The Seattle Sound
story by Elijah S.Giampietro, design by Maddie Landon
Why conform? The sound and attitude of grunge solidified Washington as one of the most important cities in the history of rock music. Its originality and “anyone can do it” attitude reshaped American pop culture and music.
Grunge brought the counter-cultural attitude of punk to the front of the mainstream. Many critics of the time highlighted how grunge succeeded as a musical style that was beloved because it was unique and emotionally powerful, not technically impressive or radio ready.
Music Like No Other
“Nobody sounds like that at all,” says Rudy Gerdeman, a WWCD radio host whose career spans back to the ‘90s. “No other scene in LA, New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, anywhere. Seattle had its own thing that nobody’s replicated since the early 90s.”
The Seattle alternative scene took the raw energy of hardcore punk, the heavy and distorted guitar sounds of sludge metal and the bizarre and creative nature of the indie scene and blended it all together. Multiple Seattle bands gained an underground following throughout the ‘80s, with members from one popular band often leaving and going on to join or form another. After Nirvana released Nevermind and changed music, many of these bands went on to perform together in arenas across the world. The importance of the unity within the Seattle scene cannot be understated. “There was a vacuum for original music because the industry wasn't promoting it so people just put it out themselves,” said Jason Benjamin Clifton, lead vocalist of local band SixGun. “Indie music, faith no more, that's what spawned Nirvana. Punk had taken it as far as it could. Punk alone wasn't gonna be a thing, it had to become what it came to keep going. The caterpillar must become the butterfly.”
Originality is something that mainstream rock had become deprived of by the late ‘80s. Hair metal bands sounded too alike and had catalogs full of music that was focused on radio success and not enough on creativity. Alternative music got its name because it was an alternative to the sound that was being promoted in the mainstream, much like Indie got its name because its artists were signed to independent labels. While not from Washington, Pixies are a legendary and heavily influential band that tied together and pioneered the sound of both of these scenes. In a Rolling Stone interview in 1994, Kurt Cobain spoke on their influence. “When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily, I should have been in that band - or at least in a Pixies cover band,” Cobain said.
Before Nevermind, mainstream success was separate from average society, with the idea of a “rockstar” being something that was somewhat superficial and unattainable to the average person. It seemed like only the most skilled and charismatic people could become rockstars and musicians that wanted to make it big had to promote themselves in accordance with an image of what the mainstream defined as successful. The lifestyle that hair metal was promoting excluded most people. Chris Cornell, frontman of legendary Seattle band Soundgarden, talked about how Nirvana changed music in a 1994 interview with Kiro 7 News. “You went from seeing a video of a band like White Snake where you have the singer's model wife doing a striptease act on the hood of a Jaguar and basically all of these rock bands presenting themselves as having a lifestyle that you will never have, that’s very special and it's very exclusive,” Cornell said. “Then you see a video with a band like Nirvana where the band essentially looked like everyone and their friends at high school and it was proof that anyone can do it.”
A Lifestyle For The People
Grunge began before the tech booms of Amazon and Microsoft. At the time, Washington was not an economic superpower and expensive housing wasn’t a defining feature of Seattle. Working class Washingtonians wore flannels and Doc Martens because they often had to work in cold conditions to survive. They needed clothes that were affordable and warm, ones that they could wear on days of cloudy skies and pouring rain.
Screaming Trees were a legendary grunge band founded in Ellensburg. Mark Pickerel, Screaming Trees founding drummer and creator of local clothing brand Road Trip Records, talks grunge fashion. “We liked this idea of wearing clothes that were synonymous with blue collar work, with migrant workers, identifying with people who worked in the logging industry, the agriculture… It was also attractive to us because it was affordable. We were living in Ellensburg where we didn't really have a lot of options when it came to finding clothes to wear on stage,” Pickerel says, “It was convenient for us that flannels and denim and work boots and suspenders had become the dress code for grunge bands. It eliminated this pressure to spend money on clothes that we couldn't afford or find.”
