Tag: Napalm Beach

Matches: Untouchables 1980 and Nirvana 1993

This is one of the many posters advertising for a show Chris would play that was secretly making Chris the butt of the joke (and of course later, when it was Boo Frog, we were both the butt of the joke. You can decide for yourself whether the Nirvana poster deliberately evokes it. Bound, endangered women were kind of a staple of 1980s punk rock posters. In this case she looks like a 1940s movie star… kind of like Francis Farmer.

What’s in a name? (part 1) Goners/Untouchables/Napalm Beach

What is in the name of a rock and roll band? Nothing and everything.

I want to start by talking about Napalm Beach, with the idea that I’m now moving toward the idea of Nirvana and Napalm Beach as mirrors of each other, because that seem to have been an intent. “One above, one below.” I believe this is what you see indicated on Tarot Card number 1, the Magician, with the double edged wand that looks like it has a candle flame at each end, one arm pointing up, one down. What is magic but a potent type of mind control? That’s how I see it, anyway. Obviously there’s a lot more at work (global finance), but it’s really clear beyond clear there is an occult element to this running all down the west coast – Los Angeles, San Francisco (Monterey, Marin, Sonoma), Portland, Seattle.

With regards to Chris’ history in Portland, he seems to have formed this band called The Goners while living in San Jose, where his family had relocated in the 1970s. After trying and failing to get traction with his first all-originals band in Los Angeles in 1974, he’d spent a few years working as a sign painter. His family was going to a Pentecostal mega church in San Jose, where his two sisters would meet their husbands and marry young. His sister Becky’s husband (the one who in 1996 helped dump all of Chris’ belongings) had a father who worked for Boeing in San Jose, and I think that’s significant for a number of reasons. For one thing, that particular Boeing plant is closely linked to Stanford University. Both my parents have their PhD’s from Stanford. There is also a link to directed energy weapons.

So in that world, Chris formed this band called the Goners. Then Chris and his band relocated back to Longview. When and why Chris moved back and forth between San Jose and Longview is a bit murky to me, but I think there were tensions between him wanting to pursue rock n’ roll and trying out other more conventional ways to make a living. He had been in a covers band called Bodhi 1971-74 which had done pretty well, but he’d always been trying to transition to a band that did all or mostly originals and could still work regularly, progress, make records, etc. There was a whole thing going on at that time period with regard to managing the expectations of small town wanna be rock n’ rollers which is worth another entire essay (I swear I could write a thousand page book) – but I’ll leave that for now, except to say, things that Chris and I thought were just reasonable life-advice in the 1970s and 1980s often were in fact calculated, top-down, control and expectation-management programs. (My working theory right now, fwiw is that the punk movement was a CIA op.)

So the Goners, which I believe was basically Chris, maybe Dave Minick, and probably shifting drummers at first – moved to Longview, and then, because Longview was a small town, to Portland, which to them, was the big city. Chris had lived in Seattle in the past so I’m not sure why they chose Portland rather than Seattle, but they did. It may have been influence of people around Chris, like the band they first played with in Portland, another Longview band called Alost. What Chris wrote was that it was Alost who told the first club they played the band name was “Untouchables” and then the name stuck. As I said earlier, it shows how suggestible Chris could be. Where I would spend months trying to come up with a band name, or tweaking lyrics, Chris tended to go with first thoughts. He often wrote out songs fully formed. No draft one, draft two, crossouts, etc. If he was drafting and editing, it was all in his head.

