I Found My Friends (17 page)

MARC BARTHOLOMEW,
Vegas Voodoo:
Once we started getting airplay from the San Jose State University College radio station (KSJS) and our first studio demo cassette tape sold all ten copies at the indie record store, I really felt like we “arrived.”

Just as a lot of the Sub Pop crew worked at KCMU, or Calvin Johnson presented on KAOS, a lot of musicians were directly involved in choosing the music that would go out on air.

LINDSEY THRASHER:
We lived in Chico, a fairly small college town in Northern California. Trish, Larry, and I worked at the college radio station and loved music, but weren't good musicians; that didn't stop us.

BILLY ALLETZHAUSER:
You wouldn't guess but Cincinnati had a great scene. I was a bit young to enjoy its heyday, but a joint called the Jockey Club had almost every major name in punk go through … We had a local punk radio show called
The Search & Destroy Show
that was the gel for everyone.

JED BREWER:
We had one of the best college radio stations in the country, KDVS … What gave KDVS its great national reputation is that it was/is one of the few stations left that was completely free-format, meaning DJs could play whatever they wanted as long as it was something that wasn't being played on commercial radio. Most college stations give DJs parameters that tend to steer DJs to only playing the biggest names in independent music. I DJed at KDVS in Davis, California, during the Thornucopia years. I truly consider it the best part of my education … KDVS was an early champion of Sub Pop, and we helped put on shows for Mudhoney, the Fluid, et cetera. We played the shit out of those first Nirvana and Tad albums.

RICK RIZZO:
WNUR (Northwestern University) was an incredibly helpful station; WXRT was a unique (to most of the rest of America) commercial station that played us early on. We got a big push from
Bucketful of Brains
in England,
Howl
in Germany,
Boston Rocker
, Byron Coley at
Spin
and
Forced Exposure
, and independent weeklies like the
Chicago Reader
. The major newspaper,
Chicago Tribune
, had a writer Greg Kot who championed our kind of music from the start.

A fresh generation had built an entirely new infrastructure required to get their sound out.

Amid this building excitement, Nirvana's life continued to be a series of opening and closing doors. On January 20, they gave their last performance in Tacoma.

JOHN PURKEY:
I talked to Krist one day about maybe doing a Nirvana show and having Machine open at Legends … the Melvins were coming up on tour, I knew that—so I thought why not get a show together: Melvins, Machine, Nirvana, and we'll open. So I had to go through the woman who was managing Legends—I worked everything out and she took over the show. So she hired this security that were all high school kids, but they'd try to throw anybody out for doing anything, the smallest thing: somebody tried to jump off stage, they'd all come after him and try to throw him out. Matt Lukin was there, and he was really good friends with Kurt and Krist. Well, he puked backstage and the security found out and were trying to throw him out. Mayhem! That's what started it all, they were trying to kick out Matt Lukin and Matt's like, “No, I'm not going!” He even gets up on the mike and says what's happening and finally they end up letting him stay.

It was a less-than-charming location, an indication of the flea-pit circuit on which the rock underground was built. Rooms up in the roof of the venue harbored an assortment of insalubrious characters.

JOHN PURKEY:
The Crips and Bloods—gangs here—they actually used to stay in here because we'd go up over the roof and there's a way to get over. You end up on the balcony area above the stage … there'd be all this abandoned building with mattresses everywhere and bums, or gangsters, living up there. We'd creep across, go down the balcony, and sneak into shows …

From playing a former porn theater in 1988 to a hangout for local gangs in January 1990, Tacoma's local color was undimmed. Likewise
,
having played eighty-two shows in 1989, Nirvana's live virginity was long gone. Their antics, since the first shattered guitar, had become wilder.