Coming from punk, protest against oppression and inequality was an integral part of grunge culture. The glamorous aspect of ‘80s hair metal had grown stale by the end of the decade and people became sick of the over-sexualized nature of the genre. Anti-sexist lyrical content was part of the foundations of grunge and remained present throughout, with songs like Soundgarden’s “Big Dumb Sex” helping define the early grunge Scene and “Polly” by Nirvana becoming a fan favorite.
On the liner notes of “Incesticide," Kurt Cobain wrote “If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the f–k alone.” Nirvana incorporated lyrics related to the topic throughout their catalog, describing “Rape Me” as having been written with the intention of making his lyrics blatantly apparent. “I got tired of people trying to put too much meaning into my lyrics, so I decided to be really blunt and bold,” said Cobain. After a decade of music that made it seem like only a specific type of person could be successful through looking a certain way, grunge came along, shattered this notion and said that anyone could do it through being themselves.
Legacy Of The Screaming Trees
Founded in Ellensburg, Screaming Trees carved out a unique place as pioneers in the alternative scene, drawing more from psychedelic and southern rock than their metal and punk influenced Seattle counterparts. Mark Lanegan, the bands lead singer, is considered one of the greatest baritone singers in rock history, with a sorrowful, beautifully smooth and powerful tone as well as brilliant poetic lyrics. The band's 1992 album” Sweet Oblivion” stood out in the mainstream as it was still distinctly grunge, but much more melancholy in comparison to its somber Seattle counterparts.
Today, Screaming Trees and Mark Lanegan stand out even more. In the ‘90s, grunge perfectly captured the vibe of Seattle - music that was raw and energetic but somber at the same time matched a city with pouring rain, cloudy skies and a vibrant urban underground. While these terms still define Washington, listening to Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains doesn’t bring to mind blocks of expensive company buildings or the Amazon Headquarters. Eastern Washington, however, is still rolling hills, clear skies and farm country. “Sweet Oblivion” and the rest of the Screaming Trees catalog captures this vibe nearly perfectly. Jason Benjamin Clifton described Lanegan’s importance. “When Lanegan came in he just dropped the hammer with the lyrics and the voice, he was their Johnny Cash.” Clifton painted a Screaming Trees mural that can be found posted against a wall in an alleyway near D&M Coffee on Pearl Street.
Pickerel gave a unique story of how the success of Screaming Trees was tied to CWU. “I give a lot of credit to CWU for energizing and helping propel the band into an international marketplace,” says Pickerel. While there was much unity in the alternative scene at the time, Pickerel has a perspective on the competitive side. “Our first record that we put out ourselves, called ‘Clairvoyance’ got a horrible review in The Observer, so our first public acknowledgement from CWU was a really negative one in the form of an awful review written by someone that worked for The Observer that was also in a competing band,” Pickerel says. “At first our impression was that we were gonna have a hard time winning the fans and support from kids on campus.”
Success really started brewing for Screaming Trees when they got signed to SST in 1987. “When we got signed to that label, that really boosted our reputation, it put us on the map internationally. That's when we started to enjoy some success outside of Ellensburg,” says Pickerel. “Prior to that we didn't really have a local following, we weren't asked to play at any of the local bars. Our music was too edgy and subversive to appeal to the 21 and over crowd at the time.”
CWU’s campus was instrumental to the band's early success. Screaming Trees advertised by putting flyers around campus and playing shows at Hal Holmes Community Center downtown. The ‘Burg radio station, at the time called KCAT, were impressed by the work Screaming Trees did with SST, appreciating and promoting the band's music more once they got word of the accomplishment. Screaming Trees worked with many CWU graduates and students during their early years. Steve Fisk, the band’s first producer, spent time in CWU’s music department. Another graduate owned a local studio that the band recorded in and Mark Lanegan’s girlfriend at the time helped the band design album covers and set up photo shoots with people in the photography department.
“We were really lucky because we had access to Central’s art department where people could literally do work on our behalf and get credits for it,” Pickerel says. “They could use it to beef up their own program on campus, beef up their own credentials or grades. That was really convenient to us, I don't think it was lost on us that we were lucky to have that baked into being an Ellensburg band. The more I look back on our early development of the band, the more I recognize how much the support from CWU and the community throughout Kittitas Valley, [and] what an integral role that played in our development and confidence and self-esteem.