WEIRDO TIMES: Early Seattle Punk Posters Live Performance by Aaaaiiiiieeee!

“WEIRDO TIMES: Early Seattle Punk Posters” presents a rare selection of show posters from the late 1970s to early 1980s, a period that saw the birth of an underground music scene and set the stage for grunge in the 1990s. The band with a symbol for a name, pronounced Aaaaiiiiieeee! will play live during the Art Walk, 8pm. In the late ‘70s, Seattle was an unlikely spot for the birth of a world-renowned music scene. But the economic misery of the Boeing Bust and the city’s distance from established music industry hubs left Seattle ripe for something new. In 1977 the Ramones, New York’s not-yet-world-famous punk pioneers, landed in Seattle for an extremely loud show at the Olympic Fairview Hotel. The gig poster, included in the exhibit, blasts the reader with an all-caps mantra of “RAMONES” repeated nine times across the sheet. Their raucous performance, incongruously held at the ritzy Olympic, inspired local bands like the Meyce, The Lewd, Weirdos, Screamers, Chinas Comidas, Telepaths, and more, to continue developing a small but ultimately influential underground scene here at home. Their dynamic, do-it-yourself show posters which form the core of this exhibit were hand-lettered or collaged, Xeroxed or occasionally offset printed, and stapled to phone poles across the city. The sound, energy, and look of Seattle’s late ‘70s alternative music scene veered away from hippiedom headlong into something new, laying the groundwork for grunge which the city became synonymous with two decades later.

Posters from the collections of Jeffrey Long and Daniel R Smith.

Bands featured include Ramones, The Lewd, Weirdos, Screamers, Mentors, The Enemy, The Visible Targets, Chinas Comidas, Dead Kennedys, Meyce, X-15, and more.