During the Boo Frog era, when Chris and I were working round the clock trying to progress musically, playing show after show (I was constantly telling him, we can’t play more than twice a month in Portland, with the idea that we needed to space our shows out to keep the draw sufficient) – sending press kits and albums to record labels, trying again and again to book tours – I recall reading an article in one of the weeklies in which Chris was described as being a “fixture” in the local music scene and getting mad as heck. Of course, I had no clue at that time that Chris was a “fixture” by outside design.
In other words, Chris was not a “fixture” in Portland in the same way that, say, Tobi Vail is a fixture in Olympia. Some people want to be fixtures. We did not.
Later, in an online discussion circa 2013, Chris’ influence on Seattle music of the 1990s was dismissed by someone saying he “wasn’t from Seattle.” In fact, that wasn’t exactly true, either and the ways that Chris’ was dismissed or diminished were almost always things that could have been said about a number of Seattle bands. In fact Chris’ connections to Seattle were deeper than many of the bands that had been associated with the “Seattle sound.” I now doubt that these comments were actually genuine – I’ve come to learn that there’s been so much cover up around Chris’ music and its links to “grunge” – and indeed, so much cover up around grunge in general – that storytellers don’t really seem to care so much about the truth as about how well (or at least how persistently) they pull off their cover stories. I however, care about the truth, and there may be some who don’t know the truth. So let me take a moment to give the low down on where Chris was from, exactly.
Stockton Evening and Sunday Record Stockton, California June 13, 1923
Chris was born in Longview, Washington, which is about 50 miles north of Portland. My research indicates that his family goes back 5 generations to this region. On his father’s side, his great great grandparents immigrated to Newburg, Oregon from Indiana. They were living in Yamhill County, just outside of Portland, by 1880. Interestingly, Chris’ father’s family line actually seems to have immigrated to North America from Wessex, England, in the early 1600s. They were Quakers and continued to be Quakers for about 300 years, before switching in the mid-20th century to a Pentecostal denomination, Assembly of God. I don’t recall as much about his mom’s side of the family but I do believe that she too, was born in Longview. That said, people didn’t always stay in Longview. Chris’ great great grandfather died in Salida, California. His obituary in the Stockton Evening and Sunday Records omits mention of his wife who had died nine years earlier and seems to leave out several of his children including Chris’ great grandfather, Lawson Henderson Newman.
The Newman family, by the way, lived in Newburg, Oregon. Chris’ great grandfather, Lawson, married in Illinois and then settled in Longview which is where Chris’ grandfather, Ogden Gould Newman, was born in 1906. They seem to have then moved to Portland, where they had a bakery (same as my maternal great grandparents in Minnesota, and during this same period of time, the 1920s) and then moved back to Washington. They lived in some interestingly named areas – like Rainbow (which was in Kelso) and Stella (just outside of Longview). Kelso and Longview are essentially the same “urban” area, but of course, in the early 1900s people didn’t travel the same way they do now. It is interesting that Chris’ first guitar was a Stella, giving to him in 1967 by his Aunt Sylvia. (According to Edmond S Meany’s 1923 Origin of Washington Geographic Names Stella, Washington – named after the postmaster’s daughter – was founded in 1880. The Stella guitar brand started in 1899.) So it is true that the Newman family has fairly deep roots in Longview, Washington (Cowlitz County) and in and around Portland, Oregon as well. But Chris’ father, Elton Harley Newman, worked for the Seattle-based Boeing company (again paralleling my Minnesota-born maternal grandmother – who was a Rosie Riveter at Seattle Boeing during the World War II – and who also worked in a sawmill in Newport, Oregon where my mother was born). Chris’ family seems to have lived in Seattle for much of Chris’ early elementary school period before Boeing transferred them to the Deep South – Mississippi and New Orleans – as his father was apparently part of a team working on the NASA space program. This was probably starting around 1963. When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, 1964, Chris was ten years old, watching from New Orleans.
The family moved back to Longview about the time Chris was beginning high school. The kids at the school taunted and ostracized Chris, and I’ve already told the story about the music gear theft catalyst (almost certainly a set up) that sent him to boarding school in Canyonville, Washington.
Later, between the mid 1970s and into the mid 1980s, Chris’ family lived for some time in San José, California, and Chris was also back and forth from San José.
But Chris didn’t just live in Seattle as a child, he played music in Seattle regularly, going back to 1980, often staying in town for a week or two and playing a series of dates per trip. It does appear that there were deliberate manipulations done around Chris to push and pull him in different ways. He was clearly not wanted in California, especially Los Angeles – a place that I now know, was exploiting him. In 1984, when Napalm Beach was living in San Francisco, it seems like they were hired to play, but only as openers. In contrast, beginning in 1984, Portland had essentially built a playground – a Potemkin village – an enticing trap – with Satyricon and other clubs of that type. It was during the latter half of the 1980s that Seattle seems to have moved away from booking Chris’ bands, while he was distracted by playing in Portland, touring in Europe, and increasingly drugs like cocaine, and then heroin.
Chris Newman and his hand-painted guitar 1987 – photo by Denis Jones
As part of an effort to preserve and when appropriate and possible, re-release Napalm Beach albums, I’ve been working on parsing out Napalm Beach’s history 1980-87. There seems to have been a number of turning points in Napalm Beach’s history that, the deeper you get into it, look more and more like pre-planned set ups, secretly spinning the band around like a blindfolded child trying to hit a birthday party piñata. These turning points seem to occur every three years or so (give or take) and often they seemed to involve processes that take about three years to work through. This kind of thing can actually be seen as a repeated motif throughout Chris’ life history, I’d say going back to 1964 and the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan. In fact, it would be an interesting experiment to tell Chris’ life story that way – as a series of three-year increments starting with February 1964.
For now, however, I want to explore something I noticed yesterday, while working on the history of Napalm Beach during the period of time they were most closely paired Greg Sage and the Wipers, as well as teenage Courtney Love. I’d been creating a zine-style document to use as an incentive for a fundraising effort, and within this zine, trying to summarize the history around what I consider to be Napalm Beach’s first four albums – Rock & Roll Hell (1984 cassette), Pugsley (1985 cassette), Teen Dream (1985 cassette 1986 LP), and Moving To And Fro (1986 cassette 1988 LP). In doing so, I’ve found myself regularly going back to the draft memoir Chris composed, mostly in 2010, for details. Gradually, things start to come into focus with regards to the clubs Napalm Beach played most frequently, and the band’s professional progress (and lack thereof).
I will say right now that I’ve started writing this blog with only a vague idea of where it’s going to end up. This is a thinking through of patterns and puzzle pieces that seem to fit together.
Portland Met (closed Jan 1, 1983) and Seattle Met (March 1983 – March 6, 1984)
I do not think it is an accident that there was a club in Portland called The Metropolis aka The Met which closed on New Years Day 1983 (Wipers and Napalm Beach having played the last show there together on New Years Eve 1982) – and a club in Seattle that opened under the same name (Metropolis/Met) four months later, then closed after almost exactly one year in March 1984. Nor do I think it’s an accident that the last show at the Seattle Met – a club that featured almost entirely local punk/alternative bands with some punk/alternative touring acts, almost always from the US* – was Alien Sex Fiend, a band from England. Nor do I think that it was an accident that the Seattle Met closed almost exactly the same time Satyricon started up in Portland. Nor do I think it was an accident that I was told by several people in the early 2000s that the “favorite song” on Satyricon juke box was Alien Sex Fiend “I Walk The Line” – a song I would describe as hypnotic, possibly trance-inducing.
