Jim Basnight
Long before Seattle was the grunge rock capitol of America, it had a long history of rugged, tough-as-nails rock, beginning in the 1960s with garage rock stalwarts the Sonics and Wailers and culminating in the ’80s with Jim Basnight and the Moberlys, a band that evoked the Beatles and the Rolling Stones at the same time, while turning out some of the decade’s finest, if unfortunately obscure, New Wave pop. In truth, Seattle is only the beginning and finishing line for the band, the city which gave them their start and to which they finally returned, with a couple other musical hotbeds serving as temporary homes during the middle part of their run. Despite the aggregate’s peripatetic career, they accumulated a consistently invigorating, distinctly Seattle body of work that stands as one of the finest collections of mostly unknown songs from the 1980s.