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What Did I Know And When Did I Know It – Part 2

To give an alternate timeline to what I knew and when I knew it — it was while I was writing the article on Napalm Beach that I knew something strange was going on with regards to Chris’ history and the development of Sub Pop as a label, in that it appeared that Sub Pop was essentially following in Chris’ footsteps in a number of ways. For example, Chris recorded Napalm Beach’s self-titled album (commonly known as Teen Dream) at Triangle Studios in 1985. In 1986 Triangle became Reciprocal Recording, and Sub Pop began to record all their records there. Similarly, Chris had played regularly at a Seattle club called the Wrex which then became the Vogue. Again, beginning around 1986, Sub Pop basically auditioned its potential signings at the Vogue. In 1989 I saw that as Chris was touring Europe with Napalm Beach, Nirvana and Tad were touring the same circuit, two weeks behind. At this point, Chris and Sam were seasoned musicians with a significant musical catalog while Nirvana were still quite green. This is the period of time when the Berlin Wall was coming down, an event witnessed by both Napalm Beach and Nirvana.

Two years later, in 1991, Napalm Beach toured two weeks behind Nirvana – while back in the states Nirvana’s breakout album, Nevermind, was rocketing to the top of the charts. I just knew there was something more than a coincidence at work, but I couldn’t figure out what. Mostly what was bothering me back in 2013, is the fact that when I sent inquiries to people at Sub Pop and K Records, including those who certainly knew who Chris was, had interacted with him, had played shows with him, had recently had pleasant personal and/or email exchanges with him – when I asked about certain aspects of this story – they all went silent.

Meanwhile, as I was composing the article “Introducing Napalm Beach,” originally on a WordPress-based platform run by music critic Everett True, it became clear that someone else was in my account. My edits were being sabotaged, reverted, etc. I’d been writing for this blog for about two years by that point and this was the first I’d noticed that type of thing going on. Another thing that was happening at that time is the screen of my iMac would suddenly go dark for a second or two, and then come back again. I thought at the time the system was glitching in some way, but it later became clear that was also a type of remote interference going on.

So that’s what I mean when I said I knew something was “fishy.”

As a background to this, at least since 1996 Napalm Beach was always being excluded from any kind of books or narratives about Pacific Northwest music, and even at times about Portland music. I always knew the exclusion was unjustified, and felt that it was odd – but after researching the story of Napalm Beach and their links to Wipers and Courtney Love among others, it seemed even more so. So I felt that publishing this story on a blog like Everett True’s would garner some kind of serious response and/or discussion. Yet it seemed to land with a yawn and a thud. And at that point I pushed a bit harder, asserting that the band had been deliberately buried by the industry, and the responses I got were along the lines of “no, they were just overlooked. It happens.” Sorry, but there was simply no way this was true. I knew it then, and it’s even clearer now.

Posted on July 22, 2022October 8, 2022

Music Industry Issues (Part 1)Tear The Pedals Off Of You

The following is an excerpt from an article the article I originally published in 2013 entitled “Introducing Napalm Beach.” I originally – rather carefully – titled this section of the article “Chris Newman and the northwest fuzz-wah continuum.” This was because I was trying to keep everyone’s feelings in mind – Chris, and others who were influenced by Chris’ music. I was trying to avoid making the claim that Chris’ ideas had been stolen by other artists who became far more successful and who avoided sharing their success or crediting their inspirational source.

However, 2013 was a very different time for me. When I published the article, I was not aware of the bigger picture of what was going on around us. I just knew something was fishy. It was shortly after publishing the article that I realized that more than any other band, it was Kurt Cobain and Nirvana who had adopted Chris’ innovations. And Nirvana was, at one time – a time before the web and YouTube, when celebrities were fewer, and larger – the biggest band in the world. This probably deserves a follow up article. The only reason I never published a follow up earlier is because many others in the industry already knew the things I was just figuring out, and had actually been waiting for years for this day to come, and were busy finalizing plans for the hailstorm of chaos that would ultimately lead to Chris’ death, and because after the initial blast of music industry/FBI blowback, Chris didn’t want me to pursue that line of inquiry anymore. It’s not because the line of inquiry was wrong or would be unfruitful; it’s because Chris was, and had always been, mightily controlled.

Because the original article was intended to be a fairly comprehensive history of Chris’ career as a musician, it’s possible this section could be lost in the din. But considering it all now years later, I realize it was probably the most consequential and controversial part of the article. So I’m republishing it here as an excerpt, and as a foundation for other information which I’ve gleaned since the publication of the article.