Seattle Met was founded by Hughes Piottin, a French immigrant who had moved to Seattle (either from Alaska or after fishing in Alaska) in 1982. In a 2014 article, Countercultural Seattle Remembers: May 13, 1983: The Metropolis, Piottin (Loser 1996) and Bruce Pavitt (in an undated “later” Seattle Post-Intelligencer article) both describe the Settle Met in ways that to me, sounded a lot like how George Touhouliotis described Satyricon. In some ways, the Seattle Met sounds a bit like a combination between all ages community spaces and Satyricon.
Marti Wyman, Courtney Love, Ursula Wehr, Robin Barbur (Bradbury) – Satyricon, 1987
One of the things that Chris mentioned in describing the Portland club was that “Courtney Love and her friends Robin and Ursula were the femme fatales of the underage side of the Met.” If you look online, you may find photos of Courtney Love, Robin, and Ursula as early as the Met days, but having been researching this history off and on for a few years now, I’ve noticed these photos often tend to vanish or become difficult to find. I have a photo of the three of them, plus Venarays singer Marti Wyman, at a Napalm Beach show at Satyricon, in 1987, after Courtney had her film roles in Straight To Hell and Sid and Nancy, and probably wasn’t living in Portland.
I find it’s an interesting thing to think about, because the early 1980s was a period of time when it seems Courtney Love was just getting into music on all different levels – writing about music, playing music, becoming romantically involved with musicians – and it’s also a period of time that she was traveling a lot. In 1981, after a stint hanging out in Portland and house-sharing with Napalm Beach – she went to Ireland and the UK – apparently with her dad and Robin. And there are photos that occasionally surface online of Courtney, Robin, and Courtney’s father Hank Harrison at a 1981 photoshoot in San Francisco.
Robin and Chris Newman stayed in touch. Robin has always been friendly to us. Robin is one of the people whom Chris chose to sign as a witness on his will. When that time came, Robin arrived with a plywood cutout of a guitar, that I think she said came from Germany, that she asked Chris to sign.
I’m including this detail only because it suggests there might be a link between Robin Barbur and Germany. There definitely is an ongoing link between Robin and Courtney.
Cutouts, LSD, San Francisco, Minneapolis, New York, Berlin
One of the patterns that I see with Courtney Love is the whole time I have known Chris, she almost never has communicated with him directly – key word being almost. Every so often she would sneak in and make an exception to the rule – but never long enough to establish any kind of relationship or meaningful communication. Meanwhile, it seems like she has proxies everywhere. I doubt that Rozz Rezabek ever lost touch with Courtney Love. And there are things that suggest she’s had links to people I didn’t ever realized she’d really been linked to, like Monica Nelson.
The more I study this time period with Chris, also, the more I realize how important San Francisco and Los Angeles were.
With regards to Minneapolis, I’ve already seen that in 1988, while I was living in St Paul, Minnesota; Courtney Love was in Minneapolis and had contact with Erika Schlaeger, who was close to me. And I have detected a pattern of teenage honey trapping linked to Courtney and/or someone handling her. And I have noticed proximity links to LSD.
Now I’m noticing more things. I’m noticing lots of movement between San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle – with lots of different people. Maybe this isn’t so strange, or maybe there’s something special about San Francisco (and I will say I think there’s something special about San Francisco). San José, Oakland, San Francisco, Marin – are all part of the San Francisco Bay Area. People who seemed to travel frequently to San Francisco included Rozz Rezabek, Courtney Love, Chris Newman and his band mates Sam Henry and Dave Minick, and the guys in Mudhoney (who IIRC had a party pad across the street from Rozz’s) and Melvins (Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover circa 1988). Chris met Valarie through Sam in San Francisco, 1983, a few weeks after recording Rock & Roll Hell.
Back to Minneapolis – I started college in St Paul in late August 1987 – and I already knew Erika Schlaeger going back to 1985 (at that time Schlaeger had already been to Germany and I think England at least once) – so of course when I got to the Twin Cities, she’s one of the first people I contacted. I feel like, one of the first things she did was play me a cassette of Babes In Toyland – but maybe that didn’t happen until later. She talked about them like they were all friends of hers, and I guess she did know everyone in the band. And it’s interesting to speculate how Babes In Toyland got together, because I think that Kat Bjelland had moved to Minneapolis in 1987. Bjelland’s Portland band, The Venarays, seem to have been playing fairly frequently, mostly in Portland, at least at Satyricon, in 1986-87.
I can currently find very little history online about the Venarays, especially as far as dates are concerned. There is no existing Wikipedia page for Venarays. My recollection is there used to be a little more information online about this band, for example, who the other players were, when they started and ended, and any line up changes. Right now I’m finding most searches on the band lead to Kat Bjelland’s Wikipedia page, which I believe is informationally problematic. Did Kat Bjelland move to Minneapolis in 1985? If so, was she traveling back to Portland to play in the Venarays? It’s possible that she was no longer in the Venarays after 1985 – but I don’t think so.
I find it odd that it’s so difficult to find specific information about the Venarays – a band that actually wrote and performed songs – versus a “band” like Pagan Babies (and its previous/subsequent forms) which most of the time wasn’t a band that actually wrote and performed music.
It is possible that Erika Schlaeger, Kat Bjelland, and Courtney Love form a trio of links that extend out into different areas. Courtney Love travelled all over throughout the 1980s. Erika Schlaeger also often travelled to Europe and South America. Of course Bjelland and Love both travelled a lot in the 1990s, as they were both in successful touring bands. In 1988, when I was in St Paul/Minneapolis, and apparently Courtney Love was also traveling the same circles in Minneapolis, Erika Schlaeger travelled to places like New York, Chicago, Berlin. Berlin was her big destination spot at that time.
Chris Newman became linked to Berlin through a very small label called “Love’s Simple Dreams” aka LSD Records. He was put in touch with them through Henk Van Dreumel, a Düsseldorf-based German man who was working the door at Satyricon. Or at least, Chris understood Henk to be German – however his name is Dutch and Düsseldorf is very close to the border with The Netherlands. Henke’s girlfriend at the time was named Heike and I believe she went on to be an international booking agent. I do recall Mark Lanegan having known her. It was Henk and/or Heike who set Chris up with this Berlin label “LSD.” Henk then went on to form his own small label out of Düsseldorf which he ultimately called Satyricon Records. A test pressing of Napalm Beach’s LP Moving To And Fro, was sent to Chris, via Satyricon, with Henk Van Dreumel’s Düsseldorf return address under the name “Positive Sinking Records.”
The Berlin-based Loves Simple Dreams record label, according to Chris’ memoir was run by the owner of the Ecstasy club. Here is what Chris wrote about that club:
The Ecstasy club was a huge building. It housed apartments on top, four bars, and at the least five stages. It was run by Thomas and his beautiful wife Petra. We were extremely excited about playing there. The aprtments were covered in entertaining graffitti. Bands from everywhere had witty scrawlings, and drawings. I had to contribute. I saw a message from Mudhoney. It was a syringe dripping blood, and it said,’Hello Napalm Beach.’
