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The WIPERS Official web site. The music of “The Wipers” and Greg Sage. Shop for CD’s and Vinyl. News on the latest recordings and their records and CD’s available here on Zenorecords.

The Wipers formed in late 1978. Greg Sage said that the idea for the name came from when he worked at a movie theater that had a long hallway of glass that looked over the city of Portland, Oregon. One of his jobs was to clean the glass that would get cloudy from people waiting to enter the theaters. When wiping the glass with a large squeegee, the view of the city would become crystal clear. A “crystal clear view” was the idea he wanted to put into music. The Wipers and Greg Sage went on to record 12 albums and several EP’s. Greg’s original idea was to never tour or do interviews, to be mysterious and let listeners have their own ideas. This original idea was not as possible as he hoped, due to the demands of working in the music industry. Even though staying independent throughout his career there were certain rules in the music world he could not bend. Greg would go on to build some of the equipment used to record the albums creating their distinct sound.

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Greg Sage Is Living In The Land of the Lost

A long delayed reissue of Wipers’ classic fourth album preserves the continuing legacy of an underground institution

As a Wipers/Greg Sage fan during the 21 years he made records, 1978-1999, I greatly enjoyed reviewing Sage’s Portland, Oregon / Phoenix, Arizona band’s nine studio albums, live LP, and his two solo records for the magazine The Big Takeover (I’ve been editor and publisher since 1980), as well as conducting four interview features with him.

I prefaced each with frustration / bewilderment that he/they remained so utterly overlooked, at least here. In Europe, Sage was hailed as a guitar wizard and creative rock force, a punk Hendrix of sorts—after a while, Wipers (no “the,” same as Buzzcocks, Talking Heads, etc.) restricted their limited touring to that continent, especially in Greece, Holland, and Germany, where they sometimes drew over 1000 people and were better treated by industry professionals. No less authority than the late, great BBC DJ John Peel called the group “perhaps the most unappreciated band of all time.” (As he was so many, many times in his valuable life, the ever-keen Peel was dead right.)

In fact, the dozen Wipers shows I caught during their existence were usually in quarter-to-half-filled small clubs like Hoboken, New Jersey’s tiny Maxwell’s. The only gigs that drew reasonably well were a memorable 1989 blowout at Providence, RI’s Rocket, a 1987 sojourn to CBGB, a big Manhattan 1981 Irving Plaza gig from an era when Wipers briefly relocated to our area, and a return New Music Seminar showcase there with Bush Tetras, Pere Ubu, and Dandy Warhols, July 19, 1996. (At the last of these—which, alas, I believe proved his/their final concert—a livid Sage stormed off after a handful of songs, having been furnished a totally-wrong-for-his sound Marshall amp, against his careful specifications/requirements for flying out! Perhaps it was a last straw for the proud musician.) After each such show, and with each new release, it seemed inconceivable that a trio this consistently great and prolific, and sometimes mind-blowing, could garner so little attention/respect/support. In fact, the best Wipers concert I witnessed, a stunning tour-de-force at New Haven, Connecticut’s little Grotto, was in front of 10 listless people; at another Connecticut show, at Norwalk’s beloved Anthrax, the band declined to play, as only four of us had turned up. (Thought I, “50 miles of train travel/fare for nothing!”)

A big part of the reason for such unyielding, unremitting under-appreciation was undoubtedly what made Sage’s small-cult fans revere him so: his staunchly individualistic, steadfast substance-over-style approach meant that he patently, reflexively refused to fit with any trend, label, tag, or movement that might’ve aided his/their visibility, down to the nondescript clothes Wipers wore in the flamboyant punk era—donning flannels when others looked like the more vivid Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, or Weirdos. Concurrently, having conceived of Wipers as a recording project in 1977 —they’d never even done a gig when they released 1978’s hard-hitting debut 7” single, “Better Off Dead”—the band toured grudgingly/sparingly and did interviews only at the behest of labels as required promotional devices, considering both to be compromises made to secure distribution, while drawing the line at not making videos during the MTV era. (Big fan Gus Van Zant offered to direct a video, which Sage did consent to, but the director proved too busy.) Funny, their gigs were amazing , and my interviews with Sage thoughtfully fascinating; a perfectionist to his core, he put all he had into whatever he did, as grumpy as he sometimes seemed doing—to his mind—unrelated tasks.

VIDEO: Kurt Cobain jamming on “Alien Boy” by The Wipers at a 1992 Nirvana soundcheck in Seattle

Ergo, to the extent that Sage was famous at all, then, it was for such stark refusal to play the game—any game—while being so great. It was music first, anything else a distant last, and it must be said he walked that walk, too. Every Wipers history must repeat the true story that on their own volition, superfans Nirvana tried to boost Sage’s profile, hailing him as their spiritual godfather in 1991—as a kid, Kurt Cobain had traveled to Portland for Wipers shows. Indeed, after that year’s blockbuster, industry-changing Nevermind , Cobain’s Seattle trio recorded and released multiple Wipers covers—his wife’s band, Hole, added another, on a Sage tribute LP that Cobain organized and financed—and Nirvana’s original label Sub Pop reissued Wipers’ classic 1980 first LP, Is This Real?.

Yet Sage famously, politely turned down Cobain’s offer to open the entire Nevermind tour. Expressing respect for his younger fan, he consented to support just one L.A. concert. Then Wipers’ following album, 1993’s Silver Sail , was Sage’s quietest , moodiest, and most reflective outside of his two solo LPs, an intentional antitheses of the grunge-punk hysteria he’d helped unleash. (He’d even scrapped a different album in progress more like his past!)

Thus, he methodically tamped down any secondhand, significant uptick in mass-scale interest that Cobain’s heartfelt homages offered; Sage wouldn’t do anything artistically on other’s terms. (It’s conjecture to wonder if Cobain, too, would have lived more than two more years had he done likewise. Before his suicide, he’d contacted Sage about producing a blues covers album, doing old Lead Belly songs etc. in Sage’s Phoenix studio. And Cobain seemed to truly loathe the fame that came with his unexpected success. Whereas 24 years on, Sage is still involved recording musicians there and tending/remastering his back catalog, while condemning the way the star-making machinery chewed up its accidental, unhappy cash-cow.)

