Tag: Portland

A brief history of me getting run out of online communities dedicated to discussing regional music history

In all honesty, outside of the MySpace Satyricon fan page I ran 2006-2009ish, I really haven’t been super active in online communities, but there have been a couple exceptions. I tried to get involved in a “portland punk” oriented community at one point and quickly ran into trouble with a guy named Mark Baar, an old associate of Courtney Love that Chris described as being kind of a thuggish street punk, who didn’t just lie to me, he was abusive, sort of like “who the f are you???” kind of thing. And there was a pile on, with this guy named xj elliot telling me that I was everyone could tell I am just a crazy lady and so of course they all ignore and avoid me. I think that maybe what set this mess off was the perennial “when Kurt met Courtney” discussion, where I chimed in. (Another whole topic.) Several of Courtney’s old school friends were in this group including Robin (Barbur) Bradbury who tried to stand up for me a little bit. But the whole discussion was shut down very quickly with a finalizing decree of We Do Not Speak About Music After 1984. Because in this group, punk ended in 1984. There is another group online, I think it’s called The Rise and Fall of Portland Punk, which declared punk as “over” as of 1981. So if you get into the latter 80s in these groups, you’re off topic and out of line. Perhaps in danger of having the cops called on you. (It seems like I’m exaggerating, but barely. They take this stuff seriously.)

Gatekeeping.

It’s not like I’m in danger of making any enemies at this point that I don’t already have. But what I will say about this here, that I didn’t say there, I find it pretty transparent. In other words, it’s very clear who they are excluding, and it’s Chris Newman. Yes, the group for which punk ended in 1984 can give him a nod, but he’s really not worthy of the group for whom “punk” ended in 1981. In fact, perhaps it is him who is responsible for the “fall” of Portland punk, though they’d never give him that much attention or credit. The thing that is significant to me about 1981 is that is when Sam Henry (of the Wipers and then the Rats) joined forces with Chris and they became Napalm Beach. (It’s also when Poison Idea formed.) The thing that is significant to me about 1984 is that is when Satyricon opened.

These groups include, but are not focused around hardcore punk which got going in the early 1980s but more the open, arty first wave of punk. The concept of punk in the 1980s and 1990s was pretty malleable, from my perspective. But there was often this thing about “I was here first.”

In 2014 was told by an owner/booker of an early club that booked Chris bands a lot that “the Untouchables were not cool” – as if it was self-evident. It was her way of explaining what I saw as writing Chris out of his own history. In other words, only “cool” bands make history. And I’m thinking – wait – you booked them all the time back then, and they were drawing crowds – and now you’re announcing that they were never “cool”? And for that reason, they deserve to be omitted? This too was a script that by that point I’d already heard from a number of people who consider themselves regional arbiters of taste and coolness. But who the arbiters of cool are appears to have been manufactured, too. Young people tend to be impressionable. If a crowd all says “wow this guy is so cool” and you’re just getting started going out to shows, who are you to disagree?

I’ve spoken with Chris a number of times about his early experiences playing in Portland, and what it was like meeting Greg Sage. Chris already knew that Sage was a revered musical genius type. So in 1980, when Sage appeared in front of the stage, studying Chris in action, Chris was excited. They soon developed a working relationship that lasted into the mid 1980s.

Sometimes I get chastised for having the audacity to speak about things when I wasn’t there. In other words, I’ve looked into something as historical research, rather than a personal memory. It’s a useful stance for gatekeepers, because if I were to accept it as a premise – that an event can only be discussed, or issues around it debated, by those who were physically present at a given event – that would shut me out of all of this. Chris never took this kind of stance, and it’s honesty incredibly disingenuous. But then it is not about history anymore, but a social bonding thing “this is our little group and we all knew each other back in 19XX and we are here to personally reminisce.”

People can do this with their own Facebook groups. What it does, is throw obstacles in my path, as I try to get to the truth of one story or another, and that is by design. It’s pretty clear that aside from Chris, most bands linked to the Portland punk or underground scenes had no expectation or intention of progressing professionally. The only explanation I can think of for this, is they had made some other kind of deal, and Chris’ ambitions, and my ambitions and investigations, are in danger of messing that up for them. And that’s the real reason that my inquiries bother them so tremendously.

What deal do I think Portland made? I think that it wasn’t just Portland but that it includes Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I think the deal was that it was their job – a globally-financed team effort – to control, stifle, set up and slander Chris and me. I think it’s understood that’s how to get paid and maybe some minor recognition and rewards. This is why it was so important to keep Chris out of Los Angeles. Because people in Los Angeles want and expect to succeed in music. Eventually they figured out how to make it so some Seattle acts could sneak through (while also preventing Chris from success and inflicting maximum damage on his sense of self-worth). So yeah, every once in a while, someone is let through professionally, to make the stifling not so obvious, but those who are let through are forced to make compromises and are very closely followed, and are in danger of elimination.

