Tag: Squid Row

What’s in a name? (part 1) 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 Boeing in San Jose, and I think that’s significant for a number of reasons. For one thing, that particular Boeing plant is closely linked to Stanford University. Both my parents have their PhD’s from Stanford. There is also a link to directed energy weapons.

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. (My working theory right now, fwiw is that the punk movement was a CIA op.)

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.

Revisiting a few key posts in Pacific Northwest Music Archives thread on factual inaccuracies published in various books regarding show history of Nirvana, Obituaries

Sometimes I give sweeping broad overviews. Sometimes, not very often, I focus on the same thing, more and more, like a microscope drawing down to see that one detail. If you are genuinely interested in understanding the truth about something, both approaches can be useful. In this post, I’m going to focus in on three comments on the long Pacific Northwest Music Archives Facebook thread that was closed down.

Being as I’ve been blocked from the group, and the group is not viewable to me, this means that not only am I unable to post, I am unable to see what has been posted. I don’t think this is really a small matter. Yes, of course it’s within their rights. But there’s what you have a right to do, and what is the right thing to do – those may be different things.

I was never told that I was out of line and asked to modify my behavior in a particular way. Rather, some of my posts were deleted and then I was blocked. Why would that be? Was I harboring some passive aggressive attitude? Maybe some of it could have been interpreted in that way – but is this how fragile all these rock n’ rollers are? In honesty, I don’t think my “behavior” was the real problem. I think the real problem is that I don’t adhere to the script, and secondarily, there are a few other people in the group who may post things that I will see that give me clues about sources of malfeasance in the Seattle scene – malfeasance that affects me personally, malfeasance that led to Chris being homeless, and ultimately murdered.

This idea that the northwest music community is a big supportive family with healthy sporting competition and minor regional rivalries is a marketing scheme that both Chris and I bought into. It doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

There are about three posts from the first thread that was shut down I want to look at a bit more closely.

First Post Under Microscope: Burdyshaw shifts the topic

Burdyshaw on problems remembering show history

A few comments. Pattern-wise, something I’m seeing increasingly are discussions that start out being about one thing, but then someone within the discussion sliding it into something else. When you’re involved in a discussion like this, that can be really disorienting. I think we’re talking about a certain topic, then suddenly it’s a different topic. In this case, the question was pretty simple: First, did Nirvana open for (or even play on a bill with) the Obituaries at Squid Row in Summer 1988 as was reported by Jerry Thackeray aka Everett True in 2006, based on an interview with James Burdyshaw of Catbutt, who said that he had seen Nirvana open for the Obituaries at Squid Row in Summer 1988. And secondarily, as a follow up, did Nirvana ever play on a bill with the Obituaries, as has been reported by several sources, and has been on the Obituaries Wikipedia page, I think since 2007 (that’s fifteen years if you’re counting). And I had done some follow up research and had by this point concluded that based on the available evidence, Nirvana never played on a bill with the Obituaries.

I had originally tagged Monica Nelson into this thread, not Burdyshaw, mainly because I “know” her. But she didn’t respond directly. Meanwhile, Burdyshaw comes back and says he spoke with her, “and she’s not certain when or where she saw them either.”

But this wasn’t about Monica and the Obituaries seeing Nirvana, it was about them playing on a bill with Nirvana. The topic has shifted.

There there’s a lot of lady doth protest too much stuff, but even within that, it looks like Burdyshaw is throwing out hints and suggestions about how the world works. The word “ultra.” The mention of the Beatles. The phrase “bloody show.” The reference to Hamburg and the Reeperbahn. 64 Spiders. The Rainbow Tavern. Xmas. Nobody.

Something I’ll add is that I believe that Chris Newman met Kurt Cobain in 1988, in Portland, backstage at Satyricon. If you think about this, even if you weren’t part of the community at the time – it starts to get pretty hard to believe the stories about Kurt Cobain first meeting Courtney Love anytime after 1990.

Second Post Under Microscope: Matthew B Ward can totally understand

Matthew B. Ward seems to be the guy who deleted my posts, etc. I didn’t know any background about him, but when I look him up online, it gets interesting (to me) pretty quickly, because he has this weird kind of adjacent to me thing going on that certain people (including Courtney Love) have, by which I mean, they have a background that seems to cross paths with or run parallel to my background in different ways. Here are the things in Ward’s background that are adjacent to things in my background (or people who were close to me, like Mike Payne)

  • Ward has a history of travel to, working in Japan, Thailand (Mike Payne worked at a Japanese restaurant and with Japan-linked people and has been to Thailand several times)
  • Ward says he’s from Lopez Island – that’s next door to San Juan Island, where I was born
  • Ward went to Roosevelt High School and University Washington – my dad went to Roosevelt High School and University of Washington
  • Ward studied English writing in college and so did I, and he was a teacher and so was I (briefly). My Seattle grandfather was also a teacher (Garfield High School) and both my parents were teachers as well (high school, college)
Matthew B Ward weighs in

