Tag: 1980s

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.

March 1989

Bullet with Butterfly Wings / Black Hole Sun

March 1989
18 March 1989 journal entry
compare to lyrics / video for Smashing Pumpkins 1995 “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”
18 March 1989
March 1989 journal entry, drawing of a black sun

In the previous entry, I wrote about some of the set ups that were going on in 1989 and I showed a journal entry about a dream from March 13, 1989. I said that I thought these two entries seemed to link to two songs that came out in the 1990s: Bullet With Butterfly Wings by Smashing Pumpkins (October 16, 1995); and Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden (May 13, 1994)

So both of these songs came out shortly after the death of Kurt Cobain, and shortly before Chris Newman ended up living on the streets.

The songs are, I believe, about the desire for truth to be squashed by lies. Specifically, it’s about enacting a strategy of slander, and violent acts to “fix” or get away with other crimes linked to finance and violence, including sex trafficking, nonconsensual human subjects research, murder.

Because Chris and I represent the place of the sun, Black Hole Sun must be specifically about turning the sun into a hole, imagery used to indicate murder. (Often it sounds like the actual lyric is “black old sun.”)

The strategy is to create a false profile via a series of set ups, cover ups, lies, and piles of libelous paperwork inaccessible to us. Some of the paperwork I have been able to access, and that would be the falsified, colorized, and libelous medical records. This is used as justification for covert biomedical torture and murder by the FBI and CIA. This is why there are clusters of premature deaths of certain types in certain communities.

The reason people are dying is because the US government is allowing the FBI and CIA to finance and conduct this activity.

smoke covered sun
2 Sept 2022 Portland, Oregon

Sub Pop, Honeytraps, Minneapolis

Got a uncle name George
Horny motherfucker always down to orge
Freaky motherfucker wanna Georgie Porg’
Treat a big booty like a smorgasbord
Freaks on the floor, freaks on the floor
How many of y’all freaks on the low?
Freaks on the floor, freaks on the floor
How many of y’all freaks on the low?

Ice Cube, New Funkadelic (Everythang’s Corrupt 2018)

Something that is increasingly clear is that a number of people linked to the Sub Pop orbit have been directly involved in obtaining and distributing surveillance footage of a pornographic nature of me, Chris, and my daughter, including when my daughter was a child.

It’s also increasingly clear that Sub Pop’s plans for world domination were well underway by the mid-1980s, and that, true to their name, they included a lot of underground shenanigans. The name Sub Pop evolved from Subterranean Pop. While both “Sub” and “Pop” could have a number of meanings, one meaning of “pop” is a father (dad). So one translation of Sub Pop may be “underground dad.” I believe that “dad” is code for FBI and CIA. (This might help explain “infrared riding hood” Tad?)

Finally, it is clear that ex-honeytrap Mike may be a linking person between my daughter’s family in northwestern California and Sub Pop. It is important to remember that when Mike and I started going out in July 1984 I was barely 16 and he was 21.

So if we rewind back to 1988, that is the year a lot of pieces were falling into place for Sub Pop. Meanwhile, in my world, Mike was in Thailand in February 1988, I think doing deals for a silver jewelry importer he worked for at the time, called Tomás Jewelry. Then Mike returned to the US, and flew to Minnesota where he lived with me. We lived in the St Paul Midway district between June and November 1988 when Mike announced that he was tired of Minnesota and didn’t want to deal with winter, so he would go back to California. I was in college and couldn’t really follow him. We had already had a long distance relationship in the past so it didn’t seem that weird to me to revert back to that.

But something else happened that summer. That was the summer my friend and neighbor, Bret Ellis Bowman was hit by a car. That happened on June 27, 1988. For a number of reasons I believe that situation is also somehow linked to the origin of Sub Pop, something that I expect will come up again.

What I didn’t know is that when Mike Payne left Minneapolis/St Paul in November 1988, is I was about to become the target of a series of set ups involving more honey traps (multiple honey traps it looks like now), and LSD.

The LSD seems to have been connected to San Francisco, and may have even been connected to Courtney Love, or to Courtney Love and Mike Payne. This reminds me also, there are two SF Bay Area linked Mikes in this – Mike Payne and Mike Patton – but as far as I know, Mike Patton wasn’t anywhere around Minneapolis.

