From 1979 to 2000, Seattle area residents could keep track of the latest musical happenings with a free biweekly magazine called The Rocket.
The entire collection has been digitally archived by the Washington State Library, which has a mandate to preserve newspapers of record.
The Seattle music scene of the 1990's was known the world over. The so called “grunge” scene spawned bands like Mudhoney and Nirvana. But the music scene there didn't start in a vacuum. It had been growing and morphing for years. The Rocket documented the development of that period.
“It really helped promote not only the bands, but the venues that were selling CDs and records, special events, it also highlighted artists and theater, plays, shows, and all kinds of culture in western Washington,” said Washington Digital Newspapers Coordinator Shawn Schollmeyer.
Schollmeyer says the attitude of the magazine was important as well. As often as it would promote the local up-and-coming alternative type bands, some articles would definitely be irreverent, when it came to covering mainstream, arena-type rock.
Many writers and music industry people wrote for its pages, including Bruce Pavitt, founder of Sub Pup Records.
Another example was the cartoon Life in Hell, written by a then-unknown cartoonist by the name of Matt Groening, who went on to create The Simpsons. Now that it is archived, the entire Rocket collection is available online for anyone to peruse, all 336 issues, approximately 16,000 pages.
It was a task just to locate every copy and issues in pristine enough condition to archive. Charles Cross, the magazine’s former editor and publisher, helped fill in the gaps.
Schollmeyer says besides being a fun nostalgic look back, the archive is an important resource for historians. She cites UW ethnomusicoligist John Vallier.
“He's been wanting to use this for some time in his classes to point out different influences over time in the area. I found out with my newspaper program there's a lot of high schools in the area using the newspapers to find out trends in our area, so it's not just going to university level research,” she said.
She says she has already heard of people using the archive to track down family histories as well. The Rocket also featured musicians' classified ads, a treasure trove of trivia. If you search through it you can find gems like a March 1988 ad for a drummer wanted, posted by someone named “Kurdt.” That would be 21-year-old Kurt Cobain looking for members for his soon-to-be band, Nirvana.
You can view the entire digital archive of The Rocket by visiting washingtondigitalnewspapers.org.