TAD — Wood Goblins

JUL 01 1990 · 12:00

TAD — Wood Goblins (1990) Era: Early Seattle Grunge / Sub Pop Underground (1990) - Pre-mainstream grunge era; raw Pacific Northwest underground rock on Sub Pop Records, recorded with noise-rock engineer Steve Albini, predating the genre's commercial explosion by two years Exceptionally high. This is TAD's first-ever music video and one of the earliest surviving visual documents of Sub Pop Records' pre-mainstream grunge era. Its MTV ban on grounds of 'ugliness' gives it significant cultural-historical value as an artifact of the aesthetic conflict between underground rock and broadcast gatekeepers. The video's extreme darkness (brightness 43.5/255), warm incandescent palette, and raw outdoor performance style constitute a near-definitive example of early Sub Pop visual identity. As a low-circulation, decades-unavailable video only restored to public access in 2016, it has strong archival and preservation priority. Context: TAD's 'Wood Goblins' video was produced in 1990 as the band's first music video, tied to the Salt Lick EP on Sub Pop Records — recorded by noise-rock engineer Steve Albini in Chicago. The video was notoriously banned by MTV, with Sub Pop documenting that programmers deemed it 'too ugly,' a rejection that became a badge of honor within the Seattle underground. TAD were among Sub Pop's earliest signees and, alongside Mudhoney and Nirvana, helped define the heavy, sludge-influenced wing of what would become globally known as grunge. The band cultivated an image described as 'deranged lumberjacks' with heavy Northwest working-class iconography. The video's ultra-low budget, outdoor woodland setting, and raw performance aesthetic are archetypal of Sub Pop's anti-commercial visual identity circa 1989–1991, before major-label money transformed the genre's production values. Director notes: The 'Wood Goblins' video was produced in 1990 to accompany the Salt Lick EP on Sub Pop Records, recorded by Steve Albini. Wikipedia states it was 'the band's first music video.' According to Sub Pop Records and taddoyle.com, MTV banned the video on the grounds that it was 'too ugly.' The video was largely unavailable for decades before Sub Pop uploaded it to YouTube as part of the 2016 Salt Lick Deluxe Edition reissue campaign. A contemporaneous observer noted the video features frontman Tad Doyle swinging a chainsaw in the woods. No production company, director, or cinematographer credit is publicly documented for this video.