Northwest Rock Music Videos

I did a previous blog entry about Bombshelter Videos, a great Seattle underground punk and rock video show in the '90s hosted by Frank Harlan (AKA Bill Bored).

Harlan also co-hosted another video show aimed at just covering Northwest music right at the height of the whole grunge thing, when the Seattle music scene was exploding. It was a perfect time for "Northwest Rock Music Videos," which ran directly after Bombshelter on KTZZ (Channel 22) for it's last few months and then continued on it's own for a few years. The actual dates Northwest Rock ran were from May 1992 to September 1994, and Harlan's co-host was Barbara Dollarhide, who also worked at Seattle label C/Z Records for many years. The show took off, mainly because it was at the right place at the right time. They'd mix in videos of hit bands of the day like Soundgarden, The Posies, Sir-Mix-A-Lot, Coffin Break, The Walkabouts, Skin Yard, TAD and The Accused, with older and more obscure Northwest band videos. Harlan has a partial episode/playlist up here. One of the cool things the would do is have a different local band host it each time, doing the introduction and some of the commentary from locations shot around Seattle. Mudhoney hosted the very first episode from the observation deck of the Space Needle, it doesn't get more Seattle than that.

Chris Sievanen, a long time contributor both in writing and photography for 10 Things back in the day, did an article on the show back when is was debuting in 1992 for the UW Daily's "Glass Onion" section. She was kind enough to give me permission to reprint it. Click on the article parts for the full-sized readable files:

Empty Records article from Glass Onion

The early '90s were a great time for Seattle's music scene. Not only because of the grunge explosion, but because there was a total DIY/indie explosion going on. All-ages shows started happening regularly around town, tons of new zines and alternative publications started or were going strong, indie labels were thriving, there were a bunch of cool bars, clubs, record stores, you name it. Everyone was getting involved or starting a band or zine or something, there was an exciting feeling in the air. And while it may be hard to imagine today, the University of Washington actually had a decent role in it, from it's 4 Bands for 4 Bucks shows, to bands playing in frats and dorms (Girl Trouble at Terry-Lander = awesome!), to the UW Daily actually having it's finger somewhat on the pulse of what was going on in the local music scene. For those not in the know, The Daily is the UW's student newspaper, it's pretty suckworthy now, but back in the day it was actually pretty good. From 1991-1993 the Daily's weekly arts and music supplement was called The Glass Onion. Here's an article from January 3, 1993 they did on Empty Records (click the photos for the full-sized readable files):