Anyway, apparently Courtney Love was in Minneapolis about this time, and that fact seems to be something that was pretty well covered up until recently – specifically, exactly when Courtney Love was in Minneapolis used to be obscured, but it now appears it was 1988.

Another thing about this is Courtney Love, when she was in Minneapolis, was apparently a pal of a person I considered my best friend at the time, Erika Schlaeger. That makes Erika Schlaeger a potential linking person between Mike Payne and Courtney Love, as she knew both of them. In fact, Mike, who had been studying jewelry and metal smithing, had made a silver ring with an onyx stone, square shaped or cabachon style, that in 1988 Erika had purchased from him for $80 – that looked similar to a ring worn by Kurt Cobain in the March 1994 photo session with Youri Lenquette.

So Courtney and Erika were pals, according to Erika, but I never met Courtney.

According to my memory, journals, etc the post 1988 set ups sort of went in this order:

  1. Honeytrap Andrew Lopas “street poet from Los Angeles” – March 1989 set up – The set up with Andrew Lopas I now realize appeared in rather precise detail in dreams going back to early 1988 – in those dreams he was described as being a combination of “Pete Townshend” and a few other people. This is I think because part of his job was to put down my musical ability and psychologically smash my guitar. Erika S introduced me to Andrew L.
  2. Encountering Owsley “Sunshine” blotter-style LSD at a party. The party was held by a girl who knew Andrew Lopas. I remember at this party she was dressed all in metallic silver. Like, wearing a metallic silver dress. Erika introduced me to the guy with the LSD. Before it happened, I had a dream about eating “bubblegum LSD” and asking if it was “diluted” (word play, I think – diluted/deluded – hinting at this plan to frame me as delusional).
  3. Teenage honeytrap “George.” This seems like something I need to address again?

When my relationship with Mike fell apart I went into a spiral of sorts. Conveniently, I had also just turned 21, so I drank a lot and had a couple of gross sexual encounters. They were with guys my age. I also had platonic guy friends who were drinking buddies, including a guy who shows up in my journals as Paul Stein (I guess it’s his real name). On March 13, 1989 – exactly 20 years before I got together with Chris – I recorded a dream.

 13 March 1989 dream page 1

There is a lot going on in this dream. Plus the dream symbols from this time usually seem to have about three different meanings. I’m talking about dreaming in code, not symbols. The looping snake drawing after the dream was just something I did because I was into things like yin/yang and Carl Jung and stuff. Looking at it now, I suppose people who were all up in my business (reading my journals) made it into something sexual, and something racial.

I don’t remember the man from Africa I mention meeting (in real life). The part about the car door among other things is a link to how my future daughter’s paternal grandmother died in 1968 – the story was that she fell out of a moving car, because she leaned up against a door. But this is probably also about all the set ups and planned defamation and the idea of us trying to get out of a trap and people linked to cars (finance) using these stories to try and get us killed by the FBI/CIA – who are the ones who instigated the set ups to begin with.

Regarding “ripped jeans” – I now think anything with the word “rip” is a coded death reference, and I think others know the meaning of jeans better than I – it’s about financing someone, linked to the color blue – so that suggests reporting stories to the FBI for money, and probably specifically manufacturing untrue stories for dirty money. It’s deliberately deadly, illegal, and treated as a game.

I say that in the dream, I had forgotten my fake ID. I had this dream just before my 21st birthday. I had an older girl’s ID that I sometimes used to get into bars. But Chris’ early 1980s band the Untouchables had a song called Fake I.D. (I don’t think I’ve ever heard it) and the idea of Chris being evoked in this dream is really interesting because he had once said that Tim Brook’s of the Blue Gallery put the Satyricon “ripped jeans” crowd down – and they also started calling Chris’ bands “bar bands” as an insult.

The man I’m flirting with in this dream is an adult, probably older than me.

A couple pages later, there’s an entry that looks like it’s the inspiration for Smashing Pumpkins song “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” and 3-4 pages after that is an entry that looks like an inspiration for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.” (I’ll post these later.)

During this period of time, my friend Erika Schlaeger was sometimes hanging around with a fifteen year old black boy who I call George in my journals. I don’t remember if that’s his real name. It’s probably made up. By this time I was living with a roommate in Dinkeytown, Minneapolis. There was a neighborhood coffee shop called Gioccos where we would hang out, drinking coffee. That’s where I would see Erika with George. It seems like he was homeless, couch surfing. Maybe she was letting him stay with her.