Under the name Untouchables, between spring of 1980 and summer of 1981, the band blazed a trail through Portland and Seattle. They were playing constantly at Portland clubs like Urban Noize, The Met, 13th Precinct, The Long Goodbye, Euphoria; and in Seattle at The Wrex, Gorilla Room, and Metropolis. They opened for Joan Jett in Portland, Johnny Thunders in both Portland and Seattle. They were given a spot opening for a band called April Wine at the Paramount Theatre (not the best fit for them as it turned out). Then, in the summer of 1981, an LA ska band wrote a letter about the name Untouchables. Chris has described this in diffrent ways. At first it sounded like a cease and desist letter, but in his biography he indicates something subtler – that the band asked if he “owned” the name Untouchables. And Chris responded that they did not own the name, and the ska band thanked them, and began to use the name. What Chris wrote in his biography is this: “When we played our showcase gig at the Paramount a few months later, Double T productions changed our legal name to Napalm Beach.” Honestly, it boggles my mind, that as late as when he was writing these memoirs, 2010, Chris thought that a promoter could change his band’s “legal” name. As for how that name was developed – my understanding is it was Mark Nelson’s idea. Chris was obviously ok with it, and again, how he was thinking at the time, and the different influence pushing and pulling on him are worth examining in part because it speaks to where music was at that time, but also, what kinds of influences were beginning to surround Chris, and how they were – I think the word is manipulating – him. Mark Nelson was one of those influences.

The reason why I bring all of this up is, it seems to be part of a pattern. I wrote earlier about how the band was forced to slow down when in 1983 all of the clubs suddenly closed in Portland and Seattle. In this case, before that even happened, they’d spent a year creating buzz under the name Untouchables, only to get pushed from at least two different angles to change their band name. A name change is not the best move when you’ve already established recognition and momentum.

The reason why I started thinking about all of this right now is, as I’ve said, I’m now looking at Napalm Beach as the other side of the Nirvana coin. Nirvana’s show dates are, for the most part, all archived online now, and in taking a look at them, I realized something that wasn’t really clear from the biographies I was reading prior to 2010, which is that Nirvana also went through several name changes early on. Yes, this gets mentioned – but I never realized that, for example, Nirvana was actually playing shows under names like Pen Cap Chew or, more notably to me now – Skid Row.

9 years since Introducing Napalm Beach

We are now approaching the ninth anniversary of the publication of my article Introducing Napalm Beach. In these years it’s become really clear that the sit back and wait, be cooperative, don’t rock the boat strategy has been a sheer and utter failure. I can’t fault Chris for the choices he made because the situation he was put into was completely impossible. I can’t believe what he managed to pull off in terms of an artistic career and legacy under the circumstances.

As I sat back and tried to untangle whatever mysteries I was supposed to untangle with very little to work with, we were bulldozed by the wiping/destruction/death machine, and so were a lot of others.

Casualties included our band, Boo Frog and all the associated dreams we had (putting out records, touring, etc), as well as my Boo Frog YouTube page, my Skullman Records YouTube page, several loved ones, and 9 years of my life. Chris and Sam.

After Chris died, I no longer had to worry about him worrying about the disapproval of his community. I don’t know why people disapprove of artists who want to make a living off their art – or just this artist I guess, and I guess I don’t really care.

I know people are talking dirt behind our backs, behind my back, and I don’t care. It’s garbage talk. I know who I am and who I am not.

I also know something else now, because I was able to move forward a little bit – under the circumstances, from what I see of the structure built up around us, there is no way in the world that The Music Industry or The Pacific Northwest Music Community writ large will gracefully accept an unburied Chris Newman, and I know why. It’s nothing to do with Chris, and it’s everything to do with Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, Bret Bowman.

That said, there is no legitimate reason that Chris’ music should continue to be blacklisted, and I feel absolutely no obligation to protect those that led little lambs to slaughter, especially those who also profited, and continue to profit financially from the crimes and cover-ups (which include additional crimes). So I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing, and if you are out there trying to stop me, well I guess that says a lot more about you than it says about me.

It is incredibly frustrating to have been going through what we have been going through and I can’t even imagine what Chris went through after 1983 and especially into the 1990s.

I don’t know exactly why Kurt Cobain was taken down, but it increasingly looks like it was part of some bizarre set up planned out long ahead of time, same as Bret Bowman. I consider the entity behind all of this Satanic, because they seem to take pleasure in doing the biggest most heinous crimes to the most innocent people.