Chris Newman and the northwest fuzz-wah continuum

One of the things that is sometimes exasperating is watching people try to figure out where, when, and how northwest punks began to incorporate elements of 60s and 70s psychedelic rock. Most writers credit Mudhoney (and their generation) for these innovations. That’s because Chris has been left out of the story.

If you look at west coast underground rock as a continuum, as I do, Jimi Hendrix had a tremendous impact. The power trio, the bass and drums holding down a solid groove while the guitar goes crazy with feedback and noise – Jimi was the innovator. Jimi’s main effects were fuzz and wah. However, fuzz tone had fallen out of fashion in rock music by the 70s. The Cramps, and Chris Newman, brought it back.

Here are some things I know about Chris as a musician. He has a sharp memory, an ear for melody, and a natural ability to arrange instruments. In addition, he has a driving need to express himself verbally, and through his guitar, and to embody all that is REAL, and all that is rock’n’roll. Simply put: it is his calling.

He grew up in a tight-knight evangelical Christian family. When he began to play, they told him he was playing the “devil’s music”. And he literally believed he could burn in hell for playing it. And he deliberately, consciously, decided that he loved rock’n’roll music so much that he was willing to burn in hell for it.

And then he did burn in hell for it. When he came out of hell, he was still playing, better than ever.

That’s how seriously he takes his music.

He is foremost a guitarist and songwriter, but he also plays bass, drums, keys, whatever. He got his first acoustic guitar at age 13 and his first electric at 14. He was also 14 when acquired his first effect pedal: a Fender Fuzz-Wah. Because, Jimi Hendrix.

At 17 Chris mowed lawns to save up money for an Electro-Harmonix LPB1 distortion pedal which he purchased from the classifieds in Rolling Stone (Issue #2). That was his introduction to Electro-Harmonix. In 1969, Electro-Harmonix developed the Big Muff π. Supposedly Jimi Hendrix was the first musician to buy a (work in progress) Big Muff – but Chris must not have been far behind, because ever since the early 70s, the Big Muff fuzz and Crybaby wah have been his main – and usually his only – effects.

In the 80s – especially the early 80s – Chris also used an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus pedal. The chorus effect was invented in the late 70s. Chris bought a Small Clone in 1980 (likely about the time it first came out), incorporating it into his sound immediately. (You can hear it, for example, on these albums: Trap Sampler, Rock & Roll Hell, and Pugsley.)

Years later, these combinations of effects would become associated with Mudhoney (fuzz/wah) and Nirvana (distortion/chorus).

As for guitar and amp, in Napalm Beach, Chris started out playing his pink fender Strat (that matched his pink converse high-tops) through a Marshall stack. Later, and for many years, his main ax was an old Gibson Flying-V bought from Fred and Toody’s Tombstone Music store.

After seeing the Cramps in 1982, and their original two guitar, Fender Twin reverb-and-fuzz attack, Chris added a Twin Reverb amplifier to his setup. He refashioned a headlight dimmer switch to an amp switcher. For his Napalm Beach shows he could now use the switch to select either the Marshall, or the Twin, or both amps together.

Posted on July 22, 2022October 8, 2022

Back To Black

photo showing Washington state rock band Bodhi standing in a field with mole hills in front, trees in back — Bodhi – 1973

The Amy Winehouse song “Back To Black” is pretty clearly about a man who is cheating, but the video shows images of a funeral and cemetery. I think the mound next to the grave was intended to evoke the 1973 press photo of Chris’ first working band, Bodhi. When Back To Black came out in 2006, Chris was married, but in a long distance relationship with his wife Denise. Meanwhile, Chris’ ex-wife Valarie never left him alone, and he continued to struggle to stay off of heroin. I am confident Chris didn’t cheat while married to Denise, but Denise acted insanely jealous, didn’t want him anywhere near Valarie, and took Chris’ relapses incredibly personally. I think Denise – a honeytrap – was among those creating a nasty record with the FBI, on purpose, in order to murder Chris. Meanwhile, Chris was trauma-bonded to Denise and never completely able to release himself from the fantasy she created for him. This situation that Chris, me, and now my innocent daughter are in, is about leveraging financed abuse into more and more abuse and ultimately murder, and it’s all done for GREED.

Amy Winehouse was almost certainly murdered as well. A so-called “27 club” casualty.

Posted on July 19, 2022October 8, 2022

He breathed music

Chris' telecaster headstock — Chris had a special way of winding strings

There are so many things that I want to remember about Chris. I’d have been inclined to write and write over the past several months, but have been unable to do so because of the kind of physical duress I’ve been forced to live under, and just trying to survive. It’s these little things that are treasured memories about a person that you might forget. Because I’ve written journals going back to 1979, and regularly since the early 1980s – I know what it is like to find a memory that you may not have realized was important when you wrote it down – then you forget it – then you find it in a journal, and you remember remembering it, and realize it was important or meaningful, even if just personally to you.

