Megan Jasper has worked at Sub Pop Records for most of her adult life and is now the label’s chief executive
It was September 1989 when I began my internship at Sub Pop Records in Seattle. I sat on the floor of the company offices, listening to Erica Hunter, Sub Pop’s one-person marketing team, call college radio stations in the hopes of them playing more Mudhoney. I was immediately amused by her strategy. “Hi. Is Robbie there? No? OK, can you please tell him that Erica Hunter from Sub Pop called? Yes, Erica Hunter as in Man Hunter.” I loved Erica straight away and as I stuffed Cat Butt’s new record – Journey to the Center of – into mailers for college radio stations, I knew I’d found my place. Sub Pop’s offices had an energy that was constantly abuzz. The main lobby was daubed with graffiti and looked like a New York subway in the mid-1980s. The Dwarves spray-painted “You owe the Dwarves $$” on the floor. There was a colourful chaos of posters and stickers on the walls and piles of records, music magazines, cardboard boxes and mailers everywhere. The phones rang off the hook, the few employees ran back and forth between offices and there was always music playing. Sometimes the music was loud and heavy like TAD or Poison Idea and sometimes it was the soundtrack to Twin Peaks or Lou Rawls, something begging to create balance amid a grunge windstorm. Mostly, it was TAD and Poison Idea.
