by Marshall Gibson

Created on: March 22, 2007   Last Updated: December 05, 2008

Art, with emphasis on music, is a chakra of Seattle culture. Seattle is a melodic black hole that seduces and tractor beams every rock band in the United States. It's the only American town where a motley group of fifteen-year-olds who barely know how to strum a power chord can score a gig on the same stage where Modest Mouse performs. Seattle is a hidden gem of isolated counterculture including indie radio (KEXP), an alternative newspaper (The Stranger), leather-clad mohawked punks you swore were extinct, and ink-covered head-shaved female bouncers. You get the impression the city was built and is maintained by college dropouts. In fact, you won't see anyone on the street over the age of thirty when meandering about the Capitol Hill area.

With swarms of concert halls and a cornucopia of performances every night, you often find yourself in a dilemma as to which club to attend. Due to this heavy dilution, an earthmoving musical icon, such as Bob Dylan, often slips through town whilst touring without denting the local population. Seattle hosts events like seventy-two-hour multi-club techno raves, block parties with stages assembled in the middle of Pike Street, a two-day festival demanding legalization of marijuana, and, of course, Bumbershoot: the gargantuan be-all end-all art & music festival held each Labor Day weekend. The highlight of the summer may have been strolling past a jamming duet on a sidewalk at Bumbershoot: one guy bangin on a drum set and one guy blasting a bagpipe, Celtic rock that would make Flogging Molly jealous.

How did this culture evolve? Many believe it's due to the natural environment surrounding the area. Seattle is bound by the Olympic Mountains to the west and Cascades to the east, parking one slob of a rain cloud over Puget Sound. Like Britain, this dreary weather pushes everyone indoors forcing them to pursue creative interests.

I wonder if there's more to it than that. Fads need a catalyst in order to transcend into permanent ethnicity; then this custom becomes definitive bohemian character, in this case drawing artists and musicians from all over the country. Positive mob mentality: it could have happened to DC if Fugazi pushed hard enough. But DC developed a legacy reputation decades ago. It shall remain Congregation Central for hippies protesting against those blue suits sending our lower class teenagers to die on some anarchic patch of sand. Please excuse my tangent.

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