Oregonian article – Nov 20, 1981 – Area bands release works on small labels
Napalm Beach’s first shows
I’ve been a bit hung up on trying to get to the truth of exactly when and with whom Untouchables were playing their first shows in Portland. Chris’ memory was really good but not perfect, and in fact he was also pretty suggestible so I witnessed for myself that it was possible for his memory to be changed by stress or suggestion.
Here’s Chris’ story:
It’s interesting because he told two stories in his memoir having to do with the earliest shows, that I could not corroborate but not exactly confirm with primary source material, the first having to do with the Untouchable’s first show, which he claimed was on the day of the Mt St Helens eruption, which most people consider to be May 18 (a Sunday) – though the volcanic eruption process actually lasted months – and the other story has to do with meeting Greg Sage of the Wipers, which he indicated happened at their next show, and that it was at the Long Goodbye the following June. I can’t find evidence of either show having happened. It doesn’t mean they didn’t happen – but it’s frustrating to have so little information to go on.
“The Untouchables felt triumphant May 18, 1980. We had blown the roof off of the Long Good-bye club and they asked us back. Mt. St. Helens blew her top off that night too. We were driving back to Longview feeling great about everything. I was driving Mark and Terry in my non discript beige Ford Falcon. We had all crashed at Koenigs rental house and woke up to a giant plume of ash billowing above Mount St. Helens! It was a mere forty five miles away. We hadn’t heard the big news and were shocked at the sight of millions of logs and trees clogging up the Cowlitz river. It was like an atomic bomb had been detonated over the mountain. People in the immediate vicinity were killed instantly. Some took advantage of the situation and disappeared, never to be seen again by loved ones. Changing idenities, moving somewhere else. Starting over. A common fantasy I’m sure. Eventually the whole area was covered with a blanket of grey ash. Like an unpure snow. It covered everything with pulvarized glass-like particles. Cars were stalled. People put nylon stockings over the manifold intakes of the carberator. The cars were choking on the ash. Some clever old ladies like Grandma Newman saw an opportunity to make some cash selling ash souvenirs. Some even fashioned ash sculptures.
“Our next gig in Portland was a real impressive one. Not a Thursday opening for a lame-ass Longview band. This was a Saturday. The Rats were headlining the Long Goodbye. A punk trio, led by handsome guitarist/singer, Fred Cole. His rockin’sexy wife Toody was on bass. Rod Rat was the spectacled punk drummer. Fred had some real rock history. No one really knew about that yet. The Rats were a raw and honest punk rock band with a hillbilly flare. Fred and Toody were a little older than their audience. They owned a cool music store downtown called Captain Whizeagles, and we all hungout there.
Strings were $3.00 a pack. They repaired musical equipment, the “Fred Cole way.” Fred could jerry-rig anything to make it work. Usually for no charge.
“That June night in 1980 the Long Goodbye featured four awesome bands. Opening was young Tom Roberts band the Imperialist Pigs. Eighteen and enthusiastic, Roberts went on to form Poison Idea with Jerry A as frontman.
Next up was the Untouchables. I had my (self painted) pink Fender Stratocaster guitar. Pink wrap around shades and pink converse tennis shoes with a crazy suit and a skinny tie. Nelson was in full black leather regalia with his signature three belts hanging off one narrow hip. Chon decked out in Zebra pants and fushia jacket was ready for his clowning drum style the people loved. Koenig bearded and slumped over his bass in full battle camoflauge layed down the bottom sounds.
We hit ’em hard and fast with a whirlwind of modern new visuals and sounds! The crowd responded quite favorably. It was a packed house, and all of us were celebrating a new musical movement. It belonged to us. We began to be a regular fixture at Long Goodbye.”
It looks like the Untouchables opened for Alost on Thursday May 29, 1980. That could be the gig he was thinking of, but Chris indicates that they drove back to Longview, Washington unaware that the volcano had erupted. I find it almost impossible to believe that someone in this part of the world could have been unaware of the eruption by May 29, 1980 as it was all over the news, and ash was blanketing the ground, especially after May 26. So possibly there was an earlier show on May 18, or maybe Chris’ memory was mixed up. I know that before they played in Portland they were driving down to check out the live music scene.
Chris indicated that the next show after that was a show featuring the Wipers, the Imperialist Pigs, and the Rats as well as the Untouchables, and that it was at the Long Goodbye the following June. So far, I can’t find this show listed anywhere else. However, if the May 29 show was their first show, such a show would likely have been their second show as I can’t find any other Untouchables shows listed before August 1980.
A similar (though not the same) line-up is advertised September 5, 1980, not at the Long Goodbye, but at a place called The Pacific Academy. On Friday, September 5, 1980 The Oregonian wrote:
“The Pacific Academy, located at 1532 SW Morrision St, will be the site of two concerts Friday and Saturday night with New wave rock and avant garde music the subject.
