You can hear this at YouTube:


TALKIN' SEATTLE GRUNGE ROCK BLUES
As sung by Todd Snider on "Songs for the Daily Planet" (1994) and "That Was Me: The Best of Todd Snider 1994–1998" (2005)

Hey, hey, my, my!
Rock 'n' roll will never die.
Just hang your hair down in your eyes.
You'll make a million dollars.

Well, I was in this band goin' nowhere fast.
We sent out demos but everybody passed,
So one day we finally took the plunge,
Moved out to Seattle to play some grunge.
Washington State, that is.
Space Needle.
Eddie Vedder.
Mudhoney.

Now to fit in fast, we wear flannel shirts.
We turn our amps up until it hurts.
We got bad attitudes, and what's more,
When we play, we stare straight down at the floor.
Why-oh-wee!
Pretty scary.
How pensive!
How totally alternative!

Now, to fit in on the Seattle scene,
You had to show people somethin' that they'd never seen,
So thinkin' up a gimmick one day,
We decided to be the only band that wouldn't play
A note—
Under any circumstances.
Silence.
Music's original alternative.
Roots grunge.

Well, we spread the word through the underground
That we were the hottest new thing in town.
A record guy come out to see us one day,
And just like always, we didn't play.
It knocked him out.
He said he loved our work.
He said he loved our work but he wasn't sure if he could sell a record with nothin' on it.
I said: "Tell 'em we're from Seattle."
He advanced us two and a half million dollars.

Hey, hey, my, my!
Rock 'n' roll will never die.
Hang your hair down in your eyes.
You'll make a million dollars.

Well, they made us do a video, but that wasn't tough,
'Cause we just filmed ourselves smashin' stuff.
It's kind o' weird, 'cause there was no music,
But MTV said that they'd love to use it.
The kids went wild; the kids went nuts.
Rollin' Stone gave us a five-star review, said we played with guts.
We were scorin' chicks, takin' drugs.
And we got asked to play MTV Unplugged.
You should 'a' seen it.
We went right out there and refused to do acoustical versions of the electrical songs that we had refused to record in the first place.
Then we smashed our shit.

Well, we blew 'em away at the Grammy show
By refusin' to play and refusin' to go;
And then just when we thought fame'd last forever,
Along come this band that wasn't even together.
Now that's alternative.
Hell, that's alternative to alternative.
I feel stupid.
And contagious.

Well, our band got dropped and that ain't funny,
'Cause we're all hooked on drugs but we're out o' money,
So the other day I called up the band.
I said, "Boys, I've taken all I can.
Shave off your goatees; pack the van.
We're goin' back to Athens."


[Todd Snider sang a somewhat different version of this song on "Near Truths and Hotel Rooms" (2003)]