That cat is out of the bag. It’s out, everybody and it is NOT going back in.

Backlash – June 1989

“Welcome to Nirvana’s Nightmare”

In a recent entry, as an afterthought, I published a photo from the a copy of Backlash. And then it occurred to me that there is more to see here.

Backlash was a rock-oriented Seattle paper published between 1987 and 1991. According to their Facebook page “Dawn Anderson also published Backfire, 1983-84, and another zine called Backfire in 1997-2003.”

Several years ago, we were gifted an original copy of the June 1989 Backlash. It is yet another possession that seems to have vanished. However, I still had some scans hidden away in nooks and crannies, somehow avoiding the (FBI) wiping machine. I guess now is as good a time as any to publish them – I’m publishing here everything I have left. This copy of Backlash was supposed to be focused entirely on Oregon music, and I think that aside from paid advertisements, the Oregon focus was maintained throughout most of the magazine, with the exception of an review of Nirvana’s first album, Bleach. I noticed this anomaly from the beginning, but now I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something meaningful behind it. Look at which band is on the cover.

“At this point in time, Simon wanted me to mention that all old Napalm Beach bass players move to Seattle and get married.”

To recap – I am alleging that both Kurt Cobain and Chris Newman were murdered via a system of malfeasance that includes set ups, lies, secret FBI files, and biomedical implants used to manipulate behaviors and create diseases including chronic diseases like chronic pain (Kurt) and asthma (Chris) and terminal diseases like cancer as well as terminal behaviors like suicide. And I’m also alleging that these murders are planned out long ahead of time. So therefore, one has to consider whether the choice to put The Obituaries on the newspaper cover was influenced in some way by these advance plans. The tricky thing about this, is the biomedical implants can be used to make people appear to do something deliberate that isn’t deliberate at all – but I suspect putting the Obituaries on the cover was a deliberate death reference. I suspect Dawn Anderson among others knew there was a plan to murder both Chris Newman and Kurt Cobain via the filing of false and defamatory reports to the FBI.

I have never met Backlash editor/publisher Dawn Anderson. My statements are entirely based on observations of patterns and in this case, inductive reasoning. In other words, I’m not just talking about this one edition of this one paper. I’m saying there seems to have been a pattern of implied threats around Kurt Cobain that (unlike Chris) he would have picked up on. I have thoughts and ideas about why this would be going on – basically, at this point I think the issue was something like the following

  1. Chris Newman was already marked by this community and others for destruction and death.
  2. Kurt Cobain knew this, and was against it. This is clear to me from his lyrics.
  3. Kurt Cobain was picked out at some point for rock stardom, where his rise would parallel Chris’ fall. I don’t know if he knew this or not, but I suspect at some point he did.
  4. Kurt Cobain was also marked out for death, but I don’t know when this happened, or what the reasoning was. (Usually there’s something you’re supposed to think, and hidden behind that, the actual reason.)

Likely the plans for murdering these two artists were mostly about control and profiteering – continuing a very destructive and profitable crime. To this end, finance was coming in from around the world. Sub Pop (as well as K Records) seems to have had a particular link to the UK record business.

Endless Love – 1998

New Yorker’s Daphne Merkin on Nick Broomfield and Courtney Love

Today I ran into and read for the first time an article about Courtney Love in the New Yorker, dated June 8, 1998. That would be seven years to the day after (FBI/CIA) tranced me out and tried drop me off a cliff while on L.S.D. with my army veteran honey trap boyfriend, and it would also have been my daughter’s father’s 36th birthday. I do have reason to suspect there are links between Courtney and others around her, and my daughter’s fathers’ family, especially her cousins the Spinos from Warm Springs, Oregon.

Let’s just say I don’t think the date of the article is a conicidence.

The article explains that Courtney has a number of personalities that she cycles through. This seems accurate. And the article is a bit of a review about the Nick Broomfield movie called Kurt and Courtney.

