WONDERTAKER RECORDS: JACK ENDINO

PERMANENT FATAL ERROR: A new sledgehammer rock record from Seattle's legendary musician/producer Jack Endino, in which he re-emerges from a long silence to show the young-uns how it is done. If you ever liked any of the great rock records from Seattle, this stands with the best of them, and for good reason: Jack himself helped make most of those records...

You already know Jack Endino, whether you know it or not. (Googling him produces 20,500+ results.) Jack was the man down in the engine room for the Seattle Music juggernaut of the early 90s, and it's almost certain you own some of the hundreds of records he's had his production mitts on since those years. (Complete discography and gory details at www.jackendino.com.) You might recall him in the movie "HYPE!" as the guy who made the most sense (he is briefly credited there as "Godfather of Grunge," which still makes him flinch). You might have seen him in a Gits documentary, or in one or another Nirvana retrospective. You might own Bleach. If you've heard recent records from the Makers, Zeke, Black Halos, Harkonen, Hot Hot Heat, Les Hell On Heels, or Boss Martians, bought the Nirvana Box Set, or heard the amazing remixed/remastered Gits reissues, you already know Jack's aesthetic. Despite that early "grunge" tag, Jack went on to prove that for him, what mattered was and is "the rock", period. "Grunge was just a convenient media tag at the time... it was really just a localized resurgence of the rock idiom, in the largest possible sense," Jack explains, professorially. Jack... shut up'n'play yer guitar!

Often forgotten is that before all that Seattle Greek Tragedy stuff, Jack was the kickass guitarist and co-songwriter for the criminally underrated, way-ahead-of-their-time Seattle band Skin Yard. Not quite punk, metal, psych, or grunge, and not exactly art rock, Skin Yard confounded everyone for 5 albums, 1985-1992, finally retiring "just when things started to get really idiotic around here", as Jack says today. The other members moved on: drummer Barrett Martin became a Screaming Tree ("Nearly Lost You"), singer Ben started Gruntruck (2 records on Roadrunner), bassist Daniel ran C/Z Records for many years. Jack, tired of doing the starving-in-a-van-with-sweaty-guys indie touring thing, saw where his bread was buttered and let the world beat a path to his studio door... but never really gave up playing.

Jack managed a couple mid-fi, self-produced solo records ("Angle of Attack", 1989; "Endino's Earthworm", 1992), sometimes playing all the instruments himself (did we mention he's a kickass singer, bassist and drummer too?) but never really held a band together after that, as he was having too much fun being invited to other countries to produce records (10 countries to date). Hey, can you blame him? He has four gold records in Brazil! (But you'll never hear 'em... they're in Portuguese!) He got to produce a record for Bruce Dickinson! ("Great guy! He's like a Monty Python character!" sez Jack.)

As the 90's ended, Jack grew impatient with the state of Rock. The sheer number of lame bands getting attention, from whiny indie stuff (Jack: "weak-core"), to cookie-cutter electronic stuff (Jack: "everyone bought the same software"), plus the worsening attention-deficit-disorder of the mainstream music industry (Jack: "hire 'em/fire 'em, sign 'em/drop 'em"), began filling him with a steely resolve to make a record he himself could actually enjoy. Jack missed having a band. He needed to rock again. Some live appearances with Wellwater Conspiracy (Terrastock, etc) helped him get his chops back. He called up some drummer friends (Barrett Martin again, and Josh Sinder from the Accused) and started laying tracks. Other friends (bassists Rob Skinner from Coffin Break, Alex Sibbald from Accused, Pat Pedersen from Skin Yard) pitched in. Then some hard years followed for Jack (an alternate album title was "Six Funerals, Two Suicides And A Divorce") but he soldiered on like the mad scientist that he is.

Fast-forward to the present... Wondertaker Records is proud to present PERMANENT FATAL ERROR, in which the rock musician Jack Endino finally re-emerges from studio purgatory to show the world how it is done. Jack's mad as hell and he's not going to take it any more...