"Come As You Are" - A Glimpse into Seattle's Music Scene

"The song begins to play. The body begins to sway. The sound of a single note, your heart is in your throat".

As I put my head down against the infamous Seattle drizzle that promises the eventual coming of spring, the city’s signature smell of clove cigarettes and ethnic food swirls about me. I inhale and try to pinpoint the source, but there are too many restaurants, too many hipsters.

The crisp salt air blows in from Puget Sound to the west, and the fresh scent of pine trees drifts down from the forests that lay to the east, colliding against the thick glass of modern buildings, lit up green and blue in support of the home team, the beloved Seahawks.  

Known the world over for its protests, Seattle is a mecca for the liberal arts, animal rights and the environmental movement, and of course…music. It has produced many greats such as Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, Macklemore, and Dave Matthews. 

For a relatively small city with a population hovering around 775,000 (within city limits. Metropolitan population is estimated at 3.5 million), Seattle is an icon of the Pacific Northwest and appropriately dubbed The Emerald City. 

On this sloppy wet and cold April night I am headed to a music house that has made its name among the great venues of this city: The Crocodile.

The building, with its neon green sign and giant brass crocodile door handles, rests in the heart of the Belltown neighborhood at the corner of 2nd and Blanchard. Its stage has been graced by the likes of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the band that made me love the venue – R.E.M. (guitarist Peter Buck’s wife once owned the Crocodile when it was a cafe).
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Tonight, I am here to work the merchandise table, a job that fuels my passion for the live music scene and sates my love of the great indie band playing here tonight – Portland’s, Floater.
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With their name being a lengthy acronym (Fight Large Organization Advertising Take-Over of Every Radio Station), Floater is an institution in the PNW.

Born and bred in the local music scene of early ‘90’s Eugene, Oregon, they have been home-grown ever since. Now residing in Portland, the power trio is known for the fierce loyalty and cult-following they instigate within the hearts of their fans. Floater is a band that truly belongs to those of us that live our lives within the West Coast music scene.

As I walk the short hall between the dark bar and the even darker music room inside The Crocodile, I feel as if I’m walking through a haunted corridor, the dingy walls lined with the faces of those musicians who made Seattle theirs.

I top the ramp at the end of the hall and look to my right, to the stage, and am rewarded with the sight of a shadowed and musty room that has seen live music almost every night of its life. High ceilings, a small bar against the back wall, and a dominant stage make the room what it is: a place to not only see live music, but to feel music; a place to immerse yourself in sound and revel in the vibe of the scene that grungy Seattle is famous for. 
 
When the time comes, I can’t help but smile as the lights dim and the bodies crowd the stage in eager anticipation. Already, the smell of alcohol, weed, and sweat are burning my nose and I feel as if my skin is the only thing keeping my excitement from bursting out of my body.

Watching the mysterious silhouettes silently take the stage is perhaps the climax of the entire evening; waiting for the music to begin and knowing it’s only a matter of mere seconds away, is the glory moment of all live music. 

The incredible thing about Seattle is knowing that while I’m here, watching my friends do what they do best, there are thousands of others just as passionate as I am scattered about the city doing exactly the same thing.

On any given night, in this cluster of music-lovers who reside in the space of land between mountains and sea, there are a number of venues to choose from and whatever type of music you’re in the mood for – it is there for your taking. Everything from hard rock to reggae to angry girl music. You’ve got a choice of big-name bands or never-before-heard-of bands that are trying to dig out their groove in history.

There’s Kuinka at Neumos, or the Dead Sonics in West Seattle; Garrett & the Sheriffs at the Queen Anne Beerhall, Macklemore at CenturyLink or Lindsey Stirling at the Paramount. The choices are endless, and Seattle is an over-indulgent buffet of pure bliss for the live music glutton. 

Unsurprisingly, Floater rocks it hard and the crowd is a sweaty, slippery mass of limbs and torsos, their arms raised, and fingers splayed wide in the swirling light while the music pulses through their bodies.

From my claimed spot behind the merch table, I fluctuate between being rooted in place and watching with captivated eyes, my heart filling with sound so gorgeous it nearly hurts, my ribcage rattling in time with the bass, and dancing with no reserve, the music taking control of my body.

My hands are in the air and it is beyond my control. They rise at the bidding of my soul succumbing to a religion that is devouring my whole life, and I savor it so. 

"This is why I love. This is why I ache". 

Strangers and I sing every lyric to one another, high-fiving and laughing and dancing while we bond over the words escaping from someone else’s mouth; words born inside someone else’s soul yet resonating so deeply within each of us in the crowd. 
  
Live music is an adrenaline like none I have encountered before; it is a healing agent that can help you through rough times; an element of joy that can lift you up and create some of the happiest moments that you will remember until your dying day. Music is therapy and should be revered as such. It is an ancient and universal culture that dates back further than you or me, further still than our parents and grandparents. It is an experience that has the power to invoke transformation. 

The after-party of a show is something to behold. As the band, whom I have called friends for most of my life, descends the stage, I am the recipient of sweat-soaked hugs while we slip into the green room, where I count the bills in the money box, which in itself is a Floater legend, plastered with stickers and witty messages written in sharpie by every person who has ever worked merch, and rewrite the sales list that I haphazardly scrawled on the back of a torn poster – a piece of Seattle and Floater’s history that I will tuck into my pocket instead of dropping into the trash can, finding a special place for it later in my scrapbook of music memorabilia. 
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Nowhere in the world will you find a city that harbors the incredibly alive, vibrant, and alluringly dirty atmosphere that has encouraged Seattle to create so many talented musicians. Like no other place I have been, The Emerald City, resting upon the shores of the Salish Sea, is truly a gem; a safe haven for individuality, self-expression, and unabated passion for music, even for those of us who aren’t musicians ourselves.  

"This I will leave for you, so you can feel everything".