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Green River Rehearses For Reunion Set

Green River has run through a series of rehearsals for their set at Sub Pop's twentieth anniversary show this Sunday, the band's first performance in more than two decades. According to a Billboard.com interview with bassist Jeff Ament (who'd later found Pearl Jam with guitarist Stone Gossard), the group has gone as far as relearning two unreleased demo tracks, "Baby, Help Me Forget" and "Leech."

"In a weird way, those are probably some of the best songs we have," Ament said. "It's funny how it works. At the time, we thought they were way too simple or not challenging enough. But in retrospect, they're really great pop songs. We re-learned those two, but there are five or six songs that never got released."

Green River also counts Mark Arm and Steve Turner of Mudhoney among its ranks. The quartet—rounded out by drummer Alex Vincent—has rehearsed five times since late April.

"We had a go at 16 or 17 songs and we have 14 right now, but we may need to get that down to 11 or 12 for Sunday," explained Ament. "We have a 40-minute slot."

As for the question of future Green River material, Ament simply said, "It would be fun to write a couple of new songs with those guys … We need to go ask The Stooges to do 25 shows or something. For me, then it would be worth it."

—The ARTISTdirect Staff
07.10.08