A weird and regrettable quirk of human nature, though, is that we often don’t appreciate something until we lose it. And having refused to release anything for an astounding 16 years, despite owning that studio and not lacking for material—Sage despises the digital recording era, having built his own analog recording gear and instruments—the man’s status has finally grown into something approaching living legend; albeit a still cloistered, mysterious one, as that’s the sort of tag he bristles at. The list of known entities, young and old, citing him as inspiration never ceases.

Lately, he’s been all but beatified by Cloud Nothings’ young Dylan Baldi and Vivian Girls, while Rocket From the Crypt, Mission of Burma, Vivian Girls, J. Mascis, Ryan Adams, Meat Wave, Melvins, Poison Idea, and Thurston Moore have happily covered his songs. One good Brooklyn band even named their LP after an obscure Wipers’ b-side: Heaven’s “ Telepathic Love” (the same barely known tune Vivian Girls covered).

AUDIO: Vivian Girls covering “Telepathic Love” by The Wipers

Which brings us to the band’s latest reissue in a methodical low-key series of them, of the band’s typically incredible fourth LP, 1986’s Land of the Lost . Ever the analog stickler, it’s not only vinyl only, but it’s limited edition colored vinyl via the Record Store label Sage trusts, Jackpot Records, in his former base of Portland.

The album itself, however obtained, is sure worth total immersion. Coming on the heels of a raucous 1984 live album released to raise funds, and Sage’s 1985 solo LP, Straight Ahead (also reissued four years ago, with liner notes composed by this writer), the singer / songwriter / producer / engineer / guitarist / iconoclast emerged from the debacle of Brain Eater’s bankruptcy, the label that had folded without paying after releasing Wipers’ 1983 third LP, Over the Edge . (Likewise, the first two albums were in legal limbo with their previous label, Park Avenue.) But Sage’s new deal with Restless would prove stable for six years and five albums. And LotL also introduced a new drummer, Steve Plouf, who remained by Sage’s side the final 13 years, the last 10 as the only other member, while Sage manned the bass himself.

And what a corker it is! While hardly diverging from the guitar-centric, catchy, roaring style from the straightforward Is This Real? , 1981’s immortal, more esoteric (even background piano-inflected), all-time classic, Youth of America , or the similarly monumental Over the Edge , Sage’s guitar sound is more directly crisp, more charging and sharp-edged like Is the Real ?—even while retaining the doomsday chords of the other two LPs, like on LotL ’s opening “Just a Dream Away.” And Plouf and returning bassist Brad Davidson keep the supple rhythms steady, in groove with Sage’s pyrotechnics.

For the purposes of this piece, it’s interesting to go back and read what I wrote three decades ago, before adding some quotes I got from him back then in our interviews to give his perspective as well. Covering LotL in issue 20 of The Big Takeover and Rockpool in real time, I reveled in Wipers’ return, doling out unsparing praise that if anything still doesn’t cover Sage’s immortal guitar-centric brilliance: “Holy smokes, it’s great to have this Portland, OR trio back, with this big-hitting new fourth LP, their first to win strong distribution. This is the most patient of the endlessly patient Wipers’ LPs—maybe that’s the biggest change three years has wrought. It’s interesting that they didn’t do studio versions of the three new songs on last year’s live LP, Wipers , or any cuts from last year’s Sage solo LP; this is nine new songs. Some of them are the most beautiful Wipers ever, especially ‘Just Say,’ the closing number, which is unusually heart tugging for a bopping guitar band. ‘Nothing Left To Lose’ and ‘Just a Dream Away’ are the immediate killers, jarring songs that take that Wipers’ hypnotism to its full head of steam in the same way that the title tracks ‘Youth of America’ and ‘Over the Edge’ had in such mouth-opening fashion. They’re still a mind-bending Sage guitar band; the drums and bass remain simple as Sage layers rows of ingenious feedback and leads on top, before adding his unique alienation lyrics. Sage has always sounded like a far away voice in your head, faintly reminding you of the importance of your own individualism. Listening to Wipers reminds that all people are intensely alone; all life is fraught with this pain of endless separation, and that subsequent lack of lasting, eternal meaning. Land of the Lost is another Wipers LP that makes that struggle just a little less weighty. And it’s a kick ass, incredible album besides, even just for the rock ‘n’ roll!”

Today I would add that the band and this rocketing LP still sound unlike any other group. And I’ve since become especially mesmerized by “Nothing Left to Lose,” which my late band Last Burning Embers covered on our only album, 2002’s Lessons in Redemption , having closed all our shows with it. Whether playing it on drums, or digging Sage’s masterful recording, its combination of pulsing, rip-roaring riffs, more ethereal, chilling undercurrents—a constant, stealthy Sage element that I find in few other bands/songs, a la Joy Division, The Sound, 1980-1981 The Cure, The Chills’ “Pink Frost,” or House of Love’s “Shine On”—or building, desperate dynamics, and back-against-the-wall defiance remain staggering. And as with Youth of America and Over the Edge , the variety of moods encapsulated by “Nothing Left to Lose” alone, or the creepy-dreamy beauty of “Different Ways” (this album’s “No One Loves An Alien”) show the dexterity, again, of an artist eliciting waves of complexity and nuance in direct formats. In fact, having been “post-punk” in 1977 before that classification existed, for two decades-plus Sage explored atmospheres in otherwise aggressive rock ’n’ roll, while capturing the moods of his times.

And to not bother the ever-reticent Sage yet still wanting him to speak for himself, it is perhaps best to repeat what he said in my interviews with him 35 years ago in response to my queries about this album. In particular, Sage typically deflected my “punk Hendrix” notions. “You can draw comparisons to anything you want I suppose,’” he demurred. “But if I’m like Hendrix at all, it’s because I play with a lot of force and compassion. A lot of vision. We all know Hendrix did—he was the master.”