Saturday – Bop Zombies, Anesthesia, Spaztics, Untouchables, Chris Tense, Jungle Nausea – $3 sponsored by Alternative Art Association.
Friday’s 9 p.m. show will feature Sado Nation, Rat$, Imperialist Pigs, UHF, the Preps, and Government Surfers For Saturday the Bop Zombies will play along with Anesthesia, Spaztics, Untouchables, Chris Tense, and Jungle Nausea. Tickets for both concerts are $3 and the acadmey is open to all ages. Concerts are sponsored by Alternative Art Association.
This is an old brick building on the west side of the river, next door to the historic Scottish Rite Center. I This location doesn’t come up much as I research show dates. It looks like it might have been one of those venues that punk promoters would rent out specifically to put on all ages shows. Often they were Masonic Halls, VFW buildings, Granges, etc.
This would have been the Untouchables fourth and fifth shows in Portland, or assuming Chris’ memory about the June show with the Wipers is correct, their fifth and sixth.
Tom Peterson, ALOST, and the Goners
I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe the exact origins of Napalm Beach. Chris tended to connect the name change from Untouchables to Napalm Beach to the changing of drummers from Chon Carter to Sam Henry. To Chris this also made sense, because of the different styles of the two drummers, Chon being a simpler New Wave style drummer and Sam being influenced by jazz rhythms of Buddy Rich and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Thanks to the help of other archivists, I’ve learned that the first show that the band played under the name Napalm Beach was on July 17, 1981. It sounds like Sam didn’t start playing shows with them until the following October. Old show calendars show a gradual adapting of the name change by clubs – for example, in August 1981 some clubs were listing them as Untouchables, and some as Napalm Beach.
I’ve written before about the name change from the Goners to the Untouchables. It sounds like the Goners was actually a Ramones-inspired punk-influenced rock band that Chris formed around 1978, who were playing shows at this time, and who recorded a demo in 1979 at Wave Studios. In fact, according to Chris’ memoir, by 1980 it looks like he’d been in the studio twice already – once with Bodhi, and once, in 1979 with the Goners.
Chris wrote: “I enjoyed hanging around with Greg (Sage) and talking about music. Soon we were recording on 2″ 16 track tape out at Wave Studios in Vancouver, Washington. It blew my mind when I walked in and realized it was the very same studio I had recorded at with Bodhi eight years before.” He was talking about the sessions with Sage for Trap Sampler which would have been in 1981. That means that Chris had recorded with Bodhi in 1973. He likely left Bodhi that same year as by 1974 he’d already formed his own original band and gone down to Los Angeles in an attempt to break into the music scene there.
The Goners, it seemed, had recorded something in San José in 1979. Chris doesn’t mention the name of the studio, but the name of the owner, Richard Dias, who Chris had also employed in 1984 to duplicate the Pugsley tapes.
It’s pretty clear that there was a continuum between Untouchables and Napalm Beach, the catalyst for the name change being the conflict with the LA ska band who wanted the Untouchables name. What is less clear is to what extent there was a continuum between the Goners and the Untouchables. The Goners had been going back and forth between Longview, Washington and San José, California, while it could be said that the Untouchables really started in Portland. Of course, the way the Untouchables started was that The Long Goodbye – apparently following instructions from someone in the band ALOST – changed the band name on the poster, and the new name stuck. This may have been their very first gig in Portland, and that gig may have been May 18, 1980, the day of the Mt St Helen’s eruption. In fact, that date, so far, is the earliest date I can find for the Untouchables playing in Portland.
There are other ways that the band changed around this time. It sounds like this is about the time that Chon Carter started playing drums; the previous drummer being someone named Luke Pyro. Chris mentions Pyro in his memoir, drops the narrative, and then mentions the band hiring “seventeen year old Chon Carter” of Longview, Washington to play drums, beginning either in 1979 or early 1980. It sounds like Mark Nelson was in the band at this time, playing rhythm guitar, and the bassists were switching back and forth between Dave Minick. Minick actually seems to have been the first bassist with the Goners, but by 1980, after Chris had moved back to Longview, Minick was still in San Francisco and playing with a punk band called The Cosmetics, so Dave Koenig ended up playing bass. Chris liked Minick’s playing and had described him to me as “Napalm Beach’s first bassist” – so you can see that there was in fact a continuum between the Goners and the Untouchables.
