Category: Napalm Beach

Napalm Beach

The Leather Trench Coat

This is just a follow up on the Jeffrey Ofelt comment made in the 2007 Stranger article (Beerly Deloved) about Courtney Love picking up a leather trench coat for Kurt Cobain in the early 1990s. Like I said, although it’s possible, I’d be surprised if Cobain ever wore a leather trench coat. But what I think is interesting about that comment is it links together the incident where Chris had his belongings taken in 1996 and I witnessed belongings thrown out into the yard of a rented home that had been temporarily abandoned around 2003. When I was reading through Charles Cross’ book on Kurt Cobain, it looked like Cobain too had something like that happen.

Among the belongings that were thrown out in 2003 were a little 1970s paperback (like, almost a zine), sort of small press book called something like How To Play Guitar Left Handed that I was told had belonged to Kurt Cobain. It included a version of “In The Pines.” I sort of wish I could have held onto that somehow, though it wasn’t mine, but it was lost in this incident. I have an old paperback Pete Seeger folksong book from the early 1960s that belonged to my dad, and it has the same song in it. Leadbelly was a popular folk artist for several decades. The other thing that Kenny had that supposedly had belonged to Kurt Cobain, and got thrown out, was a leather jacket, that supposedly a cat had peed on. How Kenny got these things, he said, was he was in a band where one of Cobain’s cousins played drums. No idea whether any of this is true. I didn’t think at first that Cobain had ever been seen wearing a leather jacket, but later I saw that in fact he did wear a leather jacket like the one Kenny had in The Year Punk Broke. So maybe it had been his jacket.

And then there was that thing where Courtney Love left a beige oversized trench coat in the back of the Napalm Beach van when she jetted off to Europe in 1981, and Chris picked it up and wore it onstage. So that Ofelt story looks to me like it combines two coats into one – the leather coat that had allegedly belonged to Cobain that showed up in my life, and the Columbo coat that had belonged to Courtney, that Chris later wore. If I’m correct – and that’s what Ofelt was doing, it shows the surveillance going on, and likely the manipulations as well. Also, it makes me think that Courtney may have actually been behind Kenny and the Kurt Cobain linked items he brought with him. She had a tendency to spread Cobain’s belongings around.

I have reason to believe that Cobain was under heavy surveillance. These kinds of things, getting all your belongings thrown out or destroyed are traumatic. Those of us who are under this kind of surveillance are treated this way for the benefit of pleasing and/or controlling and/or traumatizing the viewers. Other things, like leaving something for someone to find and seeing what they do for it, also seems to be a form of entertainment.

This. surveillance. must. end.

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.

Mysteries that could potentially be cleared up with access to Chris’ stolen materials

I’ve shown how some of my journal entries seem to have made it into popular songs including Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” Smashing Pumpkins “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” and Nirvana’s “Sappy,” but in fact there are many more instances. In some cases there are incidents that happened that may not have had associated journal entries, or it’s just a phrase taken from my journals, so that it’s harder to make the case. This would include Hole’s “Asking For It,” and Nirvana’s songs “Very Ape,” “Pennyroyal Tea,” and “Something In The Way” (this is just off the top of my head). With regards to Chris, there are links to Nirvana’s “Very Ape” and to “Heart Shaped Box.” And then there are things like Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” which doesn’t reference a journal entry, but is pretty clearly a reference to a photo that was stored in an album along with a lock of my hair. What do you do with that? I don’t know because I’m not a lawyer and so far, lawyers are all afraid to touch this.

There are things I know, but cannot prove, like John Lennon putting a lick of mine into the beginning of the song “Woman” – it’s the suspended riff used in the intro, behind the phrase “for the other half of the sky.” Even though I was a child, I was already playing guitar and I played this suspended lick over and over and over. It’s not that this is actionable in court or that I would want to take it to court, but that it’s like a hidden message. That said, looking at what’s happened to us, I think that some of the more obvious stuff should be under consideration for court cases.

