One of the assertions I’ve been making for years now is that Kurt Cobain coded lots of messages into his music which could be picked up by either Chris or by me. I know it’s not only Cobain who did this, but he was extremely clever at how he went about it, and he was importantly positioned both in time (he was almost exactly one year older than me – shared a birthday with my mother, actually) – and location, and of course by profession as a musical artist.
After going back into my journals at length, which I started to do in 2018, I realized that Cobain in a lot of ways knew my journals better than I did. As for Chris, all of his journals, and all of his letters prior to 2014 have vanished. Some of his letters vanished after he was living with me, so it is not that Chris lost or misplaced them. Someone stole them.
The first Nirvana song that I realized was based on one of my poems was the song called Sappy, based on a poem of mine called Caterpillar Jar and I’ve talked about it at length on videos and so forth. Caterpillar Jar appears in my journal first in March 1988. So, if you look up the history of Sappy, on Wikipedia you learn that it was first relased in October 1993, but the Sappy Wikipedia entry goes on to say “Originally recorded under the working title “Sad”, “Sappy” dates back to at least 1987. The first known version of the song is a solo home demo recorded by Cobain in the late 1980s”
“at least 1987” – really? I still contend that the version that came out in 1993 is based on my poem from March 1988. Where does “at least 1987” come from, and is there evidence to support that claim, the way I have evidence of the date of my poem in my 1988 journal? I don’t know the answer to that, but the source for the claim is a 2006 book called Nirvana: In Utero by a Seattle writer named Gillian Gaar. In order to find out how Gaar established the 1987 date I’d have to track down the book and see what her sources are. The thing about this is, however, in this context – northwest music history in general and Nirvana in particular – you cannot trust what people say, even when there are several people corroborating the same story. Because there is a script.
This came up again with regards to another song from 1993’s In Utero, and that is Heart Shaped Box. While writing about honey traps I started thinking about the “tar pit trap” line. Chris had written a song called Tar Pits which he recorded in 1992 (correction – Tar Pits was more likely recorded, burned up, and re-recorded in Spring 1993 – see “new information” post).
Chris had married Valarie – a heroin-addicted CIA-trauma-trained honey trap – in August 1991. Chris’ first releases were on a label called “Trap” belonging to Greg Sage of the Wipers, and Chris’ drummer, Sam Henry, was the Wipers original drummer. Sam was also a heroin addict, and Sam’s secret job, like the secret job of Valarie, and for that matter, Greg Sage, was to “trap” Chris. Chris was deliberately trapped with distractions, brainwashing, misdirection, psychological manipulation, bad advice, and drugs.
I think Cobain was drawing a parallel between himself and Chris with that line, in a few different ways.
The thing about artists that imitate Chris music – it was possible to imitate Chris musically before Chris performed publicly or recorded because of the surveillance trafficking coming right out of our private residences, and there are times I suspect this may have happened. So I don’t know exactly when Tar Pits was written, and in fact I believe the album on which it appeared, Snow Bud and the Flower People Ripped Van Stinkle was actually recorded twice, because a fire destroyed the master tapes in the period of time after it had been recorded and before it had been mixed (that was the Dogfish Studio Fire). Chris’ memory was generally good about dates, and he gave me the date of October 1992 as the date that Ripped Van Stinkle, and Tar Pits, was released.
In Utero was recorded in February 1993 and released the following September. When was Heart Shaped Box written? According to the current Wikipedia article, it was written in early 1992. What’s the source? Gillian Gaar again. This time it’s not clear from the footnote what publication; possibly it’s the same In Utero book claiming the 1987 date for Sappy.
One other thing I find a bit interesting – Gaar’s twitter bio reads thusly: “Writer and thinker. #binders” -On the album Ripped Van Stinkle, “Tar Pits” is track 11. Track 12, the last song on the album, is called “The Thinker”
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.”
Gutter Twins – Dulli and Lanegan
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).
In order to write a history of someone or something, it is helpful, to say the least, to have documentation from which to draw. These can include official documents of various types, or in the case of an artist or entertainer, dates of shows, publication dates, album release dates, contracts. They can also include newspaper articles, mentions in books, and things of that nature.
This is when it gets really sticky writing about Chris Newman and his bands. Chris, but not only Chris – there are others.
In 2013, when I published the article called “Introducing Napalm Beach” I started with what had ultimately become my conclusion – that the band had been deliberately buried – unpermitted to succeed financially, then written out of history. Most who bothered to respond lept all over this conclusion as being false, and though I thought I had made the case pretty well in the article – and trust me – it is not what I thought until I’d already been working on the article for weeks if not months – maybe I didn’t make the case well enough. Or maybe the problem was putting my conclusion at the beginning of the article. Or maybe all the criticism was just plain disingenuous.
