I Found My Friends (10 page)

While awaiting
Sub Pop 200
's release, Nirvana continued at a leisurely pace—three shows a month at most, all usually bottom of the bill.

ABE BRENNAN:
We opened the show, Nirvana played second, Swallow played third, and then Soundgarden finished things off … Nirvana—we were into them by then … The thing that stood out for me was the songs—they rocked, but there was a pop sensibility to many of them; and underneath it all lingered a sense of emotional raggedness and desperation. Or maybe that's hindsight … “Floyd the Barber” is the first song I remember hearing on the demo tape that [John] Purkey had—that was my favorite song then, super heavy and syncopated—so my strongest memory is them playing that song and me hurting my neck via ridiculous head banging. Soundgarden made a mistake in the first song, quite a jarring gaffe, actually very noticeable, and they all looked at each other and laughed. Then they proceeded to destroy. It was nice, though, seeing a band that good make a mistake.

KEVIN WHITWORTH:
We'd just finished recording our first half dozen songs at Reciprocal with Jack Endino, and he called to say that he had this band in the studio, and that we should go and see them while they were playing in town. So we all went down to Squid Row, which was just a couple of blocks away anyway. The crowd at the small tavern was thin. I am sorry to say I was not particularly impressed, other than observing how tall the bass player was, compared to the singer.

His impression was not much changed a few weeks later.

KEVIN WHITWORTH:
The Annex Theatre on Fourth Avenue downtown. “Love Buzz” had been all over KCMU by this time, and it was great—but it was a cover, so it was hard to get a handle on their music … they just stood around and swayed in prime shoegazer fashion as they played the first time I saw them, and they were much the same at the Annex. It's been said that opening for Mudhoney and Tad opened their eyes, and I believe that's true. Mark and Tad had always been crazy onstage after Tad came out from behind the drums, and before long Kurt was jumping around too.

October 30, 1988, saw a piece of Nirvana's future mythology falling into place.

JASON MORALES:
All the dorms were lettered A through whatever, and it just so happened that K Dorm was the last in a line, so that's where they'd put the people who were inclined to party and get crazy. It's where I saw Nirvana for the first time: the legendary party that shook the floor so hard it caused structural damage? That party. Just one of those early keg parties where there were so many people stuffed into the second floor jumping up and down that it damaged the floor of the dorm.

SLIM MOON:
Kurt always had a theatrical flair, it's just that the way that flair got expressed changed appropriately when the venues got bigger and the audiences got bigger … opening for Nirvana at K dorm, I got mad at Ian [McKinnon] and kicked over his drum set, so he punched me in the face. That was the first night I ever saw Nirvana smash their instruments, and I've always suspected that it was partially motivated by Kurt being unwilling to be upstaged by the violent drama of our set just before theirs. We broke up live on the radio a couple weeks after that.

PAUL KIMBALL:
When Kurt smashed his guitar at the K Dorm Halloween party I was in the hall with no visibility to the band. But I remember people howling, just going ape shit, and then seeing someone charging out the front door with the neck of a guitar raised above their heads.

A lightbulb went off when faced with that reaction; gear smashing rocked. Just as Jimi Hendrix's guitar burning was provoked by his competitiveness with Pete Townshend, Nirvana knew live performance was a friendly contest. This wasn't the last time those they played with suspected one-upmanship, but what the hey, everyone was doing it.

ROBIN PERINGER,
Heavy into Jeff:
I did almost burn down a Seattle club after lighting my guitar on fire. I had done this a couple of times, but on this occasion, Michael [Anderson] stepped on the bottle of lighter fluid, spreading it all around the stage. We did finish the song, though.