And his fervent devotion to recording was evident, too. “My goal was to make 15 albums in 10 years,” he reminded. “I do get some enjoyment [out of live performance] at certain times, but it’s not the motivation of why I got into music. A lot of people I respect got into music because they wanted to be out there doing it. I never did. I totally got inspired by the grooves in a record ; and the sound that came out of it; and the depth of it; and the science of it—the magic of it. That was 100% of my inspiration. So I feel like a fish out of water elsewhere.”

Finally, among the unusual fans knocked out by LotL , was actor Dennis Hopper, as its “Let Me Know” was included on the soundtrack (alongside Agent Orange, Hank Ballard, Burning Spear, and a bunch of Slayer tunes!) for the popular 1986 Tim Hunter movie, River’s Edge , starring Hopper, Crispin Glover, and Keanu Reeves. Even the hard-to-excite, candid Sage came away convinced. “The movie is fantastic, one of the best movies to come out in a long time,” he insisted. “Not because of us. I was really impressed.” And by way of confirmation, he confirmed, “Dennis Hopper [himself] decided to use ‘Let Me Know.’”

    At least some people got it! And with reissues like this, there’s no reason why all can’t get it now. Land of the Lost was more Wipers artistry for the love of pure musical expression, from that thumping “Just a Dream Away” start to that unusually elegiac, yearning “Just Say” finish. It stands, still, as another great work of a visionary virtuoso and his inspired, stubborn group, another product of music made as a treasured art form that burns hot at the same time. It’s the diametrical opposite of disposable pop—an album that still yields pathos and delight in equal measure for hundreds of plays, while you dance to it, too. It’s another knockout treasure from an actual genius when that word is otherwise overused. And it’s past time that more were let in on the secret. Better late than never.

VIDEO: Wipers perform “When It’s Over” from Is This Real? in Munich, Germany on the Land of the Lost Tour 1986

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Jack Rabid is the founder, editor, and publisher of New York music magazine The Big Takeover. His writing has appeared in Interview, Village Voice, Creem, Spin, Paper, Trouser Press Record Guide, and Musichound, and he hosts 'The Big Takeover Show' on realpunkradio.com every Monday at noon. He also plays drums in Springhouse, now revived and touring with The Chills in early 2019.

8 thoughts on “ Greg Sage Is Living In The Land of the Lost ”

Absolutely stunning album by a stunning band. Greg Sage/Wipers are just amazing.

cheers bob!

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Awesome article! I discovered the band on local Belgian college radio in 1980 or 81 and found Is This Real as a special import in Brussels. Hooked since and dreaming of Wipers to play Europe. Had to wait till 86 so went to their first ever gig on the old continent : Nijmegen, Holland 86. A mutual friend who knew I was hooked introduced me backstage to Greg. He told him I would attend the next Amsterdam gig a day later and that he wanted to interview him for Belgian radio….! And so did I ! The interview got even published. Saw/met him a dozen times on every tour. Great times, and such a lovely guy Greg is!

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Greg Sage & The Wipers

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The Marked Men

• Is This Real? · 1980
• Return of the Rat
• Over the Edge
• Over the Edge · 1983
• Youth of America
• Youth of America · 1981
• Is This Real?
• Window Shop for Love
• Wait a Minute
• Potential Suicide
• Nothing Left to Lose
• Best of the Wipers and Greg Sage · 1990

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Live albums, compilations, about wipers.

Greg Sage and his band, the Wipers, were one of the biggest influences on the Pacific Northwest indie-rock scene that exploded with Seattle's grunge movement of the 1990s. Formed in the late '70s and hailing from Portland, Oregon, the Wipers played a dark, brooding style of punk--marked by Sage's innovative near-virtuosic guitar work--that helped define the region's sound. Although criminally overlooked on a commercial level, the fiercely DIY Sage and his band have amassed an impressive list of followers, which includes, among others, Kurt Cobain. Under the Wipers name, and his own, Sage continued to release records into the 2000s.

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Wipers’ ‘Youth of America’ Deluxe Reissue Unearths Long-Lost Rarities

By Kory Grow

To mark the 40th anniversary of Wipers ‘ second album, Youth of America , the group has put together a commemorative vinyl reissue with Jackpot Records that features several previously unreleased tracks.

The LP represented a progression for the band, which stepped away from the succinctly catchy punk songs of their previous release, Is This Real ?, and explored sprawling, heavily textured songs, some of which surpassed the 10-minute mark. The record, Youth of America — Anniversary Edition: 1981 — 2021 , will come out on the first of Record Store Day ‘s two drops this year, June 12th.

The two-LP release, which is limited to 3,000 copies, features a deluxe gatefold jacket, colored vinyl, and a reproduction of the original, rejected artwork. The second disc contains rare mixes and tracks from the 1981 sessions for the LP, including three difficult-to-find tunes, “My Vengeance,” “The Story,” and “Scared Stiff.” The first two tracks were from a vinyl-only 1981 compilation called Trap Sampler ; “Scared Stiff” was cut from Youth of America because it didn’t fit with the album’s darker-hued feel. Alternate and outtake mixes of the album’s “When It’s Over,” “Pushing the Extreme,” “No Fair,” and “Youth of America” round out the bonus material.

Wipers put out a similarly deluxe reissue of their debut album, Is This Real? , last year to mark that record’s 40th, and Sage granted Rolling Stone a rare interview looking back on the album. In the article, Sage also addressed why he hasn’t released any new music since 1999’s Power in One . “Times changed, people changed,” he said. “I found it harder to write the way I was used to. I didn’t need to stop making music, I wanted to. It was difficult at first because I never quit on anything, but I felt I had done enough over 20-plus years and was satisfied with that. I realized to save my sanity it would be best to just stop than continue fighting to keep some of my independence.”

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By Nick Sylvester

Underscore is a new feature that surveys undervalued artists, scenes, and eras of the past.