I do seem to run into problems when I made a general statement and then support it with arguments and evidence. Usually the criticism is something along the lines of “that is ridiculous” and/or “you’re crazy and should be institutionalized/medicated/seek therapy.” And while that might not be the most well supported counter-argument a person could make, if enough people get together to form a chorus of this type, and if the chorus includes professional people who ought to know what they’re talking about – then it’s pretty hard to refute, facts and evidence be damned.
Nonetheless, I have to keep trying.
Yes, Napalm Beach was written out of history, and no, it was not an oversight. But rather than make this big claim all at once, maybe a better route is to look at smaller pieces. This is important not just because of the legacy of an artist, but because the CIA-driven machine that was and is behind all of this has is continuing to cause a tremendous amount of harm.
Yes, I now know that it is the CIA/FBI who was behind this, and that labels like Sub Pop and Flying Heart (and others) were (and are) tied into it, and this is why there have been so many premature deaths (including cancer, heart attacks, car crashes, and overdoses) in the San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle music communities. But look at me, there I go, getting ahead of myself again.
Chris isn’t the only person who’s life is being or has been deleted from history. I am on that list, my daughter is certainly on that list, and my childhood friend Bret Bowman is on that list. How should I know that Bret Bowman is on that list being as he was hit by a car while tripping on acid at age 22 while on his way to the Oregon Country Fair and spent more than 10 years in a coma before waking up and then committing suicide on the anniversary of my matriculation date from Humboldt State University? I know because as a child, Bret excelled in two areas – music and shooting.
Bret won several trap shot awards, and he also won awards related to musical performance. These are the kinds of things that would have been written up in local papers. But when I was doing research on Bret, searches in newspaper archives on his name brought up absolutely nothing. His awards did not come up, nor the incident that ultimately took his life.
I found a similar void when searching on my own name in newspaper archives. Even though I didn’t win awards as a child, I was in the local papers once or twice. And I found a similar pattern with Chris, at least in the major newspapers. What I’m saying specifically is that our names would not trigger results in searches of online newspaper archives. Could we be found by browsing specific newspapers page by page? Possibly. But to find information that way you need a lot more information – you need to know when, and in which publication, an article appeared.
There are a lot of other examples I’ve run into of centralized manipulation of data – both personal data – for example – the deletion and manipulation of my images from Google cloud accounts – and public data – manipulation of newspaper archive searches – to control information. The only groups that I know of which could be doing this kind of thing across several different platforms are federal spy agencies. And the data manipulation is sophisticated, by which I mean there’s an understanding of psychology applied here as well. If I were to make a public statement about some specific piece of data that I know should exist in a certain location not being there, or not being found, there’s a significant chance that the following day, said data will suddenly re-appear, thus making me look like I’m misinformed or careless at best, or delusional at worst. In other words, data manipulation is only one part of what is going on – defamation, disinformation, and other psy-ops are also at work here.
“Why should they care so much about you?” is the question that usually comes next – it’s a valid question, though the question always comes from those who already know the answer. Any kind of answer that I give which fits into some kind of soundbite then automatically receives the reply “you should seek therapy/medication, etc.” It’s not that the question can’t be answered – it’s just that the answer is designed – was deliberately designed – to be a bit crazy.
Just to be complete about this – information also has regularly been deleted from my computer hard drives and even from my back-ups. So as I’ve been attempting to collect and archive what I can, following right behind me is this big deletion machine. I can’t trust my computer, I can’t trust back up drives, I can’t trust newspaper archives, I can’t trust my web servers, and I can’t trust any cloud service to keep my data secure. Putting 2 and 2 and 2 together – this is intelligence agency level activity.
There were things written and published about Chris’ bands in various newspapers beginning at least by 1981. There was an article by Charles Cross in the Seattle P.I. published on July 18, 1981. When I tried to find the print version of that article and I was unable to do so not because of deletions, but because the only reasonable way I could find to access that archive required me to have a library card for the Seattle public library.
So there’s the issue of silence (being ignored in music histories), and there’s the issue of data deletion, there’s an issue of some data being unreasonably difficult to find, and there’s another issue – there’s the issue of being written about poorly. I’m not talking about bad reviews, necessarily – there are more insidious ways to sabotage an artist.
