| When the calendar flipped over from 1979 to a brand new decade, there were two questions that The Order of the Grand Lock were asking itself: “Was 1980 the start of a new decade or party of the 70s (since, after all, it still felt a lot like the 70s)?” and, “What would be the defining sound of music in this new decade (because, yeah. It was in fact a new decade. We all know it.)? If only those Locks knew that in a few short years, not only would that new sound come to define the 80s and the early 90s, but that the Order was at the center of it all. That is because the Order of the Grand Lock was about to invent grunge.
In August of 1986, Lodge 7090 in Seattle, Washington was in trouble. The Lodge was famous for its disco-themed haunted house it launched every Hallowe’en known as “The Boogie Man’s Boogie Down Haunted House and Discowreque,” but since the change in decades, attendance had been steadily dropping. “People wanted to be scared,” says Barron M. Touchills. “But by this point, they really hated disco. And that was about 80% of the whole thing.” Something had to be done.
Touchills had an idea: what if instead of his vinyl collection being played over the PA, he assembled a live band? An assortment of instruments that were designed to both retain youth-filled terror and entertain costume wearers. Instruments that when played together would create a noise that seemed familiar with it’s I, vi, IV, V chord progressions, but would otherworldly and possibly even demonic.
The High Key named the band The Held for Qüestioning, and his original line-up consisted of two heavily distorted guitars, overdriven and vaguely out of tune, one bass guitar, one set of drums, and one unamplified flugelhorn. (As it was impossible to hear the flugelhorn over the resulting noise, the performer was dismissed after the house’s second evening.) “We called it ‘grunge’ music,” says Touchills, “because the haunted house had a hotel theme. The band would play in the front space, which we called ‘the grand lounge,’ like as a play on The Grand Lock.” Sensing that this historian wasn’t getting it, he continued, talking: “Grand Lounge, grandlounge, granounge, grunge. ‘Just set everything up in the grunge, guys.”
THfQ originally started with covers of disco hits, but as their noise became more and more of a draw to the area’s teens, they slowly began to include more and more original songs into their setlist, until by the end of Hallowe’en season when the band was performing all original material every night. On November 1st, The Held for Qüestioning took their show on the road, and their sound began to spread.
Touchills, initially, was upset at the band’s popularity. What had begun as background noise for his spooky October dealings had come to overshadow all of his work, no matter how drenched in fake blood they were. “The band initially asked me to manage them,” he told us, “And I turned them down. Obviously, I wish I could take back that decision. Especially as a person who uses money almost every day.” Local record label Sub-Pop quickly signed the band and their spooky, guitar-driven, haunted house music started to become known as The Seattle Sound.
Sensing that he had missed an opportunity, Touchills attempted to recapture lightning in a bottle with the help of The Grand Lock Press’ music publishing division. “If any of the members of our Order had a teenage kid who could play an instrument, I put them in a band. I had Pick K. Novoselic’s boy and Locksmith J. McCready’s kid and Barron E. Cornell’s son. Everyone. The second I’d try to get something going, they’d all say ‘I want to play with this other guy,’ or ‘I don’t have the same range as Donna Summer’ or ‘We don’t want to split our gig money with the flugelhorn guy and also he’s like 50.’ It just wasn’t working.”
Touchills may not have been able to find the success he reached his first time as a band manager, but it hasn’t stopped him from trying. He is already planning this October’s haunted house which will be centered on, just as every other haunted house he’s planned since 1986, grunge music. Even though it is now incredibly far from the genre’s heyday, just try to say that to Touchills and he’ll immediately disagree and “forget” to get you that lemonade he offered you when you first sat down to talk. “I know the kids today are all about hip-hop and mashups, but I think this generation just hasn’t heard the right grunge band that’ll make them whip out their chain wallets and buy the new CD.” Touchills thinks that his October 2018 lineup at the “Flannel Panic Haunted Grunge-onette” has got what it takes to bring back this forgotten genre and make him his mint.
Sadly, it’s just going to be pure disappointment for him, come November. But at least he’ll always be remembered as the Lock that invented grunge music and (stupidly) set it free. |
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