Seattle heavy Weights

Rip It Up, Issue 200, 1 April 1994, Page 24

Seattle heavy Weights

What’s human, the size of a behemoth, coughs up blood, eats lotsa meat and is in a New Zealand milk commercial — yes, charming but true — it’s TAD. Tad is the name of the man, and it’s is also the name of the band that he plays in. Tad are from Seattle and make big grease drippin’ music that. is enough to scare the dog under the table and have recently signed to a major label, Giant. They should really be as famous as any. other Seattle band, but they don’t have a ■ slim and foxy singer so they are not. If they did they would be . . . huge! Tad (the man) used to be in a band called Bundle of Hiss around about the same time that Green .River were playing in Seattle and before the whole Seattle thing exploded, and they had Nirvana supportt/iem on their European tour in 1989 before Nirvana became megastars. Tad the band used to be on Sub Pop and were one of the original Sub Pop bands that helped to make the Sub Pop label fairly cool and famous for a while there in 1990 sometime, and also got Sub Pop into trouble when they released their 8 Way Santa album that featured a now born-again Christian woman having her breast fondled by some hippie in the 60s. Tie woman consequently sued Sub Pop for mega bucks, but Tad is of the opinion that this did not hinder them. "No." he says, "that incident actually helped,them out for a while, they

were kinda hurtin’ before that, and Nirvana bailed them out with that big record they sold and that stimulated record sales for them [Sub Pop] and now it’s kinda looking like we were doing the same forthem.” Tad have recently been out on the road with Alice in Chains which Tad says was 'a blast’ and were meant to be touring with Nirvana this year except Tad called Kurt’s wife Courtney Love a bitch in the British press and they were kicked off the tour. Tad does not seemed phased by this at all, after all Tad is known to be jinxed in many more ways than one. “Well,” he says, “last time we went out with Alice in Chains I drank so much that I got really sick and it turned into pneumonia. I was coughing up blood for a while, it took a month to get over that but nothing but good things have happened for a while...” Indeed, their new album Inhaler, which was produced by Dinosaur Jnr’s J. Mascis is a damn good ‘un and they are jolly pleased with it as well. “Yeah, we’re really happy with this record, but we’re not really happier with one record than another. It’s like they’re all your children and you treat them all with the same amount of love and care but it’s exciting to do new stuff all the time.” “Oh yeah,” Tad says as I am about to hang up, “be looking for a milk commercial that I’ll be in. I’ll be talking about steaks and all different types of meat.” How did you come to be doing that? "Oh, some New Zealand company came over here and they wanted a bunch of people to talk about . . . just what they know about {Tad knows a lot about meat} and then we mentioned something about 'drink this milk'." Ahhhh, the perfect man for the job.

SHIRLEY ANNE CHARLES