When the whole Seattle music boom happened 16 or so years ago (dang, was it that long ago?!) it was a generational howl. For the last year or so, I've been writing a bunch of essays that I think will become a book about generational history, and my first essay was inspired by seeing a 1995 documentary about the Seattle explosion.
Anyhow, I've been thinking about that "moment" a lot, remembering what it felt like to be young and in the right time of all that music (I was 18 when Nirvana released their first record) and feeling like something was about to bust open. I moved to the big city, and went to work with some friends of mine who opened a small all-ages dance and punk-rock club in downtown Cincinnati. Music was such a big part of my life; like any teenager or twenty-something it seemed to define every moment.
One of the bands I really loved then were The Posies. They were not the typical Seattle band; their harmonies were pretty and layered, their guitars sometimes clean, although when they had their raw, wall-of-sound moments. I knew all the lyrics, as obtuse as they were. They weren't the sound of blue-collar angst. Nonetheless, they were one of the streams of music that exploded in my generation, and it was through them that I got interested in their influences and long-time underground favorites like Big Star and Paul Westerberg.
This past weekend The Posies did their 20th anniversary show in Seattle. I wanted to be there, and even bought tickets as a way of feeling there, knowing that it might be a stretch to get out of Austin two days after a near tornado ripped our garden apart. But just buying a ticket felt like a symbol, of a band I still dig and who reunited in the past year, and as a symbol of remembering that the music my generation did and does still matters.
So for those who don't know The Posies, they weren't some huge thing but they made some great songs and had rich, layered guitars and complex lyrics that make you have to dig deeper into their meaning or just enjoy their lyricism. Their sweet harmonies and cutesy name, combined with album names like "Frosting on the Beater" would lead you to think maybe they were a little too sugary for the angst of that time, but keep in mind that with bands like Big Star as their foundation and the fact that "Posies" actually meant "posers", you might get somewhere more interesting. Bands like The Shins owe something to these guys.
(These 3 albums were amongst my faves.)
