I’m not going to try to dazzle you with a
meticulously-researched music history lesson about how, when, and at what speed
the music of Seattle spread like wildfire around the country, because,
truthfully, I only really know firsthand how it happened for me in Albuquerque.
Most of my indistinct memories of the second half of high
school are set to the music of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Mötley Crüe, as well
as, regrettably, a fair sprinkling of Warrant, Ratt, Slaughter and Scorpions
(the whistling Scorpions, not the rocking ‘70s Scorpions).
But then, tucked in there in the fall of 1991, comes this
sharp, lucid recollection of driving to school one morning and finally,
belatedly, intensely noticing “Smells like Teen Spirit” playing on the radio. Who can guess how many times it had bounced
off my ears without me processing what I was hearing? It was high school; the radio was always on,
but we weren’t always listening.
I don’t recall going home and dramatically purging my CD
collection – hell, I never even became that big of a Nirvana fan – but no
further scenes in my mental high school movie are set to a hair-metal
soundtrack. Everything just seems a lot
sharper and more significant after that.
By graduation, I was a big Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains
fan, so I bought the Singles
soundtrack as soon as it came out in the summer of 1992. I didn’t recall until I was fact-checking my
dates that the soundtrack album was actually released months before the movie, but
I’m not surprised: I really dug that
movie, but I loved that
soundtrack. It was so undeniable, so
perfectly compiled, that I wanted it to be my
soundtrack, especially as I headed into college. I soaked in it like cherries macerating in
whiskey. It got into my blood. It had two previously unreleased Pearl Jam
songs on it (igniting my lifelong obsession with exclusive, non-album tracks),
but it also introduced me to a band with a singer unlike anyone I’d ever heard
fronting a group. Thanks to Singles, I discovered the Screaming
Trees, and their unique, unmistakable voice, Mark Lanegan.
Lanegan had a vocal delivery that was nothing like what I
was accustomed to hearing from a rock frontman – no high-register wailing, no
over-emoting to the point of pretentiousness.
His gravel-throated crooning seemed transplanted from a place where the founding
tenets of cock-rock vocals hadn’t been popularized by Plant and perfected by Dio. Rather, Lanegan coasted across the riffs like
a smooth, baritone waverider, favoring longboard gliding over ostentatious
shredding. It was so subtle, actually,
that it took me years to realize how cool it was.
I grew up in New Mexico,
then went off to school in Florida
for most of college. Neither of those
places ever had a sound that I
experienced. But Seattle
had one, at least as far as I, a kid from New Mexico, knew. And that sound was separate from grunge. Grunge was a catch-phrase for a scene that
got huge for a few quality bands from Seattle,
got parlayed into success for some shittier bands from other places, then faded
away, as anything does when you pour an increasingly diluted version of it down
peoples’ throats for years.
I was barely paying attention to the scene. I was tuning in to the sound of a city. It was dark and gritty, and while no Seaweed
song sounded like a Green Apple Quickstep song or a Mudhoney song, they all had
a darkness and a struggling that united them and (in my mind) identified them with
the place. Defined the place. I was captivated.
Over the years, my interest in some of those bands dwindled,
while the Lanegan canon took on an increasingly prominent role in my life’s
carefully curated score. His songs, often
haunting, seemed to indicate that he was generally living a rougher existence
than most other artists, and that only gave them more weight.
Mark Lanegan’s music brings an intensity to almost any
moment, one you may not have expected or even wanted. A walk through your neighborhood is just a
walk till you put on “Leviathan” from Blues
Funeral, and then it’s as if you’re carrying your last dead friendship in a
metaphorical casket through a bittersweet funeral march. One minute you’re contentedly posting photos
of your breakfast on Instagram, but one listen to “No Easy Action” from Field Songs later and you’re gazing
somberly at the ruin of the last fifteen years of your life, wondering how and
where you went wrong. I mean, shit, if
Lanegan can hold it together, how the hell could you fuck it up?
Oh, and let’s not forget religion. Lanegan’s songs are about Christianity the
way Indiana Jones movies are about Christianity: The little nods and touchpoints are there,
but more because religious guilt and the threat of damnation make for great
story anchors; no one is trying to send you home with a bible and a new joy at
your place in God’s universe.
It’s 2015, and I’ve been living in Seattle for almost three years. In just a few days, I’m leaving. Measured from the year that Singles came out and this city caught my
attention, it took me twenty years to get here, and now my stay is almost
over.
As a little reminder of the insubstantiality of things like
time and place, I have a new solo album from Mark Lanegan, the onetime Screaming
Trees singer that I’ve still never seen perform live, just to give me one last
jab in the ribs. (I missed him by an
hour two years ago when I’d purchased scalped tickets to see him. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.)
His new record, Houston, is actually
a collection of dark little demos from 2002, in which Lanegan is once again
scraping at his soul for new ruminations on late nights, doomed pursuits and
the burden of living. As is generally
the case with his music, these tunes epitomize the sound that has enthralled me
for over half my life.
Layne Staley once sang about struggling and losing himself
in this city. It’s a place where
restlessness and territoriality create a weird sense of isolation (despite a
population of over half a million), and Lanegan wrote and sang songs here about
inner demons, alienation, and the stinking fucking rain for decades. And, like a dark pint of porter on a cold city
night, he always managed to make them sound comforting despite the chill.
Seattle
has been weaving in and out of my life since 1991. It gave me Alice in Chains and Sweet Water. It taught me that an entire city could have a
distinct musical personality, one that was indifferent to what the rest of the
world was doing. It’s where my first
band made our first record, and, in 2012, it gave me a destination when I
needed one. It really is the Emerald City, and I’ve spent three glorious
years here, soaking up its infuriating bleakness and standoffish idealism. It’s been indescribably wonderful…even
though whatever I thought could or would happen once I got here perhaps never
did.
Through it all, Lanegan keeps putting out great records, and
I’ll be singing “I don’t want to leave this heaven so soon” from Houston’s “When It’s In You” as I roll out of
town. He may live elsewhere now, as I
soon will, but Mark Lanegan will always be the haggard, addictive voice of the Seattle sound for me.
- MeteorJadd
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