The Grunge Gold Rush
On the most humiliating day of Jawbox's career, guitarist Bill Barbot was wearing a colorfully striped cotton T-shirt, white Calvin Klein jeans and Persol sunglasses and standing in a suburban New Jersey grocery store. Underneath orange and purple balloons and a hand-printed "Juicy Cubed Beef 59 ¢ lb." sign, he held his guitar in the air, poised to smash it into a cart full of junk food. To Barbot's left were his bandmates: drummer Zach Barocas, in a cream-colored jacket, bassist Kim Coletta in an impeccable red dress and singer J. Robbins, upside-down, clutching a microphone, cord between his teeth.
Up to this point, in 1994, Barbot's Washington, D.C.-born hardcore band had spent all five years of its existence trying to live up to a certain punk-rock ethical standard set by Fugazi, Rites of Spring and other defiantly self-sufficient bands.
"We were part of a community that didn't get the attention or the notice from the music industry or the music press and major labels, and it galvanized us, and made us feel like, 'F*** everybody,'" Barbot recalls.
The self-managed Jawbox had the good fortune — or misfortune, as we'll learn — of sounding a bit like Nirvana. In January, 1992, 26 years ago now, Nevermind hit No. 1 on the Billboard album charts, displacing Michael Jackson's Dangerous, an event that fundamentally restructured the record business in ways still visible to the naked eye. (Would we have Five Seconds Of Summer without Kurt and Co.?) Every major record label suddenly needed its own Nirvana, and had plenty of cash to find one.
The Grunge Gold Rush was a unique three-year period, from roughly 1992 to 1995, when roaring, anti-everything bands such as Butthole Surfers, Foetus and Ween had benefactors who paid them hundreds of thousands, even millions, for doing what they'd always done. Swept up in the record industry's net during this time were lasting rock superstars (Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Tool) and commercial flops that never had any business being close to a major label (Cell, Quicksand, Steel Pole Bath Tub, Jawbox).
"You could make up a band, [and] make up a quote about them [that] Kurt Cobain said. The Melvins were the greatest example. Kurt liked The Melvins, so everybody had
