Squid Row neighborhood Seattle
I made this video on Sept 12 prior to writing this article
Voodoo Doughnut “magic”
Slogans are “Good things come in pink boxes” and “The magic is in the hole!”
Trés Shannon who started Voodoo Doughnut was playing music in clubs around the same time as Nirvana under the name “Kurtz Project” which I think is, among other things, a play on the name Kurt and the German word for “short” – as in, electrical shorts, or a person who is expected to have a short life.
Kurtz Project played on January 25.
Seattle Squid Row deep dive
It looks like, according to livenirvana.com, the band that would become Nirvana began going by the name Skid Row in 1987. There was another band in New Jersey that called itself Skid Row beginning in 1986. I think that Everett True mentioned Cobain was unaware of this other band and that seems likely to be true, especially back then.
So to recap, first I realized that Burdyshaw’s comment to Everett True about seeing Nirvana open for the Obituaries was false, and then, while trying to fact check this on Pacific Northwest Music Archives Facebook group, I watched Burdyshaw and others wriggle around trying to explain the error even though I wasn’t initially accusing them or Everett True (in this case) of lying – I just said it was likely a mistake and poor fact checking, though based on patterns and the fact that this easily correctable misstatement has been on the Obituaries Wikipedia page for 15 years, I always had doubts about this being a mistake. I also mentioned that these kinds of errors, when they’re not caught and corrected, are consequential because they are then repeated by other writers and false histories are created, and false histories often have negative consequences for real people. And then this other guy, an admin named Matthew Ward came in and shut the whole thing down, profusely thanking Burdyshaw for “clearing up a mystery” – and then after my next couple of posts to the group which I did not expect to be considered particularly controversial, I was deleted and apparently blocked. (One post was an Untouchables poster from 1980 and the other was the post about my family’s links to Jimi Hendrix.)
Of course that makes me think there’s more going on, like – if the statement about Obituaries opening for Nirvana at Squid Row in 1988 was not a mistake but a lie, why this particular lie? I may have accidentally found part of the answer when I explored the New York Times and saw Cobain’s 1994 obituary which featured a photo of Nirvana playing directly underneath the word “Obituaries.” So that likely largely explains the Obituaries part – but what Burdyshaw specifying Squid Row as the venue?
I started to follow that thread, first by looking into the venue itself. It was a hole in the wall dive that went through a lot of different businesses including, according to an 2007 article in The Stranger, Rebellious Jukebox (a record store run by Nils Bernstein 1989-92 – Bernstein later became VP of PR for Sub Pop, then did I think publicity for Matador and now is a New York based editor at Wine Enthusiast magazine described as an “exhaustive traveler” – I feel like he may have been someone I tried to contact in the past, trying to generate interest in a Boo Frog album), Righteous Rags (Jeffrey Ofelt), Squid Row, the Puss Puss Cafe, Tugs Belmont (a gay bar), Bimbo’s, the Cha Cha Lounge, Double Trouble, Lipstick Traces (early 2000s), Manray, Kincora, Bus Stop, and Pony.
I’m going to stop here because clearly this is a rabbit hole and I think the Stranger intends it to be that. In the Stranger article, two anecdotes stand out: a story about someone finding decomposing severed fingers in a crockpot, and a typical type of Courtney Love story.
With regards to the severed fingers, this was a theme in the 1945 hypnosis-themed Sherlock Holmes movie Woman in Green. It symbolizes murdering witnesses or potential witnesses. There’s another thing that it evokes as well which is the severed hand that appears in the Migos video for Stir Fry. The Stir Fry video seems to allude to the 1983 Wah Mee massacre that killed another Seattle club owner, John Loui of the Golden Crown. (It’s increasingly clear that many hip hop videos allude to backroom activities around grunge era Seattle. I believe it’s because the activities, issues, and people I’m writing about here about are so deeply interwoven with entertainment industry, US government, and high finance.) Also – this is worth its own entry – there seems to be something in the Migos Stir Fry video that I would call a smoking gun to tell you that Mark Lanegan, who died of COVID complications on 2/22/2022, was actually biomedically murdered. With regards to Lanegan’s death being a murder, there are actually a few smoking guns. So I will revisit this.
