Culture January 15, 2013

In the form of a prominent tattoo on Kurt Cobain’s arm, the logo of K Records — a hand-inked logo around a capital K — has entered musical and cultural history, though largely as a footnote to grunge. There have been previous attempts to tell the story of the Olympia, Washington–based independent label in its own right: Heather Rose Dominic’s documentary feature The Shield Around the K appeared in 2000, and Michael Azzerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, which concluded with a chapter on K’s flagship band Beat Happening, followed in 2002. Despite such efforts, both the label and