This would most likely have been November 1989. Mudhoney had played the Ecstasy on April 1, 1989, and they had also played there on October 10, 1988. Of the 1988 show, Mudhoney tour book notes “This festival (Berlin Independence Days Music Festival) was sponsored by the former government of East Germany, which also featured a performance by French band, Les Thugs.” This show stands out for a number of reasons. First – the bizarre mention of the “former government of East Germany.” What does that even mean? The fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t happen until the following year, November 1989 (a month when Tad, Nirvana, and Napalm Beach were all first touring Europe, and playing Berlin) and East Germany was still a nation until October 1990. Another strange thing about this show, is it appear to be the only show Mudhoney played in Europe in 1988. Mudhoney had actually only existed as a band since April 1988, Green River having officially broken up in October 1987, and it appears to me that the 10/10/88 show at the Ecstasy club was their one and only European date that year – and very likely the very first Sub Pop linked European show. Both Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman were there. This show was followed by Mudhoney’s first US tour. Mudhoney then returned for a European tour the following spring, 1989. You could say they hit the ground running. As for shows played in the first six months of their existence (April – October 1988) , Mudhoney played Seattle’s Vogue five times, Portland’s Satyricon four times, Seattle’s Central Tavern and Squid Row once. The last show they played before flying to Germany was Portland’s Pine Street Theatre, October 2. Ten days after their Berlin gig, on October 20, 1988, they played with a band called Toadstool at Minneapolis’ Uptown Bar – a favorite haunt of Erika Schlaeger. This about a month before Mike Payne left Minneapolis and I essentially never saw him again. Payne would soon end up at Western Washington University in Bellingham and eventually settle in Tacoma, just south of Seattle.
It would be interesting to look further into this and figure out how big this government – or possibly government to government – connection actually is. Mark “Arm” McLaughlin, the lead singer for Mudhoney, is the son of a German-born mother and Air Force veteran father, and he grew up in Bellevue, the same Seattle suburb where my grandparents had lived since the 1960s. Bizarrely, on April 9, 1994, one day after Cobain’s body was “discovered,” Mudhoney and Pearl Jam were both in Washington D.C. with the Pearl Jam meeting and taking a photo with President Clinton.
Everett True links to Olympia and Seattle
It’s worth remembering that June 27, 1988 is the date that Sub Pop Sundays ended and Bret Bowman, while high on LSD, was hit by a car. He would then remain in a coma for about 15 years. The situation with Bret is a link to medical malfeasance and financed FBI files. It’s also worth remembering that Bret was on his way to Oregon meet a mutual classmate of ours – Scott Gear, who at least by the end of 1988, had a job in Seattle with Sub Pop as a driver for the English rock critic Everett True. I do believe Scott ultimately worked for Sub Pop for several years.
The standard story about the global grunge explosion is that it was ignited by a story or a series of stories in the UK music magazine Melody Maker written by Everett True. That Sub Pop had the brilliant idea to finance True’s trip to Seattle to steward around town and show him there was an exciting music scene happening. What is less clear is what the roots of the connection were between Sub Pop (especially Olympia and Portland linked Bruce Pavitt) and Everett True, for example, at his prior job with New Music Express, where he was known as The Legend! – actually an interesting parallel Rozz Rezabek’s self-appointed tile years later “Punk Legend” – a title possibly spun off of one of Rozz’s self released albums “Lover Legend Liar” – which itself is an interesting title when you think about potential links between Rozz Rezabek, Courtney Love, and Everett True.
What I’m trying to say is, I think that Everett True’s links to Olympia, and K Records (from which Sub Pop essentially spawned) goes back years earlier. In his 2006 book Nirvana: The True Story Everett True says that he first became aware of Beat Happening in 1985. He mentioned specifically the cat in a spaceship album cover on the Beat Happening self-titled debut, which was a riff off of Wipers’ Greg Sage’s 1981 Trap Sampler that featured both the Bruce Pavitt managed band Pell Mell, and Napalm Beach. Both Trap Sampler and Beat Happening were recorded by Greg Sage. If True was dialed into Beat Happening, he was likely dialed into the Wipers and Bruce Pavitt as well. Did True have direct contact with Pavitt, Calvin Johnson, Tobi Vail, or others linked to this scene before 1988? I think he did. But again, this is rarely mentioned.
Trap Sampler 1981Beat Happening 1985Two albums engineered by Greg Sage – one in Portland, one in Olympia – notice the similar cover designs
Coming back again to February 1988, that is the postmark on the test pressing of Moving To And Fro.
In other words, Napalm Beach’s fourth album (second album on vinyl), Moving To And Fro, was being pressed as Mudhoney was being formed, and it just so happens that the first European show Mudhoney ever played was at the club owned by the guy who was pressing Napalm Beach’s album, Moving To And Fro. And it also just so happens that this is the same period of time that I was living in the Midway district of St Paul Minnesota, and Courtney Love was about to arrive in Minneapolis to intersect with Erika Schlaeger, who was traveling back and forth from Minneapolis to Berlin. If I recall correctly, Erika S often flew first to New York, and then from New York to Berlin. And it also just so happens that the town where I’d gone to school in Germany 1984-85 (Kamp Lindfort) was about 30 miles from Düsseldorf, where Henk had been centered. These kinds of things are why, even though it would seem that Chris and I had different kinds of lives, we also had a lot in common. It also seems increasingly like these weren’t just non consequential coincidences. There were manipulations happening to me as well as to Chris, including manipulations intended specifically to sabotage my dreams of living in Olympia or Seattle and being in a rock band – both of which I’d wanted to do in the 1980s.
Moving To And Fro test pressing mailed to Chris Newman c/o Club Satyricon – postmarked 23 February 1988
At one point in his memoir, Chris abbreviated the Berlin club name as “XTC.” In fact, this period of time does seem to mark a turning point in an “X” – which the band Napalm Beach was sent down, and other bands like Mudhoney – but especially Nirvana – were sent up (crossing paths about this time – 1989-1991). Generally speaking, it looks to me very much like Napalm Beach and Nirvana were picked out ahead of time to parallel each other in a rise and fall kind of way, but that the intent was always to destroy both bands and their artist bandleaders – Chris Newman and Kurt Cobain.
German labels – L.S.D. and Satyricon Records
It appears that both Love’s Simple Dreams / L.S.D. and Henk Van Dreumel’s Satyricon records released a total of 18 items each, according to current information on discogs.com. LSD records released 18 titles between 1986 and 1990 (Moving To And Fro LP being number 7) – (in fact the number of unique releases seems to be closer to 14, others being the same title in different formats). Satyricon records (1988-94) released five Napalm Beach titles, at least two of which should never have seen light of day for reasons that would be obvious to anyone listening to them or understanding under what conditions they were released, and in fact, being as Napalm Beach’s contracts with Flying Heart were fraudulent, I think could easily be argued that most or all of these releases on Satyricon should have never happened. Chris has said he was reaching a point in the late 1980s and early 1990s when all that mattered to him was survival and drug money – and it’s clear that his choices for publishing were unduly limited – but from my perspective, that doesn’t make it ok to exploit an artist, regardless if you’re the record label or the alleged “manager.” By “exploit” I mean to take advantage of the person in a way that is clearly harmful to that person. I do suspect that a confidence game was being played here. By the time the really ugly recordings came out, Napalm was about to be, or had already been frozen out of touring for good.
In retrospect I think it has to be asked whether either one of these labels ever was truly intended to succeed as a label, or if they were not also constructed as a type of trap. They seemed to have worked out deals with Flying Heart on behalf of Chris – for example the addition of Snow Bud songs – songs to which Jan coercively stolen publishing rights – on Moving To And Fro – without asking Chris first. There were times when Chris could easily be manipulated simply by someone he saw as a person in a position of authority telling him “this is how we’re going to do it.”
All of these things of course were done under the guise of friendly and supportive relationships. The whole thing is complicated by that, and by the fact that Chris was increasingly blacklisted, meaning that by 1988 any record deal looked like a good deal to him. Chris didn’t understand when beginning in 1990, he was having to open for bands like Dead Moon, who had previously opened for him. This is epitomized I think by Nirvana playing Napalm Beach’s usual New Years Eve spot, headlining at Satyricon – while Napalm were in Berlin – at the Ecstasy Club – opening for Dead Moon.