I asked myself the same question: Who overlooked Wipers exactly? Was it you? How many times can we call a band "overlooked" before they're upgraded to "looked?" To "underlooked?" What if the band conceived itself as an Overlooked Band from the beginning, made contrarian studio decisions, didn't want to play live or do press, the whole mystery thing? Is this piece what our Overlooked Band In Question wanted all along?

Wipers formed in 1977, in Portland. There was a Pacific Northwest punk scene, but it was off the grid in a way that younger people like yours truly understand but maybe can't fully appreciate. Greg Sage was the band's leader, singer, left-handed guitarist, producer, etc. Their first three full-lengths-- Is This Real? (1979), Youth of America (1981), and Over the Edge (1983)-- are all different and all quite special. Lyricswise, Sage stuck to a handful of themes: loneliness, paranoia, fate and damnation, identity politics, the haves and the have-nots, alien encounters. A lot of bands, my own included, claim Wipers as an influence, but it's a tough one to back up. At best it's spiritual. At worst you're ripping these guys off and hoping no one catches you.

Vintage Wipers concert posters. Left, courtesy of John Eisenhart; right, courtesy of Division Leap.

But so wait: If they influenced a bunch of bands--  Nirvana being the big one-- what makes Wipers "overlooked?" Part of it is deliberate and aesthetic. Sage was obsessed with recording sound and the idea of recorded sound: the time/space distance it creates between the artist and the audience. His original plan with Wipers was: 15 albums in 10 years, no live shows. He had faith in distribution. In Sage's ideal world, people would hear this awesome mystery punk music from Where Again and never put a face to it. It would put the onus on the listener's imagination. Who are these guys? How old? What's their favorite cereal? Raw denim or acid-washed?

Sage was truly a studio artist. A gearhead too. He had a particular softness for vacuum tube technology. To hear him tell it, this made Sage an anomaly. Guitarists in the late 70s and early 80s were apparently trading in their tube amps for solid-state ones, which were newer and lighter and less breakable. I find all this hard to believe, as I've never met a working guitarist who would choose solid-state over tube amps. Either way, Sage was obsessed with the musical way a signal distorts when you overdrive a tube. He tinkered at the level of valves and voltage to attempt a guitar sound that was scary as hell but still had a thick, warm tone.

That's what you're hearing on Is This Real? , Wipers' first LP. Just listen to the first few seconds of "Return of the Rat" and you'll hear it-- the guitars are sludgy but still articulate and colorful. I always imagine hot lava slowly spilling out of headphones. The distortion doesn't fizz or spittle like, say, an early My Bloody Valentine EP or Pre-Cana Sonic Youth . Granted, those Ramones records had awesome overdriven guitar sounds, but even they breeze by in comparison-- very clean and precise. Sage's guitars, meanwhile, billow like storm clouds.

Sage probably wasn't the only guy after this dare-I-say grungy guitar sound. But he was kooky and insulated enough to build entire albums' worth of material around it. He was committed enough to get it right. Ceding more space to guitars meant Sage had to make some interesting decisions with the other instrumentation. Take  "Window Shop for Love" : For such a breakneck tempo, the song is weirdly slow-sounding. At any moment the whole thing seems like it could collapse under the weight of Sage’s sludge.

More than a few bands credit Wipers with paving the way for Portland's DIY punk scene, if not what would become.... Well. It's not exactly unrealistic to credit Sage and this sludgy-but-buoyant guitar tone of his as an Ur-text of grunge. At the very least, Sage was as a kind of grunge-sound proselytizer. Granted, Sage would say Wipers were proto-grunge like dinosaurs were proto-humans. But hey, rock criticism! Try this on: Would there be Nirvana or Mudhoney or Green River without Wipers? Did Sub Pop reissue Is This Real? as a way of saying thank you? Did Cobain put Wipers' first three records so far down his "Top 50 Albums" list because he wanted to hide how much of an influence they were? Not just musically but lyrically and psychically? The Greg Sage tribute album Cobain organized and financed, the time he asked Sage to open on tour...

During the one historical moment when Sage could have cashed in-- grunge-- he seemed to remain suspicious of being a Looked Band. Like, there had to be some kind of catch. This leads to a second guess as to why Wipers are overlooked: geography. Or rather the psyche inherited from that geography. Pre internet, why put yourself through the mental wringer of thinking your band can and will be anything more than a local curiosity? There were prejudices against certain geographies, too. Portland was not New York or London. At the time, it was difficult even to get distributors to carry records from Northwest labels.

So much of Youth of America , the second Wipers full-length, sounds like Sage struggling with his place in the universe. Forget being a Looked Band. Wipers, as originally conceived, might never even be a properly Overlooked Mystery Punk Band. What we get here is a marvelously weird and emotive record about feeling trapped and fucked over, but also resenting one's own victim complex.

While Minor Threat , Bad Brains , Black Flag , et al. were figuring out ways to make punk faster and rawer, Sage went the other direction: long, expansive guitar anthems that leveraged krautrock motorik and psych-rock feedback-delay effects. And if hardcore is more of an experiential/social outgrowth of punk-- to this day "I was a hardcore kid" is something you can say to a certain kind of person if you want him to like you-- Sage's Youth of America was even more about the studio than Is This Real? : pushing the sonics and recording of punk into new territory.

Songs on Youth of America are slower yet more propulsive. It's a defiantly un-rock move to rip out the backbeat and let the songs stretch out with little more than a kick/snare timekeep, the bassline just rolling along, indifferent to what it buoys. Many ZZ Top and AC/DC songs, to name but two bands, take a similar approach, not to mention Les Savy Fav songs like "The Sweat Descends" . Which is to say that in the hands and feet of a competent drummer (and Wipers' Brad Naish was very much that), a song like "Youth of America" can stay persistent and brooding and anxious without the usual signifiers of punk energy. The snare drum in particular seems so small, like a finger flicking a piece of looseleaf. But it's all in service of giving as much space to the guitars as possible, now much more present because of all the weird detritus from the tube delay effect that dominates the vocal and guitar riffs.