So he was 15 and I was 20 when I met him, I think, and mostly I just saw him with Erika at Giocco’s. The last time I saw him is the time I wrote about in my journal, when I was 21. From the very beginning, George was overtly flirtatious with me, acting like he was in love with me and wanted to be my boyfriend. I never took it seriously. To me he was a boy (not a grown man).

One day I ran into him at Giocco’s and then we took a walk to the river, and I wrote about it in my journal, as far as I can remember, pretty much exactly like it happened. It was nothing sexual. He kissed me on the cheek and that was the last time I saw him.

It sounds like the way the journal entries stack up, that the black man in the dream from 3/13/1988 was supposed to link to George. Based on some of the references in that dream, it appears that there may be some kind of link between “George” and Sub Pop. With all of his scars, George bore the signs of a “butterfly” – a person who’s trauma is leveraged and weaponized, covertly, via techniques in use by FBI and CIA. The dream that seems to link to George has references that I would now call “smashing guitar” references, which have to do with ways that people tried to sabotage Chris’ and my ability to play music, including by trying to break our spirits. That’s part of the “ripped jeans” reference. There are things about the way this stacks up, also, that suggest links between George and Andrew Lopas – the idea of a person who is a combination of other entities. Andrew Lopas, George, and Courtney Love were all linked to Erika Schlaeger. Erika also knew Kat Bjelland and all the girls in Babes In Toyland. So that means that Erika Schlaeger knew at least two people who had been friends of Chris in Portland – Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland.

With regards to the song references (I’ll put those journals in a subsequent entry) – Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden and Bullet With Butterfly Wings by Smashing Pumpkins – it looks like a reference to Courtney Love (Hole) and maybe that Sunshine LSD. And there’s the word “black” and the word “pain” which I think, at least in this time period, is always a play on Payne. Chris had a heroin dealer named Scotty Payne, who died, I don’t know how, around 2017. A question I have is how does Smashing Pumpkins show up in this part of the tapestry. In fact, a question I have is how and when did Courtney Love meet Billy Corgan? I guess Smashing Pumpkins are from Chicago and there is a lot of interchange between Chicago and Minneapolis so it might have been that.

Satyricon 1984

Going through images I just found these screenshots I made from viewing a post shared through Chris’ Facebook account back in March of 2019. The original post was made on January 28, 2018. Courtney Love has had a habit of popping into Satyricon related Facebook accounts, leaving a couple comments, then disappearing for a few more years. In this case, she comments about Napalm Beach letting her “sleep on their couch” with what looks like maybe an implied comment to Chuck Arjavac. Reading that, Chris commented to me that actually she lived in the band house and had her own room (1981). I don’t know if I’m reading too much into this but elsewhere I’ve read there was someone in the 1980s Portland punk scene named Eric Couch.

I count three people in this thread who were fine when it was posted and have since died of cancer: Matt Loomis, Chris Newman, Sam Henry.

Special Bands: Agent 86, Black Flag

There are certain bands with a devoted following who put hours into researching and documenting their every move. All it really takes is one dedicated researcher, like whoever runs the Mudhoney tourbook

Black Flag shows are cataloged here https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Flag

Agent 86 (basically Mike Briggs and whoever else) is still flying under the radar as an obscure regional punk act, but I’m starting to see more of their flyers and show dates appear online. I actually was a bit surprised at first to find out that Agent 86 played outside of the Humboldt/San Francisco circuit. I had assumed they were like most 1980s Humboldt bands, playing a few house parties, vets halls, maybe opening locally for a couple of regional hardcore bands, and then disappearing into the night.

Agent 86 seems to be a finance gruber. A strong position is achieved, apparently, by a person who manages to even have a casual connection to Chris or to me. This helps explain some of the unusual meetings in Chris’ life and in my life where people appear briefly, then disappear, but continue to wield influence behind the scenes. At some point I was in the same room with Mike Briggs. I may have spoken to him, or not, I don’t know. I think I’ve seen his band play. I remember him as blonde and older.

