Seattle Subsonic

From Cave Singers to Nirvana in 5 steps

November 18th, 2009

Rachel Ratner has connections.
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She’s an on air DJ for KEXP as well as educational outreach coordinator for the station. She is also (and more importantly) the bassist for Partman Parthorse and possibly the only sane person in that group, as well as one half of Seattle’s “Butts” – cheeky eh? In what little spare time that leaves, Rachel somehow decided to explore some of her musical connections and inevitably the  binds that tie our Seattle music community together. To do this she created  a cartographic study of Seattle’s musical incest. She began trying to map out how the bands she’s in, and her friends bands, were interconnected. Kind of a 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing…only with the Seattle Music Scene and not Kevin Bacon. The resulting criss-crossing family tree should have, by all genetic studies, left us with lots of 3-armed lobster-clawed bands, but has instead rooted Seattle firmly in it’s musical clan.
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To bring her project from the paper to our ears, Rachel created a podcast aligning band after band in a straight line through the canopy. It’s amazing, really.
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Have a listen to Rachel’s kin-folk below or download it by right-clicking here.

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You can check out more the family tree cartograph on the KEXP site here. And you really can plot the Cave Singers to Nirvana in only 5 steps.