Musical Seattle Wedding Gift?

March 24, 2014 11:03 PM

My cousin is getting married in a couple of weeks on the east coast. I'm traveling there from Seattle. Both bride and groom (my cousin is the groom, if that matters) are active musicians in the Boston scene. I don't know them very well. They're in their mid 30s and were impressionable teenagers when grunge was just becoming an enormous deal. I was thinking they might appreciate a small wedding gift that had something to do with Seattle's musical history, but I myself am not very familiar with it all, with what's actually cool and what's just tourist junk. My budget is less than $50 (less would be better) and I need to be able to fit it in my suitcase and have it be modest looking at the wedding itself. My cousin plays guitar, drums, is a lead singer, and writes lyrics as well as music. His genre, as far as I can tell, goes around a central pillar of "rock". I'm looking for a token kind of gift. They have a registry but also stipulate they don't need or require gifts multiple times, it's going to be a super small wedding and I'm not sure I'm even going to be at the ceremony itself. Just something that will make them go "cool! I never would have asked for this but it's a neat thing to have!" Do you have any ideas?
posted by Mizu to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

A framed headstone rubbing from Jimi Hendrix's or Kurt Cobain's grave? Cheap, easy, maybe morbid, but it could also be a musical motivation.
posted by timsteil at 3:32 AM on March 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Have they registered?

Unless you know that they had a particular favoriate group/artist, and you know that they covet a particular something, a gift of this sort might just be a well-intentioned white elephant.

Check their registry and see if there's anything there that strikes you as a nice gift.

Secondarily, a gift card to Target or Williams-Sonoma is always a good choice.

A check towards their honeymoon is also a very thoughtful gift.

Your impulse is very sweet, but there are proscribed wedding protocols for a reason, and the fact that you're completely stumped should lead you down a different path.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:24 AM on March 25, 2014

Response by poster: Don't worry: If I can't find something that fits this idea, I will drop a few chai's worth of cash into their honeyfund. It's simply an idea I thought that would be nice, because they don't expect me to give them a gift at all. This askme is just to see if anything is out there at all.
posted by Mizu at 5:42 AM on March 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Framed photo of the Soundgarden?
posted by metasarah at 6:13 AM on March 25, 2014

What about an effects pedal? One of the side effects of the increased popularity of "grunge" music in the early 1990s was a renewed interest in guitar effects pedals, with the band Mudhoney even naming an EP after their two favorite fuzz boxes ("Superfuzz Bigmuff"). With the subsequent mainstream success of Seattle bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam, the marketing department at DOD Electronics seized the moment by naming their new fuzz pedal the "Grunge" pedal. Its instruction manual included sample settings for Melvins, Accused, Napalm Death, and "Territorial Pissings" sounds.

eBay has a lot of these under your $50 budget.
posted by lakersfan1222 at 6:23 AM on March 25, 2014

A high school friend brought me 'sand from Jim Morrison's grave' after visiting Paris from the US, back in the day. It might have been so appealing because I was 14, but I loved that she put it in a cute little container and I could keep in in my instrument case.
posted by little_dog_laughing at 6:36 AM on March 25, 2014

Maybe a couple of Sub Pop T-shirts (one for each of them)? Or something similar; pint glasses, coffee mugs, Sub Pop's got quite a few things for sale with one logo or another on it.

Sub Pop (Wikipedia) being the Seattle indie record label that was pretty much the home of grunge, at least in the early days.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:06 AM on March 25, 2014

A his-and-hers pair of plaid flannel shirts, if they're still into grunge.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:24 AM on March 25, 2014

Not the same as the old days, but some Crocodile merch maybe?

http://www.thecrocodile.com/merch/
posted by humboldt32 at 10:35 AM on March 25, 2014

Maybe you could find something interesting at the Experience Music Project Gift shop (or maybe it might just be touristy, not sure). At least some sort of grunge-lyric-themed card or postcard or maybe a small photographic print could be found, to give them physically in addition to honeymoon funds.
posted by dahliachewswell at 12:15 PM on March 26, 2014