This is part of the pattern that happened with Sub Pop later in the 1980s. Bands that would one day become grunge superstars all seemed to have some personal contact with Chris between 1985 and 1988. This includes Kurt Cobain who Chris did not share a bill with, but spoke with, briefly, back stage at Satyricon in 1988.

With regards to Black Flag, I started noticing some weird things about their early 1980s shows. One thing I tried to figure out is if Chris had played on a bill with them, and how many times. Chris (who’s memory is good) thought they played together once or twice, but he also said their styles were really different and he wouldn’t expect to be put on bills with a band like Black Flag. And it does look like they played together at least once, but I’m not sure because there are two different flyers saying two different things. And now I’m going to have to get into this whole thing where I have to admit to myself that there was a really nasty thread of racism and sexism running through 1980s hardcore punk that I was in denial about, at least at first.

According to the Black Flag concerts wiki, their first show in Portland was April 21, 1980 at the Long Goodbye. I don’t know when the Untouchable’s first show in Portland was, but I do know it was in 1980, and I know that they played the Long Goodbye the following month, on May 18, 1980. The website shows Black Flag playing four shows in Portland in 1980 alone.

Napalm Beach may have played with Black Flag at the Met in Portland on June 30, 1982, but maybe not. There are several flyers for this show, all showing Poison Idea on the bill, but only one of them showing Napalm Beach. It seems like it’s swapped in some posters with Nig-Heist. I am including this detail because I suspect the racist band name may have inspired another band name that would appear later, linked to Wipers, to Sub Pop, and to Elliott Smith: Crackerbash.

Another screenshot I have from another website – I’m not sure which – shows Black Flag and Napalm Beach both opening for Bad Brains on December 10, 1982, again at the Met.

Bad Brains, Black Flag, Napalm Beach flyer for the Met
Bad Brains, Black Flag, Napalm Beach at the Met Oct 12, 1982

I can only find a record of Black Flag playing once in Humboldt County, in Arcata at all ages club Mojos May 29, 1983. This is in contrast to X who played in Humboldt quite a bit (though the documentation of this so far isn’t great). It looks like there was a scheduled concert for May 3, 1984 at Mojos with Black Flag opening for Meat Puppets that was cancelled. Some sources indicate Meat Puppets played but Black Flag didn’t.

When I ran across this information online back in December 2020 – specifically the information about Black Flag playing an all ages show in Arcata May 1983 – it sort of threw everything I knew or understood about my high school days into question. How is it that there was a Black Flag show in Arcata in 1983 that I didn’t know about? I am really not sure because I think it was that same month – May 1983 – I went to my first “grown up” concert, which was Jefferson Starship at Redwood Bowl, outdoors at Humboldt State University. I say grown up because I guess my parents dragged me to a hippie concert or two when I was a baby. I saw X at Mojo’s the following fall, and somewhere between 1982 and 1983 it seems like I saw a number of all ages shows – or maybe it wasn’t that many – at the Arcata Vet’s Hall and the Bayside Grange.

But now it looks like there were a number of punk shows at Mojos in 1983, including T.S.O.L (February 15), and Dead Kennedys (April 27). Were these shows deliberately being kept from me? I suspect they may have been, especially the Black Flag show. I just feel like I would have known if Black Flag were playing, and if things were normal. I would have seen it in a zine (why did I only see one or two copies of Counterpeace? I know more must have come out) or my friends would have said something.

Maybe the flyer offers a clue.

1983 Black Flag at Mojos flyer
1983 Black Flag at Mojos flyer

Untouchables / Napalm Beach shows in Seattle 1980-83

This is a distillation of some of the information recently published on a blog called Three Bands, Three Bucks: Seattle Clubs That Rocked 1980-95

Although it seems to be an ongoing project and not an exhaustive list, one thing I noticed is a drop off in frequency of Napalm Beach being booked in Seattle after 1989. Eric Danielson has also indicated that Napalm Beach, at least to him, seemed to “disappear” after their first European tour in November 1989. Although I’ve been critical of Danielson’s fact checking, this was a personal experience observation.

I now suspect that the disappearing was by design.

Information on the website also confirms what Chris had told me back in 2010 when he talked about his history playing in the northwest – that most small and mid-sized rock clubs seemed to close down in 1982. This happened in Seattle and Portland simultaneously. That is when Chris moved briefly to the San Francisco Bay Area, which is where he met Valarie, whom he would later marry. It is also where he was introduced to heroin. For various reasons I suspect all of that too, was by design.