A final key aspect of the Sub Pop aesthetic was the sense of humor; as far back as 1986
Sub Pop 100
carried the message “The new thing, the big thing, the God thing: a mighty multinational entertainment conglomerate based in the Pacific North West.” The label even released the ironically titled
Fuck Me, I'm Rich
compilation, paraphrasing a line from Mudhoney, when the money certainly wasn't rolling in. The label was constantly self-referential—everything was intended to reinforce Sub Pop's budding mythos. Jokes were simply the default communication. Consider the following gorgeous whimsy regarding the
Sub Pop 200
party, Nirvana's last show of 1988 …

LEIGHTON BEEZER:
I was invited to play by default, I guess, since it was a record-release party and all the bands were on the bill. But from here on out it's hard for me to give an accurate answer, since I got very seriously drunk that night and my memory is a little fuzzy … They were really just another band among equals at the time … But here's what I do remember. Kurt and I used to occasionally have a beer together before he played. He used to stink for some reason … like, really bad BO. And so, one night, as a joke, I brought along a roll of my girlfriend's deodorant and gave it to Kurt before he took the stage that night. He laughed, and then quickly disappeared. The next thing I knew, I saw Kurt onstage with Nirvana, rolling some of this stuff on, like, in the middle of a song … I can't remember which one. He then picked it up and showed it to the crowd. The band stopped playing, looking kind of bewildered. Kurt held up the deodorant, Teen Spirit, and said something like, “Leighton Beezer said I stink and gave me this. Now I smell like Teen Spirit.” … A couple of weeks before the
Sub 200
show, Kurt stopped by my house on the Hill, just to shoot the shit. He picked up my guitar, a Squire Jagmaster, as I recall, and played these four chords for me. He said he'd been listening a lot to the first Boston album and wanted to use those chords in a new song he'd been working on. I said, “But you're ripping off ‘More Than a Feeling,' dude.” He smiled and said nothing.

Returning (alas) to consensual reality after Leighton's teasing, of note is how casual the release party was and how little Nirvana mattered.

GEOFF ROBINSON:
I admit I still have this awful mental image of a cocktail bar with canapés when I know that's utterly false … It was just another gig for us. The big draw was that we would be able to play with our friend Jesse Bernstein. I am still kicking myself for not getting to know him better, and mostly for not patronizing his material and other venue appearances more. He was truly a genius, and to this day I rank him up there with Burroughs and Ginsberg. Once Blood Circus got to know Jesse, our output appeared to me to be more amateurish than I had ever imagined. He was a master, and I miss him. He would probably call me an emotionally indulgent jellyfish for saying so, but there it is.

MARIA MABRA,
Hell Smells:
Jesse … He was hard to get to know, we were kicking it with him … I was in the trailer where he died, where he killed himself, just days before he did it—that was a shock, we were all like … It just came out of the blue. “Did you hear what Jesse did?”/“What?!” It felt crazy. I see people now with his T-shirts and I always say, “Hey, that's a Jesse T-shirt!” and they say, “Yeah, he's cool.”

JAMES BURDYSHAW:
I kept hearing things about Nirvana but didn't see them live until summer of 1988. They played with Monica [Nelson]'s band in Seattle at a new club called Squid Row. I didn't really think much of them that night. They were super-loud and sloppy. They fell on the stage and screamed a lot. Kurt seemed very drunk and Monica told me she thought they sucked. I could hear the Melvins influence, for sure, but thought Buzz [Osborne] did it much better. I was thinking, What was all the buzz about these guys? I saw them at the Vogue in late August and liked them a little bit this time. They were tighter and started playing heavy riff songs instead of just screaming, but it wasn't until I saw them open the first night of the
Sub Pop 200
record-release party at the Underground that I really had a change of opinion. They played first of five bands that night—before the Thrown Ups, even. The place wasn't even half full and I stood with Rob Roth [of Truly] and both of us were dumbfounded. I remember him saying, “Damn, these guys suddenly got really good!” I can distinctly see Kurt and Krist playing with confidence and going into the songs seamlessly. Then I heard Kurt sing these melodies I'd never seen him do before.

Although Nirvana ended 1988 still just a footnote alongside greater legends, they could still feel genuine hope for the year to come. Their music was getting released: They'd recorded an album initially entitled
Too Many Humans
but soon to become known as
Bleach
. They were now an established presence in three regional music hubs and could enjoy the holiday season with friends in Seattle, Olympia, and Tacoma.

