Growing up, I became obsessed with music. It started in my early teens with the perfumed pop of Duran Duran and Soft Cell, morphed briefly into brooding Goth before landing squarely in the UK indie alternative scene of the late ’80s.
For a while it was a very English thing for me, but around 1988/89 that got turned on its head by grunge. I was working in a London record shop at the time and remember talking to the Southern rep about the next big thing. It was something different, and wrong, every month but hey, he had to get it right one time; and that time was Sub Pop.
LameFest UK (Nirvana, Tad, Mudhoney at the Astoria, London) was a blistering experience. It was as if someone had taken the energy and excitement from punk or metal, and added feelings and desperation to replace pomp and bullshit. My music had just grown balls. That first Peel Session from ’89, kicking off with ‘Love Buzz’, still sounds fresh and vital today.
My love affair with the Seattle grunge scene was fittingly short lived. By Nirvana’s epic Reading show in 1992 I was tiring of that thump thump thump, my record shop education having opened doors to everything from traditional folk to hip hop. But it still hurt when Kurt suddenly decided his time was up a few years later.
But the list of important Seattle bands is a lot longer than you’d expect from an otherwise unremarkable, unfashionable American city. Ray Charles in the ’50s, Hendrix in the ’60s, grunge; then Band of Horses, Foo Fighters, Fleet Foxes, Sunny Day Real Estate, Kenny G… There’s always one.
While I’ve been to hundreds of gigs and festivals and have bought 1000+ CDs over the past 30 years, the anti-romance of Seattle has stayed with me; it has a scruffy, unkempt quality I can relate to. So you can keep Liverpool and New York, Manchester and Austin; Seattle is still my musical Mecca.
This love affair has been rekindled in recent years by the remarkable output of Seattle radio station KEXP. I found it quite by accident while surfing YouTube for something to listen to. I don’t even remember what it was I found; and it says a lot that the radio station stuck in my mind more than the music. Here I was, watching a live HD radio session with fantastic audio. I was hooked – it remains the one thing on YouTube I’m subscribed to.
So here’s to Nirvana, and to KEXP, and to everything else that’s musically magnificent about Seattle. I’ll make it there one day; let’s say it right now – before I’m 50, I WILL go to Seattle. And of course it helps that it’s a couple of hours from Canada – a country I’d love to spend some time in. Until then though, I’ll keep it tuned to KEXP.
More (possibly slightly more exotic) League of Extraordinary Bloggers’ road trips:
Go Play Listen 