By Todd Matthews

The COVID-19 pandemic led many people to take up new hobbies—solving jigsaw puzzles, baking bread, or bingeing Netflix shows—to curb boredom and anxiety. As a longtime journalist and Capitol Hill resident interested in local history, I opted to collect and read old issues of The Rocket, the music and culture magazine launched on Capitol Hill in 1979.

The magazine occupies a special place in local music history. Sub Pop Records’ roots trace back to the label’s co-founder, Bruce Pavitt, and the column he wrote for The Rocket. Before achieving rock stardom with Nirvana, Kurt Cobain picked up The Rocket at a record store in his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington. In the late-1980s, while searching for a drummer, Cobain placed a classified advertisement in The Rocket, and Nirvana scored its first-ever magazine cover with The Rocket‘s December 1989 issue. The band even used the magazine’s typesetting machine to design its iconic logo. The Simpsons creator Matt Groening and MAD magazine’s Don Martin illustrated covers for The Rocket. In addition, The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean, best-selling author and National Book Award Finalist Katherine Dunn, and NPR music critic Ann Powers (while she was still in high school) wrote for The Rocket.

The final issue of The Rocket published on October 18, 2000. Flipping through 40-year-old issues with my ink-stained fingers, I felt like I was popping open time capsules and peering inside to learn more about a city and neighborhood that I thought I knew after living here for 30 years. Continue reading →