The Portland punk band that invented the Seattle Sound

The Wipers : Mystery

[Purchase]

In January of 1980 The Wipers released their debut album Is This Real?. Kurt Cobain wasn't the first dirty blond super sensitive punk rock guitar hero the Northwest produced. Ten years earlier, Greg Sage and the band he named after his window washing job broke out of the Portland scene, forming the transition between the garage rock idols of the 60's (The Sonics, Wailers, Raiders, Kingsmen) and the early grunge rock heroes that would culminate with Nirvana. In fact, Nirvana would cover two songs from Is This Real?, "Return of the Rat" and "D-7" and this album would be one of three by the Wipers to make Kurt Cobain's list of 50 favorite albums.

You can say the Seattle sound actually came from Portland.

Is This Real? is full of the buzzsaw-heavy guitar riffs and adolescent anxiety that would be earmarks of the grunge scene. There are even times when the guitar drops out and the bass dominates the proceedings. And Gage gets repetitive, whining "You don't care about it /You don't care about it /You don't care about it /You don't care about it" .

The album wasn't completely ignored despite its origins in the top left hand corner of the United States. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gives Is This Real? a B+, writing 

Three guys from Portland (Oregon, but it might just as well be Maine) who caught on to punk unfashionably late and for that reason sound like they're still discovering something. Which hardly makes them unique--there are similar bands in dozens if not hundreds of American cities, many of whom send me records. What distinguishes this one is Greg Sage's hard-edged vocals--detached but never silly, passionate but never overwrought--and economical one-hook construction.

Sage remembers the more negative reviews:

 "Is This Real?, that was really poorly received because we weren't considered punk enough and we didn't have black leather coats with chains and the Clash painted on the back. We were very uncool at that time, but 20 years later it's considered kind of the pinnacle of that time," he told Phoenix New Times in 2000.

Sage would have an entirely different rhythm section playing on the follow-up, Youth Of America. After eight European tours and four tours of America promoting a total of ten albums, Sage now lives in Phoenix where he is  producing music at Zeno Recording Sound, his own 24-track studio.