Greg Sage (born October 21, 1951) is an American songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist, regarded as an important influence on many
punk rock and
post-punk
Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad music genre, genre of Punk Music, punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde s ...
artists. Sage is best known as the principal songwriter and vocalist/guitarist of the influential
Portland, Oregon-based band
Wipers.
Early years
Greg Sage was born in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...
, on October 21, 1951. His involvement with music began with cutting records at home as an adolescent, due to his father being involved in the broadcast industry.
Sage’s first instrument was bass guitar, because of the low tones that made larger grooves in the vinyl records due to slower modulations. Basses were harder to find and much more expensive when Sage was in grade school, so he used guitar instead.
Sage has been involved in music professionally since the age of 17, when he worked on a full-length album by the professional wrestler
Beauregarde (''Beauregard'', 1971; re-released 2004). After several years of playing and recording guitar, Sage founded Wipers in Portland in 1977.
The mood of Sage's lyrics is frequently dark, and rife with references to confusion and severe alienation. His song structures often take unexpected turns and are typified by fractured melodic passages punctuated by massive, intricate guitar parts, and use of heavy
distortion
In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signa ...
. He usually plays on a 1969 left-handed
Gibson SG
The Gibson SG is a solid-body electric guitar model introduced by Gibson in 1961 as the Gibson Les Paul SG. It remains in production today in many variations of the initial design. The SG (where "SG" refers to Solid-Body Guitar) Standard is Gi ...
with attached
Bigsby tremolo.
Wipers
In 1977, Sage founded the Wipers. The name was inspired by a job he had picked up cleaning windows at a movie theatre; the crystal clear transparency of the glass was what he realized he wanted to emulate with his music.
Its inception was at first an exclusive recording project. Then Sage planned to record 15 LPs in 10 years without touring or promoting. He believed it would be possible to avoid live shows, press, pictures and interviews, and this – coupled with the mystique of his unorthodox music – would encourage a deeper, more imaginative engagement with the recordings.
In 1979, Sage established his own record label, Trap, and asked several Portland punk bands to record singles. Some of those early bands were The Stiphnoyds, The Neo Boys and Sado Nation. Sage later re-released some of the material on a compilation record entitled ''The History Of Portland Punk''.
Solo career
Since the demise of Wipers, Sage has also recorded several albums as a solo musician and operates his own label, Zeno Records, based in
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the on ...
where he currently resides.
Discography
Solo albums
*''
Straight Ahead'' (1985)
*''
Sacrifice (For Love)'' (1991)
with Wipers
* ''
Is This Real?'' (1980)
* ''
Youth of America
''Youth of America'' is the second studio album by American punk rock band Wipers. It was released in 1981 by record label Park Avenue.
Content
The album marked a distinctive change in the band's sound. Compared to its predecessor, ''Is This ...
'' (1981)
* ''
Over the Edge'' (1983)
* ''
Land of the Lost'' (1986)
* ''
Follow Blind'' (1987)
* ''
The Circle'' (1988)
* ''
Silver Sail'' (1993)
* ''
The Herd'' (1996)
* ''
Power in One
''Power in One'' is the final studio album by punk rock band Wipers, released in 1999 by Zeno Records. The album was written, produced and recorded at Greg Sage's Zeno Studios in Phoenix, Arizona.
Critical reception
''Exclaim!'' wrote that "led ...
'' (1999)
External links
The Wipers official homepageGreg Sage at TapeOp.com– Greg says he was 17 when he met Beauregarde in 1969.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sage, Greg
1952 births
American punk rock guitarists
American punk rock singers
Living people
Musicians from Portland, Oregon
Singers from Oregon
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guitarists from Oregon
American male guitarists
20th-century American guitarists
20th-century American male musicians
Restless Records artists
Enigma Records artists