I wouldn't call this jam-band punk, but the music had the appearance of being looser and more aimless-sounding, as if Sage is stuck in a miasma of bitterness. The vocal delivery on "No Fair" is aggressive, but it's made to sound more distant, Sage screaming into the void. His guitar lines, in contrast to the emergent hardcore sound, were limber and anthemic, Springsteen -like even. For all the discontent, this was Sage trying to be more than a punk band. I'd be willing to bet Deerhunter 's Bradford Cox has an opinion about this record, among many other newish psychedelic indie rock bands you've heard about on this site. Needless to say, Youth tends to be the critical favorite.

Just as needless to say: This ambitious album was not commercially successful, even by Sage's sights. It's an artier record, less immediate, more about punk than punk per se. "When It's Over" goes on for three-and-a-half minutes before Sage utters a word. That's an eternity.

Over the Edge , which came next, has the needle moving back toward straight-up punk. There are tricks here, but they're under the hood, not as explicitly artsy as what was happening on Youth of America . To me, these are his best songs on nearly every level: concise and immediate but recorded in that contrarian, distinctly Sage-like way. People liked this one a lot too, so much so that Sage reneged on no touring and took Wipers on the road. The bouncy "Romeo" even got some radio airplay-- not bad for a song on a record that sounds so deliberately wrong .

Like the first moments of Is This Real? , Over the Edge leads with a curious, stage-setting guitar tone. Think back to the time you first encountered a low-bitrate mp3, something so bad you actually noticed the quality degradation, the swishy pixellated cymbals. That's not unlike the experience upon first hearing this one: Did I get a bad rip? The guitar on "Over the Edge" has nearly zero low-end information, as if Sage played it out of an alarm clock radio.

But it's all intentional. Sage scooped out the low-end of the entire record. This one decision is at the heart of what makes Over the Edge so beguiling-- immediate songs that sound out of reach. This is not your standard prophylactic lo-fi story. Sage seems to have baked the psychoacoustic context in which he wants us to hear this music into the recordings themselves: punk-inflected pop songs you stumble on while turning through the AM dial late night, maybe, and curse yourself for missing the band names. The songs are, to use a James Murphy phrase, "too old to be new, too new to be classic."

The first seven on here are basically perfect. The drumming is simple, thuddy, and distant, as if there were a tarp placed between the microphones and the set. Tempos are taken down just a few ticks, which gives Sage's fragile string sounds more space to breathe and ring out, upping the eeriness of songs like "Doom Town" and "So Young" . "Messenger" is a great example of Sage's increasingly awesome sense of melody and melodic irony: To a peppy, major-key tune, "Messenger/ Always brings bad news/ Just a trick of fate/ Am I the one you'll use," and then right over a surprise two-bar measure, Sage adds, "You got me all choked up." Super smart stuff-- just enough to let Sage get away with all the guitar solos he can't help himself from taking.

Over the Edge closer "This Time" is a funny way for Sage to end his best record. The guitar riff is a re-rip of "Return of the Rat", the first song on Wipers' first album, down to the hard pan and billowing distorted tone. Sage could be saying anything in that gravelly voice, and it would still scare the hell out of me, but he decides on, "Don't wanna be a part of you/ 'Cause you always make me feel a fool."

In retrospect, it was Sage's kiss-off to punk-- not just the aesthetics but the ethics, the lookeds and the looked-nots, the politics of keeping it real. He had already been sour on being sour for a few years by now, as his mellower post- Edge output suggests. (Right now, from what I can tell, Sage lives in Arizona and masters records.) Cobain knew better than anyone why Sage passed on the Nevermind tour: You can't fire a man who's already quit.

Nick Sylvester plays drums in the Brooklyn rock band Mr. Dream .

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• March 31, 1989 Setlist

Greg Sage Setlist at Effenaar, Eindhoven, Netherlands

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• Astro Cloud Play Video
• Let It Go Play Video
• Someplace Else ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Blue Cowboy Play Video
• On the Run Play Video
• Nothing Left to Lose ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• The Chill Remains ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Seems So Clear Play Video
• Time Marches On ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• All the Same ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Way of Love ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Just a Dream Away ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Soul's Tongue Play Video
• Straight Ahead Play Video
• Make or Break ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Goodbye Again ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Be There ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Blue & Red ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Good Thing ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• I Want a Way ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Messenger ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• Let Me Know ( Wipers  song) Play Video
• The Circle ( Wipers  song) Play Video

Edits and Comments

4 activities (last edit by allenz , 27 Apr 2022, 14:15 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• All the Same by Wipers
• Be There by Wipers
• Blue & Red by Wipers
• Good Thing by Wipers
• Goodbye Again by Wipers
• I Want a Way by Wipers
• Just a Dream Away by Wipers
• Let Me Know by Wipers
• Make or Break by Wipers
• Messenger by Wipers
• Nothing Left to Lose by Wipers
• Someplace Else by Wipers
• The Chill Remains by Wipers
• The Circle by Wipers
• Time Marches On by Wipers
• Way of Love by Wipers
• Astro Cloud
• Blue Cowboy
• Seems So Clear
• Soul's Tongue
• Straight Ahead

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Greg Sage Gig Timeline

• Mar 26 1989 The Roxy Dendermonde, Belgium Add time Add time
• Mar 27 1989 Melkweg Amsterdam, Netherlands Add time Add time
• Mar 31 1989 Effenaar This Setlist Eindhoven, Netherlands Add time Add time
• Apr 05 1989 E-Werk Erlangen, Germany Add time Add time
• Nov 22 1991 Melody Ballroom Portland, OR, USA Add time Add time

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Wikipedia: The Wipers From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Wipers are a punk rock group formed in Portland, Oregon in 1977 by guitarist Greg Sage , drummer Sam Henry and bassist Dave Koupal .

Is This Real? , The Wipers’ first album, was first released in 1980 and quietly gained a cult following. The Wipers became better known after the wildly popular grunge band Nirvana covered two songs from Is This Real? . Nirvana’s frontman, Kurt Cobain, spoke of being heavily influenced by the band. The Wipers were a major influence on the grunge music scene in general, and The Wipers albums like Is This Real? alien boy ep and Over the Edge are now widely considered to be among the greatest and most influential punk albums of all time.