New Zealand 1992Fred and Toody – probably a photo from around 2010 – found on my hard drive
On most articles I write, I leave the comment fields off, because first of all, no one ever comments on my blogs, and second of all, should someone decide to comment, I don’t want some random Kurt Cobain / Courtney Love conspiracy theories or shaggy dog tales.
I think, however, I will leave the comment field open on this particular article, and here is why – I’ve covered a lot of ground, made a lot of connections, and mentioned a lot of names. I want to give people the opportunity – especially if their name has been mentioned – to explain, clarify, counter, or rebut. My intent is never to shut down dissent, to insulate myself from justifiable criticism, falsely accuse, or twist facts. So if anyone feels I’ve done any of these things, and has a countering viewpoint to offer want to make sure they have that opportunity. I don’t have a problem with debate. I do have a problem with people who object to things I say, but refuse to do so directly to me. How, exactly, is that helpful?
I said at the beginning of this article that I didn’t know where it was going. To me, I feel like where I ended up was at the idea that Napalm Beach (and their mirrors, Nirvana, Mudhoney et al) was at the center of an international conspiracy and confidence game linked not just to different branches of the music business, but possibly to a number of government entities both foreign and domestic. I mean, I feel like that’s basically what I have just described. And that the proto-Satyricon Records name “Positive Sinking Records” – was far more than a German accent joke.
* One of the other few instances of a non-US act playing at Seattle Met was John Cale with a band called Memory, and Napalm Beach on August 6, 1983.
Before I ended up being diverted and having to talk about the 60s and 70s, etc, I was focused on documenting Chris’ history playing music in clubs in Seattle and Portland though I know he played a fair amount in the SF Bay Area as well – I just don’t know how much, or what clubs I’d been looking at. Anyway, I started to see a strange pattern around Chris’ gigs in Seattle in 1987 and 88 and the beginning of Sub Pop, and I also started to see a strange pattern with regards to Chris’ bands and Nirvana specifically between 1988 and 1991. During those years, Napalm Beach was frequently playing the same clubs as Nirvana, and they would play a week or two apart. As I was looking into this, it seems like things got really weird and I was drawn into covering all this adjacent stuff.
Yes, I would prefer to focus on topics that I think will garner movement, in court. Because I don’t know how else anything will ever get accomplished. I see no reasonable route out of wonderland. It seems like nothing but a crime and murder spree to me. The physical attacks have been ceaseless and the lies exhausting. Roxy is being attacked right now.
It looks to me like Chris was extremely productive between 1980 and 1988. In the late 80s, he began to have issues with drug addiction – first cocaine, then heroin, though he continued to play regularly. Meanwhile, he had been lured into contractual agreements with Jan Celt who was operating a fraudulent operation on behalf of other interests in the music industry and/or FBI/CIA. Celt was another form of honeytrap – he offered friendship, a place to stay sometimes, and he helped put out records, but he didn’t adequately promote or distribute and he also participated in drug use with the band. Chris told me Celt basically let the records sit in his basement. Celt misrepresented his intentions; he insisted on taking all the publishing rights; and when Chris was being threatened by drug dealer over a small amount of money, broke and in fear for his life, Celt forced Chris to sell his Snow Bud and the Flower People catalog under duress, for $6 per song. Valarie had once admitted to me (probably around 2010) that she knew that Celt’s deals were fraudulent. I asked her to write a statement about it and she said she would, but of course she didn’t. That’s how people operate in this take down. They don’t follow through and hope you’ll forget you asked. There were old copies of – I think it was a magazine called Two Louies online, where Celt was quoted as telling a story that was basically the true story, except turning Chris into the Snow Bud character, saying Snow Bud had to sell his catalog to escape a drug dealer. So he was basically bragging about his theft. That online article seems to have vanished, as so much evidence has gone missing over the years. Signs are pretty clear that money is being paid to the FBI to destroy Chris and other artists. The point is – these contracts were fraudulent, some to a really egregious level. And Valarie, who had previously acknowledged this, would not put it into writing, and the moment Chris died (if not before) she lept over to the side of Jan Celt praising him for the work he did with Chris “saving his catalog” etc. Complete lies. She is completely untrustworthy and I believe also on the take.
Jan Celt has worked for decades for Multnomah County Library. Chris has released many albums over the years. A search reveals that the library has exactly one of Chris’ CDs (Fire, Air, and Water); and to my recollection that was also the case years ago. Similarly, EMP in Seattle apparently had a single Napalm Beach flyer on display. Napalm Beach/Snow Bud played more shows in Seattle in the 1980s and 1990s than Green River/Mudhoney and far more shows than many of the other groups who are well known as part of the “Seattle scene” of that era. This is not about sour grapes and a band being “overlooked” and it certainly isn’t about Chris being worthless. If that were the case they wouldn’t be regularly headlining weekend shows as they were. No, this was – and still is – a coordinated take down. And in the local papers – Willamette Week and Portland Mercury – what I’ve seen is they’ve gone from scant mentions to literal erasure, and this happened while Chris was still breathing.
Meanwhile, we have guys like Eric Danielson now trying to turn Chris’ life into some “cautionary tale.”
This stuff is old and it stinks. To me, it feels like endless loops of rape and assault.
The blacklisting and the attacks are out of control.
Back to 1987.
I need to take another look at Sub Pop. They seem like they modeled themselves originally not just on K Records but on other labels like Slash in Los Angeles and Subterranean Records in San Francisco. But they also seem to have been immersed in the occult – maybe all these labels were. I don’t know if that was their idea or if it comes from the CIA and/or bigger components of the recording industry. Courtney Love is a link to the occult and to the CIA. I also think Mike Payne was making deals with them.
Peter Gabriel’s 1987 music video for Big Time describes a path to wealth that seems to be based on Whitey Bulger finance (the last line is about a “bulge” growing bigger). It seems it is linked to doing murders via reports to the FBI. The video begins and ends with the words “Hi there!” Snow Bud seems to be a character traveling underground, popping up at the end “Hi there!” But there’s all this effort to smash him, with concrete blocks and so forth.
The powers behind this crime have been amazing in their capacity to weaponize friends and family – the people you trust the most. In some cases, childhood friends were secretly and perhaps slowly turned against us, though likely they grew up in families who were strategically positioned for this purpose. I’ve been able to see traces of this looking at census data on ancestry.com. Just as, when I was driving to California in January 2014 I was surrounded by a swarm of infrared-equipped weaponized cars and trucks, it seems that my family, Chris’ family, and my daughter’s paternal family were always surrounded by weaponized neighbors; families with a mission.
I recently have been writing quite a bit about Courtney Love, a person who came into Chris Newman’s life around 1980 in the capacity, he thought, as a teenage friend and fan, but who was actually, literally, on a mission of destruction. In 1981 or 82 Courtney started a relationship with a man named Rozz Rezabek, four years her senior.
Over the past three days or so, I’ve had this experience of dreaming about one person every night, with this idea that there is more to say about them, regarding malfeasance. First it was Courtney – and I should go back and examine what I dreamt about, because I see increasingly that there’s an intertwining with Rozz, California – hospitals? bikers? – and then the next night it was Mark Lanegan (another person to revisit), and last night it was Rozz.
I remember dreaming about Rozz, forgetting the dreams, just wanting to sleep, and then I had this dream where I saw a photo of Rozz in large resolution, 1500×1500 pixels, linking it to my discovery of Courtney’s photo on January 6 at Satyricon, and all the questions I starting asking about what was going on at Satyricon in January 1989 and increasing signs of a larger strategy at work aimed at both Chris Newman and Kurt Cobain.
