about Seattle, Washington, I think about three things. First, Seattle Grace Hospital, the setting for Grey’s Anatomy, second the Seattle Seahawks home of Marshawn Lynch and third never ending rain. I had no idea that even before Grey’s and Marshawn Seattle, in the 1940s, was home to a vibrant culture of Jazz and a new genre now known as R&B (then called “race records”). It was a Northwest Renaissance of sorts much like the one in Harlem in the 1920s.
short, both Charles and Jones credit the city with giving them their big breaks. Charles stated that “Seattle is the town where I made my first record. And if you ever want to say where I got my start, you have to say that.” That record was “Rockin’ Chair Blues” named after another Seattle night club, the Rocking Chair, which was a hit “race record” in 1949. For Jones, it was in Seattle where he had his first opportunity, while still in high school, to go on tour with Lionel Hampton, but he was kicked off the tour bus by Hampton’s wife because he was so young.
Janie I am well aware of the trials and tribulations we all go through within our own families & please know that my request is for the benefit of only two people! The two people I am speaking on the behalf of are both past away and unable to say what I can only know and imagine is a topic of great interest to them both in the spirit world! Thee open air tomb that is Jimi's Memorial has the three sections of 9 stones that surround it; each stone representing each year of your brother's life within Jimi's Memorial. Jimi's Family; his father,your mother,aunts & uncles and spots for future siblings of James's to be laid to rest when their times come! Jimi's Real True To Blood Birth Giving Mother Ms. Lucille Mitchell Hendrix lays all by her lonesome buried alone on the same property within The Greenwood Memorial Home several thousands of feet away way across thee other side of the property! Janie know that a son is without his mother & a mother is without her son & do the right thing; not for me & not for you or anyone else for that matter other than Ms. Lucille & her little Mr. Jimi & invite her & have her moved into the circle of 27 Stones so she & her son who so many of us around the world feel a relation through his words and music and his love and mission for everyone to "Keep On Movin, Straight Ahead!" Thank You To All That Read This & Feel The Same Way! -ryan m. menges I have added a link to a video I put together just a little more than one year ago on April 2, 2014 please all that watch it, watch it all the way through & hear the words that are shared in the first song, even if the style of music is not the style you may think is fitting because it surely is fitting & then the let Jimi bring you all home on the second song in this 5:53 video i made not knowing I was going to make this petition one year later! I FIND IT ALL TO BE RELATIVE...
And speaking of Soundgarden, the cover photo of Chris Cornell on that first release, ‘Screaming Life,’ was taken by Seattle local Charles Peterson. Even if you don’t know that album you recognize Peterson’s work. His blurry, black and white photos of Seattle bands during the period are the image most of us have of that time and place. That’s by design: When Sub Pop saw Peterson’s work, they knew how iconic it would be.
Neither would a lot of great music made over the last 25 years. Not since the British Invasion had a regional scene exerted as much global influence as the Seattle scene of the late ’80s/early ’90s. As is true of a lot of regional scenes, it grew out of one tiny seed: isolation.
Seattle was so far off of the cultural map that touring bands rarely, if ever, made it to the Pacific Northwest. This led to a do it yourself movement quite similar to what ‘Sonic Highways’ covered in the Washington D.C. episode. If the bands won’t come to you, then you must become the band, and that’s what kids did. You know the names: Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Nirvana. These were just local guys playing for each other.
Which isn’t to say that no music had ever broken out of Seattle. Jimi Hendrix was a Seattle boy, after all, as was Ray Charles. Heart, too. The real find of the episode, though, is a mid-’60s Seattle band named the Sonics that can only be described as proto-grunge. Check these guys out:
The DIY ethos didn’t just permeate the bands playing the clubs, either. We’re treated to a brief history of Sub Pop, the little fanzine that became one of (if not the) most important labels in independent music. These were the guys who first released Green River, after all — the band that spawned both Mudhoney and Pearl Jam. If that’s all they ever did then Sub Pop would have earned its place in history, but they also released the first albums by Soundgarden and Nirvana.