STEVE MORIARTY:
Jonathan Poneman saw us play then apparently developed a crush on Mia [Zapata] and asked us to play with Nirvana at the HUB [Husky Union Building] Ballroom … It was our second show in town—we thought we had it made. But Mia didn't want to go out with Jonathan, she wouldn't tolerate him—so we fell off the radar all of a sudden. We were no longer in the Singles Club. These were regular people; the owners of Sub Pop were as notorious as people in the bands … It's gone down in history that the University of Washington banned Nirvana for life from playing there. I'm sure that they didn't care—they didn't play there again. It was probably two thousand people, the biggest show they'd played at the time—the kids went wild. When we played they went ape shit! We had to tell the bouncers to move the monitors and not beat people up, because they weren't used to this, they weren't ready for it. It was so oversold that somebody pulled the fire alarm so that people would leave. Then they sold more tickets and let more people in. That was just where they blew up right there—we knew they were packing hundred-seat places but … It was January, it was a university, people were back to school after holidays. We hung out in the dressing room, drank tequila, and they methodically destroyed the dressing room by smashing the chairs, and Krist was chasing Kurt around with the big cooler of ice they'd brought out for the beers. It was funny. They were just causing trouble, having fun, being rock stars—why not? We were in a classroom, basically, so it was like “school's out for summer”: Alice Cooper! So they destroyed it—threw ice and beer all over the place and got banned. They were just out to tear it up. That was the biggest fun they'd ever had in their life … Onstage they were just really at the height of their game—they had the enthusiasm, lack of jadedness, lack of ego.

KAPTAIN “SCOTT GEAR” SKILLIT WEASEL,
Crunchbird:
The violence had been picking up with roving skinhead gangs. So the day of the show, and I arrive to learn our drummer had been savagely beaten the night before and was in the hospital … So now I am loading my shit in, there is one green room all four bands used. Now, understand, I am a rather large fellow: six-two, one hundred and ninety pounds. Kurt is this tiny, shy mammal. When I stepped into the hall from the loading dock he was on his way out, all greasy and pimpled in a blue flannel shirt—he looked scared shitless by my sudden appearance, this giant in combat boots (and a blue flannel I wore in as well) stomping down toward him holding the fifteen-inch speaker. I had to stop and turn my back to the wall, but he actually ducked under me … it was like when a cat scampers under your foot. We get the gear onto the stage and we needed to do sound check
right now
! We have no drummer! So in steps this very pixielike wonder named Chad Channing who whoops out our sound check and tells us he will fill if Sean doesn't make it. Now, see, right here I'm like, “Fucking cool!” But it also felt like I was dissing our drummer due to his situation. I relax, but Crunchy [Jaime Robert Johnson] seemed a bit stressed. I went to the green room and I met Mr. Novoselic—we were the same size! He was amazed to not have the biggest feet in the room. He truly seemed sincere … Finally, in walks Sean, head all wired together, can't talk, just totally punked the hospital to do this show—
nothing
was gonna stop this man. When we were to go on I was amazed to see that vast hall brimming wall to wall; this was going to be epic! I overheard comments from the other bands about how punk that was; tells a doctor to
back off!
gets out of hospital, and comes to pound the shit out of those skins.

SETH PERRY:
Dale and I took a seat at the end of the bar by the front door of the club and spent all of the Melvins' and Nirvana's sets sitting there drinking beer. At one point we had an inkling to try to go watch Nirvana but decided not to, as the club was too packed, so we decided on the safety of our seats with quick access to the exit. It was quite claustrophobic in there and I remember being amazed at how many people were stuffed in.

The night before the Legends show, Nirvana was showing the Dionysian spirit of rock 'n' roll in other ways.

GEORGE SMITH:
At the Steamboat Island show, there was a buzz that Kurt was on heroin … At that show people were talking about track marks—he had faked them up on his arms to skewer or maybe propagate the rumor … People were talking “Kurt has track marks,” but he had drawn them, overdone. I didn't think about it too much at the time—Ian McKinnon, a popular punk-rock guy in town, had died from an overdose … I didn't know if it was true about Kurt and if he was just having a goof at people or if there was something to that.

JUSTIN TROSPER:
Sub Pop bands were very “rock” compared to the Olympia thing, and Nirvana straddled that line … Kurt came out onstage looking all fucked up with what appeared to be track marks. He was pretending to be a junkie, or he was one, but in any case we all thought that was really stupid even though, and especially because, we were big fans. The Seattle bands pretended to be rock stars until they actually became them!

