MAYDAY 1976: While much of Seattle was out doing the "The Hustle" at area discos – or square-dancing to local country-rock tavern bands – a small coterie of younger musicians were busy making history.This is the ultra-rare poster for a 3-band gig held at the old IOOF Oddfellows Hall (915 E. Pine Street) in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
The event's title – The TMT Show – was an acronymic reference to the trio of participating bands: the Telepaths, the Meyce, & the Tupperwares. In hindsight, this first stirring of the Northwest's punk scene – well, at least since the Sonics' heyday way back in the '60s – would help spark the rise of an independent "alternative" scene that would ultimately come to fruition with 1980s-1990s grunge rock.
But even more significantly: rock historians have recognized that the TMT Show was a bit of a trail-blazing event. As a harbinger of punk things to come, it predated by months even the very first gigs in Britain by the Clash, the Damned, the Buzzcocks, & Siouxsie & the Banshees – not to mention, the many Los Angeles punk bands that followed (including the Screamers: the revamped and relocated Tupperwares). Interestingly, because Seattle had a few busybodies who enjoyed tearing down legally posted rock handbills, the racy graphics of the TMT poster caused it to be especially targeted, and thus, exceedingly few have survived.