Peterson shares a great story about the one that got away. He attended Nirvana’s first Seattle gig, shot the opening act, and split without ever taking a single photograph of Nirvana because he didn’t like them and couldn’t imagine them going anywhere.
Nirvana. That’s really what this episode is all about, It can’t be about anything else. Nirvana is the vehicle that turned Grohl into a superstar. Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear was sort of a silent fourth member of the band, too. Even more importantly, this is where the two men lost their friend, Kurt Cobain. Bassist Duff McKagan, another Seattle boy, apologizes to an off-camera Grohl for not calling after Cobain’s death. “Thanks man,” we hear a very sincere Grohl reply.
Every ‘Sonic Highways’ episode results in a song recorded in a local studio, this time at the wildly eccentric Robert Lang Studio. Lang is a Seattle native who grew up just three blocks from the location of his studio, which he has literally been digging out of a hillside for the last 30 years. The joint started as a single garage, but Lang would trade bands studio time for shovel time, removing 400 truckloads of dirt from the side of the hill to build a labyrinth of underground stone and marble rooms.
Digging deep emotionally, recording underground. What else could the Foos name this week’s song but ‘Subterranean?’
And speaking of Soundgarden, the cover photo of Chris Cornell on that first release, ‘Screaming Life,’ was taken by Seattle local Charles Peterson. Even if you don’t know that album you recognize Peterson’s work. His blurry, black and white photos of Seattle bands during the period are the image most of us have of that time and place. That’s by design: When Sub Pop saw Peterson’s work, they knew how iconic it would be.Seattle was so far off of the cultural map that touring bands rarely, if ever, made it to the Pacific Northwest. This led to a do it yourself movement quite similar to what ‘Sonic Highways’ covered in the Washington D.C. episode. If the bands won’t come to you, then you must become the band, and that’s what kids did. You know the names: Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Nirvana. These were just local guys playing for each other.
Which isn’t to say that no music had ever broken out of Seattle. Jimi Hendrix was a Seattle boy, after all, as was Ray Charles. Heart, too. The real find of the episode, though, is a mid-’60s Seattle band named the Sonics that can only be described as proto-grunge. Check these guys out:
The DIY ethos didn’t just permeate the bands playing the clubs, either. We’re treated to a brief history of Sub Pop, the little fanzine that became one of (if not the) most important labels in independent music. These were the guys who first released Green River, after all — the band that spawned both Mudhoney and Pearl Jam. If that’s all they ever did then Sub Pop would have earned its place in history, but they also released the first albums by Soundgarden and Nirvana.
Peterson shares a great story about the one that got away. He attended Nirvana’s first Seattle gig, shot the opening act, and split without ever taking a single photograph of Nirvana because he didn’t like them and couldn’t imagine them going anywhere.
Nirvana. That’s really what this episode is all about, It can’t be about anything else. Nirvana is the vehicle that turned Grohl into a superstar. Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear was sort of a silent fourth member of the band, too. Even more importantly, this is where the two men lost their friend, Kurt Cobain. Bassist Duff McKagan, another Seattle boy, apologizes to an off-camera Grohl for not calling after Cobain’s death. “Thanks man,” we hear a very sincere Grohl reply.
Every ‘Sonic Highways’ episode results in a song recorded in a local studio, this time at the wildly eccentric Robert Lang Studio. Lang is a Seattle native who grew up just three blocks from the location of his studio, which he has literally been digging out of a hillside for the last 30 years. The joint started as a single garage, but Lang would trade bands studio time for shovel time, removing 400 truckloads of dirt from the side of the hill to build a labyrinth of underground stone and marble rooms.
Digging deep emotionally, recording underground. What else could the Foos name this week’s song but ‘Subterranean?’
But 