There’s a lot to parse in the article because journalists are forever indicating that they know more than they let on while pretending not to know much.

One of the sentences that stood out to me in this article is about 3/4 through, at the end of paragraph 16 when the writer asks “So how is it that everyone he talked to either hates or fears Love?” And Broomfield responds “I didn’t find anyone who had anything wonderful to say about her.”

When journalists are letting you know they know about something linked to Chris or me, they typically do it in the last sentence of a paragraph, as if between the paragraphs, there’s a second part left unspoken and understood.

Chris had been interviewed for Kurt and Courtney. Valarie was also there. I don’t know if Chris had “wonderful” things to say about Courtney, but he always said he had nothing bad to say about her, and Flying Heart/Jan Celt told Chris and the local music press that the reason the footage with Chris did not appear in Kurt and Courtney is because it was a hit piece and Chris had nothing bad to say. Chris and Valarie had pet rats and he told me that when the camera crew was there, Valarie was letting baby rats run in and out of her mouth.

See how I just did that end-of-the-paragraph thing?

Another thing about that movie is that Napalm Beach’s cover of Wipers Potential Suicide is mentioned in the credits, but it it not used in the movie. I suspect that’s also hint of some type. Look at the pattern of songs on the original 1992 release of 8 Songs for Greg Sage.

Once again – Napalm Beach wasn’t the only band being set up for a fall.

Nirvana was also being set up for a fall.

The occultists are fascinated by opposites. Black/white. Good twin/Evil twin. The first/the last. The biggest/the smallest. Up/down. Beginning/End. Napalm Beach was the oldest of a group, and Nirvana the youngest.

A vanishing point, in art, looks like the top of a pyramid or the center of an X. “One above, one below” – and yet somehow, both end up in the dirt.

Music equipment theft as catalyst 1967, 1982

Valarie, Sam Henry, X, Sean Croghan

Canyonville Bible Academy – 1967 – 1971

From Chris’ biography – My ninth grade year was a bizarre culture shock. I had gone from being adored as Pugsley in Mississippi, to the ridiculed and strange chubby flower child that wandered the halls of Olympic Junior High carrying flowers with my new found girlfriends Patty and Sharon. All the jocks and squares taunted me with “Hey Flower Boy,” and “Faggot.” There was the occasional shoving and threats when the girls weren’t around.

This all changed later that year when some of the bad kids heard I played in a band with Ed Banning, who was known for living at his Mom’s doing what he ever he pleased, being kicked out of Jr. High and he knew where to get pot. A couple of the more influential popular kids asked me to hook them up with some weed. I half heartedly agreed and then I panicked, not really wanting to ask Ed to help me out.

I ended up giving the kid a bag of oregeno and he seemed okay with it, since it was free of charge and he had no idea what the stuff looked like. Eventually I was in the position to get a joint now and then, but this also brought the riff-raff out. This one hoodlum kid showed up at my house and tried to sell me a Vox bass amplifier he had stolen from the school gymnasium along with a couple of the school’s microphones.

I knew the kid who the amp belonged to and I had jammed with him at my house. He had a band called Green Square, and they were really advanced players for fourteen year old kids.

I got my friend on the phone and told him who had his Vox bass amp and his dad was right on it. My school principal called me and my folks into the office to hear my part in it. This caused the entire school to look at me as a dirty rat fink! Not cool!

Everywhere I went that summer I was accosted by these assholes. What was I supposed to do? Let the jerks rip off my friend for his equipment? After getting hassled and ridiculed all the time, I decided, “Hey Mom? You know what? I might be interested in going to the private Christian high school that you and your sister’s and brother attended.” C.B.A. Canyonville Bible Academy. Nestled in a peacful Southern Oregon mountain valley, almost four hundred miles from Seattle, I could start a new life.

On my own, away from home at fifteen.