“A book written about your S.O.” – I was talking about the factual inaccuracies in Eric Danielson’s book, without referring to it or him directly. I have mixed feelings about Danielson’s work overall, because in some cases, he did some good work with archiving, for example, a discography (although it’s possible a lot of the work was done for him behind the scenes). But in the full scheme of things, there’s probably been more harm than good done because of all the inaccuracies and distortions, and because there is such a paucity of material available, and Chris is no longer around to personally interview, etc. Danielson’s book was self-published, however, while Everett True’s book, and the Willamette Week article, etc, were not. So publishers are not doing due diligence in checking basic facts – and this isn’t just happening with one book – it’s a pattern.

Back to Ward – look carefully at the language he chooses:

“I can totally understand that it must have been bizarre and disorienting…”

This is the way people talk to me. It is a pattern. “You are anxious.” “You are disoriented.” “You feel a loss of control.” It’s always always always focused on my emotional state, as if that’s what this entire thing is about. The language is patronizing while feigning concern. And this is always when I’m trying to discuss facts.

Mansplaining on steroids.

I responded that (Danielson) – who Ward called an “attempted journalist” – literally has (I thought) a Masters Degree in Journalism and I explained my background, and why I know what responsible referencing and source checking looks like and that is a post which was deleted. By the way, I didn’t use Danielson’s name at all in these posts. I should say I just re-checked his bio and possibly I made a mistake (I say possibly because there’s a lot of shifting around going on). Danielson’s current Amazon bio says that he studied journalism, but both his BA (from University of Washington) and is MA (from George Washington University) are in history. This is a minor issue, because my complaint about Danielson is specifically that 1. he gets facts wrong 2. he doesn’t cite sources, and I have to add a third one now, which is that 3. when mistakes are pointed out to him, with evidence, he refuses to correct them. Historians know how to do this kind of due diligence as well as if not better than journalists. This refusing to correct factual and even damaging mistakes is another pattern. In some cases, it’s libelous. (I may come back to this because Danielson just republished his book on Chris with a new title.)

“I also don’t think there is an agenda in that particular case” Ward writes of the Danielson situation – but how exactly would he know, being as I gave no specific details? I didn’t mention Chris, Danielson, or the book by name. The truth is, Ward does know. He knows there is a massive agenda around Chris. At risk of being a bit harsh – how stupid does Matthew Ward think I am? Or is he simply trying to make me look stupid (another pattern) while possibly triggering me with his patronizing attitude?

I saw this kind of thing done to Chris all the time, and how he tried to cope with it year after year after year. Sometimes he would get triggered. Most often he just kept trying to do his own thing, looking for appreciation where he could find it.

Ward finishes the post by saying he’s blocked in a group that he co-administers for pointing out something factual – I can’t even wrap my mind around how you would be blocked from a group that you administer so I’ll just let that one go.

Third Post Under Microscope: “Thanks in particular to James Burdyshaw for clearing up an interesting mystery”

Matthew B Ward closes down post

What mystery, exactly, did Burdyshaw clear up? It looks to me more like he got caught in a lie, which he was then permitted to back out of, relatively gracefully.

Ward goes on to mansplain “we should not read too much into the fact that aspects of the past will probably never be established for sure, especially when talking about murky, alcohol-fueled adventures that happened over 30 decades ago.”

30 decades – ? a weird – typo? So let’s say he meant 3 decades or 30 years. It’s a valid point explaining how Burdyshaw may have made an error (even though I don’t think he did and I’ll spare you that scrutiny) – but it doesn’t explain the point that I made several times which is that the editor/publisher/fact-checkers of the book did not do their jobs.

All these words are potentially coded language linked to financed malfeasance: murky, alcohol, fuel.

Ward again displays a sign that he’s got a background meshed into a mind control agenda (CIA) – “aspects of the past will probably never be established for sure.” Look, you can get a pretty good handle on certain aspects, like did a band play a show at a particular location at a particular time, especially if the band was Nirvana.

The thing about Nirvana is they became so famous so quickly that it sent a shockwave through everything. If you saw Nirvana prior to them becoming famous, you didn’t have decades to forget about it before they became famous.

My current claim is this: the reason for muddying the water around Nirvana is because there was a plan for Kurt Cobain and the plan was murder by suicide. And it was conspiracy. And in order to cover it up, more murders. And I am a big target for these people and you can imagine why. That is why this crowd relentlessly patronizes me, libels me, and tells all these lies.