Loser

The Seattle music scene burst onto the world stage as the 20th century ended. But most accounts of this phenomenon, from Time magazine to MTV to uncountable "Cobain-sploitation" books, sucked. Despite what clueless media said, there never was one single "Seattle Sound." But there was an overall Seattle attitude. The best of our bands weren't trying to break into the corporate rock pantheon but to demolish it. Like the Web, the Seattle Scene was all about decentralizing culture, about putting the means of production and distribution into more hands, about honest heartfelt expression. You don't have to be from NY, LA or SF to make music or art. "You're the superstar," as Krist Novoselic says. This is the tale I relate in LOSER: The Real Seattle Music Story. Achingly detailed and lavishly illustrated, it chronicles two decades of pre-punk, punk, post-punk, and neo-punk music in Seattle and the Northwest. It includes all the bands who made it big and plenty who didn't but are still worth remembering. Read all about the interconnected origins and spectacular rise of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Hole, Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, TAD, the Posies, Love Battery, Gas Huffer, Seven Year Bitch, Flop, Fastbacks, the Supersuckers, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Built to Spill, Bikini Kill, Sky Cries Mary, the Young Fresh Fellows, Beat Happening, the Presidents of the United States of America, and all your other early-'90s Seattle music favorites. Originally published in late 1995, it's back in a (slightly late) twentieth anniversary edition. It's got over 240 big pages with over 800 illustrations. The new version has even more pix and stories, an updated discography, and many "whatever became of" listings. Loser remains the most lavish and detailed account of a phenomenon that rocked the world.