Chris began to compose a memoir. He wrote regularly during 2013, and stopped abruptly in January 2014 after I was chased down and kidnapped – aggravated kidnapping, I now realize, by a group that included the FBI/CIA as well as people linked to the entertainment industry – and held under the most outrageous false pretenses in a psychiatric mind control facility. Chris didn’t know what to make of all this, and he too was being subject to intense mind control techniques. I feel terrible that this instigated crash destroyed our band (the destruction was deliberate), our marriage plans (also a deliberate destruction), and ultimately, Chris’ last hopes of success (aggravated murder – these were crimes committed in order to facilitate and cover up other crimes).
However, by the time he stopped writing, Chris had recorded a lot of memories. The memoir draft is more focused on personal memories than on his music career, but music was intertwined throughout Chris’ life, as natural to him as breathing.
Chris did intend to publish this memoir, at least at first. Later he had second thoughts, but really what he needed was a good editor. Just as with everything else in his life, his work could have shone with a little professional assistance. This was not going to happen, however, as long as we were under the all-encompassing suffocating blacklist.
Chris’ memories of Courtney Love were important to him, and influenced his views on the possibilities of success in music. Courtney made Chris believe she was in love with him, or at least had a huge crush on him. When she went to Europe in 1981, she wrote him what he described as “love letters” – all of which were removed from his apartment and presumably destroyed in 1997 by his landlord and brother in law, even though the rent had been paid. Similarly, important letters from my collection to me have also gone missing, throughout the 1990s and even as recently as 2018 – including a copy of a 1983 letter to my grandmother about punk rock and the idea of having a music career that Kurt Cobain appears to have seen and quoted from – verbatim – in interviews. This is the sort of thing I mean when I talk about patterns.
Following is what Chris wrote about Courtney Love in the draft of his memoir. The only editing I have done is minor grammatical corrections (and added some relevant images).
We were soon blessed with a self appointed roadie. It was the night of the Joan Jett gig and Steve Shades pulled up his truck to the loading dock and yelled “Let’s go!” Steve was loud, obnoxious, and everybody in the Biz knew him and his loud mouth. He was a stage hand at big concerts, and his obnoxious behavior got him noticed all the time. It got him in trouble most of the time. It was as though Steve suffered from Tourette’s Syndrome.
Once he had to stand outside the cafe as we all enjoyed our after show dinners. Steve was asked to leave since he couldn’t seem to stop swearing. He always pretended to brag about his band The Shades. He briefly led the band playing bass, writing the songs, and calling the shots as Chelsea Ray handled the vocals. She appeared in the Kurt and Courtney documentary as the friend of the Cobain’s nanny, who seemed to be frightened for her life. She implied that Courtney was a dangerous woman.
Steve Shades ended up renting a house in southeast Portland. We all moved in, including a couple of extra room mates. One room mate being Courtney Menely. Later she became known as Courtney Love. Chelsea Ray happened to live right next door with her then husband and daughter. In 1982 Courtney was a trust fund baby. Maybe sixteen years old. She was usually loud and opinionated and always hyper. Courtney would climb in the van uninvited and ride to our Seattle gigs.
Her best friend Robin was a real looker and she and Courtney saw Napalm Beach with April Wine at the Paramount the year before. Courtney was a trippy Rocker chick. Her dad sent her a shitload of original Owsley Acid. Different colored barrels of pure LSD.
Axomoxa was a cool looking and sounding album by the Grateful Dead. Much more accessible than the first one (Morning Dew was my favorite cut) and the second, Anthem for the Sun. My Granny let me pick it out on my fifteenth birthday that summer in Longview. On the back cover a family of hippies are shown laying around on a grassy hill on a sunny day. Courtney Love claimed it was her as a child in the foreground. She claimed her father had dosed her with LSD at the age of four. She said he was the Grateful Dead’s manager of some type. Photographer, gopher, drug runner? She showed me the book he, Hank Harrison had published. It was something like, “My Life with the Dead.” It was all for real. Courtney was some kind of connected rocker kid from the very beginning.
When I watch Courtney’s father in the documentary Kurt and Courtney, I feel a seething hate for the man. He comes off as the opportunistic money-grubbing bitch that some claim Courtney to be. It breaks my heart to see a parent treat their child as disposable commodity. I respect the girl for her intelligence and tenacity. Courtney is as resilient as I am, but I know she hurts down deep.
Courtney had a different outlook back then. She was still developing into a woman and she was a rowdy and aggressive little tom boy sometimes. Other times she was a soft little feral kitten that only required love and understanding. She has so much intelligence and drive. The woman eventually became a household name and a glamorous celebrity in Hollywood. She was raised in a hippy commune and ended up in Beverly Hills.