With regards to the Courtney Love story, it is told by (Cha Cha Lounge co-owner) Jeffrey Ofelt and takes place during the Righteous Rags era, probably around 1993. “Courtney Love came in to pick up a coat for Kurt Cobain that she had on layaway and was buying as a Christmas present. It was a leather trench coat or something. She came in to make a payment, and she wanted to use the phone, and she was smoking.” The coat was “a leather trench coat or something”? Was Kurt Cobain – or anyone in the early 1990s – ever seen wearing a leather trench coat? I mean, I’ve been wrong before, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say not.
This whole thing about combining two memories into one? That happens. But in this case, I suspect two garments were combined into one. This is another entry, maybe.
I did not expect things to get this complicated.
Back to Squid Row, specifically. That bar seems to have opened in 1986 (possibly) but really got going with live music in 1987. The only record I have of Chris Newman playing there is for Claudia Gherke’s 28th birthday in 1988, with Snow Bud and the Flower People. I’m thinking this venue might have been a bit small for him during that era, but he would usually play for people he considered friends who asked him to do special events like birthdays. He was even cajoled into reviving Napalm Beach for birthdays years after he swore he’d never play as Napalm Beach again.
This is partly why I’ve focused so hard on Squid Row – because Chris was asked to play first as Napalm Beach at the Vogue for Claudia’s 27th birthday, and this was right before the Vogue started doing Sub Pop Sundays – and then he was asked to play Claudia’s 28th birthday at Squid Row as Snow Bud – and both those times, a Sub Pop super group known as Bundy Creature opened for him. It was like some weird book end.
I did not know (or remember, I suppose I’d read it) that one of the names for Nirvana, in early 1987, was Skid Row. According to livenirvana.com, that name lasted about three months between April and June, and they played around four shows under that name. They played Tacoma’s Community World Theatre on June 12, 1987 as Skid Row but on June 27, 1987 they played the same venue as Pen Cap Chew. June 27 is an important date because June 27, 1988 was the day Bret Bowman was hit by a car, it was the day that Sub Pop Sundays ended, and I know that date was picked out for Bret to be hit at least June 27, 1987, a year ahead of time, because I’d recorded a predictive dream that night. But it’s possible, and I’ll have to look into this more deeply – by June 1987 Kurt Cobain was also already on the creep store murder menu.
Cobain stands out among other musicians because of his willingness to distinguish, from my perspective, right from wrong, with regards to what Chris and I were being put through. Thus, the symbolism of a severed finger (accusation).
With regards to Cobain using the name Skid Row – the history of the term Skid Row is interesting and I didn’t know that a lot of sources trace it directly to Seattle. Basically, in the early days of Pacific Northwest logging, lumberjacks were faced with moving these giant trees out of the forest by pulling them with horses (usually) or oxen. The easiest way to do this was to pull them downhill (obviously) so that’s how they logged – they’d build a flat “road” into the woods, and skid the trees down the road to the mill. The road was called a skid road. Lumber camps or tent cities were built along these roads, and the tent cities were eventually called “skid row.” I think the reason that the name Skid Row is associated with Seattle is because there was a large and maybe famous or semi-permanent skid row area in Seattle back in those days. This links to me. How? Where I grew up, in Humboldt County, we had the same thing going on. I grew up at the edge of a redwood forest that had been logged in the late 1800s and again in the early 1900s and right behind our house in the woods was a skid road. We called it “the old logging road” but it was a skid road. I played in that area a lot as a child and I have reason to believe there was surveillance around our favorite spots – probably wireless cameras attached to trees feeding data to hidden drones. In addition, in the summer of 1986, Bret Bowman and I both worked at the Samoa Cookhouse, an old logging camp cookhouse in Eureka that catered to tourists. He was a dishwasher and I a hostess and I’m sure there was surveillance in there, too.
