The Vogue – 1980s Seattle

The Belltown dance-club scene got kick-started in 1977 with the founding of a gay bar called Tugs Belltown at 2207 1st Avenue. It featured a big dance floor, lots of fresh punk and New Wave music, and the occasional live band. Down the street another gay venue, Johnny’s Handlebar, followed Tugs’ lead in 1979 when it reemerged as Wrex, a video dance club that spun alternative and punk records. In 1980 Wrex booked the first of what would be countless live bands — Delta 5, Joan Jett, X, Grace Jones, Hüsker Dü, and Romeo Void all played here. In 1982 Wrex was shuttered and The Vogue opened in its place. Many of the best local bands performed at The Vogue, including Mudhoney and Alice in Chains, and it was the venue for Nirvana’s first well-attended Seattle show, on April 24, 1988.

https://historylink.tours/stop/wrex-vogue/

Visible Targets at Wrex advertisement
Visible Targets at Wrex 1981

I have not been able to figure out what a “video dance club” is. There are a few clubs that have media systems nowadays – for example, Dante’s in Portland gets crowded and has a television system so you can see the band from different corners of the club. And then there’s The Voyeur in Olympia, which apparently makes videos (or at least potentially makes videos, or it did make videos) of any/every band that plays there. Not sure what happens to those videos, because I’ve never seen them appear anywhere online. Evergreen State College in general is media-oriented (as is Portland Community College) and this is a whole bag of worms – because I am by now basically certain that both of these colleges are links between the CIA and the larger entertainment industry, and to this end, a ton of funding is coming in to these places from various sources to literally do surveillance based sex trafficking and brutal mind control forced-cult activities like the ones that led me to file a Title IX complaint in 2017. A complaint that I believe was shut down by Seattle-linked financial sources.

But I digress.

I don’t know what a video dance club. The photo I have of Snow Bud playing at Vogue shows a television set behind them and – is it a screen? with a white pyramid shape above it.

Snow Bud at the Vogue

In Portland the Met (located where Dante’s is now) until 1982, and in Seattle the Wrex until 82 and then the Vogue all seem to have been gay clubs that also attracted the “new wave” or “new music” crowd. The characters from the Vogue who reappeared in Chris’ life in some way after he met me include Claudia Gherkin, the booking agent, and secondarily Dennis White who had been a bartender at both Wrex and Vogue. Chris mentioned to me that White used to tend bar dressed like a woman, whereas Claudia sometimes uses a male name (Claude), at least online.

The Vogue seems to have been an important stepping stone for the bands that would be signed to Sub Pop. Going from the premise that grunge was a manufactured phenomenon largely based on imitating and then burying Chris Newman, and the whole process set up years ahead, it’s worth asking why the name Vogue (or even the name Wrex) was chosen. Wrex has a number of connotations, but one of the things it is are call letters of a TV station in Illinois – WREX channel 13, established 1953 (which was also the year Chris was born). UHF frequencies are used in mind control and to cause cancer via piezo electrical biomedical implants.

I stared into a belly through the eyes of a beast
Made a toast to life and commence the feast
We chewed up mints and creams till our mouths were oozing full
Devoured mounds of meat, sucking marrow from the bone
Washed it down with wine, vintage 1953
Leaned back in our chairs, sucked our gums and picked our teeth

Mudhoney – Final Course 2013
John Sex at Vogue - Seattle Rocket cover
From NYC – John Sex at Vogue (get it?) – Seattle Rocket 1987

A reason why I wonder about the name Vogue is because it’s the name of a premier – maybe the premier – fashion magazine, and grunge was not just music, it became fashion as well. David Bowie, Fashion is a 1980 song that seems in some ways to link the concept of fashion with fascism (goon squad, robotic dancing, etc) and may be related. The “Derelict” fashion show section of the 2000 movie Zoolander is an obvious satire of the concept of grunge fashion. The movie also brings out references to mind control black sites (“You have been in a day spa for a week”) and Manchurian candidate style assassinations. Just because a movie is fiction doesn’t make all parts of it untrue. There was literally a grunge-era Seattle band called The Derelicts, and yes they played at the Vogue and seem to have been close to Mudhoney.

The obvious reference to Vogue Seattle, once you begin to understand what it was, is Madonna’s Vogue (1990) “strike a pose.” In that song she names off a list of classic Hollywood movie stars.

Bowie also lists stars in his 2013 song about entertainment industry linked surveillance The Stars Are Out Tonight (with various meanings for “star” as star-like drones are part of this surveillance and attack network).

One of the things I figured out in 2015 when I was experiencing so much sexual and other harassment at Portland Community College was that there are cameras in bathrooms and dressing rooms all over Portland, and I now know, in Seattle clubs as well. Also, there are hidden cameras broadcasting from doctors exam rooms. The main location of these video surveillance devices seems to be fire sprinklers, so obviously, fire departments are part of the cover up. Also, it’s against the law to cover up a fire sprinkler. All of this footage – photos or video – collected from this hidden camera system seems to be distributed or trafficked to wealthy people (including celebrities and all in that orbit) worldwide. My understanding is this global surveillance, trafficking, and attack system is run by the CIA and FBI.