While The Wipers began by pioneering the tight, catchy punk rock that Nirvana and others would later bring to the mainstream, the band quickly evolved into producing guitar-solo soaked, labyrinthine punk rock epics. 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.

In 1998, then 18 year old drummer Travis McNabb joined the band for the tour for the album The Circle . He went on to join Better Than Ezra and work with Shawn Mullins, Howie Day and Beggars members of which later formed Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

In 1992, the tribute album Eight Songs for Greg Sage and the Wipers_ (Tim Kerr Records) was released on 4 colored 7-inch records, and included The 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 %28band%29, Calamity Jane, Saliva Tree, Honey, Nation of Ulysses, and Thurston Moore Moore-Keith Nealy.

In 2001, Greg Sage’s Zeno Records 1 released a Wipers Box Set of the Wipers’ first 3 albums, which by that time had been long out-of-print.

Sam Henry is still an active musician in Portland, Oregon, and continues to play with popular Northwest songwriters like Pete Krebs and Morgan Grace .

The most current The Wipers updates can be found @ Wikipedia . This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License . It uses material from the Wikipedia article ‘The Wipers’

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Greg Sage of Zeno Studios and The Wipers

By bryan bingold.

I first discovered The Wipers in a basement record shop in Southeast Portland. I picked up Silver Sail and was blown away by the sonic quality. I quickly found myself buying all The Wipers' albums I could find on any format; vinyl, cassette, and yes, even CD. But it didn't stop there. I soon found myself researching the band's past, but the more I learned the more mysterious The Wipers and Greg Sage became. Then I hit a brick wall. The Herd was the latest Wipers' album released and from what I heard maybe the final album. Had I known that this was almost the norm following each release of a Wipers' album, it wouldn't have mattered. But I didn't know that then, so I turned to the albums I had and studied them intently. The Wipers have an unmistakable "sound" that is unique solely to them. All their albums retain this "sound" yet none of their albums sound alike. It was this concept that nearly drove me mad on many occasions and ultimately led to this interview. How did you first get into recording? What initially spawned you? I used to have a professional record cutting machine. I think it was fifth or sixth grade. My dad used to work in broadcast and I guess all the radio stations used to use these professional lathes for cutting commercials. Then they went to tape cartridges or something; so there was a big surplus of these. My dad happened to know somebody at the TV station he worked at and they had a lathe just sitting in a room.taking up space. So I got it for like a hundred bucks.It had a Grampion Head and everything else; including a microscope. So I started cutting back then. You could find blank red lacquers at Goodwill and things like that for a nickel a piece because there was a big surplus of that stuff. Cutting needles and everything else, just because there were a lot of home cutting machines. I would cut stuff off the radio for kids at school. I spent a lot of time looking at the grooves through the microscope; inspecting my work. It got me kinda interested in playing music. Basically that's where it started for me musically. As far as recording goes,. it just kinda carried over from cutting records. Did you graduate to a four track? Yeah. I think the first tape machine I had was a four track Tascam and a small eight channel mixing board. Then it just kinda took off? Well yeah, once I started making records I was just in the habit of recording my own stuff so it just slowly built up over the years. What was the first band you recorded besides yourself or The Wipers? The first band, oh man there's been so many. I couldn't tell you. Did you ever have a job at an outside studio? I tried to when I was sixteen. It was like the major studio in Portland, I forget what it was called.... NWI, I think, where "Louie, Louie" and stuff was cut at. I almost got a job there, but I lied about my age. Once they found out about that, it was like "Um, sorry kid you have to be eighteen." I never worked for any other studio. I did freelance stuff. So bands would just hear what you've done and ask if you could help them out? Yeah, in the early days I used to record a lot of the local bands. I've read that The Wipers' "sound" was due to the VTDI (Vacuum Tube Direct) preamps and the technology that you're making yourself. How did you get into that and when did you start building your own equipment? It would have been around '77 or something. Once I started making records I was always extremely poor; we never got paid from any of our record labels, or from record sales. So it became apparent that it was really difficult for me to rent equipment, from friends and stuff. Renting a house or whatever. It all added up. I had always worked with tube equipment ever since I had started cutting records, and I've just always noticed that tubes have a specific sound to them. This was back in the day where people would give me a lot of crap. People would laugh when I talked about vacuum tubes because solid state was the only thing out there. Even professionals, other studios, and engineers would just laugh and call me prehistoric. Because I saw value in vacuum tubes. I just started learning all that I could about it, it was kind of a lost art form during the 70s. Tubes were basically cast out. Even the old equipment that would be revered these days, people would laugh at. I bought a pair of Telefunken ELM 2500s for $300 in pristine shape from a studio. The studio just went out and bought all new shiny Neumanns. Stuff like the Telefunkens was just considered junk. It wasn't until the later mid-80s that people started realizing that new isn't always better. I never had money to buy equipment, so I just started teaching myself as much as I could about electronics. It was a hard field because you could hardly find information on it and no one I met knew anything about vacuum tubes. The only electronic people I knew were just strictly solid state. So, I just started experimenting, I would tear apart equipment that I liked the sound of and I would study it's circuitry. I started breadboarding circuits that I found that I thought sounded good, then I started experimenting with different topologies. Which, in those days, were just unheard of like ground plaining, zero point grounds, and dual match grounds. Things that might've been used in radar equipment or something that had that super high band width, but I was self taught so I had no idea. I'd say after about two years of basically tearing stuff apart and learning from it that way. I started building circuits that I thought sounded pretty good, the stuff I built was strictly for my own production. It was just the sounds I was looking for. I always looked for something that was very open and very natural sounding. Not anything that was clean or pristine, but my sound uses a lot of distortion to simulate the distortion of the every day world. I found it really hard to find any type preamp that could mirror distortion, some of the best equipment just didn't know how to understand distortion and it just sounded horrible. I always looking at the coloration and such. I just started building for my own purposes with not ever really thinking about selling any of it. Then I designed a direct box and it probably one of the first vacuum tube direct boxes in that period of time. There weren't any companies at all producing tube equipment. I mean at all. By the time I got it to where there was a lot of interest in my direct boxes, like a lot of major studios had purchase them from me (even in Hollywood). But I never had money to market it and by the time I really kind of got it together, it was like everybody and their dog was making tube equipment. I never got into the competition of it, I build like 4 or 5 different types of mic preamps for different things. Vocals, guitars.....All with a different speed characteristics. You want something fast for drums, something medium speed for vocals, just depending on what you're working on. So if someone came to you with an idea for a preamp and asked you to build it would you be open to that? Yeah, I build like guitar preamps, keyboard preamps, vacuum tube stuff with really radical passive EQ. I build stuff that you can basically use as a front end into an amplifier. Whenever I go to Europe, on tour, I usually get stuck with the horrible sounding newer Marshall that has zero tone. So I built my own front preamps that I bring with me so I can pull some tone out of those amps. Or just plug them directly into the power tube section. I'm more into building speciality stuff. I don't build anything that seems to be the trend. There were a lot of pro-audio stores in the Northwest that were really interested in taking some of my stuff, but we get into these arguments because they insisted that the trend was balanced outputs. I work with unbalanced out in a balanced environment. If you are running a small signal like a microphone over 25 ft., yeah, you need to balance it, but I mean, where it's a trend where if you sell something that's unbalanced out it's not considered the flavor of the month. I don't even bother competing because I build all sorts of circuits. I've built a lot of balanced equipment and personally I just use, myself, what I think sounds the best. Unbalanced out is the way to go, all my equipment in the studio has been switched over to unbalanced in and unbalanced out except for microphones. I kept my cable lengths under 12-14ft. and the amount of punch and clarity you gain that way is just unbelievable. You can argue with people all day long about how good this is, but they don't use their ears. They just talk about what they read; I use my ears to design equipment. Over The Edge seemed to stand out in the mid-80s as an unique sounding Wipers' record. What went on during those