from the final article by Gene Stout, Seattle PI Music Critic:
My time on the music beat — from 1983 to the present — has been a wild ride, with hundreds of interviews with some pretty famous people and hundreds of concert reviews.
It has been an honor to write about music in a city that has helped launch the careers of Quincy Jones, Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, The Sonics, Ventures, Wailers, Heart, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Death Cab for Cutie, among many others.
People often ask me to name a favorite concert, but there have been so many, from big arena shows to little piano-bar performances. I couldn’t pick just one.
Among my most recent favorites was a Patsy Cline tribute concert March 5 at the Columbia City Theater featuring local singers Rachael Flotard, Kim Virant, Star Anna, Kristen Ward and Victoria Wimer Contreras. Collectively, they captured the spirit of Cline and her music in a stirring, heartfelt concert.
My first concert review for the P-I actually came in October 1979, when I saw Lenny and Squiggy of “Happy Days” at a Burien nightclub. It was a silly show, but readers enjoyed my goofy little review, which led to a series of assignments before I was officially hired as a reporter and critic in 1983.
It marked a real commitment by the P-I to popular music coverage, which had been a part-time beat for many years in the very capable hands of my predecessor, the late George Arthur.
Continue reading at the Seattle PI.