Courtney has proven to be a pioneer in feminist music and values, yet she seems to hold onto old fashioned beliefs that it is a woman’s duty to take care of her man. She also strongly believes in the institution of marriage, at least it appears that way to me.
When Courtney visited Portland right after being in the movie, Sid and Nancy, she strolled through the Satyricon and walked past my table where I sat with my girl at the time, Nancy Loeffler, and proclaimed,”I would have married you Chris Newman!” I didn’t know what to say, but she kept walking, and out the door and into the night, she went.
She showed up at Nancy’s fancy apartment after hours. Ms. Love wasn’t getting anywhere acting like a Hollywood star, so she came down to our level, and we all included her in the cocaine-fueled conversations that late night.
The acid Courtney’s dad sent her was really amazing. It was as potent as the day it was manufactured, ten years before. We all tripped hard on that shit.
Me and Mark Nelson dropped acid together several different times.
Courtney gave a lot away and sold a few hits for $2.00. Courtney was pretty fun to hang out with as a young girl. One day I saw her diary sitting on her bed. I opened it to the most recent entry: I am in love with this musical genius named Chris, but he’s really fat, and I don’t know what people will think.
It angered me slightly, but I was so accustomed to that attitude. Fat guys rarely got the girl they wanted. I always set my sights high. I could sometimes charm a girl into ignoring my flaws and dazzle her with my shining brightness. Times did eventually change attitudes somewhat, especially as a woman gets more mature, she may fall for an overweight but exceptional guy. Men aren’t so forgiving about the shortcomings in a girl’s physical appearance. They say men are visually oriented and pursue that “trophy girl.” It is a sign of success in most circles.
Courtney did try to hook up with me. We had one evening alone in the band house. We made out on the rug in the light of the television. I stopped myself, after getting very intimate with her. She knew how to kiss back then. We just made out and fondled each other like teen-agers, only I was twenty eight and she was around seventeen. She told me she was a virgin, and she wanted her first to be me. I was thankful I didn’t carry out her request. I really liked Courtney, but she was a handful.
I never dreamed I would ever hook up with a loud aggressive woman, but I did end up marrying Valarie for fifteen long and exciting years.
When Courtney became famous, she had no qualms about “kissing and telling.” She often emasculated former lovers in the press. Calling them a lousy lay or less than adequate in the bedroom.
I was very impressed with HOLE’s album Live Through This which was released to critical acclaim in 1994 right after the suicide death of her famous husband.
My first wife, Valarie and I saw Courtney at La Luna in Portland. She had just been on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. I got us in on the guest list and the guy at the door said, “Hey, Courtney was just taking about you.” I was in awe of her new found power and celebrity.
She quipped, “Hello, Chris Newman” from the stage.
I was high as fuck on heroin and I was beaming with pride. The entire concert blended together into a warm swirling embrace. I loved what I was experiencing. I felt there was a chance for me to make it in the music business.
December 1994 – “Live Through This” tour
1994 magazine ad – Live Through This
Hole at Fillmore, San Francisco – 11-11-94
Marti Wyman, Courtney Love, Ursula Wehr, Robin Barbur (Bradbury) – Satyricon, 1987
In his 2021 book, The Rocky Road To Recovery: The Life of Chris Newman of Napalm Beach Eric Danielson claimed that Chris Newman “attended and participated in the infamous Satyricon Riot” (p 77, 171). This claim is uncited, unsupported, and false. I am not claiming that Danielson has deliberately falsified information. It’s possible this was a rumor that everyone had simply accepted as self-evident.
The Satyricon Riot of April 28-29 1990 is an event that has come up in conversation and in the press from time to time, ever since I moved to Portland in the summer of 2000. At some point in the early 2000s I conducted an interview with Satyricon owner George Touhouliotis who cited that event as being a turning point in his enthusiasm for running the club. What I didn’t understand, until researching the event in The Oregonian archives a few days ago, is that it really was not a one-night affair – but that it seems to have inspired a long running conflict involving not just a few criminal cases, but civil lawsuits stretching into the mid 1990s.