Rozz was born in a small coastal town, Bandon, Oregon. I know that about him, and then everything about his past is a blank to me until the late 1970s when in November 1977 he joined a San Francisco punk band called Negative Trend. According to Wikipedia, Rozz was only in Negative Trend for four months (!) Granted, it seems to have been an action-packed four months, but maybe what is more significant is the positioning of Negative Trend with regards to the punk rock world. Somewhere, several blog posts back, I hypothesized that the entire punk rock movement was basically a CIA op, and that I also suspected the 1960s flower power movement was also basically CIA, especially the parts having to do with dropping out, turning on, acid tests, doing-crazy-stuff-to-your-kids, Timothy Leary, Grateful Dead, etc. I have also mentioned that in this geography of malfeasance, there are certain bands that stand out, and also, that zines, or zine-like publications also seem to come into the fore. I would right now hypothesize that any time you see a zine pop up, especially between the 1960s and 1990s, you might suspect malfeasance links. I say this entirely based on patterns – I can’t yet explain why. Or maybe it’s not only zines but access to DIY media in general – film, video, audio, photography, and print.
I’m thinking of this now because I see that one of the first members of the band that became Negative Trend was V.Vale of Search and Destroy magazine who seems to be a linking person between the 1960s flower power movement and the punk movement of the 1970s and 80s. I am vaguely familiar with Search and Destroy (a fair amount of Rozz’s punk rock fame is from photos published in that magazine) – but I didn’t know that it had been started out of City Lights Bookstore, linked to Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Vale was replaced by Will Shatter, and in 1979 Shatter and another member of Negative Trend formed the band Flipper. Flipper has long been on my radar as seeming to have weird links to people around me I’ve never quite been able to figure out.
Anyway, Rozz quit Negative Trend in March 1978 and then there’s a blank spot in his history again before he pops up in Portland, almost exactly the same time as Chris, and forms a band called Theatre of Sheep. At some point in his life, maybe later in the 1990s I believe that Rozz had dual residences, one in San Francisco and one in LA, bringing up the question, how did he afford it? As far as I can tell, he’s spent his life working odd jobs. But he seems to have links to medicine.
I have the strong sense right now that Rozz was linked to an early 1980s San Fransisco punk band called The Cosmetics, which shared a bass player with Napalm Beach, Dave Minick. I have the sense of this, but no direct evidence. But it makes sense, because having been around Rozz a bit, I am aware that the group of San Francisco punks who were in bands performing and making records between 1977 and 1983, say – is a very close group. They all seem to know each other. Minick for his part is not just a link to San Francisco but to Los Angeles as well as he seemed to have girlfriends and eventually a wife who were from Los Angeles, probably Hollywood specifically.
The cosmetic industry keeps popping up as a potential finance connection going back, probably, to the Chuck Berry song, Maybellene. (Cars indicate finance as well – in the Chuck Berry song, Maybellene is driving a fast car.) When Napalm Beach was featured in the June 1989 issue of Seattle’s Backlash, the caption underneath the band read “Yay, Fabergé!”
My own history with Rozz began in late 2007 or early 2008 when I was working on a recording project with Marty Vincelli. In retrospect, what I see are a series of set ups. Every time I think to myself – “Ok, that was a set up” – and I start pulling on the thread, I realize that one set up led to another set up to another, etc. And I can only imagine this was also true in Chris’ life, and in Kurt Cobain’s life, and I very much fear in my daughter’s life as well. Let me pull on this string for a minute.
I was introduced to Rozz by Marty Vincelli. Marty was I think raised in Oregon but his dad was a northern California Biker, not a Hell’s Angel but Hells’ Angel adjacent (Gypsy Joker maybe) – and a drug dealer. Speed, maybe. (I have a sense of FBI connections, in the sense of financing and concocting false reports about me.)
I was introduced to Marty Vincelli by Tom Harrison who was from Springfield, Missouri, but who had lived in the Minneapolis area. Research I’ve done since we broke off contact in 2005 indicates that Harrison has links to a lot of other places he never bothered to mention to me in the 3 years that we were friends, including Hollywood, California and Irving, Texas. Harrison’s history (and even, possibly, his last name) indicate potential links to Courtney Love and Michael Payne.
And how did I meet Tom? I met him on an internet mailing list aimed at Portland musicians. This was probably in early 2003, before the social media era, when people who wanted to interact one-to-one online did it either through chat, bulletin boards, or email listservs. This was a list serv called PPIUM which stood for Portland Punk and Indie Underground Music, and it was an offshoot of an older listserv called OPIUM – for Olympia Punk and Underground Music. Both of these listservs were run by Matthew “Slim” Moon who had founded, and was at the time still running, the independant label Kill Rock Stars. Moon was also in bands like Earth and Nisqually Delta Podunk Nightmare, and thus was in the Nirvana orbit going back to the Skid Row era (1987). Later, he was, for a period of time, a boyfriend of Mary Lou Lord. This means that Moon has links to both Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith.
At the time PPIUM appeared on the scene a number of Olympia based musicians were moving to or near Portland, almost like a mass exodus or immigration. I found this mailing list because I was already on another mailing list, maybe called pdx-pop or something – and Moon posted a notice to pdx-pop saying he was starting a new mailing list for discussing music, but he didn’t want it to be for promoting shows. (Something like that. Olympia artists are a bit – controlling – sometimes with interesting results.) More stuff happened to me or around me because of PPIUM but I’ll leave that for now.
So what I discern from all of this is I somehow was introduced to Rozz Rezabek by a series of what seems like chance encounters that ultimately can be traced back to someone linked to the Olympia/Portland music scene, Slim Moon – but that within all of this, looms also the shadow of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love.
At the time I knew Rozz he was often blogging about his early days, including his crazy-making relationship with Courtney, on his MySpace blog. He’d often talked about writing a book but as far as I know when MySpace crumbled, Rozz’s writings went with it. Rozz had a lot of interesting stories – being at Winterland to open for the Sex Pistols and then never getting a chance to do so, and the chaos of that show; meeting Sid Vicious; meeting Billy Idol; meeting Joan Jett; being at a party with Andrew Wood and becoming so jealous of his rising star Rozz decided to walk home from Seattle to Portland; having a 15 year old fan/groupie (not necessarily sexual) named Stefanie Sargent (would later become guitar player for 7 Year Bitch). His stories about Courtney Love were particularly colorful.
I don’t know if or how much of Rozz’s stories about Courtney were true, but from the collection of stories about her from him and other people – but especially from him – you start to realize that she is incredibly crafty, and to me, I can see she’s been trained, as others around us were trained – in mind control tactics. But Courtney is in a class of her own. She seems to be working from a long-term strategy and she also seems to have access to a tremendous amount of finance and connections – almost like she’s amassed a clone army. By “clone army” I mean, legions of people, bands, etc, working from a common script. I’m not saying she’s at the top of this hierarchy, but I think she’s fairly high up, and that her links to the CIA go back at least to her parents generation. In fact, I’d say it’s clear that her parents – both of them – are linked to CIA mind control. This could be its own essay.
So I met Rozz in 2008, via Marty. At this time, Rozz would have parties, inviting various people – other musicians, scenesters from the 80s and 90s, and some younger women (not sure where they came from). Some of these folks were linked to San Franciso as well as Portland. Some of their histories seemed both interesting and somehow random – one woman, for example, had been the “whip girl” for live performances of Velvet Underground’s Venus In Furs – I guess she walked around stage in shiny boots, cracking a whip?
