Immersion in Seattle’s music scene begins minutes after disembarking at Sea-Tac, the city’s international airport, which houses a store devoted to the record company Sub Pop. In 1988, the then shoestring Sub Pop Records released Nirvana’s debut single; it subsequently became as synonymous with Seattle as Motown is with Detroit. Opening our hipster playlist is Nirvana’s fourth single, Smells Like Teen Spirit, released three years later. It became a massive hit across the world, igniting the rock phenomenon that would transform Seattle, a hitherto obscure enclave in America’s far north-west, into an epicentre of cool.
Previous generations of Seattle musicians took for granted that they would have to leave their hometown if they wanted a successful career. Arguably the greatest electric guitarist of all-time, Jimi Hendrix is up next – he was born and raised in Seattle, although only found fame after moving to London.
Right now, Seattle’s music has never been so rich or diverse. Witness the contrast of Fleet Foxes’ Sun it Rises, a yearning choral-Americana hymn to frontier spirits, with avant-hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces. Shine a Light hails from their futuristic twin Quazarz album – released in 2017 by a certain indie record label with its own airport shop.
Portland has become renowned in recent years for its ultra-progressive attitudes – as satirised by the comedy series Portlandia – but the city’s hippy roots have long attracted free-thinkers from all over America. Emerging from the city’s early 90s underground rock scene with his disarmingly catchy dark-folk confessionals was Elliott Smith. Here, we trace the Texan native’s troubled quest around Portland in Needle in the Hay.
Other musicians who rocked up in Portland included feminist trio Sleater-Kinney, formed in the Washington state capital Olympia during the mid-90s, by guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, alongside drummer Janet Weiss. From their 2015 comeback album, No Cities to Love confounds the adage that radical voices mellow with age – or, in the case of Portlandia co-creator Brownstein, fame.
Next up, we have the Shins, who formed in New Mexico but became Portland residents following their 2002 breakthrough hit New Slang (as featured in the film Garden State). Then, Laura Veirs – who was called to the city via Colorado and the midwest to craft her contemplative modern-folk tapestries – offers a revelatory version of the Grateful Dead song Mountains of the Moon, from her latest album the Lookout.
The Grateful Dead were, of course, a flagship band for 60s counterculture. From San Fran, tremors from the Summer of Love rippled up the west coast of the US – and then around the world. While the Dead were busy soundtracking Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, the 1967 Haight-Ashbury scene’s commercial powerhouse was Jefferson Airplane, a relatively straightforward folk-rock band until the recruitment of siren vocalist Grace Slick. Her vocals on White Rabbit – with its exhortation to “feed your head” – alongside other songs, such as Somebody to Love, helped the tracks become anthems for the ages.
A decade later, the punk revolution was under way, and San Francisco’s North Beach district harboured the latest manifestation of the city’s nonconformist heritage: the Dead Kennedys. They deployed caustic satire in songs like California Über Alles to debunk mainstream American culture and politics.
Our penultimate track is Why Won’t You Stay, by one of San Francisco’s greatest songwriters, Mark Eitzel, chronicler of the city’s luckless and heartbroken for the past 30 years – both with legendary band American Music Club, notably on Everclear (Rolling Stone’s Best Album of 1991), and in his more recent solo work. Eitzel’s lachrymose voice is the perfect accompaniment to a Mission bar crawl.
Carrying the city’s freak flag proudly into the present day to round off our playlist are Thee Oh Sees, a twin-drummer psychedelic juggernaut led by wild-eyed John Dwyer – proof that San Fran isn’t merely a place, it’s also a state of mind.
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