I just finished Greg Prato's Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music, the best book I've read on the subject.
The book does exactly what it says on the tin - it's nearly 500 pages of first-hand accounts chronicling everything from the early days of The Sonics in 60's, Three Whiz Kidz in the 70's, the birth of what we know now as "grunge" in the 80's, to the mainstream successes of the 90's, all the way up to present day.
It goes pretty in depth about everything from the good times of crazy shows and various backstage hijinks and indulgences, to the low points such as the deaths of Andy Wood, Kurt Cobain, Mia Zapata and Layne Staley. A compelling read from beginning to end.
So I just had to take a leisurely stroll down memory lane with a little compilation of some of my favorite tracks from the era and the region. Yeah, there's no Alice In Chains or Pearl Jam or Mother Love Bone or Nirvana.
Why? Because. That's why.
The Seattle scene was notoriously incestuous, with everyone playing in a number of bands. I was gonna do a little run-down of how these bands are connected before I realised that run-down would be anything but little. Seriously, I would take me all fucking day just to type it.
If you're interested in knowing who played when and what in which band, you could always go to Wikipedia or something, because I honestly couldn't be bothered. If you're not interested enough to look it up, just keep in mind as you're listening that a lot of these bands share so many members that you're essentially hearing the same people over and over.
Most of these tracks are from 1985-1995. Others aren't.
(zip) V/A - Pacific Northwest Compilation (68 mb)
1. Fecal Matter - Laminated effect
2. Swallow - Zoo
3. TAD - Wood goblins
4. The Fartz - Idiots rule
5. Green River - Hangin' tree
6. The U-Men - Dig it a hole
7. Malfunkshun - With yo' heart (not yo' hands)
8. Skin Yard - The birds
9. Mudhoney - Sweet young thing ain't sweet no more
10. Dead Moon - 5440
11. Screaming Trees - Love or confusion (Jimi Hendrix cover)
12. Soundgarden - Tears to forget
13. The Melvins - Grinding process
14. The Blackouts - Idiot
15. The Supersuckers - I say fuck
16. Cat Butt - Big cigar
17. Some Velvet Sidewalk - Mousetrap
18. 7 Year Bitch - Knot
19. The Wipers - Return of the rat
20. The Gits - Second skin
Buy the music.
Buy the book.
1 comments:
This is awesome, I just finished Our Band Could Be Your Life, which is about the growth of DIY music and had a bit on Sub Pop, Mudhoney, Olympia and Seattle and I'll check out this book too.
I'm also a HUGE gits fan and wonder how big they would have gotten if Mia had not been murdered. Such a great band with incredible potential. I'm going to download this and check out all of these songs. I think this may be one of your best compilations yet, and I'm pretty sick of the whole grunge thing too but this looks good.
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