Welcome to the YouTube concert footage rabbit hole that will back up that bold headline in honor of Seattle Rock Day.
This all started last week when I found this rare clip of Soundgarden at NYU doing 3 of my favorite tracks off Louder Than Love in ‘89:
(The rest of these were filmed right here in Seattle and go chronologically.)
Full-disclosure, I’m getting loopy from a lack of sleep because I already spent over an hour at work and then stayed late to write this blog. After embedding and writing about all NINE videos, the whole thing disappeared in one unfortunate keystroke. It was brutal at the time, but turns out, there was good reason.
In that blog I had the wrong Alice in Chains clip. I mean, it was a dope one. High sound quality, epic setlist, the whole nine. (Proof.) But THIS! This is the Alice in Chains video that was meant for this blog. 1990 at the Off Ramp. People stage-diving left and right. The legendary KISW “Rock” stickers on Jerry’s guitar. My friend Boomer would call this "rowdy":
Then we have Pearl Jam playing underneath the Space Needle at the Mural Amphitheater, FOUR DAYS BEFORE TEN CAME OUT!
A couple months later Nirvana was doing a Halloween show at the Paramount, and well, maybe this will explain why School is my favorite song of theirs. What Dave Grohl's drumset did to deserve that kind of punishment will remain forever shrouded in mystery:
Then we switch historic theaters and fast forward a couple years to 1995 so we can watch Mike McCready shred a double-neck at the Moore! Good luck processing all the awesomeness of Mad Season doing Lifeless Dead:
Speaking of Mike McCready and Barrett Martin, I went to see them and Duff McKagan at Walking Papers’ first show in 2012 at Slim’s Last Chance. While I did get to see those legends share a stage, it really belonged to Jeff Angell:
(You can see Walking Papers at Alma Mater in Tacoma on April 6th, 2019.)
As seen in the cover photo, Ten Miles Wide had an epic set at the Sunset (which is a few blocks from where I’m typing this, because I live in Ballard and am typing this FROM HOME!) back in the summer of 2016 shortly after the release of their masterpiece The Gross:
(You can see Ten Miles Wide at Clock Out Lounge in Seattle on April 13th, 2019.)
Right down the road at High Dive in Fremont, Woodshed has had many wild shows. They never get old, but they can blur together after a while. I’m glad Nate wore that bitchin’ sweater in December 2017, because I can distinctly remember this one:
This brings us to just over a year ago when Taryn helped put together F*MS at The Crocodile. Bruiser Brody had a rowdy, tight set in front of a packed room on a sweaty Wednesday. Proving to us all that Seattle Rock remains in good hands to this day:
Hope you enjoyed checking out whatever you checked out. I know it’s a lot. I’ve watched most of it at least twice (what? You thought I was gonna rewrite this thing without the life and emotion that the music stirs inside of me??), and lived half of it in-person!
Feel free to bookmark this because there’s SO MUCH incredible live footage from amazing Seattle bands here. And it barely scratches the surface of all the great music this town has to offer over the years.
Happy Seattle Rock Day!
Matt