Nirvana – Sappy – updated information from Gillian Gaar book

This 2018 video about Nirvana’s song Sappy is important for a few reasons. For one thing, it shows the skin on my face developing burns in real time, as I was being attacked with directed energy (microwave) weapons. For another, I’m talking about some real stuff – the idea that Cobain’s song Sappy was taken from my 1988 journal entry/poem called Caterpillar Jar. Possibly related, I was in Minneapolis/St Paul at the time, and unbeknownst to me, Courtney Love was also in Minneapolis, hanging out with, even possibly staying with, with a girl I considered a best friend. I now am pretty convinced that the “he” referenced in the Nirvana song “Sappy” is Mike Payne, my boyfriend at the time.

One of the things I said in that video (I think – I know I said it somewhere) was that according to the Wikipedia page on Sappy, the song “dates back to at least 1987.” It then goes on to describe the first home demo as going back to the “late 1980s.” Since my Caterpillar Jar poem was written in 1988 (March 88 IIRC) – compelling evidence that Sappy was written in 1987 would detract from my argument that it was a deliberate spin-off of my poem, Caterpillar Jar. Though as you seen in other entries it’s hardly the only 1980s journal entry of mine that made its way into a “grunge” song. Still, I wanted to find out whether there was real evidence to support the dating of the song back to “at least 1987.” The Wikipedia entry (footnote 3) referenced page 5 of a 2006 Gillian Baar book called 33 1/3: In Utero.

And today I received my copy of the book, which I eagerly opened to find out what kind of evidence there is to show that Sappy was from 1987 or earlier. Turns out, there’s nothing about that at all. The only thing on page five is a reference to the earliest recorded version of Sappy dating to the “late 80s.” I already knew that.

So that statement about Sappy dating to “at least 1987”? Has no source. It looks like it’s linked to the Gaar book, but it’s only because it’s right before another statement that is linked to the Gaar book, creating a false impression that there’s support for the statement. But there isn’t.

To me, this creates more support for my assertion: That Cobain’s lyrics for Sappy are directly and knowingly based on my March 1988 poem, Caterpillar Jar.