Here is what Chris wrote about hiring Chon Carter:
“We ran into the seventeen year old Chon Carter on Commerce avenue in Longview. It was a sunny spring afternoon. Chon stopped to talk to us in front of The Minder Binder. We offered him the drum posistion in the Goners based on his looks and age alone. His brother Cris Carter was a known rock drummer in Longview’s ALOST. Chon boasted, “I’m already in a band… We play heavy metal… We’re called LAMANTARA!” He held up the logo he had carefully scrawled during school detention that week. We waited a few hours, and it must have sunk in. He came back to the Minder Binder where we were playing Six million Dollar Man pin ball and drinking pitchers of cheap beer. Chon told us he was ready to join the Goners. Then he quit school. The band was off and running.”
Chris indicates that the Goners first show was at the Stop Inn in Rainer, Oregon, writing “We got our act together there just like Bohdi had done in 1972. It was still the same seedy dive owned by Bud Diss (Erika’s note: I’ve seen his name written elsewhere as Al Diss). Diss was a perfect name for the old saloon owner and card room gangster… The Goners tore it up, working out some great tunes, and we had a great old time blowing minds! I was writing pop songs with a punk edge. I followed the Monkees and the Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart school of songwriting. We were ready for the Big City of Portland, Oregon.”
If it is true that May 18, 1980 was the date of the Goners/Untouchables first show in Portland, it’s likely that is also when the band’s name was changed from the Goners to the Untouchables. This is the show where they opened for Chon’s brother’s band, ALOST.
What seems to be going on with Chris, is he seems to have been marking changes in the band partly by changes in drummers. First the Goners had Luke Pyro. Was this in San José? Was it Pyro who played with them in their 1979 studio sessions? I’m not sure, but if I’d had to guess, that’s what I’d guess. Was Mark Nelson in the band then? Possibly. Minick may have been on bass. Then Chris (and Mark?) moved back to Longview, and Minick stayed in San Francisco, joining the Cosmetics. Chris and Mark Nelson hired Dave Koenig and Chon Carter in Longview, and the Goners played their first local show in Ranier, Oregon, soon plotting out a move to “the big city” – Portland, Oregon.
So even though the roots of the Goners likely go back to 1978 – that period of time is murky. I think that based on the information currently available, the most concise and accurate way of describing Napalm Beach’s origin is to say that they formed in 1979 in Longview, Washington, and moved to Portland in 1980. And that their first show was was in Rainier, Oregon – probably in 1979 – and their first show in Portland was at the Long Goodbye, May 18, 1980, opening for ALOST, another Longview, Washington based band. And that this is the show where the band name was changed from the Goners to the Untouchables.
In researching this, I came across another couple of details that I found interesting, something Chris mentions in passing – first is that Mark Nelson had played in ALOST, and it appears that The Goners and ALOST socialized and likely played together several times. And that the lead guitar player for ALOST was named Tom Peterson – the same name as the iconic Portland car dealer who’s face was pictured on the cover of Wipers 10-29-79 album, and on the watch that Kurt Cobain was said to have always worn.
This is what Chris wrote:
ALOST were from Longview and they were the band of which Nelson was once a member. They played mostly modern cover tunes and light metal originals. Their originals were weak and out of step with the times. I had spent the last two years as guest guitar shredder at all ALOST’s outdoor keg party’s in Longviews surrounding hills. I heard some cute chicks say, Oh yeah, he’s the guitar player that’s better than Tom Peterson (ALOST). The Goners made them sweat. We always built a fire under their asses. We were a tough act to follow for sure. Soon other bands halfway ruling the roost, had to step down when Newman and company came around. We were now known as The Untouchables, thanks to ALOST and the poster from our first Portland show.
A comment on the band name Snow Bud and the Flower People
The band name is Snow Bud and the Flower People. Snow Bud is two words. It is not Snowbud and it is definitely not Sno-Bud. I will tell you how I know this. I asked Chris.
It’s understandable how one would make the mistake of calling the band Snowbud (one word) in part because Chris’ font choices sometimes made it look like one word – and in fact maybe there were times he wrote the band name as one word on his cassettes as he was forming the band – which he really didn’t take that seriously. But this whole “Sno-Bud” think is taking liberties. I see this band listed as “Sno-Bud” a lot – for example, on Satyricon calendars. Where you don’t see it is in Chris’ own work. At least I never have seen him write the band name that way, and like I said – when I asked him – he told me what his band was called, and how it was spelled.
It may have been done in part as a play off of “Sho-Bud” – a type of pedal steel guitar. But whatever the idea was behind this, it seems to have come from Jan Celt, not Chris. And Chris clearly didn’t raise a stink over it, as he tended not to assert himself over these kinds of things. However, had he been asked, he would have told Jan – or anyone who asked – what his band was called.
I don’t think this was really a mistake. I think it was a demonstration of how Chris could be manipulated.
Inconstancies like this can cause confusion and problems in databases.
How we wrote songs
Chris and I didn’t write songs like other people write songs because we didn’t have access to the language (aka code aka slang) that every other artist has been using, nor knowledge of the framework around which this language hangs – framework in which Chris and I were actually centered. The set up may be depraved but you have to admit it’s clever.