Chris played a lot more guitar than I did over the years, performed and recorded, and his style was copied in a lot of ways, including, I would say, in the theme song of “Magnum P.I.” (possibly a sources of the Zoolander joke about “magnum”). But that’s just style – people copy styles all the time. The reason I bring it up is because the same people profiting from the copying Chris’ style will turn around and say Chris as an artist wasn’t worth a damn.

I’ll note here that I’ve seen hints that the guitar player for The Carpenters took inspiration from Chris’ guitar playing. This would have been in the early 1970s.

Music-wise, the feel of Nirvana’s “Lithium” seems to have been inspired by Chris’ song Pugsley, and this is repeated again in PJ Harvey’s “Meet Ze Monsta.” And if I could access Chris’ archival materials – journals and tapes and that sort of thing, I suspect I’d find a lot more. So the thefts that have happened over the years were just not property thefts, as well as intellectual property thefts, but evidence tampering. This idea that all this crime can somehow be justified with libelous stories collected and distributed by the FBI is beyond absurd. Theft is theft and libel is libel and the repeated pattern is of crimes (theft, libel, medical malfeasance, kidnapping, assassination) committed specifically in order to cover up other crimes (theft, sex trafficking, child trafficking, medical trafficking, nonconsensual human subjects research, malfeasance, graft, murder) along with various other tactics and techniques like control of focus. The depravity of all of this, not to mention the criminality, senseless waste, and stupidity, is honestly, for me, almost beyond comprehension. I think anyone in my position would want to see the perpetrators of this collection of crimes, regardless of who they are, held accountable under the criminal statutes of this nation, same as they themselves do to others. They should not be permitted to kidnap and murder their way out of everything.

With regards to intellectual property theft, a lot would probably be cleared up by access to what must be mountains of stolen journals and other creative materials from Chris’ lifetime. In some cases, Chris was performing songs for years before recording them. Someone recently uploaded a bootleg to YouTube of a Napalm Beach performance from New Years Eve 1985 at Satyricon in which they perform a song called My Master Calls, a song that would not be recorded until 1993’s Curiosities, eight years later. At first I thought that the performance couldn’t have been from 1985 because of the presence of that song, but it later became clear that for whatever reason, the song had not been recorded in the studio until years later. In addition, there seem to be songs that show up on live recordings and bootlegs that were never recorded including in 1982, “Into The Sky” (among the inspirations for Nirvana’s 1993 song “Very Ape”) and a 1986 performance of a song called “Mercury” that was uploaded by Mike Lastra. Chris for whatever reason was ambivalent about both these songs, though I think both of them are good songs. (In the case of “Into The Sky,” Chris said, ironically, that “They didn’t seem to like it in Seattle.”)

When I met Chris in 2009 he either had never heard the 1994 Mazzy Star song “Fade Into You” or he had just recently heard it for the first time. Something I noticed, that he never mentioned to me, was the similarity between the Mazzy Star song and his song Crippled Mind. I don’t know when Chris wrote Crippled Mind, and I didn’t think to ask, because this was before I knew anything about surveillance or intellectual property thefts – I’d seen things I thought were weird coincidences. He recorded Stoned and Alone in 1996 under what seems like almost desperate circumstances. Now of course I wonder how long he was playing the “Crippled Mind” chord progression at home or in performances, unaware he was under this kind of surveillance. But he wrote his lyrics in his journals, and that is one reason the journals are important to unravelling mysteries like this.

(track info available on Soundcloud)

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.

Spex and Loves Simple Dreams (L.S.D.) Records

from Chris’ draft memoir (1988-1989 time period)

Napalm Beach - Liquid Love - Backlash 1989
June 1989 Backlash showing Napalm Beach with Simon Simoncini

I got a package from Germany. It was a rock magazine, it looked similar to SPIN. It was called SPEX, and inside were three one hundred dollar bills. They told me the reels of master tape Tom Robison had sent were now vinyl albums on L.S.D. – Loves Simple Dreams Records – in Berlin. The music critics voted it into the top ten albums of the year. Napalm Beach – MOVING TO AND FRO.