Chris Newman was at one of these gatherings. I think he was brought by Anton Long. This was one of the early times we “met” – I think I’d met him before this, but we didn’t really know each other. He was married to Denise but she lived in Pasadena.
In talking with Chris later, I learned that even though they’d both been in bands in Portland in the early 1980s, he didn’t really know Rozz. Chris was a serious musician in a way that Rozz was not (this is the truth). Rozz is not at home writing playing and writing songs every day as Chris was. Rozz was into a lot of artistic and creative endeavors, but not interested in artistic success in the way that Chris was. But Rozz was entertaining to watch, and he was able to draw a trendy crowd, and that probably made Chris a bit jealous. Chris could also draw a crowd, but by the time I knew Chris, he was really being pushed down. For example, in 2010, Napalm Beach had to open for the Obituaries. Napalm Beach’s history was far more extensive than the Obituaries who had played a few years, disbanded by 1990, then got back together in 2007. Napalm Beach’s performances were still incredibly powerful. This kind of thing was done to Chris over and over and over, going back to 1990. Honestly, his tenacity in the face of what was thrown at him in terms of set ups and humiliations, was astounding.
Anyway, I liked Rozz and Chris grew to like him as well. But it sounds like Rozz was a connection for us to meet people who would set us up or create damaging reports for the FBI. And then there was a drug/medical thing.
When you get to a certain group of people, there are some really weird connections to hospitals. As far as I can tell, all the major hospital networks on the west coast are deeply involved with FBI/CIA mind control. By this I mean, “punishing” people by literally making them sick (or killing them with cancer, heart attacks, strokes, etc), and rewarding people with drugs and/or not making them sick for a little while. It is a horror show. But there are people around us who seem – I guess the only word is complicit – and relatively unbothered. But it’s weird, because some of these people also either have, or pretend to have serious medical conditions. I’m increasingly suspecting that with some people who are closely connected to this system, they literally go to the hospital for conditions they don’t actually have. In other words, their medical histories are strategically falsified.
Because medical histories are supposed to be private, it’s really hard to prove something like this, but I’ve seen signs of this over and over, with people linked to mind control. I don’t mean that their medical histories are falsified as mine are, to be defamatory – but that they are active participants in this particular form of falsifying – and the agenda is manipulation. Again, this is worth an entire essay. There are just so many tactics and strategies around this mind control system, and a lot of it is cover up, deception, misdirection, and control of focus.
Around 2011 I started to suffer severe increases in back pain. At the same time, I was cut off my opioid-based pain plan at Multnomah County Health Clinic after I delayed a urine test. Even though I was still in severe pain, and even though opioids were the only thing that worked, they refused to relent. Now, this severe pain was actually torture, and it was entirely created via biomedical implants – but I didn’t know that at the time – and even though I’ve known it since 2017, so far there’s nothing I’ve been able to do about it. I still need opioid based pain medications.
Rozz at this time was going to a doctor at OHSU Richmond Family Clinic and getting large prescriptions of oxycodone for chronic hip or knee pain, supposedly from a performance-linked injury. I’m not saying that he does or doesn’t have severe chronic pain – he might indeed have it – but he did not take opioids the way I take them. He took them, at least sometimes, to get high. I will say as a chronic pain patient that I don’t know why any chronic pain patient would do this, because it creates tolerance, rendering the medications less effective.
Based on Rozz’s recommendation, I switched to the same clinic he was using, Richmond Family Clinic. But they refused to put me on an opioid based pain plan, suggesting that I instead try medical marijuana, which I did. But in reality, I still needed opioid medications. Rozz had a lot of these, and fairly frequently I’d find myself in severe pain, and he would give me enough medication to get me through.
Now this is a big no-no for doctors. But here’s the thing – they literally forced me into this position. It turns out that 2011 was an absolutely horrific year for me, pain wise – the exact year all the doctors refused to medicate me. And do not forget – this pain is deliberately being caused. The amount of time in my life that has been consumed by suffering in severe pain is staggering. I’ve had Tylenol overdose scares, and other life threatening situations occur because of this severe pain. And it’s entirely medically concocted. I can show evidence of this now.
So Rozz really helped me – but the situation was entirely a set up.
In the background, apparently have been these “FBI files” – maybe the set up was in part to concoct more files on me, though, like I say, the FBI says they have no files on me. But that really doesn’t make sense, when you look at the big picture. They’re hiding something, clearly.
I will say that even if they had a file saying I – I dunno – let’s say they have a file saying I did 9/11. If so, I still deserve a fair trial like everyone else, to determine whether in fact, I did or did not fly a plane into the WTC and Pentagon.
Another thing about Rozz you might not realize if your only knowledge of him is from what’s published online – is his links to Courtney Love didn’t end in the 1980s. His stories about her extended into the 1990s and he also told me that his interview in the Nick Broomfield movie Kurt and Courtney was an act concocted by him and Courtney together. In that interview, he acts like Courtney is this awful woman he can’t stand. He also, as I recall, pulls out her old medicine bottles, maybe for Valium.
That, and similar things I’ve witnessed, suggests to me that a lot of the vitriol from people around Courtney is concocted. But also, I think a lot of the positive portrayals of her are concocted as well. The aim is to confuse.
What the dream from last night suggested to me is Rozz was connected to the set up of Courtney Love with Kurt Cobain – and thus to the demise of Kurt Cobain.
The size of the image in the dream – 1500×1500 – also links Rozz to a Federal Torts Claim Act against the FBI I filed yesterday with the Department of Justice – and the idea that Rozz has something to do with negative reports about me filed with the FBI (Op Anne Boleyn), which presumably the FBI has been using as an excuse to physically harm me.
It looks like, according to livenirvana.com, the band that would become Nirvana began going by the name Skid Row in 1987. There was another band in New Jersey that called itself Skid Row beginning in 1986. I think that Everett True mentioned Cobain was unaware of this other band and that seems likely to be true, especially back then.
So to recap, first I realized that Burdyshaw’s comment to Everett True about seeing Nirvana open for the Obituaries was false, and then, while trying to fact check this on Pacific Northwest Music Archives Facebook group, I watched Burdyshaw and others wriggle around trying to explain the error even though I wasn’t initially accusing them or Everett True (in this case) of lying – I just said it was likely a mistake and poor fact checking, though based on patterns and the fact that this easily correctable misstatement has been on the Obituaries Wikipedia page for 15 years, I always had doubts about this being a mistake. I also mentioned that these kinds of errors, when they’re not caught and corrected, are consequential because they are then repeated by other writers and false histories are created, and false histories often have negative consequences for real people. And then this other guy, an admin named Matthew Ward came in and shut the whole thing down, profusely thanking Burdyshaw for “clearing up a mystery” – and then after my next couple of posts to the group which I did not expect to be considered particularly controversial, I was deleted and apparently blocked. (One post was an Untouchables poster from 1980 and the other was the post about my family’s links to Jimi Hendrix.)
Of course that makes me think there’s more going on, like – if the statement about Obituaries opening for Nirvana at Squid Row in 1988 was not a mistake but a lie, why this particular lie? I may have accidentally found part of the answer when I explored the New York Times and saw Cobain’s 1994 obituary which featured a photo of Nirvana playing directly underneath the word “Obituaries.” So that likely largely explains the Obituaries part – but what Burdyshaw specifying Squid Row as the venue?
