Hamelin: Stories from Seattle during the Grunge Years

If asked to name four pivotal bands from Seattle's grunge rock years... even for me --  a true poser who was either too young or too poor to attend a single concert -- it's a very simple answer:  Nirvana , Soundgarden , Alice in Chains , and Pearl Jam.* *(Mudhoney and Melvins fans can troll me later.) *(STP fans can go f**k themselves.) But let's remember each of the respective lead singers of the first three bands (Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, and Layne Staley) have one tragic thing in common.  HAMELIN is my retrospective on what was happening in Seattle between 1990 and 1996. I was a boy at the time, but it's my observation there was perhaps something in the air, or in the water, brewing in the forests of the Pacific Northwest during this time in American history. Desert Storm had come and gone. Music changed rapidly from New Jack Swing to Grunge Alternative Rock in months or weeks. And kids in Seattle began to dress in a way my high school classmate Christine Celio