There are a few reasons why I know for sure that this hidden camera network exists and is being used widely, and the main reason is because things were done deliberately over and over to let me know about it – either via covert communications with me in real time or by mirroring something back through media. For example, something was said or something that happened in a doctor’s exam room when it was just me and the doctor – shows up on a TV show or movie (or several TV shows and movies) or in music videos. Alternative, there have been a lot of real-time coded communications coming from outside the exam rooms, restrooms, and dressing rooms in the form of timed or responsive bumps and thumps on walls and ceilings. (I can still remember several specific examples.) This is why calling me delusional is such an important defense mechanism for those covering this up.

Bowie – Heroes – 1977
Madonna – Vogue – 1990
Visible Targets at the Wrex 1982

What was BUNDY CREATURE?

As I’ve mentioned earlier Bundy Creature was, according to Vogue booking agent Claudia Gherke (aka Mardi Claw, Claude Lemon, etc), a special band put together to celebrate her birthday. There’s a poster online for her 27th birthday on 25 August 1987 at The Vogue, where Napalm Beach headlined, and the 3bands3bucks website shows that Bundy Creature played again (at Squid Row) on Claudia’s 28th birthday in 1988 this time with Snow Bud and Girl Trouble. Those are the only times, so far, I see Bundy Creature appearing on a show listing. However, somewhere in the collection of flyers I’ve downloaded over the past week, on a flyer for one of Chris’ bands, Bundy Creature is listed, but in a way that makes it seem like they’re a booking agent or promoter – something like “Bundy Creature presents.” (If/when I find the flyer I’ll post it here.)

I also mentioned earlier that Bundy creature must have been a reference to serial killer Ted Bundy, but I realize now that Married With Children was on television by early 1987, featuring the anti-hero protagonist shoe salesman Ted Bundy. Meaning the Bundy creature may be a reference to serial killing AND shoe selling.

A question I have is did Bundy Creature ever show up on a bill that did not also involve one of Chris’ bands?

I continue to be a bit fascinated by who in Bundy Creature Claudia chose to name – Jack Endino and Tad Doyle – and who she decided to leave mysterious – “very now famous members of soundgarden… some mudhoney”

It would actually be really easy for me to ask someone who knows who was in this band I guess but I’m not in the mood to put people on the spot right now.

The reason why I’m a bit focused on Bundy Creature is the timing of this August 25, 1987 birthday show with regards to the beginning of the Sub Pop Sundays showcase.

Claudia Facebook post on Aug 25, 1987
Claudia Facebook post on Aug 25, 1987

Elliott Smith’s suicide note

When Elliott Smith died in 2003, Chris was homeless in San Francisco. I believe there are a lot of lies (a script) around Elliott Smith. I believe that like Chris, he was brought down for money, and likely because he wasn’t on board with the “let’s all pile on” mentality of cruelty and scapegoating.

Elliott Smith’s story is carefully curated, with the oh-so-predictable cautionary “don’t do drugs” message woven through – even though he didn’t have illegal drugs or alcohol in his system when he died.

I do not think any photos of Elliott Smith’s suicide note on a post-it have ever been produced.

Did he, or did he not drop that last T off of his name? Because if he did leave off that last T, I think the note could be interpreted as an apology to Chris. And I wish Chris had known.

Chris made this poster

poster for Tabasco Tim's acoustic showcase with Elliott Smith, Chris Newman, Sean Crogan, Birddog, Jerry Ann + special guests

See also Blue Gallery, Elliott Smith, Sean Croghan

Belmont Avenue, Portland - sign on telephone pole reading "I heart metal"
SE Belmont Ave, Portland
April 7, 2022

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.

Blue Gallery, Elliott Smith, Sean Croghan

Blue Gallery

June 10, 1989

From Chris’ memoirs – Napalm Beach played Blue Gallery a couple of times. The club felt competetive with Satyricon. Blue Gallery owner Tim Brooks was the local champion for the sub-underground snobbery embraced today by the Olympia K records scene. It was his job to dismiss bands like the Jackals and Napalm Beach as worthless bar bands berift of art and unworthy of consideration. Brooks felt like his little bar was the true music mecca. He claimed the Satyricon was over run with ripped blue jeaned blues based junky bands. Sean Crogan of Crackerbash was Tim Brook’s friend and shared his sentiments. Croghan also played and promoted the X-Ray cafe, an all ages downtown venue run by his highschool pal Tres Shannon now of Voodoo Doughnuts fame.

Note: Blue Gallery was circa 1988-1992
Tim Brooks died of lung cancer in 2004 at age 48

poster for Tabasco Tim's acoustic showcase with Elliott Smith, Chris Newman, Sean Crogan, Birddog, Jerry Ann + special guests
July 5, 1995

Elliott Smith and Sean Croghan

I was playing an acoustic showcase with Elliot Smith and Sean Croghan at the Egyptian club (July 5, 1995). Croghan insisted he and Smith play first to the small crowd. I was on fire and excited to play with Elliot (sic) there. Before I could play my first chord, I saw Croghan pull Elliot out the door, sending me the message that I wasn’t worth listening to.

I have enemies in my little town of Portland, but the real problem fuckers are in neighboring Seattle and Olympia. If they continue to have their way, I will stay written out of the Northwest history of Rock n Roll Music!

I know the competition is based around the fact that I outshine most mediocre artists. I have put years of work into my passion. These days the DIY culture encourage the young to get out there and do it.

I hear some great stuff now and then. I do believe there are things more important than musicianship in this craft. You have to retain a sense of humor and to trust your gut feeling on everything. That is God’s voice speaking to you, I believe.

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.