So what actually happened on this night? The core of the incidence seems to be this – that Touhouliotis had stepped outside and decided to take a leak in a neighboring vacant lot. Portland Police Officer Rocky Balada spied and then confronted him. George tried to give him the brush off and walk back into the club, and that’s when Balada began to beat George. What George told me when I interviewed him, and what seems to have come out a grand jury trial later that year, is that at first, no one understood that Rocky Balada was a police officer. He was described as a “guy in a windbreaker” with an earring beating up on George, the club owner. At that point two club employees, Bruno Berger, the bouncer, and Taki Kapellakis, the cook, rushed to George’s aid. After that, more police showed up. Berger and Kapellakis were charged with “among other things, rioting and Escape I” – felony charges. These cases were thrown out by the grand jury the following June (Stanford, “Whose Riot Was That Anyway?” Oregonian, June 20, 1990)
Charges of assault against Steven A. Birch, and John J. Noyola were dropped in July 1991. Both were convicted of harassment, put on probation, and ordered to pay fines. George Touhouliotis and Gilly Ann Hanner “entered pleas of guilty and no contest to misdemeanor charges.” (Leeson, “2 Patrons Convicted In Satyricon Disturbance” Oregonian, July 4, 1991)
By this point, four police officers had filed a civil suit against Touhouliotis and five other individuals, and Touhouliotis had filed a counter suit. These civil suits dragged on for years. One of the suits was by Officer Balada, against the the club, for mental distress resulting from the display of a painting – “the painting of a policeman choking a bleeding black man included the name ‘Rocky.'”
1st Amendment Benefit Show – July 10, 1991
On July 10, 1991 a benefit concert was held at the Melody Ballroom to help Touhouliotis defray legal expenses. It was called The Benefit To Support The First Amendment. Text on the poster read “Help keep Satyricon open. Under attack for a painting displayed after a police raid last year, owner George Touhouliotis needs help with the fight. Stand up for all our rights.” The poster went on to advertise “One night only – 2 Big Stages – ALL AGES.” It appears that Napalm Beach and Sweaty Nipples were co-headliners. This doesn’t make Chris a participant in the riots – it simply means someone asked him to play a benefit to help the beloved club owner, George Touhouliotis, and he accepted. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s Chris’ bands seem to have been playing Satyricon an average of twice a month (alternating between Napalm Beach and Snow Bud). So it was only natural that Chris would want to support the club and George, and as a songwriter and artist, it was only natural that he would support our constitutional right to free speech. From my perspective, all good US citizens should want to support and defend the first amendment – though that, and what that does and does not entail exactly – is, I understand, often a matter of controversy.
Looking through Oregonian archives, appears that most or all of the legal wrangling over the May 29 1990 conflict and the “Rocky” painting was completed by 1995. And that’s when, from my perspective, the story gets even weirder.
Musician Jeffrey Lee Pierce died of a brain aneurism on March 31, 1996, exactly one year, as it happens, after the gun murder of Tejano artist Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (and exactly 23 years before the gun murder of rapper Nipsey Hussle). Another musician named Pierce – Paula Pierce of the Pandoras – died of an aneurism in 1991 at age 31 – just one of many weird spiderweb links around these events. Chris was a big fan of Jeffrey Lee Pierce, but he didn’t find out about his death until the following November. Once he found out, Chris put together a memorial tribute concert for Jeffrey Lee, which was held on December 11, 1996 (also my daughter’s first birthday). Two days later, on December 13, 1996, Chris was arrested for heroin possession, an event which would eventually lead to him and his wife Valarie losing all their possessions and becoming homeless for the better part of a decade.
The catalytic event that led to Chris’ fateful arrest had to do with Valarie creating a ruckus at a 7-11 after spilling a tray of nachos. The clerk at the 7-11 called the police, and Chris allowed them to frisk him. They found evidence of heroin, then searched the car and found more.
Could this little nacho fracas and the resulting drug bust have been seen as a parallel to the Satyricon Riot? Something that is interesting – especially in light of the July 1991 Satyricon benefit show advertising “Two Big Stages” – is there were actually two different incidents in downtown Portland on the night of April 28-29, 1991 involving arrests of bar patrons. The other incident was at a bar called Goldie’s and resulted in the arrest of Portland Trailblazer Cliff Robinson. (After retiring from basketball Robinson suffered a stroke in 2017 and died in of lymphoma in 2020 at the age of 53. Robinson was born in Buffalo, New York, and died in Portland, Oregon.)
So by the end of 1996, Chris was dealing with arrest warrants, legal problems, treatment programs, and all kinds of loss, including financial ruin. This is also when Valarie openly began working as a prostitute.
