Wipers

All Music Guide:

Misunderstood, mistreated, underrated, and/or just plain unknown, Greg Sage should be mentioned in the first breaths about trailblazing guitarists and U.S. independent music of the '80s and '90s. Since forming his band, Wipers, in Portland, OR, in the late '70s, Sage has been put through the ringer more than enough to justify his hermetic operating methods and attitude. While most of his devout fans consider it a travesty that his name isn't as known as a contemporary like Bob Mould or even an unabashed fan-boy turned legend like Kurt Cobain, Sage would likely retort that it's not for the notoriety that he began making music. Unlike most other musicians who gain inspiration and motivation from watching their favorite stars revel in popularity and idol worship, Sage's inspiration stemmed more from the joy he got from cutting records on his own lathe. He has been more than content to remain in the underground, retaining optimum control over his own career while lending production help and support to younger bands that look to him for his guidance. Throughout his lengthy and prolific career, he has downplayed or shunned any attention or recognition given to him, preferring to let the music speak for itself.

Initialized with the intent of being a recording project and not a band in the truest sense, Sage formed Wipers in 1977 with drummer Sam Henry and bassist Doug Koupal. Sage's original goal was to release 15 records in ten years, free of traditional band aspects like touring and photo shoots. However, he found out early on that being involved with independent labels involved plenty of compromise -- and that independent labels took a great deal of independence away from him, rather than empowering him.

After a debut 7" on Sage's Trap label (an outlet that Sage also used to release a pair of Portland scene compilations), Wipers recorded Is This Real? on a four-track recorder (free of overdubs) in their rehearsal space. Park Avenue Records was willing to release it, but they insisted that Sage and company re-record everything in a professional studio. Despite the relatively polished outcome, Is This Real? remained the group's rawest and most direct outing. It was full of Sage's raging but agile guitars and what would become his trademark songwriting style, dealing with extreme isolation, confusion, and frustration with an agitated sense of melody. 14 years after its release, Sub Pop picked up the record and reissued it without any involvement from Sage.

Prior to the recording of the group's finest moment, 1981's Youth of America, Henry left to join Napalm Beach. Koupal stayed on long enough to play on a couple of the album's songs but left the band to move to Ohio; Brad Davidson moved in to play bass and Brad Naish took over on drums. Having been unimpressed by the professional studio experience, Sage took it upon himself to record and engineer everything by himself. The move paid off, resulting in a furiously spirited but brief LP full of extended passages that allowed Sage to flex his astounding skills on guitar without sounding like a showoff.

For 1982's excellent Over the Edge, the structures of the songs tightened, the pop sensibility hit full stride. As a result, "Romeo" and "Over the Edge" each sustained a fair amount of radio play in the U.S., thanks to a few stations that were developing play lists that would later be identified as alternative or modern rock. Another factor in Wipers' somewhat increased exposure had to do with the better distribution of their new label, Restless. Before Over the Edge's release, Sage fell out with Park Avenue on a number of unresolved issues.

The next studio record, Land of the Lost, didn't appear until 1986. During the lull between studio time, the band toured, Sage released his first solo album (1985's hushed Straight Ahead), and the band released a self-titled live album. Naish left the group in 1985 and was replaced by Steve Plouf. Follow Blind came out in 1987 and The Circle followed in 1988. Aside from some slight production nuances and the occasional dabbling with stylistic curveballs, the three studio albums between 1986 and 1988 more or less swam in the wake of the first three but are far from embarrassments.

A 1989 tour was accompanied with an announcement from Sage that Wipers would be ending. The end result of mounting frustrations with the independent music business and the fact that the band had lost the lease on a studio space they had devoted three years to developing, Sage packed up and headed for Phoenix to remain close to his mother. He left a town that he couldn't get arrested in, let alone reviewed. Plouf came along to Arizona (Davidson married, moved to London, and sporadically played with the Jesus & Mary Chain), and Sage built a fully operational studio in his new hideout. He recorded a second solo record, Sacrifice (For Love), and released it in 1991.

Meanwhile, several alternative rockers became vocal about their admiration for Sage. The most notable was Kurt Cobain, whose band Nirvana covered Wipers songs and asked Sage to open for them on tours. Never wanting to be opportunistic and never wanting to draw attention to himself, Sage politely turned down the offers. Sage would also reason that the timing was never right, as he and Plouf had trouble securing a bassist who would be willing to learn over 100 songs and tour unglamorously to little fanfare. Sage himself was never a fan of touring; trudging through the States to promote records had been nothing but one nightmare after another, he never got a thrill from the attention that comes with being a frontman, and only a couple towns -- specifically Boston and Chicago -- were regularly supportive. Wipers enjoyed most of their touring success in Europe, where they were treated with much more respect and filled theaters holding a couple thousand fans.