X – 1983

Something I realized now, going over this history with a fine toothed comb, that I’d somehow managed to miss before was that it appears that the notorious X and Napalm Beach show at Euphoria may have occurred on the same tour where I’d seen X perform at an all ages show at Mojos in Arcata. It was one of my first concerts, and the first show I can remember seeing in a club setting. I was 15 years old – Erika

Chris: I first met Valarie at Sam’s apartment in San Francisico in the Tenderloin district. Sam’s girl Kathrine had a fatal overdose in San Fransisco while Napalm Beach were gone to Portland recording Rock N Roll Hell with Greg Sage in the Summer of 1983. This all had happened just six weeks before we all met Valarie and her friend.

Valarie was an obvious speed freak. Sam met her and this punkrocker chick in the park down on the street below. He brought them up inside his apartment where I was smoking my killer bud. I was thirty then and they were only eighteen. They were up all night folding clothes, tweaking on what ever could keep their fired up brains busy.

The next day Valarie informed us the other chick was planning to rip off Sam for his guitar, practice amp, and anything else of value. She and a couple of dudes were going to break in by climbing the fire escape.

This foiled their plan, and Valarie stayed around to party with us. She was Sam’s girl for a couple of days. She mentioned she lived in San Jose with her Grandma Caldwell most of the time. It turned out to be a couple of miles away from my Dad’s store on the Alameda Expressway.

We all went to see X play at the Kabuki Club. It was weird to see the expression on Exene and Johns faces when me and Sam were standing there in front of the stage. Our little incident at the Euphoria club had only gone down a few months before. This was September 1983.

The Euphoria was a one thousand capacity venue. Napalm Beach had played the night before in Seattle, and we were pumped up for the show with X. We ended our rousing set with a tribute to Jim Morrison and the Doors, and a song much like “THE END”, called “LAST DAY”. It brought the house down, the audience was on its feet and cheering. Even John Doe and Exene were up front banging their heads. A standing ovation for a local opening act is almost unheard of. It was the kind of show a musician dreams about.

Afterwards John and Exene invited us up to their dressing room. Mark was the sensitive martyr, but he was my right hand man and and I should have grabbed him out of respect, especially when Sam and Gwartney came up on their own. Mark was in his low self esteem mode, acting as if he was nothing more than a glorified roady. He had Gwartney help him load the van with our gear. This was before X had even hit the stage.

X invited Napalm Beach to come and play some shows in LA. John Doe tried to beckon me to get to the Big City. LA or New York. He was right. You can’t get anywhere here. Things did change ten years later in the great northwest.

X went on to play a rowdy inspired set that night. By this time I was fucked up royale. It was time to load out and split but Mark had already done that. Then… I blew up like an Atomic Bomb! Someone had broken into our van and stole my Marshall amp head and a few of Sam’s drums. I was livid and caused a huge scene there in the alley behind the club. Gwartney joined in the rage. Shaking and pounding the dumpster and primal screams making X’s skin crawl, I’m sure of it!

John and Exene looked horrified as I gazed into their vehicle with a crazed look in my eyes, and started to tell Exene how I could go for her if she was available… They took off with haste, and I soon recieved an official letter from their management and booking agency in Los Angeles.

“Napalm Beach, we cannot work with such unprofessional behavior. Do not come to Los Angeles. I repeat!!!…”

A few days later, two young kids told me the name and address of the boys who stole my Marshall and the drums. I called the cops with the information. They said they couldn’t do anything about it. Those Montoya boys were trouble.

I got a posse of four huge dudes to go with me. We got up to the door, and a little fifteen year old red headed kid answered.

“Here’s your drums, and our friend has the Marshall head in Tillamook. We will meet you at the corner of 39th and Powell tomorrow at 3:00 PM.”

They were there with ten other boys. They quietly handed over the amplifier, and I sincerly thanked them. It was amazing. We howled with laughter driving away with the equipment.

Years later a local musician and man about town, Sean Crogan of Crackerbash, told me he was one of the skater kids who helped out by giving up the Montoya boys as the thieving culprits.