 

6.0

First Tour, First Lessons

February to July 1989

Two years' work
amounted to only thirty shows for maybe a few hundred Washington natives, plus two original songs out. But January saw completion of Nirvana's first album, and some songs were already impressing their fellow musicians. Unfortunately, it'd still be months until
Bleach
would see release, and Nirvana was still just a local name.

NATHAN HILL:
King Krab were playing at a club called the Vogue and they were in town recording
Bleach
. They came down to the show and played us the rough mixes out in our van. It blew us away. At that time Matt Varnum was the only one in the band who was old enough to drink in a bar, so we drank in the van. It was a good time.

STEVE TURNER,
Mudhoney:
Well, the first time I saw them, at the Vogue, I thought they were OK, a bit too much of a Melvins influence maybe. Then they quickly came into their own, more confidence, more hooks. By the time we played with them in California … they blew me away. So much energy! And Kurt rolled around on the ground at one point and somehow managed to balance on his head while still playing guitar …

The question remained whether Nirvana would make it past local buzz, whether they would make the first cut and then succumb before leaving a lasting scar.

Nirvana's first step outside of Washington was a logical one: Portland.

BEN MUNAT,
Grind:
As far as how connected Portland and Seattle are … there have always been Seattle bands coming down here to play and Portland bands going up there. A band could actually easily do Vancouver BC, Bellingham, Seattle, Olympia, Portland, and Eugene as a little mini-tour, with no more than a couple hours' drive between each … there has always been a rich local scene in Portland.

For a band that had started while one member lived in Tacoma, another in Olympia, and their drummers in Aberdeen, the distance was no big deal.

JAIME ROBERT JOHNSON:
What made Seattle special to me was the fact in the space of one week, I could see Black Flag, Paisley Sin; head down to Portland and catch the Obituaries and Napalm Beach; head home the next night and catch a set by the angular artiness of bands like Infamous Menagerie doing a show with Lethal Gospel, or go see Skin Yard; then on the weekend catch Malfunkshun playing in a shoe store, go down to the Vogue to catch the Mentors, and for my Sunday hangover go hang at the Comet, where the bartenders had extremely good taste in music.

DANIEL RIDDLE:
Portland was much like Seattle in that it had many talented players and groups but its lack of a so-called music industry allowed for greater musical community, as where Seattle had a music scene. The difference being one of cooperation versus competition.

SETH PERRY,
Oily Bloodmen:
As I see it, Portlanders [on the whole] have always had a slight inferiority complex when it comes to Seattle, even though they like to see themselves as equals, if not superior.

JOE KEITHLEY:
It's got a really active punk scene—one reason a lot of people moved from California, as they couldn't stand it or couldn't afford it so they would end up in the Northwest. Portland currently has a better music scene than Seattle because you can live there cheaper than you can in Seattle, and if you want to go play in Seattle or Vancouver or down to California it's just a few hours' drive so it's pretty centrally located and you pay half the rent.

Portland became another staple of Nirvana's gig diet; Seattle and Olympia are the only places they ever played more.

RENÉE DENENFELD,
Caustic Soda:
It was an amazing, lively, outrageously active, and usually friendly music scene. In the beginning out of punk houses—there were famous punk houses, like Ether 13 in Eugene or Dirge in Portland—the clubs came and added more impetus. But being the rainy Northwest, the music was always largely born and created in basements … largely created by outsiders; street kids and rejects and poor kids and dropouts. It was not a college scene at all. It was very warm and welcoming to an incredibly diverse array of people …

GILLY ANN HANNER:
Portland was like the Wipers, Poison Idea, the Accused … More punky, but punky in a way that people knew how to play their instruments—I'm not saying that no one in Olympia knew how to play their instruments but … you didn't
have
to play your instrument; it was almost like reverse-snobbery in a way, it was kinda weird … Tam was teaching herself to play drums: “I can't chew gum and play the drums at the same time! I'll mess up!” Heather, she could sort of sing … They were the cool people in the band. I was not cool, because I could play guitar and I didn't have crazy hair …