Sunday Matinees at The Velvet Elvis

The Velvet Elvis was a theater in Pioneer Square located at 107 Occidental Avenue South. From the mid-to-late 1990's, The Velvet Elvis hosted quite a few punk, indie rock, emo and other types of underground music shows. The main booker was Meg Watjen, who went on to book Graceland after the theater closed. One of the many unique things about The Velvet Elvis was they would host Sunday matinee shows. I'd usually go down and grab a late breakfast somewhere in Pioneer Square, then wander over the to nearby venue to catch the shows. This photo is of Submission Hold playing one Sunday. Often the crowd would gather up on the stage all around the bands to watch them play, which totally broke down the divide between the audience and the band. While I saw way too many emo bands (what we called emo back then, bands that played fairly formulaic soft-hard-soft-hard, many were on Gravity Records), I caught some amazing shows on what would otherwise have been a lazy Sunday afternoon.