Billy Joe and The Dusty 45s

Founded in 1939, Seattle's Showbox Theater is one of the towns very few extant entertainment venues that can lay claim to having provided local music fans such an astonishing breadth of music over the decades. From the Jazz Age to the Grunge Era, the storied ballroom has featured shows by touring icons like Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters, and the Ramones - as well as those by homegrown talents ranging from burlesque queen, Gypsy Rose Lee, to Pearl Jam. Although the Showbox has had its ups and downs in times past, today it remains active as a significant contributor to Seattle's music scene.

A new era in Seattle's rock 'n' roll history began on September 8th 1979. It was on that date that the moribund old Show Box Theater [1426 First Avenue] was reawakened as a venue that would introduce local rock fans to the fresh "New Wave"of sounds emanating from England - in particular, a concert by Magazine, the very first British band of that era to come through town, along with local heroes The Heat(er)s. That event was, however, just but the start of a musical tsunami that would soon hit these shores. Subsequent to it, many of the UK's finest talents would also perform on the (newly renamed) Showbox™ fabled stage including the Police, XTC, Fingerprintz, the Specials, Ultravox, 999, the Jam, the Squeeze, the Psychedelic Furs, PIL, Nina Hagen, and Dire Straits. The Showbox Theaters contributions to music culture, however, trace back much further than just that dawning of the Punk Rock/New Wave Era. Indeed, the Showbox is an entertainment venue that can proudly lay claim to an astonishing breadth of musical history. Not only has the ballroom been the site of legendary performances by touring jazz icons like Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie and seminal bluesmen like Muddy Waters and the Junior Wells Band, the Showbox has also played a role in the rise of successive local/regional music scenes during most every era since the halls founding three quarters of a century ago. Whether considering first-generation rock "n" roll bands from the Pacific Northwest's "Louie Louie" Era (such as Merrilee & the Turnabouts, the Kingsmen, or the Wailers), our homegrown Grunge Era gods (such as Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, TAD, or the Screaming Trees) the Showbox has hosted great shows year after year.