Also, my assertion is there was always a plan to leave Chris and I impoverished, as others grew wealthy from exploiting us and spreading damaging lies about us. It was no accident that by the late 1990s Chris became homeless, living in “tarp town” San Francisco, a modern skid row. Finally, it’s possible that Nirvana’s temporary band name was a direct nod to the Squid Row tavern, because clearly the Vogue was important with regards to an agenda around Chris, and like I said, 1987-88 were bookended by Chris playing with Sub Pop’s Bundy Creature first at Vogue, and then at Squid Row.
Bars seem to be important with regards to the structure of this surveillance-linked exploitation, probably because they are gathering places, and exchanges of money, goods, or backroom deals can be made without drawing undue attention. And squid are sea creatures known for having large eyes, excellent vision.
Sometime between June 27 and August 9, 1987, according to livenirvana.com, Cobain played a house party in Raymond, Washington called the Green House. Other sources, like Charles’ Cross’ Heavier Than Heaven, say their first show was at a Raymond, Washington house party. on March 7, 1987. So there’s some conflict about what was going on in these early days, but I’m putting all of this here because Cobain killed himself in a greenhouse, because the Seattle police, when they released suicide photos in 2014 filtered all the photos to have a green tinge.
Raymond is a small town, a half hour drive from Aberdeen. According to the Charles Cross biography, the March 7, 1987 show was set up by somene named Ryan Aigner. Cross’ claim that this was Nirvana’s first show conflicts with the information posted on livenirvana.com which has him playing as early as December 1985 as “fecal matter” with Dale Crover on bass and Greg Hokanson on drums. None of this online stuff is sourced, so I don’t know where the information comes from but maybe over time I’ll figure it out. If I were a writer being paid to write a book about Nirvana, I’d definitely want to chase down these leads. I’m guessing this has been addressed somewhere in a more recent book.
I want to also draw attention to this name “Bliss” which shows up briefly as an August 1987 proto-Nirvana band name and say that, like Heck being a name from my family tree, Bliss a name from Chris’ family tree, on his mother’s side. They were descended from the brother of a famous hymn writer named P.P. Bliss who had died along with his wife in a train crash (Ashtabula River railroad disaster).
Squid Row Info Sources:
http://www.projectroomseattle.org/programs-content/2014/1/these-streets-squid-row
https://www.thestranger.com/features/2007/11/29/449526/beerly-deloved
James Burdyshaw is full of **it
The more I think of it, the more I realize that it’s freaking insane that James Burdyshaw would be treated like some kind of guru on a Facebook group called Pacific Northwest Music Archives, while I’d be blocked. Because it’s looking increasingly like Burdyshaw is a total liar, and that my being booted is based entirely on me having an angle that is both unique and truthful.
I hate to even give this guy energy at all, except that it’s people like him who block the sun. I mean, in a sense, in another sense maybe his lies help reveal the truth, the truth being that this region is crawling with opportunists and liars.
He gives the impression that he was pals with Kurt Cobain. Even by what you can read in Everett True’s book you can see that’s not true. He spoke to Cobain once in a beer line in 1992. He had to introduce himself “I was in the band, Cat Butt.” Cobain would have been familiar with the band name (what a name) because they played around Seattle at the time. So what. Burdyshaw says he knows Cobain’s first girlfriend,Tracy Marander. When I started uncovering truth in 2014 I was watching everyone around all of this fable and Marander had changed her profile image to a cat. That pretty much tells me all I need to know about Tracy Marander.
Burdyshaw in the music archives even went so far as to say that Kurt Cobain would find my line of inquiry ridiculous. Can you imagine the gall? That he thinks he knows what Kurt Cobain “would think.” Burdyshaw knows full well what the deal is. By the way, Chris’ ex-wife pulled this number as well, claiming, essentially, to channel the voice of Chris from the grave. You know – someone who helped put him in the grave now speaking for him. That’s rich.