With a 1993 tribute record called Fourteen Songs for Greg Sage & the Wipers floating around, the Sup Pop reissue of the first record, and the attendant exposure gained from them, Sage effectively squashed any steam his "career" was gaining by releasing Silver Sail in 1995, a Wipers record that hardly resembled the storming fury that made his back catalog suddenly revered. And then, once the attention waned, Sage and Plouf returned to their '80s aggression with 1996's The Herd. Three years later, the duo unleashed Power in One on Sage's new Zeno label. In 2001, Sage used his own label to release a three-for-one package of Wipers' first three albums. Remastered with plenty of bonus tracks, it's probably one of the most unselfish moves committed by a musician. Electric Medicine, Sage's third solo record, came in 2002.

Wikipedia:

The Wipers were a punk rock group formed in Portland, Oregon in 1977 by guitarist Greg Sage, drummer Sam Henry and bassist Dave Koupal. The group's tight song structure and use of heavy distortion has been hailed as extremely influential by numerous critics and musicians, including Melvins, Mono Men, Stephen Malkmus, Poison Idea, My Vitriol, Nation of Ulysses, Nirvana, Calamity Jane, and Cloud Nothings.

History

Origins

The band was originated as the brain child of Greg Sage.

"I think I got that concept early on as a kid. I was very lucky to have my own professional record cutting lathe when I was in 7th grade due to my father being involved in the broadcast industry. I would cut records for friends at school of songs off the radio and learned the art of record making long before learning to play music. I would spend countless hours studying the grooves I would cut under the microscope that was attached to the lathe and loved the way music looked, moved and modulated within the thin walls. I might have spent too much time studying music through a microscope because it gave me a completely different outlook on what music is and a totally opposite understanding of it as well. There was something very magical and private when I zoomed into the magnified and secret world of sound in motion. I got to the point that I needed to create and paint my own sounds and colors into the walls of these grooves."

Greg Sage's first instrument was bass guitar, because of the low tones that made larger grooves in the vinyl records due to slower modulations. Basses were harder to find and much more expensive when Sage was in grade school, so he used guitar instead.

Greg Sage's idea behind the Wipers started as only a recording project. The plan was to record 15 LPs in 10 years without touring or promotion. Sage thought that the mystique built from the lack of playing traditional rock & roll would make people listen to their recordings much deeper with only their imagination to go by. He thought it would be easy to avoid press, shows, pictures, interviews. He looked at music as art rather than entertainment; he thought music was personal to the listener rather than a commodity.

Foundation, early years

Sage founded the punk rock band the Wipers in Portland, Oregon in 1977 along with drummer Sam Henry and bassist Dave Koupal. Wipers' first single, Better Off Dead was released in 1978 on Sage's own Trap Records. After several years of playing and recording guitar Greg felt he wanted to do something different in music, and being labeled as a band seemed to be the first tradition and standard he should try to avoid. He wanted to make his own recordings and manufacture and run his own label himself without anyone else's financing to keep it as pure as possible. In 1979, Sage approached several Portland punk bands and asked them to record singles for his new Trap label. Some of those early bands were The Stiphnoyds, The Neo Boys and Sado Nation. Sage later re-released some of the material on a compilation record entitled The History Of Portland Punk, which included some tracks from the Wipers.

Their first album, Is This Real?, came out in 1980 on Park Avenue Records, a bigger label that the band hoped would get them wider distribution. Originally recorded on a 4-track in the band's rehearsal studio, the label insisted the band use a professional studio. Once released, the LP quietly gained a cult following, although the band was best known for their live shows around the Portland area. At the time of its release, Is This Real? defied categorization, and its catchy, driving punk anthems are now regarded as post-punk classics.

Between the release of their first two LPs, Park Avenue released 1980's Alien Boy EP, consisting of the title track and three demo outtakes. Released without the band's permission, the EP was the first of many unauthorized or bootleg Wipers records for which the band received no royalties (until these early releases saw reissue on Sage's own label Zeno Records in 2001). Sage has said regarding Is This Real?, "Hell, that record was in print for over twenty years and we never received a cent for it."

