Research Guides
This playlist, available at the above YouTube link, is adapted from The Rocket’s “Top 300 Northwest Records of All Time,” included in the 300th issue of The Rocket on April 21, 1999. Published just over a year before the paper’s end, this list is a sampling of the music that defined The Rocket and the Northwest overall. The list itself was created from contributions from 51 Northwest music critics, pared down from 1,000 records to the 300 most revered that, as editor Charles R. Cross puts it, “deserve their place in history.”
To create this playlist, we selected songs from The Rocket’s list, often through some extrapolation. When list entries identified entire albums–which was certainly the majority–we included the top song or songs from said album, rather than the entire thing. We excluded entries in this list that were released before The Rocket was in print, such as music from Jimi Hendrix or Rockin’ Robin Roberts and the Wailers, or music from compilation albums of various artists, such as Sub Pop 200. For the sake of brevity, we have not included songs representative of the entire list, but encourage listeners to explore the full list through the digital archive.
Track List: