FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: powerHouse Books is pleased to announce the November 2003 release of: Touch Me I’m Sick Photographs by Charles Peterson Introduction by Eddie Vedder Essay by JennIE Boddy “There was a group of people who ended up being the unwitting parents, the people who birthed the Seattle scene. And Charles Peterson is one of those people.” —Jonathan Poneman, co-founder of Sub Pop Records Poised at the epicenter of an explosive underground scene, photographer Charles Peterson witnessed the birth of a brash new era in music that grabbed the world by its throat and refused to let go. Grunge, the bastard child of ‘60s garage and ‘70s punk, revived the original gritty spirit of rock and roll: rebellion ain’t pretty but it sure is fun. Featuring 92 photographs—eighty of them never published before—spanning 16 years, Touch Me I’m Sick, Peterson’s third monograph, documents the raw power of live performances by the soon-to-be-famous artists and their dedicated fans. Yet, Peterson’s photographs do not rely on the cult of celebrity to tell this compelling tale of angst, anxiety, and acoustics. Rather, they capture the cathartic ritual between musician and fan played out in seedy clubs reeking of sweat and stale beer. Bored, alienated youth with nothing better to do than bash their instruments and mosh their bodies in a barrage of sound, song, and furious energy are mirrored with his signature style of wide-angle intimacy, swirling lights, and a strange sense of grace. Peterson, who became known mostly for his signature style "blur", exploited by use of the open shutter flash technique, capturing bands at the height of their intensity. Marvels of controlled chaos and swirling lights, his live photographs plucked spontaneous beauty from the tumult of a rock show, revealing the depth and honesty of its most unguarded moments.   But we also see into some of the performer's quiet (and fun) moments, both backstage and in group portraits. Touch Me I'm Sick sheds fresh light onto these famous anti-heroes of the scene, here refreshingly liberated from our culture's fascination with the cult of celebrity. They, and the photographs, are content to stand on their own homegrown footing, melting the lines between fame and formalism, hype and honesty, subject and beauty. In so doing, Peterson creates timeless, artistic imagery out of this swiftly passing frenzy, and smashes the godhead of rock stardom, revealing band, audience, and photographer as fellow conspirators in one of rock and roll’s latest, greatest revivals. “In conjunction with the sounds created by producer Jack Endino, the Peterson photos projected a unity of vision rarely seen in the music business. His ‘look’ helped define Seattle grunge in the same way the ‘look’ of Bluenote records defined the vibe of jazz in the mid-50s to mid-60s.” —Bruce Pavitt, co-founder Sub Pop Records Featuring photographs of grunge legends Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Sleater Kinney, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, L7, Hole, and Black Flag, among others, as well as excerpts from Your Flesh, Flipside, Melody Maker, B-side, Swellsville, and Chemical Imbalance, Touch Me I’m Sick is the perfect mix of art and journalism for music purists and connoisseurs. “And you know what? I think other photographers secretly want to be like Charles and Charles secretly wants to be like other photographers. And it’s a hard call—would you rather have that street cred, punk rock hipness and respect from all the cool bands, or industry suave that gets major magazine editors and record exec dorks to fly you all over the world for photo shoots and pay you outrageous amounts of money?” —Jennie Boddy, Your Flesh #25 Charles Peterson was born in 1964 in Longview, Washington. He  received a B.F.A. in photography from the University of Washington in 1987. At that time he met up with a group of musicians (future members of Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, etc.) and the journalist/record promoter Bruce Pavitt. He decided Charles gritty, populist look was the perfect element to showcase the bands on his new label, Sub Pop. The rest is contemporary pop history—grunge, Nirvana, Seattle. Peterson's photographs have graced hundreds of record covers, and appeared in publications worldwide including the Village Voice, NME, The New York Times, Newsweek, Mojo, People, Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Rockin' On, Guitar World, and Newsweek. He has two previous monographs, Screaming Life: A Chronicle of the Seattle Music Scene (Harper Collins) and Pearl Jam: Place/Date (Rizzoli/Vitalogy, with Lance Mercer) His images have appeared in numerous other books, including The Blue Jean, 1001 Record Covers, Cobain, This Band Could Be Your Life, and Come As You Are, and feature prominently in the feature film Hype, as well as numerous other video documentaries. Twenty Five of his photographs are in the permanent collection of Seattle's Experience Music Project museum. He is also with Getty Images (Stone and the Image Bank) and Retna Ltd. Peterson currently lives in Seattle with his dog Barkely. Eddie Vedder was born in 1964 in Evanston, Illinois. He is the lead singer of the multi-platinum, internationally famous band, Pearl Jam. Vedder relocated to Seattle from San Diego in 1989 to sing with ex-members of Green River and Mother Love Bone. Since that time, Pearl Jam have played sold out shows from Turkey to Thailand. Riot Act, released winter 2002, is their sixth album. Vedder appeared in Cameron Crowe's movie Singles, and collaborated with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on the soundtrack to Dead Man Walking. He is also active in many social and political causes. And he plays a mean game of Scrabble. Jennie Boddy was born in Detroit Michigan. She relocated to Seattle on the cusp of the grunge explosion, at which time she became the publicist for Sub Pop Records. She pursued music writing as well, mostly for small but highly influential independent publications such as Alternative Press and Your Flesh. Since that time, Boddy has lived in Los Angeles and New York City, where she is currently a head publicist for Interscope Records. MUSIC/PHOTOGRAPHY Hardcover, 9.25 x 12.25 inches 144 pages, 92 tritone photographs ISBN: 1-57687-191-6              $40.00