If you actually care about truth, it’s important to recognize which people are lying, and to stop giving a platform to those people. Burdyshaw might offer some general insight into what the scene was like at the time, but the stuff he was saying in the Everett True book was clearly exaggerated, in some cases untrue, likely with an agenda.
What’s in a name (part 2) Green Pajamas, Brown Towel
This is one of those things that people will say is a minor detail or I don’t know but it’s bothering me so I’m going to write it out. I suspect it’s not such a minor detail and it may intertwine with something else.
In the 1980s it looks like there were at least three bands in Seattle with the word “Green” in their names – Green River, Green Pajamas, Green Ice. I could go down a whole rabbit hole with the word green but I’ll just say that it seems like it’s widely understood to be historically linked to magic and witchcraft (the green knight), alchemy (the green lion), and more recently, mind control including use of directed energy weapons. I am a bit fascinated by who has green eyes (I have green eyes and so do Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna I think) and I don’t have enough information to draw any conclusions about that but I do know, again, based on patterns, that frequency-based manipulations are done on babies in utero. Based on patterns, also, I know that when I was born, my mother’s labor was induced by this technology, and so was my labor (in short, they use the tech to force your water to break). This isn’t my main point here so I’m not going to do a full argument but there’s pattern-based evidence for this.
Ever since I was a small child, if someone asked me what my favorite color was, I’d say it was green. In my mind, it was because I had green eyes.
I have read two books focused on the life of Kurt Cobain, the book by Charles Cross “Heavier Than Heaven” and the book by Everett True, “Nirvana: The True Story.” Chris bought Azeraad’s older official biography and read it, but I’ve never read that one. I’ve seen movies like Kurt & Courtney and Francis’ Montage of Heck (Heck is a name in my paternal grandmother’s family tree and I am certain this is related. It’s hard to avoid tangents – but my Seattle Grandma Helen Meyer, a nurse at Swedish Hospital, seems to have been important.)
Anyway, in one of these biographies, I assume it was True’s, there is this mention of Kurt getting married to Courtney wearing green pajamas. I say I assume it was True’s biography because I tried to find the reference this morning and couldn’t find it in Everett True’s book, but I found a description in Charles Cross’ book, and in Charles Cross’ book Cobain got married in blue plaid pajamas (p 234). I’m sure there are photos and I assume both True and Cross looked at photos and perhaps they interpreted the colors of the pajamas differently, or maybe they were making some other point, I really don’t know.
But in the background of all of this, I was trying to figure out how to interpret and talk about the early band names Nirvana was using. In order to figure out how to do that, I had looked at Nirvana’s early show history, and how they were being billed early on. According to livenirvana.com, their first performance was in December 1985 supporting the Melvins at Spot Tavern in the town of Pacific Beach Washington (a coastal town with a population of 291 according to the 2010 census) – as Fecal Matter. Their second show was on May 3, 1986, in Olympia at Gessco Hall, also supporting the Melvins, this time with the name Brown Towel. Their third show was in Aberdeen, under the name Stiff Woodies. After that they called themselves Skid Row until late June 1987.
All three of these early band names seem, at least to me, to have some connection to me. I don’t know how interesting this is. Fecal matter is a weird one and might come up later in another context so I’m not going to talk about it right now. Stiff Woodies, same thing. Actually I’ll cover that here –
The first poem I ever wrote (I was probably 8 years old), went like this:
I had a wooden doll
she had a wooden bed
upon her wooden pillow
she lay her wooden head
I also had an Uncle Woody. He lived in Minneapolis, and was married to a woman named Millie. She eventually died of cancer (likely was assassinated) and he died of tuberculosis (definitely was assassinated). The idea the name “Millie” (and millipede) is that it relates to millions, as in a million dollars. The million dollars is a reward for helping to bring about murder – likely the murder of me and/or Chris by setting us up, creating these salacious FBI files. Lots of people are involved in this and hoping to cash in big time, and it’s obvious there’s already been a ton of money flowing around it.
