I remember the first time I ever heard Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" -- or, rather, saw the video for it -- I was in a long-defunct bar on Second Avenue and 12th Street called The Dragon Bar*. I was with a quartet of similarly inclined friends, and we all were stopped pretty much dead in our tracks by it. The clip was immediately followed by the video for "There's No Other Way" by Blur. The latter song was not as widely celebrated as the former song -- then or since -- but I remember being quite struck by it, as well, and immediately put it to my drinking comrades: "Which was better?" You can probably imagine how that went.
This debate -- such as it was -- was immediately derailed when my friend Joanne walked over to the jukebox to put on the song below, handily drowning out the sound of the television. "This is better than fucking both!"
She was, of course, correct.
To all my Seattle people living in our new weird ground zero, please be safe.
*The Dragon bar closed by the mid-90's and became a gay bar called Dick's. Dick's had a long run before it, too, closed and became the comparatively drab 12th Street Ale House. A million years prior to the Dragon Bar, it was a storied watering hole called Slugger Ann.
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