Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the app today.

New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.

As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.

So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.

Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.

One evening, Chris Novicellich went over to Bruce's house and started banging on the windows, demanding a recording contract.

Yeah, I was really taken aback because in indie culture, contracts really weren't used very much.

Yeah, so I was intimidated. I did call John, and John's true genius was to go to the library and photocopy a generic contract.

I did call it a contract, use a little white out, and for 20 cents worth of copies, we were able to get a contract with Nirvana that is essentially the reason why we're talking to you today.

Ramen VR is how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Ross, and on the show today, have two rock and roll fans harness the raw energy of grunge in Seattle, and then send it out to the world to the iconic record label, Subpop.

In 2006, the influential startup investor, Paul Graham, wrote an essay called The 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups, and mistake number one, single founder.

Graham argued that startups with two or more founders have a better chance at succeeding, and you could add to that, have a better chance at having an impact, as Subpop records did.

Because the raw energy and creative tension between the two co-founders is what made that label legendary.

Now, if you remember, or even if you don't, in the first few years of the 1990s, Seattle was the epicenter of American youth culture.

Seattle bands like Pearl Jam, Mud Honey, Allison Chains, Soundgarden, and of course Nirvana, seemed to own the rock and roll airwaves between 1990 and 1995.

And a big part of how the city and its sound exploded out into the world has to do with Subpop.

Just like Barry Gordy and his Motown label brought the sound of Detroit to radios around the world, Subpop and its co-founders Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt helped turn Seattle into a global brand of music and culture.

The band Subpop signed would come to define the do-it-yourself rock and roll of the late 80s and early 90s, and Bruce and Jonathan managed to do this despite being shunned at least in the early days by the big influential American rock magazines.

Now, like all the stories we tell on this show, Subpop was and is a business, and as you will hear for a big part of its first 30 years, he pretty badly run business.

But that's not really the point. This is rock and roll.

...