The day the music didn't die

Kurt Cobain was stuck on the other side of the globe. It was the one week when the whole world—well, a good chunk of the independent rock music world—was converging on Olympia for the International Pop Underground Convention, and the Oly resident and Nirvana leader was not happy.

"I just remember seeing them come off the airplane and coming towards us," touring mate and Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore recalls. "One of the first things I asked Kurt was like, 'This is exactly the same time as the IPU thing—do you wish you were playing that?' And he was like, 'Fuck yeah!'"

A month after Cobain groused about missing the IPU, his band released Nevermind, in the process torching the blinds that had once shielded Olympia's underground music world from the mainstream's prying eyes.

Yet the indie music scene—particularly in the Northwest—has weathered the post-Nirvana influx and fickle withdrawal of attention and corporate cash in large part because of the IPU, which took place 10 years ago this Aug. 20-25. By fortifying the community's resolve for self-sufficiency, the IPU both energized the scene and set the stage for the spectacular creative flowering that's taking place right now.

Organized by Olympia's K Records, and boasting shows by incendiary punk and pop outfits such as Bikini Kill, Beat Happening, Fugazi, L7, Unwound, and Jad Fair (not to mention a picnic, cakewalk, and Planet of the Apes movie marathon), the IPU has served as a model for indie music gatherings like the biannual Yo Yo A Go Go festival and last year's Ladyfest arts and activism conference, both staged in Olympia. The convention marked the launch of the stridently independent Kill Rock Stars record label, home not only to several of the bands that played the IPU, but also folks such as Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith. And the IPU's Girl Night provided an empowering spark for the nascent Riot Grrrl feminist movement.

More broadly, the IPU galvanized folks who had been creating vibrant pop and punk scenes throughout the country, joining in one place musicians, indie label owners, and fans whose primary contact till then had been through the postal service. It was an infectious week erupting with possibility, where throngs buzzed on Olympia's sidewalks and in its music halls, proclaiming "No lackeys to the corporate ogre allowed." Veterans of the Do It Yourself revolution re-upped for a new decade, while scores of new recruits signed on the dotted line.

Of course, that was then. The corporate ogre indeed rushed in after Nevermind, and the ogre's boardroom expectations sapped the energy of many in the indie world.

This is now. Even if the ogre had kept its clutches to itself, a scene can't sustain the fervor that permeated the IPU. There's no going back to Memphis in 1955, or New York in 1975, or Olympia in 1991. Yet today might just be the most fruitful period for American indie-rock since then. Amazing things are happening—bands like Le Tigre, Sleater-Kinney, the Gossip; recordings such as the first disc of the new Unwound opus Leaves Turn Inside You; the Mr. Lady label in Durham, N.C.; events like Ladyfest that clearly take inspiration from the self-awareness and confidence that was summed up in the International Pop Underground Convention.

A decade down the line, it feels like the dawn of a new vitality, says Mecca Normal singer and IPU alumna Jean Smith. "I've felt this before, where you feel like you have energy and you're gonna make things happen. But then if you connect up with other people, you'll find that they're sort of feeling the same way."

BEFORE THERE WAS AN IPU, there was a BBQ—a chow-down and get-down fete thrown by K Records' Calvin Johnson and Candice Pedersen at Pedersen's folks' home in the Steamboat Island area outside Olympia. It was the summer of 1990.

Isolation had played a role in the development of the Northwest's unique brand of rock going back to the Kingsmen, the Sonics, and Jimi Hendrix. Things hadn't changed much by 1990. Olympia bands were largely content to play for themselves rather than the national stage. Nurtured in part by the independent ethos at Evergreen College and its KAOS-FM radio station, the local arts scene at the south end of the Puget Sound was especially self-sufficient.

It was pre-Internet time, which compounded the isolation. Snail mail was the only mail. No one offered five-cent phone calls to the other coast, and small indie labels (where a moderately successful release might sell 5,000 copies) didn't have money for anything beyond bare necessities. At K, which had been "exploding the teenage underground into passionate revolt" since 1982 with releases from Johnson's own Beat Happening and Some Velvet Sidewalk, there was no budget for travel that might allow Johnson and Pedersen to meet other bands and label folks.

The Steamboat Island barbecue turned into an all-night dance fest, and the lightbulb went on. Maybe K could throw something like this to gather together all the folks they never saw—for the friends in bands whose usual stop in Olympia was a revolving door of unload-soundcheck-eat-perform-goodbye.