POPPING THE SEAMS

…the word “Seattle” stands for a lot more than its music scene. In writing about the Seattle scene, critics are not just chronicling a random success story. They are grappling with the notion of a geographically specific scene itself. – Charlie Bertsch, Making sense of Seattle Issue #5, March/April 1993

Writing in 1993, with the “Seattle Sound” just past its media peak Bertsch considers how the grunge phenomena was closely bound to anxieties resulting from changes to US economic geography and world political geography. He claims that in the 1990s the rise of “Edge Cities” in the US, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union had destabilized the ways that identity could be formed through geography.

Starting in the ’60s suburban developments become increasingly important as sites of economic production. They are no longer just bedroom communities for commuters who work in the city, but become sites of office parks and industrial facilities. Commuting may mean traveling from one Edge City to another, bypassing the urban “center” altogether. These Edge Cities are characterized by their newness – they have no identifiable local culture and they may not even be named.

In contrast to the generic Edge Cities, the specificity of Seattle as a place is seized on. Far more than just the home of some popular bands, “Seattle functions as a conceptual refuge.” The city “becomes a hedge against Edge Cities named after the intersection of interstates, malls or not named at all.”

The concrete geographic particularity of a Seattle, its definition as a real place not interchangeable with any place else masks the landscape of Edge Cities. The obsessive, almost frantic turn to Seattle as an origin of independent culture (…) transcends the world of music.

For music critics, then, “Seattle becomes a way to make sense of the world” in a time when the stability of national and urban borders is in question.

Bertsch notes that the idea of Seattle as origin of the musical style gross oversimplification. Underground/alternative/independent music scenes operate in networks of regional and transnational exchange. Even niche-audience local bands tour small venues in the US or distribute their recordings outside their own localities. In the 1990s fanzines and small press magazines were an important mode of communication between different regional scenes. Many independent artists that reach a higher profile in the US do so by first gaining attention in the UK and other international markets, demonstrating that even obscure self-releasing artists are engaged with a global audience.

panel from Jeffrey Lewis comic.

Chicks on Speed with Peaches