Hazel — Dayglo

JUL 01 1993 · 12:00

Hazel — Dayglo (1993) Director: Russell Bates Era: Pacific Northwest Indie/Post-Punk Boom (1992–1995) - Portland alternative scene contemporaneous with the peak of Sub Pop's cultural dominance, positioned adjacent to but distinct from mainstream grunge High curatorial value as a rare official visual document of Hazel — one of Sub Pop's most critically regarded yet commercially overlooked early acts — directed by Russell Bates at the outset of his career. The video preserves a distinctive Portland DIY aesthetic and captures the band's unusual four-person configuration including dancer Fred Nemo, making it irreplaceable as both a genre artefact and a record of the Sub Pop promotional ecosystem circa 1993. Context: Hazel's 'Dayglo' music video emerged from the fertile and fiercely independent Portland, Oregon indie scene of the early 1990s, on Sub Pop Records — the Seattle label synonymous with launching the grunge movement — yet Hazel deliberately charted a different course. The band's dual-vocal interplay between Pete Krebs and Jody Bleyle, combined with the unusual inclusion of Fred Nemo as a full band member in the role of dancer, gave their visual output a performance-art dimension rare in the genre. The video sits at the intersection of post-punk DIY ethics, queercore adjacency (Bleyle was also involved in Team Dresch and the Candy Ass label), and Sub Pop's broader effort to document and promote the Pacific Northwest underground beyond grunge's dominant commercial wave. Director notes: Confirmed via Russell Bates' own director portfolio at russellbates.com/work/hazel-dayglo/, where he lists the band's four members — Peter Krebs (guitar/vocals), Jody Bleyle (drums/vocals), Brady Smith (bass), and Fred Nemo (dancer/feet) — and notes that Fred Nemo's performance is a significant component of the video. The Dayglo video sits within Bates' early Sub Pop music video work, consistent with the label's 1993 promotional campaign for the debut album Toreador of Love.