Spex and Loves Simple Dreams (L.S.D.) Records
from Chris’ draft memoir (1988-1989 time period)
I got a package from Germany. It was a rock magazine, it looked similar to SPIN. It was called SPEX, and inside were three one hundred dollar bills. They told me the reels of master tape Tom Robison had sent were now vinyl albums on L.S.D. – Loves Simple Dreams Records – in Berlin. The music critics voted it into the top ten albums of the year. Napalm Beach – MOVING TO AND FRO.
Wow! Henk Van Drummel had been a door man at Satyricon. He had a visa while doing the forign exchange student thing. I had signed a Teen Dream album for Henk one night at the bar. It mentioned, “I hope we get to Germany someday.” Henk and his girl Heike made that dream come true.
It was so fucking amazing. We were going to tour Europe in Novermber and half of December of 1989. We all three had been dabbling with cocaine and heroin for far too long. We knew we had to prepare for kicking our drug habits.
We had to find a new bass player. Simon (Simoncini) had left for good this time. He left on July 4th, 1989. He is still clean and sober today. I loved playing music with Simon. He was younger and very good looking. A sweet funny guy, that loved to get loaded. We shot so many speedballs. We got scared sometimes doing massive injections of cocaine. We all saw people having coke seziures. They can’t remember their own name. Cocaine was the scary part of the speedball cocktail. It overpowered the heroin at first, but it always won over after the cocaine fades away quickly. That’s part of the reason addicts keep reaching for the coke rush.
Sam and I tried a few bass players out, but they had to have the outlaw image. they had to be able to play good enough to hold down mine and Sam’s on stage onslaught of Rock! There he was, all 6’6″. Too-tall Dave Dillinger. He was pretty new in town. He was from L.A., twenty one, and he knew his music. He played a little drums, and guitar too. Bass was his forté. He had a solid simple style that suited Sam’s busy drumming style, and gave me something solid to build chord structures around. My soloing sounded fuller with solid bass support.
Sam had been getting more and more into his drugs. He was really bummed when his girlfriend Debbie left him. My girl Nancy also left that same weekend. Napalm Beach were booked to play at the Central in Seattle. We had no bass player, so Sam played bass, and this guy Dave Meyers, played drums. Sam and I were so fucked up, shooting speedballs the whole way. Dave Meyers drove his van and the equipment with his buddy Jim Micheals riding up front. Jim was new at it, and kept turning around because he was jonesin’ watching us shoot up the whole three hour ride.
Needless to say, we sucked shit. I can’t believe we called that desecration of music Napalm Beach. Seattle band guys were there, like Mark Arm of Mudhoney and Lee Conner of Screaming Trees.
Sam and I went on the stairwell after a couple of songs and shot more dope. I could not stand up with out holding on to the mic stand. How was I supposed to play guitar? My god that sucked shit!
I wrote,”She Moved Away” after that.
Sam was impossible most of the time at that point. I was hating working with him, and dreaded having to buy any dope from him.
Dave Dillinger’s first gig was a tense one. The Satyricon was packed, we went on last. Sam still is not present. We set up his drums, we are standing on stage waiting, tuning. It’s getting close to 2:00AM and they close at 2:30 in Oregon. Sam walks up and immediately starts complaing about how his drums were set up wrong. I screamed,”YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE!” He threw his beer in my face. I stood there fuming, humiliated, beer dripping down my face on to my guitar. Jan, transfixed on the side of the stage, showed his worry. “Do I have to take this?”, I pleaded. Jan nodded his head.
The crowd watched in awe as we went into a more menacing version of MONSTER than ever before. I improvised the lyrics to fit the impending doom. We made it through the set, and went our seperate ways.
This was too big to fuck up. I had one little side trip to take, before that jet airliner took us to Europe.