A little over a year ago, a tiny indie record label in Georgia asked me to help curate a compilation CD of ’80s and ’90s Seattle rockers. The result is now out. I didn’t pick the title Sleepless in Seattle. But I did help pick the music therein.

The label had originally hoped to attain tracks by Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but found them beyond its budget. So instead, I fed the label’s people several hundred tracks by less-than-double-platinum acts. Several months’ worth of back-and-forth culling between me and them, and rights negotiations between them and the tracks’ original labels, resulted in 20 songs, mostly from the Sub Pop and C/Z archives. They represent a wide swath of Northwest noise, from the avant-art-noise of the Blackouts to the garage aggression of the U-Men to the acid-pop of the early Screaming Trees to the out-and-out assault of TAD and Coffin Break. There’s even one out-of-state band in the collection, Babes in Toyland.

There were, of course, some disagreements along the way. The LA-based independent promoter who’d been my original go-between with the label once asked, during the selection/culling of tracks, why I hadn’t included the “Seattle bands” Bush, Oasis, and Stone Temple Pilots. I had to explain to him those acts were really from such far-off places as London and San Diego, not here. I also helped persuade the label to axe its initial cover design, a cartoony sketch of longhair flannel dudes, in favor of a photo montage.

Now that it’s out, I like the fact that the compilation focuses on bands that didn’t “make it” globally. It’s more of a living artifact for concentrating on music you haven’t heard a thousand times. Parts of it could represent an average Thursday night at the Central Tavern in 1990.

There’ll be a release party and benefit concert in mid-April. More about that as it gets closer.