Tacoma Tutors Come To You

While some people might only recognize Tacoma as the “TAC” of the SEA-TAC airport, it has a rich culture and history that spans thousands of years. First inhabited by the Pullyallup tribe, Tacoma rapidly grew in the 19th century due to the development of the Northern Pacific Railroad. In only three years, Tacoma’s population, once a mere 1,098 multiplied by nearly 36 times, eventually becoming an underappreciated but undeniable cultural landmark. Three seminal bands of the 1960s also called Tacoma home. The Wailers, not to be confused with Bob Marley’s band of the same name, recorded the wildly catchy but infamous indecipherable garage rock smash “Louie, Louie” before Portland’s The Kingsmen made it a hit. The Sonics were one of the first bands to establish a truly “punk” sound with aggressively loud anthems like “Strychnine,” “Psycho,” “Boss Hoss,” and “The Witch.” However, the Ventures were the most commercially successful of the three with their surf rock hit “Walk, Don’t Run” and their theme song for the police drama TV series Hawaii Five-O among the most iconic instrumentals in rock history. The first two bands in particular helped form the foundation for Seattle grunge, with some of the earliest grunge bands including Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, Green River, and the recently deceased Chris Cornell’s band Soundgarden all paying homage to the Tacomans who preceded them. While Tacoma’s contributions to the music world would later be overshadowed by those of Seattle (and to a lesser extent, Olympia, Washington, whose own K Records silently spearheaded a more mild-mannered and contemplative breed of indie rock), it is advisable for these reasons and others that you tutor yourself on Tacoma history. One of my favorite writers, Richard Brautigan, whose absurdist novels and short story and poetry collections including Trout Fishing in America, Revenge of the Lawn, and Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork combine offbeat dry humor with acerbically inventive metaphors and imagery, also hailed from Tacoma despite being more commonly associated with the San Francisco Renaissance. Another famous musician you might not have known hailed from Tacoma (and indeed I did not realize until now) is Bing Crosby, whose gentle croonings, commonly associated with Christmastime, could not be further from the raucous proto-punk of The Sonics or The Wailers. In more recent cultural history, actress Pamela Reed, who co-starred with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop and lent her voice to The Simpsons as bitter divorcee Ruth Powers before being cast as Amy Poehler’s character’s mother on the acclaimed sitcom Parks and Recreation. So please, find some time to tutor yourself on Tacoma and its substantial links to culture as we know it.