sessions? All I can say is that I never tried to mimic what I did before. It depends on the mood, it depends on the set of songs, and it depends on the situation. On that particular record I had to rent a house and use the basement to record it in. It was all on rented equipment. On that album I used a particular amp and it just had a characteristic. A lot of the records I make I try to make real characteristic if possible. Some people pick out one record and say "Why did you depart from this" But I say "Why don't I just record the same songs and album." You would be surprised how many people comment that they didn't like the new record because it wasn't anything like the last one. That's been repeating consistently for over 20 years so you tell me...... It's hard to make a record sound characteristic. Over The Edge had a certain type of song content and it was very, very limited as far as equipment goes. I basically rolled off all the low end completely on that record. That's the way that record felt. It just felt like it shouldn't have any low end. It made it very vocal and very guitar. That record I got nothing, but 99% insults over for the first six years because of that. No one seemed to understand that it's like being a photographer. I mean you don't just take a picture, sometimes you work with filters, sometimes you work with lighting, sometimes you work with depth of field to create an actual illusion with what you're shooting. I approach music and recording in the same way. In fact this record (The Power in One) I've been working on for the past two years is very much different. It's basically very raw and just very unproduced. Back to the ethics of early punk? If there were ethics involved with that. It was just the feel that should go with this record. It has more.......I don't know how to describe it........the sound is just very raw and under produced. I'll get crap for that too, I'm sure. The funny thing is, when Is This Real? (The Wipers first album) first came out it was just totally put down, until about 8, 9 years later. Now it's considered a punk classic, like on a pedestal. But that record was totally rejected for nine years, Youth of America was rejected for seven years, Over The Edge was totally rejected for about....Well it actually did really well in the beginning, but in the main circles for what was going on at the time, it was totally, totally rejected for six years. That's kind of how I like to do it. It's not a good business decision, but I think it's kinda important that music can survive over three months. How did your first solo album Straight Ahead come about? After I recorded Over The Edge, I had $5,000 invested into that record. The record company went bankrupt, so they took the money and started a new label. We got screwed and I had no way of paying back the debt, so that was the end of The Wipers. I was out in the Mohave desert and I wrote a bunch of songs on the acoustic guitar, I fixed a tape recorder for somebody. An eight track recorder, so I got to use it for a month as a fee for fixing it, I guess. I just recorded those songs. Then one day someone called from a record label, a guy that used to work for the label that screwed us, and he said "I feel sorry for you guys" and I told him that I didn't have any Wipers stuff for him and that The Wipers didn't exist anymore. Anyway, the label, licensed Straight Ahead, a live record, some old tapes and basically got me out of debt for Over The Edge. If I never recorded those songs, Over The Edge would've been The Wipers' last record. What process led up to the building of Zeno Studios? At the time, I was getting requests from lots of large bands that were well known, to produce records for them. A lot of indie labels wanted me to produce records for them. I had a bunch of equipment, but I had no place to set it up. Then I found this old church building and decided to build a studio. By the time it was finished the whole industry changed. Indie labels just don't exist any more, or don't have any money to give their artists recording budgets, and Arizona isn't a mecca for the music industry. You acoustically designed Zeno Studios. What was intent with that design, what did you want to bring out? Guitar and drums. I've worked in other studios for other projects and I never liked how you would have to spend four to six hours trying to get drums to sound like drums. I just never like the economy way of dealing with acoustics, which would be using sound deadening material. So I had this mill cut me so many board feet of Ponderosa pine, I built all these arches....The studio is 70-85% all wood, so it has a real nice sound for guitar and drums. You can bring drums in there and in about 45 minutes you're ready to track. Beside the VTDI preamps do you have any pieces of gear you like? Do you build everything you use? I got 12 channels of tube preamps that I've built, got EQs that I've built, direct preamps that I've built for just going direct to tape through the board. I got tube compressors that I've built, I have an old Trident mixing board that I totally stripped out and redesigned. I put newer op amp circuitry in it. An ATR 16-track 1", a Studer two-track. Yeah, I don't have much money for equipment or anything, but most of the stuff I have that sounds good is just stuff I've built or redesigned. Do you have a favorite mic that you use? My favorite all time mic was the Telefunken ELM. They were just like a human ear, they were just so amazing...magical sounding. I like the U47. My tube preamps are just amazing sounding with [Shure] 57s, so those are the ones I use the most. I use the Electro Voice, that little egg shape mic, MV40BB, I think. I use those a lot on guitar now instead of 57s. But for vocals I use a 57 into a tube mic preamp. I got a lot of mics and a 57 is the one that I think works, but it only works through the right tube preamp. It just has the right characteristics. I got some AKG tube mics, I don't use those very much. The main mic I use now is that egg shaped EV and the 57s. Have you ever tried to build a mic? No. No interest in it? Not that I have no interest in it, it's just the finance. We're not like a digital, animated mixdown, or computer-based studio. Only being 16-track with link up 24; we just don't bring in the type of business that can warrant spending tons of money. Do you have any strange mic'ing techniques that you've used? Nothing really weird, I've used some plastic PVC tubing. Put a mic in one end and a headphone transducer in the other end, about ten feet of distance, to get some weird sounds. I mic drums from a distance, we have a 14 ft. ceiling for drums. But you know, I mic snare somewhat close-up I don't mic snare as close as most people do. A lot has to do with the tube preamps that I built for mic'ing snare too. They're really open sounding so you don't need to close mic stuff as much. For guitar I, 99% of the time, mic those close up. I'm experimental with a lot of tracks, but I don't find much merit in it. I know you're not one for influences, but was there any album's whose production blew you away? Not really. I kinda liked, I forget the studio name, I think it was maybe Sunset Sound.I liked the sound that came out of that studio. The Forever Changes album by Love, I like the recording style on that. It's probably just an eight track, but I like the sound of the acoustic guitars. The way the drums were recorded was probably just one mic, with nothing on the kick drum. It had a really tube-y sound to it and I kinda liked that. I like the sound of some older records just because of the tube mics that they used. Not that it's my cup of tea, but I liked the sound of the vocals on the early Beach Boys because they were definitely all U47s. The same with the early Beatles, U47s onto an Ampex 440 or some other four track going at 30 ips. Nice sound, something you never hear these days. When I drive I scan through radio channels and it's just weird. When you scan through all the modern stuff, and then you hit an oldies channel and it plays something from the late sixties. Man, the sonic difference is just..... Amazing. Well it's just the color, it's got body to it and color to it. You can taste the color of it. The thing about modern recordings is that they're transparent and in your face. It's like the difference between film and video tape, or the difference between real wood or a Formica table top. Modern stuff is very pristine and in your face, but then it's just single dimension. See I record super super analog. So it has this three dimensional sound quality. Everything I do is super analog, then when I go to master, I just end up being very depressed. The way I record actually hinders the way it ends up in the modern world. when you master now it goes through digital processing. I just watch the 3D color fly away with little wings. The last time I mastered, it wasn't one of my projects, I actually insisted that it goes straight from the convertor, bypassing the mixing board, and into a three band limiter/compressor. I never have to EQ any of the stuff I mix. The most I've ever had to EQ, when mastering, was half a dB at 50 and maybe a half dB at 4.7 just so there's some EQ in the circuitry. So I can take something I mix and bypass all the convertors, and that's the thing with digital, if you can bypass as many converters as you possibly can. You go into a mixing console, that has tons of convertors in it, go into digital compression,.that has tons of convertors in it. Every conversion you go into takes away the realism or color. So the last thing I mastered I went from the 24 bit convertor straight into a three band compressor directly onto hard disk. I was able to keep about 30% of the imaging. Which is pretty good considering that at a high end place, at best, you're able to keep about 6%. Any suggestions for young recordists out there? Learn how to do it yourself. I mean the music industry is so bad right now. There's just no money in it. I was lucky that I taught myself everything, it was out of necessity that I did. I think that if you are going to survive in this day and age, the more you can do on your own, the better chance you have.

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Heavy Music  |  No. 121

Bob rock: metallica, mötley crüe, & more, by jake brown.

Bob Rock is a foundational pillar of modern day rock and metal production, the architect of a drum and guitar sound he pioneered on cornerstone releases, including Mötley Crüe’s Dr....

Tutorials  |  No. 31

Studio interns: so you wanna be an intern, by larry crane , geoff sanoff.

As a studio owner, I get several calls and emails per week from people looking to break into the "glamorous" world of recording through interning. These people wish to gain experience in the studio,...

Tutorials  |  No. 117

Flood (aka mark ellis): u2, nine inch nails, nick cave.

Flood (aka Mark Ellis) could be called one of the most mysterious record producers working in the business by name alone, not to mention that most special way his ears hear music, and the...

Tutorials  |  No. 49

Analog summing, by j.j. wiesler.

Recently, we've seen an influx of analog summing mixers on the pro audio scene. Products like the Dangerous Music 2-BUS, Chandler Limited Mini Rack Mixer, Audient Sumo, and Folcrom RMS216 are examples...

Let's DIY  |  No. 33

Diy shockmount: build your own microphone shock mount, by tom rogers.

Here's a ridiculously cheap and simple way to make a pretty nice microphone shock mount. Cost is under 10 bucks (way under if you build more than one) and it shouldn't take too much more than a...

Tutorials  |  No. 47

Dummy head mic: making a binaural dummy head microphone, by john klepko.

Restoring a vintage Neumann M49 Microphone: Vintage King Restoration Series, Part 2

What is the attraction of vintage microphones? While we all may spend more hands-on studio time with our outboard gear, our console, and so on, there's undoubtedly a uniquely personal connection we...

Tutorials  |  No. 105

"keep the drummer happy": nick launay on recording lou reed, kate bush, midnight oil, by nicolay ketterer.

Throughout the years, Nick Launay has worked with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, PiL, Gang of Four, Lou Reed, Kate Bush, Midnight Oil, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Arcade Fire, INXS, Talking Heads/David Byrne,...