Oregonian article – Nov 20, 1981 – Area bands release works on small labels
Tag: Napalm Beach
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.
Matches: Untouchables 1980 and Nirvana 1993
This is one of the many posters advertising for a show Chris would play that was secretly making Chris the butt of the joke (and of course later, when it was Boo Frog, we were both the butt of the joke. You can decide for yourself whether the Nirvana poster deliberately evokes it. Bound, endangered women were kind of a staple of 1980s punk rock posters. In this case she looks like a 1940s movie star… kind of like Francis Farmer.
What’s in a name?
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 Lockheed in San Jose, and I think that’s significant for a number of reasons. For one thing, that particular Lockheed facility is closely linked to Stanford University. Both my parents have their PhD’s from Stanford. Research at Stanford’s SRI is linked to wireless weapons (Russell Targ was a laser physicist as well as a magician), and Lockheed manufactures directed energy weapons. (Targ went from SRI to Lockheed.)
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.
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.
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.
Matchbox: U-Men and Napalm Beach
The U-Men cover is from the Dig It A Hole single released in 1987. The Napalm beach cover is from their album, Liquid Love, the first album they put out with Jan Celt at Flying Heart records, in 1988. Artist/writer Joe Sacco made the Liquid Love cover. I doubt that Chris, who wasn’t a record collector, had any idea of the similarity between the two album covers.
There is a whole thing with Flying Heart and album art, and contracts in general. It’s a lot of theft and fraud. There was an earlier album cover that Chris did not approve and asked (in my presence) to be destroyed, but it seems that around the time Chris got sick, Celt started to distribute that version of the record. That version has a bunch of unflattering photos of the band, with flames drawn on them in red. The symbolism seems like it should be obvious.
With regards to these two album covers, there’s likely another reference going on, and it has to do with Seattle’s Bumbershoot festival, 1985. By 1985 Napalm Beach was a mature band, trying to get somewhere. They had recorded Rock and Roll Hell with Greg Sage in 1983 and released it on cassette, and in 1985 they self-recorded Pugsley, also releasing it on cassette, and also recorded their self-titled album, which would later be called Teen Dream and self-released on vinyl.
Both Napalm Beach an U-Men played Bumbershoot in 1985.
There’s a lot of strategy employed to bury Chris’ music and his intent. U-Men seem to have achieved this at Bumbershoot 1985 by pouring lighter fluid into a water feature and lighting the whole thing on fire. I’m guessing if you read about Bumbershoot 1985 in any “grunge” book, this is what you’ll hear about, and this is what you’ll remember. “They lit the moat on fire.” It’s not about the music, it’s about the flames. It is a mind control tactic – control of focus – the “cool kids” tell you where to focus, and who (and what) to pay attention to, and who and what to ignore.