VADIM RUBIN:
The rap on those guys back then was that they were pretty into drugs. So to me he seemed like he was a bit of a stoner.

STEVE MORIARTY:
Part of the scene with the Sub Pop bands revolved around heroin—we were anti-heroin, anti-drugs, it was our common sense we thought; we drank a lot but we weren't doing drugs—not smack, anyway.

CHRIS QUINN:
I remember Kurt having a lot of stomach problems back at the time I knew him—he had something going on. He had the stomach thing, and when I knew him he had no reason to make it up—for a long time I thought he didn't drink or do drugs, I thought he was straightedge … I never saw him do anything in that whole period—but I'm only one person. For the amount I drank at the time, the amount of people I knew drinking at parties—it was college—Kurt never seemed like he was into that; it wasn't his thing.

Rumors …

Cobain was certainly open to experimentation, at least of the musical kind. During this spell in Olympia he worked with a Calvin Johnson/Tobi Vail outfit, the Go Team; sang for his friend Dylan Carlson's band Earth; and collaborated with members of Screaming Trees on a project known as the Jury.

MARK PICKEREL:
I loved the collaboration and would have loved for it to turn in to something prolific and consistent, but both bands just became overwhelmed with their own workloads and responsibilities as well as devotion to their own writing. I also have to wonder if it was a little uncomfortable for [Mark] Lanegan and Cobain to figure out how to divide up the workload—they were both such strong singers, but Lanegan didn't play an instrument at the time, so it didn't leave him much to do on songs that Cobain sang. I will say, though, that I thought it was a really magical meeting of musical minds, and if we'd had just a little more time to develop it, we could have made an amazing album!

Becoming a top draw at the “in” label meant Nirvana could live reasonably on just a few local shows, as they proved in 1990 by playing only once a month for March, September, November, and December, while not at all in June and July.

JOHN PURKEY:
There was around $7,000 made. She [the promoter] paid out $500 each to Nirvana and the Melvins. Machine made $150, though we were guaranteed $500 if there were five hundred people at the show. The show turned out to be over capacity. Something like eight hundred people.

CRISPIN WOOD:
We were paid $500 that night. I assume Nirvana was paid the same, possibly more since they went on last. Not crazy-great money, but not bad, either. I also know that Cobain was not impressed by the sound man that came with the rented PA. After hearing us do our check, Cobain offered our sound man $100 to mix their set. Our sound man—Carl Plaster, engineer/producer on most of our recordings—turned Cobain down. Nirvana couldn't have been hurting too badly for money if Cobain was able to offer $100 for sound.

MARC BARTHOLOMEW:
The Nirvana show at the Cactus Club was our first legit paid gig. The band got $50 cash and every member got a free drink ticket. I'm sure the few friends of ours who showed up covered that $50 with their ticket price at the door. The only other benefit was the sound guy was usually cool and would record your set from the mixing board onto a cassette tape … After our set we hung out with the other bands, I got my free drink ticket, and felt like a big shot being nineteen years old, drinking a draft Budweiser in a big red plastic cup walking around a club. It was basically “Here's your drink tickets, get your shit off the stage.”

Nirvana had ambition as well as label obligations, so they found themselves supporting Tad on a tour haring down the West Coast to Tijuana, Mexico.

ERIC MOORE:
Pine Street holds maybe … 1,100 people? It was oversold, I'm sure, with more people than that. The idea that a large number of people would come see bands like Tad and Nirvana was sort of new at the time … There was a lot of talk about the lineup and who would headline. Tad was considered a bigger act in some ways, but they were all headliners … I think we got tacked onto the bill because one of our band members was sleeping with someone who worked for Monqui (the production company) at the time … Tad walked up to me (he was friendly sometimes!) and complimented me on our set. Stoked! And then … someone from, I'm guessing Nirvana's crew, stole my leather jacket from behind my amp onstage.