I started to follow that thread, first by looking into the venue itself. It was a hole in the wall dive that went through a lot of different businesses including, according to an 2007 article in The Stranger, Rebellious Jukebox (a record store run by Nils Bernstein 1989-92 – Bernstein later became VP of PR for Sub Pop, then did I think publicity for Matador and now is a New York based editor at Wine Enthusiast magazine described as an “exhaustive traveler” – I feel like he may have been someone I tried to contact in the past, trying to generate interest in a Boo Frog album), Righteous Rags (Jeffrey Ofelt), Squid Row, the Puss Puss Cafe, Tugs Belmont (a gay bar), Bimbo’s, the Cha Cha Lounge, Double Trouble, Lipstick Traces (early 2000s), Manray, Kincora, Bus Stop, and Pony.
I’m going to stop here because clearly this is a rabbit hole and I think the Stranger intends it to be that. In the Stranger article, two anecdotes stand out: a story about someone finding decomposing severed fingers in a crockpot, and a typical type of Courtney Love story.
The Woman in Green 1945
With regards to the severed fingers, this was a theme in the 1945 hypnosis-themed Sherlock Holmes movie Woman in Green. It symbolizes murdering witnesses or potential witnesses. There’s another thing that it evokes as well which is the severed hand that appears in the Migos video for Stir Fry. The Stir Fry video seems to allude to the 1983 Wah Mee massacre that killed another Seattle club owner, John Loui of the Golden Crown. (It’s increasingly clear that many hip hop videos allude to backroom activities around grunge era Seattle. I believe it’s because the activities, issues, and people I’m writing about here about are so deeply interwoven with entertainment industry, US government, and high finance.) Also – this is worth its own entry – there seems to be something in the Migos Stir Fry video that I would call a smoking gun to tell you that Mark Lanegan, who died of COVID complications on 2/22/2022, was actually biomedically murdered. With regards to Lanegan’s death being a murder, there are actually a few smoking guns. So I will revisit this.
With regards to the Courtney Love story, it is told by (Cha Cha Lounge co-owner) Jeffrey Ofelt and takes place during the Righteous Rags era, probably around 1993. “Courtney Love came in to pick up a coat for Kurt Cobain that she had on layaway and was buying as a Christmas present. It was a leather trench coat or something. She came in to make a payment, and she wanted to use the phone, and she was smoking.” The coat was “a leather trench coat or something”? Was Kurt Cobain – or anyone in the early 1990s – ever seen wearing a leather trench coat? I mean, I’ve been wrong before, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say not.
This whole thing about combining two memories into one? That happens. But in this case, I suspect two garments were combined into one. This is another entry, maybe.
I did not expect things to get this complicated.
Back to Squid Row, specifically. That bar seems to have opened in 1986 (possibly) but really got going with live music in 1987. The only record I have of Chris Newman playing there is for Claudia Gherke’s 28th birthday in 1988, with Snow Bud and the Flower People. I’m thinking this venue might have been a bit small for him during that era, but he would usually play for people he considered friends who asked him to do special events like birthdays. He was even cajoled into reviving Napalm Beach for birthdays years after he swore he’d never play as Napalm Beach again.
This is partly why I’ve focused so hard on Squid Row – because Chris was asked to play first as Napalm Beach at the Vogue for Claudia’s 27th birthday, and this was right before the Vogue started doing Sub Pop Sundays – and then he was asked to play Claudia’s 28th birthday at Squid Row as Snow Bud – and both those times, a Sub Pop super group known as Bundy Creature opened for him. It was like some weird book end.
I did not know (or remember, I suppose I’d read it) that one of the names for Nirvana, in early 1987, was Skid Row. According to livenirvana.com, that name lasted about three months between April and June, and they played around four shows under that name. They played Tacoma’s Community World Theatre on June 12, 1987 as Skid Row but on June 27, 1987 they played the same venue as Pen Cap Chew. June 27 is an important date because June 27, 1988 was the day Bret Bowman was hit by a car, it was the day that Sub Pop Sundays ended, and I know that date was picked out for Bret to be hit at least June 27, 1987, a year ahead of time, because I’d recorded a predictive dream that night. But it’s possible, and I’ll have to look into this more deeply – by June 1987 Kurt Cobain was also already on the creep store murder menu.
Cobain stands out among other musicians because of his willingness to distinguish, from my perspective, right from wrong, with regards to what Chris and I were being put through. Thus, the symbolism of a severed finger (accusation).
With regards to Cobain using the name Skid Row – the history of the term Skid Row is interesting and I didn’t know that a lot of sources trace it directly to Seattle. Basically, in the early days of Pacific Northwest logging, lumberjacks were faced with moving these giant trees out of the forest by pulling them with horses (usually) or oxen. The easiest way to do this was to pull them downhill (obviously) so that’s how they logged – they’d build a flat “road” into the woods, and skid the trees down the road to the mill. The road was called a skid road. Lumber camps or tent cities were built along these roads, and the tent cities were eventually called “skid row.” I think the reason that the name Skid Row is associated with Seattle is because there was a large and maybe famous or semi-permanent skid row area in Seattle back in those days. This links to me. How? Where I grew up, in Humboldt County, we had the same thing going on. I grew up at the edge of a redwood forest that had been logged in the late 1800s and again in the early 1900s and right behind our house in the woods was a skid road. We called it “the old logging road” but it was a skid road. I played in that area a lot as a child and I have reason to believe there was surveillance around our favorite spots – probably wireless cameras attached to trees feeding data to hidden drones. In addition, in the summer of 1986, Bret Bowman and I both worked at the Samoa Cookhouse, an old logging camp cookhouse in Eureka that catered to tourists. He was a dishwasher and I a hostess and I’m sure there was surveillance in there, too.
Also, my assertion is there was always a plan to leave Chris and I impoverished, as others grew wealthy from exploiting us and spreading damaging lies about us. It was no accident that by the late 1990s Chris became homeless, living in “tarp town” San Francisco, a modern skid row. Finally, it’s possible that Nirvana’s temporary band name was a direct nod to the Squid Row tavern, because clearly the Vogue was important with regards to an agenda around Chris, and like I said, 1987-88 were bookended by Chris playing with Sub Pop’s Bundy Creature first at Vogue, and then at Squid Row.
Bars seem to be important with regards to the structure of this surveillance-linked exploitation, probably because they are gathering places, and exchanges of money, goods, or backroom deals can be made without drawing undue attention. And squid are sea creatures known for having large eyes, excellent vision.
Sometime between June 27 and August 9, 1987, according to livenirvana.com, Cobain played a house party in Raymond, Washington called the Green House. Other sources, like Charles’ Cross’ Heavier Than Heaven, say their first show was at a Raymond, Washington house party. on March 7, 1987. So there’s some conflict about what was going on in these early days, but I’m putting all of this here because Cobain killed himself in a greenhouse, because the Seattle police, when they released suicide photos in 2014 filtered all the photos to have a green tinge.
Raymond is a small town, a half hour drive from Aberdeen. According to the Charles Cross biography, the March 7, 1987 show was set up by somene named Ryan Aigner. Cross’ claim that this was Nirvana’s first show conflicts with the information posted on livenirvana.com which has him playing as early as December 1985 as “fecal matter” with Dale Crover on bass and Greg Hokanson on drums. None of this online stuff is sourced, so I don’t know where the information comes from but maybe over time I’ll figure it out. If I were a writer being paid to write a book about Nirvana, I’d definitely want to chase down these leads. I’m guessing this has been addressed somewhere in a more recent book.
I want to also draw attention to this name “Bliss” which shows up briefly as an August 1987 proto-Nirvana band name and say that, like Heck being a name from my family tree, Bliss a name from Chris’ family tree, on his mother’s side. They were descended from the brother of a famous hymn writer named P.P. Bliss who had died along with his wife in a train crash (Ashtabula River railroad disaster).