Meanwhile, back in April 1996, the Satyricon which had previously been a beer and wine only venue, acquired a liquor license. The change was announced in an April 12, 1996 Oregonian article entitled “Spiking the punks at boozy Satyricon: Booze at Satyricon.” Twelve days later, the Oregonian published another article by the same writer, with the headline “Satyricon’s Dirty Dozen” and opening with a quote from 19th century clergyman John Henry Newman. This “dirty dozen” reference had to do, at least on the surface, with Satyricon celebrating its 12th anniversary. But what else does it mean? It was the title of a 1967 film about “a top-secret mission to train some of the Army’s worst prisoners and turn them into commandos to be sent on a virtual suicide mission just before D-Day.” But before it was a film, “dirty dozens” were spoken word insult games (later showing up in blues lyrics) where (according to Wikipedia) “participants insult each other until one gives up.” (Wikipedia, dozens (game))
Another interesting construction in this article is the one that was pulled for the headline of the April 12 article “Spiking the punks.” Spiked belts were a 1980s staple of punk rock gear, but what is the meaning of all of that? I now have come to believe that “spike” is slang for the covert insertion of radio frequency activated devices which are used by intelligence agencies (and doctors and police linked to them) to manipulate behavior, create disease, and to murder. This conclusion is based on direct forensic evidence which I have found and documented, as well as on pattern-based evidence. I have discerned that there is actually a lot of slang linked to this technology – wires/wired, or chicken wire, and pins are also slang for the same thing. Chain link fences are used in photos and video to symbolize someone being wired up in this way. Such references come up with regularity in different media, including song lyrics, and this goes back at least to the 1970s (though the technology itself is older). The idea of “spiking” being something more sinister than a simple liquor license is further supported by the doubling in the headling – the word “booze” is doubled and the name “Satyricon” is doubled. This is a reference to matched, or “twin” attacks and murders – covert assassinations that are linked to each other, symbolically or otherwise (often by dates, names, circumstances).
As far as the content of the articles, what I find myself asking is how did George Touhouliotis suddenly have the money to do a $200,000 renovation of Satyricon? This was a man who five years earlier was in dire financial straights, scraping together money from benefit shows, to pay a few thousand dollars in legal fees. $15,000 from the Portland Development Commission still leaves $185,000 the Satyricon allegedly paid out of its own pocket.
From my perspective, it seems to be indicative of a pattern around Chris and me in which things begin to simultaneously go really bad for us, and really good for everyone else. But I’m beginning to see it’s not just Chris and me who have been suffering. The concept of “spiking the punks” – and the fate of many of those in the community – by which I mean many premature deaths which I maintain have been falsely attributed to bad luck, drugs, and/or a “rock n’ roll lifestyle”- are starting to tell a bigger story.
And what about Officer Balada? In June 1999 Balada was caught up in another scandal. He was accused of allowing officers working federally-funded drug missions to leave hours early yet still receive pay for the full shift. The federal program was called “Operation North Star.” According to Balada and others, the practice of paying officers federal funds for time they didn’t actually work was known as “cuff time” or “short nights” and was common throughout the Portland Police Department. Balada was transferred, then relieved of his duties in July 1999, and promptly filed a stress disability claim against the city. It’s difficult to sort out how many lawsuits Balada filed in the 1990s, but there were several, and he seems to have frequently won money in settlements from these suits. George Touhouliotis paid him a settlement of $7,000 (Police officer near settling lawsuit – Oregonian – April 13, 1994 – page B02). In 1993 Balada sued then-Mayor Bud Clark and various city officials “accusing them of engaging in racism and a plot to oust him from the bureau” and won a settlement of $34,000. In 2000, Balada, who was receiving disability pay, sued the City of Portland for $22 million, claiming civil rights violations and defamation (Policeman Sues City, Superiors – Oregonian – July 1, 2000 – page D01). Balada seems to have been staying home and receiving disability pay from July 1999 to September 2006, when he retired and received his pension as well as $92,300 from the city in addition to the disability pay he had already been receiving since 1999 (December 4, 2008, Oregonian, Bernstein – page B02).
SNELL – of the Oregonian Staff; DWIGHT JAYNES of The Oregonian also contributed to this report from Dallas. ‘TRAIL BLAZER ROOKIE CITED AFTER BRAWL‘, Oregonian, 30 Apr 1990 A01
Danielson, Eric N. The Rocky Road To Recovery: The Life of Chris Newman of Napalm Beach. Pagoda Press/self-published (September 12, 2021). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09F3GSNDL/
Writing to correct and clarify some things about Napalm Beach. Chris talked to me a lot about his past, and his history in music. Because I had written a history (Introducing Napalm Beach), and because I kept wanting to understand things clearly, I would frequently ask him questions, and I would also try to find corroborating support for the things he said in documents, newspaper clippings, and other primary source materials. Generally speaking, Chris’ memory was outstanding, especially as far as dates were concerned. He also had a surprisingly good – though not perfect – memory of the shows he’d played and whatever other bands were on the bill. In certain cases where his memory was fuzzy, or contradicted in some way with evidence I’d dug up, he’d been able to clarify certain details with other band members.
