The first time I heard Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff was late one particularly humid evening during summer vacation after 9th grade. I was lying on my bedroom floor shirtless, flat prepubescent chest facing the ceiling, thinking, “Wow – this really sounds like shit.” Little did I know, this dingy sonic gem would launch me into indie rock oblivion. And, well, here I am a decade later, drunkenly moshing to an electrifying rendition of Hate the Police, screaming out lyrics and smiling wide.

My Mecca is the Sub Pop 20th Anniversary festival and I am in the Grand Mosque, a clearing in Marymoor Park with a beer garden and two outdoor stages. Across the mosh pit I spot someone wearing an ancient relic of a Screaming Trees t-shirt, tattered almost beyond recognition. Before the set, I engaged in a friendly debate over which Mudhoney album is their masterpiece (it’s obviously their self-titled full-length). And earlier in the day, I spotted Kim Warnick of Fastbacks fame talking to fans by the pizza tent. These are my people.

The festival is a harmonious melding of old, young, and very young, all enjoying this beautiful summer weather for one purpose: to enjoy music performed by the bands they love. There’s no tension here, no overt air of pretension. Nobody is here to impress or oppress. Perhaps it’s the small size of the festival, or the open liberal nature of the urban Pacific Northwest – I’m not sure. What I am sure of is how lucky I feel to have found this fold.

Although embarrassing to admit, I was a top 40 junky throughout middle school. I knew Gin Blossoms’ Hey Jealousy by heart, danced to Salt-n-Pepa’s Whatta Man, and was genuinely excited for Ace of Base as The Sign ripped up Rick Dee’s Weekly Top 40 every Sunday night. My friend Tim and I built guitars out of Construx and jammed along with the radio after school. My innocent sugarcoated life was sweet indeed. That changed when Kurt Cobain died.

I recognized Kurt as the frontman of Nirvana, the band whose album Nevermind had recently been enjoying heavy rotation in my newly purchased stereo system. His death was intriguing – perhaps because artist suicide was new to me, or perhaps because I was a budding fan faced with the abrupt end of a great newfound band – and I began researching his music. It didn’t take long for me to discover grunge and take the plunge into Seattle’s rich music scene. With only a guess as to what I was getting myself into, I picked up a Mudhoney album and uncovered my musical identity through Sub Pop records.

My high school years were spent collecting early Sub Pop releases and reading everything I could find about Seattle and grunge, teetering on obsession. Green River, Soundgarden, Tad, Skin Yard, Fluid, Coffin Break, Screaming Trees, Crackerbash, and Seaweed were household names. I watched Hype! and poured over Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story (which reads like a social studies textbook). I charted musicians through the bands they played in and created a big happy family.

Just as I imagined the scene to be like in high school, a strong sense of kinship fills the festival air. While the Fluid performs their first show in over 15 years, Kim Thayil, the legendary Soundgarden guitarist, observes from backstage, no doubt harboring nostalgic feelings. Brandon Summers of The Helio Sequence dedicates their song Blood Bleeds to Seaweed frontman Aaron Stauffer’s daughter, citing that it’s her favorite song. While fronting the highly anticipated Green River performance, Mark Arm, the debatable father of grunge, introduces his band mates by name-checking their old, obscure previous bands like a festival-wide inside joke.

I’m here to see the old bands I was obsessed with in grade school – many of which broke up before I had a chance to see them. The guys from Seaweed have all gained a few pounds but still pack enough energy and enthusiasm into their performance to put most young popular bands to shame. The Fluid looks weathered, but frontman John Robinson is on fire with his flamboyant stage presence, hitting every note. The Vaselines seem to capture the attention of the entire festival as they perform songs popularized by Nirvana: Son of a Gun, Molly’s Lips, and Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam. I stand close to the stage in a drunken trance, imagining this to be one of the more magical moments of my life.

The showstopper is Green River, the band all the old school Sub Pop diehards are here to see. As one of the first groups to release an album on the label, they were highly influential and helped mold the early Sub Pop sound, and their aura of influence continued after breakup in the forms of Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, and Love Battery. Watching them perform is amazing. Mark Arm channels Iggy Pop on stage and the rest of the band grins while ripping through their classics. This is where it started.

My music tastes have changed focus over the years and I admit to not knowing many of the bands on Sub Pop’s current roster, but I am impressed with what I see. Foals are a dance-rock party that even toddlers are moving to. No Age rips it up as the punk rock answer to the White Stripes, and Iron and Wine casts a whimsical spell over the audience. Flight of the Concords, a musical comedy duo on HBO, headlines on Saturday and completely kills it onstage. It almost makes me consider upgrading my cable package. Almost.

Near the end of the festival, I look around and catalog all the great things Sub Pop has done as the music industry supposedly dies a slow death. As long as progressive labels like this keep producing quality music, the heart of this industry will always remain. Happy Birthday, Sub Pop. Here’s to 20 more.