Jeff Kirby • Music Journalist

Writing about music in one of the greatest music cities on Earth

I was eight years old and my dad had just picked me and my brother up from track practice, and the DJ on 107.7 The End led into the next song by saying, “This is a brand-new one from a local band called Nirvana, and man, this is gonna be big.” Grunge defined - and then confined - Seattle music for years, completely shaping my childhood and the memories I have of it. Listening to Soundgarden tapes on my walkman in the old wooden summer camp bunks on Orcas Island. Being blown away seeing the Foo Fighters perform The Color and the Shape at Bumbershoot the summer before eighth grade. Once grunge became decidedly uncool, Seattle adopted an even harder sound, and I spent my teenage years idolizing the new local heroes Botch and the Blood Brothers. When I graduated college with a writing degree, there was never a question what I was going to write about.

After school I moved back to Seattle and got an unpaid internship at the Stranger, “Seattle’s Only Newspaper,” hanging out in the office during the day and then paying my rent by delivering pizzas at night. My role as the books intern turned into regular, compensated work covering shows, albums, and news for their now-defunct music blog Line Out, as well as a regular gig covering parties for the weekly print column, “Party Crasher.” This was a golden era at the paper: Dan Savage had solidified himself internationally as a leading voice in gay culture, Eli Sanders was doing reporting that would later win him a Pulitzer Prize, and Lindy West began publicly and hilariously fighting fat-phobia on the paper’s blog, the story of which became the bestselling novel and hit TV show Shrill. Also, my buddy Eric worked there, and he didn’t get famous or anything, but he’s a really great guy. My life was a bizarre, hedonistic dream - I had free access to any concert I wanted and people were going out of their way to invite me to their parties - and I was getting paid for all of it. Then the economy crashed in 2008 and the dream was abruptly jolted back into reality. Every freelancer at the paper was let go and it was decided that all pieces would be written in-house for the indefinite future. At least I still had my pizza job.

I continued writing articles for papers and magazines across Seattle and beyond, still trying to take advantage of my pedigree by blogging about expensive, weekend-long festivals in return for free admission. But after the financial crisis, freelance music journalism never rebounded to where it had been before, and finding any sort of regular-paying gig in the industry was a pretty dismal proposition. Rent was steadily increasing, and a decent health care plan was starting to sound pretty appealing. So, I sold out, and started writing copy for corporations instead of inviting myself into tour vans to cover bands. Looking back, the only thing I regret is that I didn’t get to live that hedonistic dream for longer before it became inviable.

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