Chris communicated at length with writer Eric Danielson when Danielson was working on a article back in 2010. Eric put a lot of work in particular into compiling a discography of Chris’ music. Since that time, he has done further research, last September, self-published and made a book about Chris’ life available on amazon.com called The Rocky Road to Recovery: The Life of Chris Newman of Napalm Beach. No one else has put anything close to this level of work in researching and publishing about Chris’ life. Nonetheless, there are still some errors, and things that I think bear clarification.
From The Untouchables to Napalm Beach
One thing that seems to be an ongoing source of confusion is when and where was Chris’ best known band, Napalm Beach, formed. The answer, it appears, would be on which band you consider to be Napalm Beach. If Napalm Beach is considered to be the band consisting of a core of songwriter/guitarist Chris Newman and drummer Sam Henry, then Napalm Beach formed in 1981, in Portland, Oregon. However, this is not how Chris thought of Napalm Beach. Chris considered Napalm Beach to be the same band as the band he formed in Portland in 1980 – The Untouchables – albeit with a new name, and soon a new bassist, and new drummer. Unfortunately Napalm Beach bassists cycled in and out faster than Spinal Tap drummers – but Sam stayed in the band playing drums from 1981 onward. It is possible, I suppose, to consider Napalm Beach to be an evolution of a band even older than The Untouchables which Chris called The Goners – but in this case I would defer to how Chris saw his band. The Untouchables was the same band as Napalm Beach. The Goners were gone.
Another thing I would call attention to, is the assumption that Chris Newman and Sam Henry were co-equal partners in the band. Though Sam is an exciting and dynamic drummer and personality, the reality is, that Chris was the bandleader, songwriter, guitar player, and on recordings often he was also the bass player. Chris arranged and sometimes engineered recording sessions, he created album artwork, and so on.
Generally speaking, creative power balance that fans perceive in a band (or that publicists or media presents) is not necessarily reflective of the internal reality of the band. Chris’ bands were his bands – just as every band line up with Greg Sage that Greg decided to call the Wipers was the Wipers – it was Chris who decided what was and was not Napalm Beach. He would never put it that bluntly, but I’m a different person. That said, after a certain point, it’s hard to picture Chris having anyone but Sam play drums for Napalm Beach. The band he formed in 2008 with Sam on keyboards, Lost Acolytes, in all honesty, could have been called Napalm Beach, as it featured three original members of Napalm Beach – Sam, Chris, and Dave Minick. Paul Vega played drums. Calling the band Napalm Beach would have meant an easier draw, but I suspect Chris wanted to move on from the baggage and expectations that were foisted upon Napalm Beach. To him, Napalm Beach had ended in 1996. He wanted to move forward artistically, which is also why he fell in love with his next band, the band he had with me, Boo Frog.
The reason Chris believed he had to give up “The Untouchables” as a band name was because Chris was sent a “cease and desist” letter from a Los Angeles based ska band called The Untouchables. If Chris had a lawyer, or means to research the situation – he might have learned that he had used the name first. Chris had been using the name since 1980 while the ska band formed in 1981 – which must have been the same year they sent the letter. This kind of thing had happened to Chris more than once – another band trying to force its way into Chris’ territory – and if it wasn’t on stage – if it was something to do with business – Chris did not seem to know how to stand up for himself. He always seemed to think it would be easier to move on to the next idea, rather than stand his ground and fight for what he’d already established.
As for The Untouchables original line-up – with Chon Carter on drums and Dave Koenig on bass – my recollection from Chris’ stories, is that Chris fired Koenig, and that Chon left shortly afterward. That is when Sam Henry joined the band. 1981-82 is also the period of time where Chris developed the sound that combined the Big Muff fuzz with the Small Clone chorus.