Wow! Henk Van Drummel had been a door man at Satyricon. He had a visa while doing the forign exchange student thing. I had signed a Teen Dream album for Henk one night at the bar. It mentioned, “I hope we get to Germany someday.” Henk and his girl Heike made that dream come true.

It was so fucking amazing. We were going to tour Europe in Novermber and half of December of 1989. We all three had been dabbling with cocaine and heroin for far too long. We knew we had to prepare for kicking our drug habits.

We had to find a new bass player. Simon (Simoncini) had left for good this time. He left on July 4th, 1989. He is still clean and sober today. I loved playing music with Simon. He was younger and very good looking. A sweet funny guy, that loved to get loaded. We shot so many speedballs. We got scared sometimes doing massive injections of cocaine. We all saw people having coke seziures. They can’t remember their own name. Cocaine was the scary part of the speedball cocktail. It overpowered the heroin at first, but it always won over after the cocaine fades away quickly. That’s part of the reason addicts keep reaching for the coke rush.

Sam and I tried a few bass players out, but they had to have the outlaw image. they had to be able to play good enough to hold down mine and Sam’s on stage onslaught of Rock! There he was, all 6’6″. Too-tall Dave Dillinger. He was pretty new in town. He was from L.A., twenty one, and he knew his music. He played a little drums, and guitar too. Bass was his forté. He had a solid simple style that suited Sam’s busy drumming style, and gave me something solid to build chord structures around. My soloing sounded fuller with solid bass support.

Sam had been getting more and more into his drugs. He was really bummed when his girlfriend Debbie left him. My girl Nancy also left that same weekend. Napalm Beach were booked to play at the Central in Seattle. We had no bass player, so Sam played bass, and this guy Dave Meyers, played drums. Sam and I were so fucked up, shooting speedballs the whole way. Dave Meyers drove his van and the equipment with his buddy Jim Micheals riding up front. Jim was new at it, and kept turning around because he was jonesin’ watching us shoot up the whole three hour ride.

Needless to say, we sucked shit. I can’t believe we called that desecration of music Napalm Beach. Seattle band guys were there, like Mark Arm of Mudhoney and Lee Conner of Screaming Trees.

Sam and I went on the stairwell after a couple of songs and shot more dope. I could not stand up with out holding on to the mic stand. How was I supposed to play guitar? My god that sucked shit!

I wrote,”She Moved Away” after that.

Sam was impossible most of the time at that point. I was hating working with him, and dreaded having to buy any dope from him.

Dave Dillinger’s first gig was a tense one. The Satyricon was packed, we went on last. Sam still is not present. We set up his drums, we are standing on stage waiting, tuning. It’s getting close to 2:00AM and they close at 2:30 in Oregon. Sam walks up and immediately starts complaing about how his drums were set up wrong. I screamed,”YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE!” He threw his beer in my face. I stood there fuming, humiliated, beer dripping down my face on to my guitar. Jan, transfixed on the side of the stage, showed his worry. “Do I have to take this?”, I pleaded. Jan nodded his head.

The crowd watched in awe as we went into a more menacing version of MONSTER than ever before. I improvised the lyrics to fit the impending doom. We made it through the set, and went our seperate ways.

This was too big to fuck up. I had one little side trip to take, before that jet airliner took us to Europe.

Music Industry Issues (Part 3) Big Black Monsoon

This version of Napalm Beach’s Pugsley was recorded and released on cassette in 1983.

Napalm Beach – Pugsley (original version)

Nirvana released Lithium on their breakout album Nevermind, September 1991.

Nirvana – Lithium

PJ Harvey’s Meet Ze Monsta was released on To Bring You My Love in February 1995.

PJ Harvey – Meet Ze Monsta (Live)

Big Black was the name of Steve Albini’s band. Albini was the engineer/producer for Nirvana’s final album, In Utero (1993).