Sage then tweaked and evolved the Wiper's sound with each subsequent release. Sage became known for not only his do-it-yourself ethic and guitar solos, but also for his domineering approach to the band’s creative process. With the new rhythm section of bassist Brad Davidson and drummer Brad Naish (ex-Styphnoids), Wipers recorded a second LP for Park Avenue. With its epic title track and generally longer song lengths, 1981's Youth of America stands in sharp contrast to the short/fast punk approach of the time. This change of pace was according to Sage a deliberate counter-reaction against the trend of releasing short songs, which many punk bands did at the time. The album was, according to Sage, not well-received in the United States at the time of its release, though it did fare better in Europe. Along with other records by the Wipers, Youth of America has since come to be acknowledged as an important album in the development of American underground and independent rock movements of the early 80s. Following a dispute over the album's cover art, Wipers parted ways with Park Avenue for good.

The next LP, the militant, distortion-drenched Over the Edge, was the first Wipers record to meet with immediate acceptance. The song "Romeo", which had already been released on 7" by Trap, actually got some airplay. The band then embarked on their first extensive tour, documented on their 1984 live LP. In spite of the original idea to not focus on live music, Wipers did play live, eventually releasing a live album, called Wipers Live.

Many of the Wipers' recording techniques and musical equipment were designed by Sage and the band. The band members purposely relied on word-of-mouth advertising for their albums, often rejecting interviews, and played far fewer live shows than many of their punk contemporaries. Despite this, Wipers made the jump to Enigma Records subsidiary Restless Records, one of the biggest independent labels of the time signing punk-related bands. First to be released was Sage's solo album Straight Ahead. Sage played all acoustic, electric, and bass guitar parts, and on many songs was backed by a drummer. The next few years saw three more LPs released on Restless, one being the 1986's Land Of The Lost which featured the song "Let Me Know", used in the Keanu Reeves film, River's Edge. Copies of this album are highly sought after collectibles. In 1988, then-18-year-old drummer Travis McNabb joined the band for the tour for the album The Circle. They released five studio albums before Sage decided that their sixth, The Circle, would be the Wipers last.

In 2001, Greg Sage’s Zeno Records released the Wipers Box Set, which included the first three Wipers albums, which by that time had been long out-of-print, with additional never-before-released material. Recently Jackpot Records and Sage reissued Is This Real?, Youth of America, and Over the Edge on vinyl records, utilizing the original master recordings.

Post-Wipers

Sam Henry is still an active musician in Portland, Oregon, and continues to play with popular Northwest songwriters like Pete Krebs, Morgan Grace and Jimmy Boyer. Sam also continues to perform with Napalm Beach, the band he formed with Chris Newman in the early '80s. Travis went on to join Better Than Ezra and work with Shawn Mullins, Howie Day and Beggars, then toured for bluegrass/country music act Sugarland. He was replaced in Wipers by Steve Plouf who continues to work with Greg Sage and on other music projects. Steve operates a vintage goods/Zeno Records store in Portland Oregon appropriately named Zeno Oddities.

Influence and legacy

Sage later remarked on their initial reception: "We weren’t even really a punk band. See, we were even farther out in left field than the punk movement because we didn’t even wish to be classified, and that was kind of a new territory. ... When we put out Is This Real? … it definitely did not fit in; none of our records did. Then nine, ten years later people are saying: 'Yeah, it’s the punk classic of the ’80s.'"

Wipers became better known after the wildly popular grunge band Nirvana covered two songs from Is This Real?, "D-7" and "Return of the Rat". Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain spoke of being heavily influenced by the band. The Wipers were a major influence on the grunge music scene in general, with bands such as The Melvins, Mudhoney, and Dinosaur Jr. citing them. Wipers albums like Is This Real? and Over the Edge are now widely considered to be among the greatest and most influential punk albums of all time.

In 1992, a tribute album Eight Songs for Greg Sage and the Wipers (Tim Kerr Records) was released on four colored 7-inch records, and included Wipers songs performed by Nirvana, Hole, Napalm Beach, M99, The Dharma Bums, Crackerbash, Poison Idea, and The Whirlees. The CD release of the tribute album was called Fourteen Songs for Greg Sage and the Wipers, and expanded to include covers by Hazel, Calamity Jane, Saliva Tree, Honey, Nation of Ulysses, and Thurston Moore-Keith Nealy.