When the Satyricon got running in 1983, 84 – Chris moved back to Portland. For many years Napalm Beach would headline at Satyricon at least twice a month, once with Snow Bud and once with Napalm Beach. Napalm Beach and Snow Bud also played many other clubs in Portland and Seattle, and occasionally elsewhere.

Untouchables started playing around Portland and Seattle in 1980. They changed their name to Napalm Beach in August 1981. Untouchables/Napalm Beach shows in Seattle before 1983 included

The Wrex (1980-82)

1981

March 21 – Untouchables
May 8-9 – Untouchables, X-15, Tiny HolesJuly 15 – Untouchables
July 17 – Untouchables, Crisis, Spectators
July 18 – Untouchables, Spectators
August 5-6 – Untouchables
August 9 – Untouchables, Executives
October 8-10 – Napalm Beach, Grey Matter
October 31 – Napalm Beach, Visible Targets, Sleeping Movement
November 14 – X, Napalm Beach
December 11 – Napalm Beach
December 12 – Napalm Beach, Visible Targets

1982

February 5 – The Untouchables
February 19 – The Fleshtones, Napalm Beach

The Wrex closed in March 1982, re-opening in January 1983 as The Vogue. The last published show was on February 20 and it was The Fleshtones with Blackouts.

The Showbox

1981

May 30 – Rescue The Rock Of The ’80s Spring Collection w/Untouchables, RPA, Nouveau Cliche
August 30 – Save The Gorilla Room Benefit w/The Enemy, Napalm Beach, Student Nurse, Spectators, Rapid-I, the Executives, DT’s, the Deans, Scizzors, Shatterbox, Fastbacks, the Rats, Joe Despair & the Future

Gorilla Room calendar July 1981
Gorilla Room calendar July 1981

1982

May 9 – KCMU Benefit – Visible Targets, Three Swimmers, Napalm Beach
September 26 – KCMU Benefit – The Cowboys, 54/40, Life In General, Napalm Beach, The Frazz, Pamona Boners
November 12 – Public Image Ltd., Napalm Beach

Gorilla Room (1980-81)

1980

December 12-13 – The Untouchables, Casey Nova

1981

February 27 – Red Dress, Untouchables
February 28 – The Enemy, Untouchables
April 28 – Cowboys, Untouchables
April 29 – Untouchables
April 30 – Untouchables, Skinny Ties
May 26 – The Cowboys, Untouchables
July 16 – Executives, Untouchables (this entry is missing from the website)
July 18 – Untouchables

With regards to the end of the Gorilla Room, the website states “On July 23rd, 1981, the PI noted that the Washington State Liquor Board ordered a month-long closure of the Gorilla Room due to numerous minor violations.” The club was given a number of sanctions and never re-opened.

August 1981 is when Untouchables changed their name to Napalm Beach. My 2013 version of story (relayed from Chris) was: “Napalm Beach closed down the Gorilla Room. The place was packed and everything and everyone was sloshing under a layer of beer. They partied until they passed out onstage. That was the end of the Gorilla Room.”

It sounds like the violations had to do with minors drinking on the premises. My notes state that “Underage patrons found onsite included Duff McKagan and Chuck Biscuits.”

Baby O’s (1980-82)

1981

August 7-8 – Untouchables
September 2-5 – Untouchables

1982

May 14-15 – No Cheese Please, Napalm Beach
June 18-19 – Hi-Fi, Napalm Beach

Golden Crown (1979-83)

1982

June 12 – Visible Targets, Napalm Beach
July 16 – Beat Pagodas, Napalm Beach
July 30-31 – 54/40, Napalm Beach
August 20-21 – Toiling Midgets, Napalm Beach
September 17-18 – Napalm Beach, Life In General, Rally Go
November 26 – Napalm Beach, Student Nurse, LeMax
December 17 – Napalm Beach, Next Exit

The site states “On February 19th, 1983, Golden Crown co-owner John Loui was killed along with 12 others in the infamous Wah Mee Massacre. Loui had sold his interest in the club before his death, but it is unclear if his partners, The Woos, were still part of the ownership at this time.

To be continued.