rkcndy in 1993, this photo is of Jerry at that show. New Red Archives later released all Christ on a Crutch's material on CD.

Christ on a Crutch discography:

• 1987, "Spread Your Filth" 7" (500 pressed, Over the Top)
• 1987, "Spread Your Filth" LP (2000 pressed, Over the Top)
• 1989, song "Off Target" on "State of the Union" compilation LP (Dischord Records, re-mastered and released on CD in 2002)
  
• 1990, "Kill William Bennet" 7" (Black Label)
• 1991, "Crime Pays When Pigs Die" LP (New Red Archives)
• 2000, "Spread Your Filth: The Doughnut and Bourbon Years" CD (New Red Archives, re-issue of 1st LP)
• 2000, "Shit Edge and Other Songs for the Young and Sentimental" CD (New Red Archives, re-issue of 7"s and past compilation tracks)
• 2000, "Spread Your Filth/Shit Edge" double LP (New Red Archives)

Stagediving at Rckndy

Seattle promoter and now owner of El Corazon, Lori LeFavor, booked the all-ages venue Rckndy (AKA Rockcandy) for most of the mid-90's. Finally Seattle had a large sized all-ages venue that punk and rock bands could play. It wasn't always the greatest place to see a show with long lines to get in, no in-and-outs and sometimes pain in the ass security, but it was a good, safe venue that hosted hundreds of great shows from stuff like Ween and Hammerbox to the The Misfits, UK Subs, Damned and Bouncing Souls. Rckcndy can be seen in both the movies "Hype!" and "Singles." It was also a venue that actually had a stage a couple feet off the ground, making it a prime place to try out your stagediving and crowd-surfing skills, much to the dismay of the staff that worked there.

Fat Anthony (RIP)

Fat Anthony was a plump crusty punk kid I first met hanging outside a house show drunk, cracking jokes and pretty much holding court with half a dozen or so people because he was so funny. He wore a dirty tan t-shirt with beer bottlecaps stuck on it, smelled pretty bad, but I stuck around and ended up talking to him for hours because he had great stories and was totally fucking funny. Over the years I ran into him all the time at shows around the U-District, Olympia, Everett, etc. In this picture he's singing along with I think Flight 800 at a show at Second Time Around Records in the U-District. A few years ago Anthony died of a staff infection that was left untreated. His smile and sense of humor are missed.

Poison Idea

I really can't say enough about Portland's kings of punk Poison Idea. On record they played a brutal blend of punk, hardcore and metal (depending on which record and era, one of those sounds was more prevalent). And live P.I. always put on a great show, often with lead singer Jerry A breathing fire, cutting himself open, or jumping out into the audience. I saw them at least a dozen times, probably more. Seattle audiences always went insane for them. Huge slam pits, beer flying everywhere, the whole crowd singing and dancing along to the music, totally eating the whole experience up. I'll never forget their show at the OK Hotel with Naked Aggression when the whole place was going nuts and I'd just recovered from almost knocking myself unconscious from running into a wooden post at the side of the pit... as kids bodies were flying everywhere, Jerry A looked out over the chaos and got the biggest shit eating grin on his face. He was soaking in our energy and used it to propel the band's set to an even heightened level of excitement. Over the years the line-up of the band changed drastically and a few years ago guitarist and founding member Pig Champion died, while the band still plays on, they are nothing quite like they were back in the day.

This photo is of Poison Idea in their later years playing at the Crocodile Cafe with Steve from the Gits on guitar.

Best Poison Idea albums to pick up: Pick Your King (The Early Years CD has this on it), War All The Time, The Best Of Poison Idea CD