My daughter had a cousin named Woodsie who died in a car crash. He was also murdered, and I know this because I’d had a premonition in a dream. While he was alive, Woodsie had come into conflict with a local timber company over harvesting rights on or near his land.
The name Stiff Woodies and actually a lot about Kurt Cobain’s art suggest that he had a pretty solid inside scoop on covert activities of this type. In recent years, I’ve had many dreams about Kurt Cobain. The only thing I really know for sure is his maternal family has been involved in covert activity for a long time. This is also true of Courtney Love’s family (both her mother and father). And it’s true of my family, Chris’ family, and my daughter’s father’s family. These families tend to intermarry I guess.
This is confusing and hard to figure out since no one admits to any of this. But something fairly unique about Cobain is he seemed to be aware, or at least to express his awareness, of medical malfeasance, and at the same time, he was clearly the subject of some pretty brutal medical malfeasance.
That brings me to the name Brown Towel. The story around this, for me, is actually pretty impactful. When I was in kindergarten at Freshwater School in the village of Freshwater, California our days were structured so that we had snack time, then nap time. After nap time was story time. For nap time, we all had brought a bath towel from home, and we’d lie down on the floor of our kindergarten classroom on these towels. The kids were all proud of their towels and they ahd all these different colors and designs. I was very excited and wanted and expected to bring with me a deep blue and green sort of paisley-design towel that I thought was very pretty, and I remember my mom telling me I wasn’t going to bring that towel, because that was one of her her good towels. She gave me a plain brown towel to use. So I was disappointed, but basically, this is how I was treated throughout my childhood. At the end of nap time, our teacher would normally say “nap time is over, put away your towels.” However, one day we had a substitute teacher, and that teacher decided to end nap time this way “Every child with red on their towel, get up and put your towel away. Every child with blue on their towel, get up and put your towel away” and so on. She went through all the colors of the rainbow, but she never said anything about the color brown. Eventually, I was the last one lying on the floor on a towel while all the other children were gathered around the teacher for story time. The teacher brought out a book and began to read a story. I’m still lying alone on this brown towel. Then the teacher says, “oh! Everyone with a BROWN towel get up and put your towel away.”
This was the beginning of excluding me, treating me badly. It became amplified after about fourth grade, and there were similar incidents to this, becoming more and more traumatizing. There were other ways that I was separated out from other students, sometimes under the guise of something positive (teacher’s pet) – and I was often complimented on being silent and not making waves. Punk rock is what changed that for me and in that sense I saw punk as something redemptive and life saving. Little did I know it was just another vehicle of manipulation. But at the time I was introduced to punk rock I needed the life-affirming energy it offered.
Do I think that that my brown towel trauma was related to Cobain’s naming his band brown towel? Yes, I do. Because there are other references in his songs that directly relate to minor traumas of this type that I experienced during childhood. Being “hosed down” (Paper Cuts), being burnt on the arm with a cigarette “by accident” (Sliver), etc.
So the obvious question is how would Cobain know that all of these things were happening to me, and an ancillary question is, is it possible that some of all of these things were to HIM. I suspect that some of these things did happen to him, but I don’t know. It does seem like he knew that these were deliberately induced traumas.
Sometime in 2019 I concluded that there had been surveillance in, and distributed from, Freshwater School when I was a student there. Based on hints I’ve seen in movies, it seems it was distributed to people working in the entertainment industry. Based on patterns, I can conclude that there was surveillance trafficked from inside the classrooms, and from around and most likely from inside the girl’s and boy’s bathrooms.
This would not have been going on without the US federal government’s seal of approval. What is really remarkable about all of this is that people seem to be willing to engage in these kinds of behaviors, and even to fight to continue these behaviors, but the thing that really freaks them out is the idea that someone will openly discuss, or expose these behaviors – the deliberate traumatizing of children, the surveilling of children in private spaces like bathrooms, and the manipulation of children. As for why parents and teachers would take part in this, it seems to be a combination of conditioning, herd mentality, and financial incentives.