Napalm Beach “Into The Sky” – Golden Crown, Seattle – 1982 bootleg (bestrockphotos.com)
Heroin
There is a lot to say about heroin, and how it was introduced to Chris, and who was behind it. Chris believed to the end of his days that his experiences with drugs were either things that just happened to him, or things he wanted to happen – but I don’t believe any of this, and the reason I don’t believe any of this is because I have access to a lot more information than Chris did, and unlike Chris I am unburdened by the need to accept personal responsibility (blame) for everything bad that happens. I think Chris underwent deep and deliberate brainwashing both while under the influence of older friends and drugs, and even when he was in recovery. I have reason to believe that people were rewarded for introducing Chris to drugs, and that the FBI was behind all of this, likely accepting funding from various sources. That said, there are a few other issues I want to clarify.
First, while Chris was exposed to a lot of drugs in his earlier bands – pretty much every street drug there was – he did not try heroin until 1981. He was 28 years old. And after trying it the first time, he didn’t try it again for several months, and it was some time before he experienced the withdrawal that signalled a “habit.” The person who gave him his first dose of heroin was his bassist, Dave Minick, who was driving a cab and playing in The Cosmetics, and it happened in San Francisco.
Sam Henry, on the other hand, already had a heroin habit when he joined Napalm Beach. The rumor was that he had been kicked out of the Wipers either because of his habit, or because of the behavior of his girlfriend – the same girlfriend who died as Napalm Beach was recording Rock ‘n’ Roll Hell, allegedly of a heroin overdose. Minick was in and out of Napalm Beach. So Chris was in a band with two members who were effectively heroin addicts. In 1983 Sam introduced Chris to Chris’ future wife Valarie and it appears that although she was very young, she also was already a user of speed and heroin.
I am not trying to point fingers at any given person in Chris’ life – in part because I know not a single one of them acted alone – that each of them had someone bigger behind them, protected by the FBI. I only think it should be made clear, since Chris was tagged as a heroin addict, that he was not the first person in the band to use heroin.
Courtney Love
And then there’s the teenage girl who showed up with pocketfuls of Owsley acid, who later became known as Courtney Love. If heroin was a gift from the FBI, the LSD was almost certainly from the CIA.
Wrex, Seattle – 1981
There are stories about Courtney Love and a trip Napalm Beach took to play at the University of Washington HUB in Seattle, October 1981. I don’t think any of those stories can be corroborated and they all conflict with stories she has told about herself. The one story I do believe about this trip is that Courtney left an oversized Columbo-style overcoat in the van which Chris later wore (seen here at the Wrex in Seattle, 1981 – the club that later became The Vogue).
Courtney Love was more than a girl who just happened to show up in Portland and find a place in the Napalm Beach band house. Her role was part of a bigger tapestry and it’s been difficult for me to figure out just what, and how much to say about that. There is a bigger background here that includes mass exploitation of children in various ways, including sexual exploitation of children – by our intelligence agencies, and supported by the Department of Justice. Chris’ encounter with Courtney fits into this background. She was just one of a series of honey traps set up for Chris by the FBI/CIA.
April 28-29, 1990 Satyricon Riot
Throughout his book, Danielson states that Chris “participated” in the Satyricon “riot,” almost as if it were self-evident. This is not true, and in fact it is the first time I’ve heard such an assertion. I don’t even know if Chris was there. My sense is that he was there – but he was not involved in the fracas in any way. Napalm Beach did later play a “First Amendment” benefit show to “help keep Satyricon open.” I’m not sure to what extent Chris was paying attention to what seems to have become an ongoing conflict between Satyricon and Officer Balada. Balada had taken offense to a photo or artwork hanging inside the club, and was suing for damages. I do know that Chris viewed his civic rights and responsibilities the same way I do. He just didn’t ever really think he would find himself in a situation where his expectation of personal privacy or right to speak out would really be under threat.
The event that came to be called the Satyricon Riot should be looked at more deeply, not because Chris was involved, but because it seems to have been a significant event in the history of Portland music, shedding light on the club scene, and on police activities.
There are other things that could use further clarification, but these are the issues that so far have come to mind, that I really felt it was time to clarify.
Generally speaking, Chris was, from my perspective, over-concerned about what people would think about him, should he rock the boat in certain ways. He cared about people’s feelings and he tried to shoulder responsibility for his own actions, from my perspective, to a fault. Many who knew him, or who had been clued into this, and who had something to gain from keeping Chris in the dark, exploited this and other parts of his personality, using these characteristics to manipulate his behavior and to attempt to drive wedges between him and me. Out of respect for Chris, while he was here, I avoided weighing in on certain things. But I think that failure to correct false or misleading stories around Chris has led to damage, including undeserved damage to his reputation. I’m not claiming that he was perfect, nor am I claiming to be unbiased – I just think that the facts are important.