This is one of those things that people will say is a minor detail or I don’t know but it’s bothering me so I’m going to write it out. I suspect it’s not such a minor detail and it may intertwine with something else.
In the 1980s it looks like there were at least three bands in Seattle with the word “Green” in their names – Green River, Green Pajamas, Green Ice. I could go down a whole rabbit hole with the word green but I’ll just say that it seems like it’s widely understood to be historically linked to magic and witchcraft (the green knight), alchemy (the green lion), and more recently, mind control including use of directed energy weapons. I am a bit fascinated by who has green eyes (I have green eyes and so do Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna I think) and I don’t have enough information to draw any conclusions about that but I do know, again, based on patterns, that frequency-based manipulations are done on babies in utero. Based on patterns, also, I know that when I was born, my mother’s labor was induced by this technology, and so was my labor (in short, they use the tech to force your water to break). This isn’t my main point here so I’m not going to do a full argument but there’s pattern-based evidence for this.
Ever since I was a small child, if someone asked me what my favorite color was, I’d say it was green. In my mind, it was because I had green eyes.
I have read two books focused on the life of Kurt Cobain, the book by Charles Cross “Heavier Than Heaven” and the book by Everett True, “Nirvana: The True Story.” Chris bought Azeraad’s older official biography and read it, but I’ve never read that one. I’ve seen movies like Kurt & Courtney and Francis’ Montage of Heck (Heck is a name in my paternal grandmother’s family tree and I am certain this is related. It’s hard to avoid tangents – but my Seattle Grandma Helen Meyer, a nurse at Swedish Hospital, seems to have been important.)
Anyway, in one of these biographies, I assume it was True’s, there is this mention of Kurt getting married to Courtney wearing green pajamas. I say I assume it was True’s biography because I tried to find the reference this morning and couldn’t find it in Everett True’s book, but I found a description in Charles Cross’ book, and in Charles Cross’ book Cobain got married in blue plaid pajamas (p 234). I’m sure there are photos and I assume both True and Cross looked at photos and perhaps they interpreted the colors of the pajamas differently, or maybe they were making some other point, I really don’t know.
But in the background of all of this, I was trying to figure out how to interpret and talk about the early band names Nirvana was using. In order to figure out how to do that, I had looked at Nirvana’s early show history, and how they were being billed early on. According to livenirvana.com, their first performance was in December 1985 supporting the Melvins at Spot Tavern in the town of Pacific Beach Washington (a coastal town with a population of 291 according to the 2010 census) – as Fecal Matter. Their second show was on May 3, 1986, in Olympia at Gessco Hall, also supporting the Melvins, this time with the name Brown Towel. Their third show was in Aberdeen, under the name Stiff Woodies. After that they called themselves Skid Row until late June 1987.
All three of these early band names seem, at least to me, to have some connection to me. I don’t know how interesting this is. Fecal matter is a weird one and might come up later in another context so I’m not going to talk about it right now. Stiff Woodies, same thing. Actually I’ll cover that here –
The first poem I ever wrote (I was probably 8 years old), went like this:
I had a wooden doll she had a wooden bed upon her wooden pillow she lay her wooden head
I also had an Uncle Woody. He lived in Minneapolis, and was married to a woman named Millie. She eventually died of cancer (likely was assassinated) and he died of tuberculosis (definitely was assassinated). The idea the name “Millie” (and millipede) is that it relates to millions, as in a million dollars. The million dollars is a reward for helping to bring about murder – likely the murder of me and/or Chris by setting us up, creating these salacious FBI files. Lots of people are involved in this and hoping to cash in big time, and it’s obvious there’s already been a ton of money flowing around it.
My daughter had a cousin named Woodsie who died in a car crash. He was also murdered, and I know this because I’d had a premonition in a dream. While he was alive, Woodsie had come into conflict with a local timber company over harvesting rights on or near his land.
The name Stiff Woodies and actually a lot about Kurt Cobain’s art suggest that he had a pretty solid inside scoop on covert activities of this type. In recent years, I’ve had many dreams about Kurt Cobain. The only thing I really know for sure is his maternal family has been involved in covert activity for a long time. This is also true of Courtney Love’s family (both her mother and father). And it’s true of my family, Chris’ family, and my daughter’s father’s family. These families tend to intermarry I guess.
This is confusing and hard to figure out since no one admits to any of this. But something fairly unique about Cobain is he seemed to be aware, or at least to express his awareness, of medical malfeasance, and at the same time, he was clearly the subject of some pretty brutal medical malfeasance.
That brings me to the name Brown Towel. The story around this, for me, is actually pretty impactful. When I was in kindergarten at Freshwater School in the village of Freshwater, California our days were structured so that we had snack time, then nap time. After nap time was story time. For nap time, we all had brought a bath towel from home, and we’d lie down on the floor of our kindergarten classroom on these towels. The kids were all proud of their towels and they ahd all these different colors and designs. I was very excited and wanted and expected to bring with me a deep blue and green sort of paisley-design towel that I thought was very pretty, and I remember my mom telling me I wasn’t going to bring that towel, because that was one of her her good towels. She gave me a plain brown towel to use. So I was disappointed, but basically, this is how I was treated throughout my childhood. At the end of nap time, our teacher would normally say “nap time is over, put away your towels.” However, one day we had a substitute teacher, and that teacher decided to end nap time this way “Every child with red on their towel, get up and put your towel away. Every child with blue on their towel, get up and put your towel away” and so on. She went through all the colors of the rainbow, but she never said anything about the color brown. Eventually, I was the last one lying on the floor on a towel while all the other children were gathered around the teacher for story time. The teacher brought out a book and began to read a story. I’m still lying alone on this brown towel. Then the teacher says, “oh! Everyone with a BROWN towel get up and put your towel away.”
This was the beginning of excluding me, treating me badly. It became amplified after about fourth grade, and there were similar incidents to this, becoming more and more traumatizing. There were other ways that I was separated out from other students, sometimes under the guise of something positive (teacher’s pet) – and I was often complimented on being silent and not making waves. Punk rock is what changed that for me and in that sense I saw punk as something redemptive and life saving. Little did I know it was just another vehicle of manipulation. But at the time I was introduced to punk rock I needed the life-affirming energy it offered.
Do I think that that my brown towel trauma was related to Cobain’s naming his band brown towel? Yes, I do. Because there are other references in his songs that directly relate to minor traumas of this type that I experienced during childhood. Being “hosed down” (Paper Cuts), being burnt on the arm with a cigarette “by accident” (Sliver), etc.
So the obvious question is how would Cobain know that all of these things were happening to me, and an ancillary question is, is it possible that some of all of these things were to HIM. I suspect that some of these things did happen to him, but I don’t know. It does seem like he knew that these were deliberately induced traumas.
Sometime in 2019 I concluded that there had been surveillance in, and distributed from, Freshwater School when I was a student there. Based on hints I’ve seen in movies, it seems it was distributed to people working in the entertainment industry. Based on patterns, I can conclude that there was surveillance trafficked from inside the classrooms, and from around and most likely from inside the girl’s and boy’s bathrooms.
This would not have been going on without the US federal government’s seal of approval. What is really remarkable about all of this is that people seem to be willing to engage in these kinds of behaviors, and even to fight to continue these behaviors, but the thing that really freaks them out is the idea that someone will openly discuss, or expose these behaviors – the deliberate traumatizing of children, the surveilling of children in private spaces like bathrooms, and the manipulation of children. As for why parents and teachers would take part in this, it seems to be a combination of conditioning, herd mentality, and financial incentives.
