Seattle Sound Magazine’s latest cover story is about “The 50 Greatest Songs from Seattle,” a question that’s proved great fodder for  thought and conversation. Josh and I were both very flattered to be asked our opinions for the piece and to see ourselves credited as “Seattle music know-it-alls,” though I don’t think any of the songs we named made it in the top 20. Here were my nominations and reasonings, I’ll try and get Josh to post his as well.

Teeth Like Gods Shoeshine - Modest Mouse 
When I lived away from Seattle, this song made me terribly homesick. Every run-down mall in the PNW (which was all of them) had a Orange Julia’s Julius in the 80’s and until recently at least, the Seattle Center still had one. I drove past the buildings on the cover of the album, Lonesome Crowded West, almost every day of my childhood. The song, the band’s sound in this era - that’s the Seattle I grew up in.
 
Lithium - Nirvana
Iconic. What’s more Seattle than a song named after the number one treatment for manic depression? 
 
Cream - Thee Emergency
Thee Emergency is the band that made me fall back in love with Seattle music. I think Cream would be a stand-out song on any album, no matter the artist, it’s got the heavy soul of old blues.

Rearviewmirror - Pearl Jam
Vs. was validation that pearl jam wasn’t a fluke band, with a few great songs in them. A point they’ve continued to hammer home to this day.     

Jesus Lips - Hopscotch Boys
Acid Pony - Ice Age Cobra 
While they have distinctly different sounds and feels as bands, Hopscotch and IAC are what grunge could/would have become if it had a chance to grow up and evolve. The Hopscotch Boys also happen to put on the craziest live show in the city, they’re somewhere between crime and art.  
 
Praying Hands Make Fists - The Hands
A perfect mix of old and new sounds, recorded in their basement, a true accomplishment of the Seattle DIY scene.

Baby’s Got Back - Sir Mix A Lot 
The birth of the Seattle hip hop sound, in my consciousness. To this day I know every word to this song… and I’m pretty sure most of you do too. 

Today I just got in the mail the newest edition of Seattle Sound Magazine, one of our printed brethren, devoted to the music scene as it happens in and around Seattle, and in it I learned a few things.
1. Jon Smith, the designer of our wonderful poster for our show next Saturday, also designed this month’s cover for Seattle Sound Magazine. What a sweet drawer he is. I especially like the Mr. Yuck in the background. Nice touch.

2. Atlas was clearly not trying to keep the all-ages shows a secret by advertising their shows in Seattle Sound Magazine with quarter page color ads.

3. Seattle is really happy to have a local American Idol to talk about.

4. Being green may involve living in an old cargo container, buying lot’s of ‘green’ stuff, and going to organic restaurants where they make you pay lots of money for vegetables.

5. While everyone else is yapping about changing our behavior when it comes to the environment, Pearl Jam has actually been changing their behavior.

6. This paragraph from Executive Editor Jason Kirk’s piece on the fact that yes there is global climate change related to human activity, bothers me a bit:

So if we’re going to hail the “greening” efforts of the music industry or anybody else, we ought to recognize that with the political and cultural momentum behind the green movement these days, corporations don’t need to reduce their carbon emissions to be perceived as “going green.” All it takes is the money to buy “credits” an a great PR campaign to paint yourself as the greenest new kid on the block. Take the difference between Sasquatch! and Bumbershoot, for example. For this year’s Sasquatch! Festival, LiveNation did purchase carbon offsets, but the nationwide concert-promotion company completely squandered the opportunity to use the festival and its gathering of thousands as a platform for education on environmental issues, let alone embark on any of the numerous, impressive, and creative plans One Reel has in store for this year’s Bumbershoot festival.

This seems a little bit too much like a hit piece to me. And hipsters don’t need to be convinced to hate the polluting mega corporation… that’s part of their M.O.
7. I would much rather read about music in a music magazine than environmentalism.

8. Glossy full color pages are my Achilles heel.