Research and Writing – II – Gatekeeping and The Script

Our Favorite Performer

Use just once and destroy
Invasion of our piracy
Afterbirth of a nation
Starve without your skeleton key
I love you for what I am not
I do not want what I have got
A blanket acne’ed with cigarette burns
Speak at once while taking turns
– Kurt Cobain “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” (In Utero 1993)

I have made the claim that archivists, scenesters, and writers writing about the music of the pacific northwest – in particular those writing about the times when Chris was actively playing and recording – recite from a script. And they don’t just recite from a script about Chris, but about all notable artists within his orbit, or shall we say sphere of influence.

In addition to there being a script, there are established gatekeepers of history, especially when it comes to artists around whom there is a lot to hide – and there are a few of those. Chris’ history is hidden mostly by simply being omitted, though it seems that the more is written about him, the more there is to disentangle, because falsehoods are being published, and once they are published, if they aren’t immediately corrected, they’re apt to be republished again and again. The more that is written about Chris, the more likely it is that gatekeepers will appear, and one person who may be positioning herself in that regard is his first wife Valarie. Valarie – another honey trap – has published out and out libelous statements about me – by which I mean demonstrably factually false as well as harmful – and refused to remove the defamatory content when asked, so she may deserve additional attention.

Gatekeeping is particularly systematic when it comes to more well-known artists. The who come most immediately to mind are Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith, both of whom I believe – or better put – I believe beyond reasonable doubt – were forced to suicide. In other words, like Chris and many others, they were murdered. And not only that, it was widely known that Cobain and Smith were murdered, and that it was widely known ahead of time that they would be murdered. In other words, these are cover-ups that begin while a murder is being planned (and the victim could still potentially be saved) – and they are cover ups involving not just a small group, but large communities, and supported or instigated and covered up, once again, by the FBI/CIA. Under such circumstances, you can understand why there would be gatekeepers, and why any writer who cared about his or her own life and/or the lives of their family members, would not venture beyond the official gatekeepers and the official script.

I mean, I hesitate to support this fear such a system engenders by painting it out to be exactly as corrupt and terrifying as it is, but history teaches us that acquiescing to violent authoritarianism only leads to more violence, and more authoritarianism. So my point of view is that someone has to break the cycle, and that starts with speaking truth.

The gatekeeping is about more than covering up murders. A lot of it is about money, and the murders themselves seem to be linked to financial and material gain (homes, cars, opportunities) by people in the community. Gatekeeping can be as simple as directing attention. “Mark Lanegan is the best singer” is one example of the script. You’ll hear some version of that from lots of different sources. I’m not alleging this part of the script comes from Lanegan – I think it is linked to someone else – but that everyone within a certain community was obligated to go along with it, and certainly not to counter it publicly. This background made it even weirder when Lanegan would say to Chris – more than once, but only in private – “Chris, you are my favorite singer.”

Cobain sort of takes the piss out of the whole thing here, as he introduces “the last song of the night” on MTV Unplugged, which is a Leadbelly* song he recorded as a duet with Lanegan, Leadbelly’s “In The Pines”. The introduction (first minute of the video) is the main part I’m taking about – “this was written by my favorite performer – our favorite performer – all our favorite performer, isn’t it? We like him the best. Oh, and there’s a donation basket…”

Within the full performance are other hints about what’s been going on in the background – like when he says “K” at the end of his intro and at the end when he says “WHOLE (HOLE) night” and instead of saying “cold wind” he pronounces it “CONE wind” – recalling some imagery of a cone-shaped hat blowing off along with some blue butterflies, and switching from white to black in the Heart Shaped Box video.

* It is my contention that Chris Newman was murdered by aiming a frequency weapon – possibly a carrier wave with radioactivity – at his internal organs via one or more implants in his gut – aka a link to both the moniker “Leadbelly” and the word “gutter.”

Cobain, from my perspective, was uniquely talented at creating art which could potentially catch the attention of either Chris or me. I was listening to and reading about a lot of old folk and blues artists in the 1980s and early 1990s, including Leadbelly. In addition, Leadbelly was known for the song “Goodnight Irene,” which links him to Ken Kesey (via the lyric taken for the book title Sometimes A Great Notion), and to the Oregon Country fair which is where Bret was headed on June 27, 1988 when he was hit by a car. I suspect that the Kesey family is linked to Courtney Love’s family (something to do with dairies and/or Grateful Dead and/or LSD/CIA).