Our last eight years together were pretty much horrible, and that is because of circumstances forced upon us by others. As I process all of this, I cannot escape the fact that any number of individuals whom he trusted could have given him a clue about the danger we were in, and how to find his way out. And they didn’t. When I asked them directly, they usually turned around and told Chris I was crazy. I’m very grateful to Chris that he stood by me the whole time, even though all these forces were working against us. I’m very sad that Chris was ultimately unable to see the bigger situation around him. I’m very sorry no one else stepped up to help him see it.

There are so many things about Chris that I loved or found endearing or just special. I feel like he was surrounded by muck and people who either willfully misunderstood him or deliberately misrepresented him. For example – one day when Chris was eating unhealthy food and I was suggesting an alternative I remember someone saying to me “he likes what he likes,” as if I shouldn’t bother. But that real truth was, something I noticed early on, is Chris was very suggestible. In other words, he was prone to influence, even as an older adult. From my perspective at the time, that was a good thing, because it meant that a good influence would help lift him up. But of course it was a double edged sword.

Another early thing I noticed about Chris is that when he listened to music, his breathing would change. I’ve never known anyone else like this – as soon as he began to listen to music, he’d begin to breathe deeper, slower breaths. To me it seemed like he was breathing music.

When he was sick with cancer, he wanted to record a last album, but as soon as he started to feel well enough to do that, he was brutally attacked with directed energy weapons. This is one of many hints that music industry interests were behind his torture and murder. Probably the last thing he played on guitar was a wrenchingly beautiful version of Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland.” I thought it was so much more beautiful than the version on Hendrix’s album because he was playing it simple, sparse, dripping with soul. We started talking about recording again. But then that very night the torture started again and didn’t stop until he died.

Chris was so proud of his collections of guitars, books, DVDs, and effects pedals. He said that because he lived on the streets, or addicted to drugs and without a permanent residence for so long, it was meaningful to him to be able to have and be able to keep these things.

I’ve only been able to keep a few of Chris’ things, one of which is the guitar he had when we got together, a black Mexican Telecaster. I picked it up recently and of course it still has his strings on it, and it made me remember another thing about him, which is how he wound strings. He tended to wind them just once or twice around the pegs, and then he’d leave the ends long. This is the tiniest thing but it is something that makes me remember him. When I look at the strings wrapped around the pegs I see Chris. These are the strings he put on this guitar, and one day I’ll replace them, and if I don’t write down how he wound strings maybe I’ll forget.

Posted on July 19, 2022October 8, 2022

Nirvana – Sappy

Posted on July 12, 2022September 12, 2022

Snow Bud and the Flower People – Ripped Van Stinkle – 1994

Tim/Kerr #41

recorded 1993, and again in 1994 – released in 1994

Snow Bud and the Flower People recorded this album, at first under the title of El Kabong, at Drew Canulette’s Dogfish Studios in 1993. However, before the album could be mixed, it was destroyed in a fire.

According to the April 19, 1993 issue of The Oregonian, The March 24, 1993 destroyed about 5,000 hours of tapes.

Oregonian – Portland_OR_-_April_19_1993-_pC06 Download

It is my opinion that the Nirvana song Heart Shaped Box, which had been recorded in February 1993, contains a deliberate reference to Chris’ song Tar Pits, which I suspect was recorded in February or March 1993. Chris tended not to leave too much time between recording and mixing, and El Kabong was burned up in late March, between the recording and the mixing.

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t make sense for one unreleased song to deliberately reference another unreleased song, but as I’ve been saying, our circumstances are anything but normal. There has been regular surveillance in, and worldwide distribution and trafficking of surveillance from our private homes going back within both Chris’ family and my family, to before we were born, and this is not the only time I suspect this kind of thing happened.

Cobain and others were trying to show that the surveillance was going on, without saying so directly.

It’s worth noting that Cobain’s use of the word “Tar Pit” includes the word “Trap.” Chris’ first recordings were made on Greg Sage’s label, Trap Records.

Snow Bud Ripped Van Stinkle cover — clockwise from left: Chris Newman, Sam Henry, Lance Paden, Nathan Jorg

Snow Bud Ripped Van Stinkle inside cover — clockwise from left: Chris Newman, Sam Henry, Lance Paden, Nathan Jorg

Posted on July 10, 2022October 8, 2022