Photo By: Alan Brennan
Seattle is famous for its constant rain, dirty flannels, and perhaps most notably, in cultural affairs, for being the birthplace of grunge. Some of the most famous grunge bands from the ‘80s and ‘90s like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney were formed in and around our city, and their legacies continue on to this day.
As a huge music fan, I have visited many of the historically important grunge sites in Seattle, like Kurt Cobain’s memorial park, the Moore theater, and the Crocodile (where I actually saw Cobain’s signature on the wall in the greenroom). These places take me back in time to when my parents and their friends were young in Seattle and participated in the vibrant music scene.
When talking to long time family friend and Seattleite Erik Foss – a self-proclaimed grunge fan who lived in Seattle during grunge’s its prime – he recalled many stories of his youth going to in and out of various shows, including having seen Nirvana live 10 times.
He described the grunge sound as “dirty fuzz,” with garage, reverb, and static. When asked about his live music experiences, he explained, “I did see Mudhoney open up for the Butthole Surfers in King’s Street Station on Halloween, and that might have been one of the weirdest shows I’ve ever been to.”
He described the Butthole Surfers as “insane,” having two drummers, movies playing in the background, and naked dancers on the stage, which, by the end of the concert, had fully collapsed. At that time, Seattle was random, exciting, and electric.
To him, Seattle has lost its grit. Where it once held a small community of musicians who passed cassettes to one another and played shows in basements and college dorms, Seattle is now an ultra-expensive tech metropolis that is unsustainable for broke musicians, who were the very ones that gave the city its once rich regional identity and charm.
With the introduction of technology, masses of people, and tech companies, Seattle and its music scene has changed immensely in the past 40 years. Though Seattle grunge has technically “died,” its legacy lives on and has had impacts on music all over the world. Though I wasn’t alive back then, I can feel Seattle’s changes–the lack of grit, energy, and distorted music. Even if change is inevitable, sometimes I wish I could’ve been there to see it for myself all those years ago.
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