Other artists code things in layers – even coding nonverbal sounds, beats, and chord progressions. Chris and I had no conscious access to any of this and so we wrote in a more straightforward manner. That said, there is still some complexity. For example, Chris wrote the songs on his 1986 album Moving To And Fro generally from the viewpoint of a teenage boy or young adult – but in a song like “Monster” he was actually writing from the viewpoint of a disapproving adult commenting on this teenage boy who spends all his time “drawing weird pictures” and playing electric guitar. Chris felt the phrase “electric guitar” was quaint and old fashioned – like I might think of the word “hyperlink” as quaint and old fashioned. There’s a line in the song about “smoking acid” which is I think an old cliché about people who don’t actually know how LSD is ingested. And the bit about “big red eyes moving to and fro” is about being stoned on marijuana. In coded language, the “red eyes” would indicate surveillance. Chris didn’t have that in mind writing, but others might have it in mind listening, because their background is different.
I think sometimes Chris would put in lines that sounded good, where he liked the rhyme, but in which meaning was secondary. I remember asking him to explain a line from his song “Unworthy” – “Tell me something true, and if it comes from you, I will believe the truth is all you knew” – he tried to explain it, but I think it was hard to explain. I think the sentiment was that – this song being likely directed toward his second wife, Denise – he wanted to believe this idea that she was radically honest and her example could make him a better man. In reality, she was not what he thought she was. Chris tended to self-blame a lot, and to absorb blame from others, and I think part of this was his heavy church upbringing and part of it was his way of being courageous and taking responsibility for everything that went wrong in his life. But part of this line might have just been about the way the words rhymed and flowed together. Chris was very musical.
I wrote the same way as Chris, except that I tended to rewrite and rearrange and try out different words, etc, whereas Chris would write out a song fully formed. Both of us tended to write from personas or different parts of our personality and/or as characters. I have a song called “minivan mom” for example which was about how I was feeling, but not at all about who I was or who I thought I really was. I think the term for this is “implied narrator” – in other words, the narrator of the song is a fictional persona. This I think is pretty standard. Where we differ from other songwriters is that we were unaware of the strange structure that were were born into, the language used to describe it, and the layers of deception within or cloaking around the structure and the language.
It’s weird to have gone through college and gotten a Masters Degree in English, as I did, without having this basic information about the use of coded language in art and music. It’s weird to have slogged through pages of critical theory where all minutae of text is analyzed from every angle, without this ever having been overtly discussed. I imagine if I were to go back to these analytical texts I’d find the coded language in them as well – code language analysis of coded language texts with all these meanings and motifs being analyzed all the while the code itself is never overtly discussed. Trying to comprehend this – what appears to be a fundamental dishonesty in higher learning – is one of the many challenges I’ve faced in recent years. At first I thought that this was the most radical thing about the structure around us – the near complete co-opting of language and it’s deep integration into western art and culture. Now I see that there are bigger issues, like global genocide.
As for the language issue, I eventually concluded that the symbolic coded language must have become ever more deeply engrained because of the nature of the situation. It’s not something that must be the way it is – it’s something that is the way it is because it serves a function. Part of the function is entertainment, but much of the function is secrecy, cover up, or exposure – but coded exposure. Usually a planned (or in progress) crime is exposed too late for it to be stopped.
To a large extent the code is the way it is because of what amounts to violent suppression of free speech and expression, and rewards offered for participation in and cover up of crime. Artists have information about crimes they are not able to share. If they did share this information, nothing would be done to prevent the crime, and the artist might endanger him or herself. This suppression of free speech and the associated patterns of crime should be of great concern.
Matches: Tom Peterson watch, Cobain’s suicide shirt
The man’s face on Cobain’s watch, and on Ivan French’s banner above, is Tom Peterson.
Something I notice now, every time I see this image from Cobain’s suicide, is that when Chris was sent home from the hospital in January 2021, after his terminal cancer diagnosis, he arrived wearing a hospital gown with a pattern very similar to Cobain’s suicide shirt. On August 1, 2021, about three months after Chris died I was having such a terrible time with pain in the teeth to either side of the tooth 14 extraction site, I went to an emergency dentist. As I was walking to the dentist’s office from the bus stop, I saw a hospital gown with a pattern identical to the gown Chris had been wearing thrown into a pile of dirt near a highway overpass, along with a bunch of trash including food containers, masks, syringes, and a ripped up copy of Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book”
August 1, 2021
Compare to this image from Peter Gabriel’s 1987 music video for Big Time
See also: Matches: Live Through This (Sept 7 2022)
and A momentary reflection on the narrative and my research to date (Sept 7 2022)