Elliott Smith – Miss Misery

Posted on September 9, 2022September 12, 2022

Touch not a cat but a trap (Cat Butt and the Obituaries)

I recently posted an inquiry on a Facebook page for NW music. Basically, I was trying to fact check a statement published in Everett True’s 2006 book on Nirvana, made by James Burdyshaw, best known for the 1980s band Catbutt. He had mentioned, and True had published, that he had seen Nirvana perform during a certain time period (“Summer of 88”) at a certain venue (Squid Row, Seattle) opening for a certain band (The Obituaries). I had run across this in the book as I was also working on putting together as much information as I could about Napalm Beach’s live history in Portland and Seattle, and I knew, based on what I’d come across already, that there was no listing for the Obituaries playing with Nirvana at Squid Row in June of 1988, or ever.

In my research, however, I ran into another article, this time in Willamette Week, around the time of the Obituaries reuniting, where writer Jason Sims stated matter of factly, that “both Soundgarden and Nirvana” had opened for the Obituaries ( The Obituaries: 1 am, Ash Street Saloon. August 28, 2007). The statement is also still on the Obituaries Wikipedia page, and to my recollection, it’s been there since 2007 when the band first came to my attention (though bizarrely, the bit about the bands they’ve played with is uncited).

The Obituaries Wikipedia page — The Obituaries on Wikipedia 9 Sept 2022

Because I’ve seen problems with regards to Chris’ history where false things are published and then promulgated through subsequent publications, I suspected this was what might be going on here – and so I decided to double check via the aforementioned Facebook post.

Now I’m going to stop the tape for a moment – picture a train about to run off a cliff – the train is the Official Story of Everything Seattle Music – and it’s full of people in a state of panic, doing everything they can – including setting people on fire – to keep this train on track, because it’s generating a lot of money for people, and it’s also preventing light from showing the ugly cracks in a very old facade of lies and injustice.

This train, when it crashes, is not as far as I know, going to kill anyone – but as long as it keeps running, people keep dying. So maybe the train metaphor isn’t apt –

What I want to say is it looks like this is a very small fact or mistake. But in reality – let’s try another metaphor – it’s more like a loose thread in a sweater, that, if you pull on it, begins to unravel the sweater. And there are a lot of loose threads in this sweater. So when people try to stop me from pulling the threads, as they inevitably do, what they’re actually doing is promulgating lies and cover ups and crime. I’m not sure there’s a nicer way to put this while still being accurate.

That’s why, even this is a very small fact – it’s important. It links to other things that deserve light.

So allow me to explore this small seeming issue a bit more deeply.

The first thing I want to mention is, band names, especially “punk rock” band names – often seem creepy/weird/bizarre – to the point that you might just ignore them. But they have meaning, and in some cases, band names interact with other band names and/or songs. I won’t do a deep dive into that here, but say that the names of these bands shouldn’t be ignored or considered meaningless.

The other thing I want to mention is that I’ve noted before that these “scenes” – the 1980s-90s music scenes in Portland and Seattle – have historical gatekeepers, and Burdyshaw is a gatekeeper. This actually may be something that goes on all the way to the top in the music business, I don’t know. What I do know is it goes on here. So if you are a writer and you want to write a book about Elliott Smith, Kurt Cobain, or someone in that immediate orbit, there are people you are permitted to interview, and there are people you are not permitted to interview. And I know this because I’ve been involved in this whole thing for some time now. It has to do, I gather, with whether you want your book to be published and/or stay in print, which most writers do.

James Burdyshaw responded to my Facebook post, and it was determined that it was an error. I thought I made it clear that I wasn’t intending to play “gotcha” with him – of course people can make mistakes, and it is the job of the author and/or publisher to fact check and correct the errors. But I was troubled, because I’ve found quite a few errors in True’s book – and I speculated that perhaps the book was poorly fact-checked because the book itself was linked to the music publishing industry, at which point a number of people felt they needed to explain that I was reading too much into this, it’s a simple mistake, not a global music industry conspiracy.

Burdyshaw in particular kept coming back and harping on this. Sometimes when people are busy trying to mislead me or shame me for asking follow up questions, they also sneak in other information, like the sentence “It’s not a big deal.”

Then I posted a couple things that suggested that there might be something else to all of this – and that indirectly implicated Monica Nelson and The Obituaries in a bigger – the only way to describe it is as a conspiracy.

I also asked if the folks on the site had discussed yet, why so many musicians from this scene are dying young of cancer, heart attacks, suicides. (I should note here, though I didn’t include this – that strokes, aneurisms, and car crashes are also a risk.) At which point a moderator, Matthew B Ward, deleted – it looks like three of my comments, including

a clarifying response as to why I referred to a certain writer as a journalist, rather than, as Mr Ward had suggested, an “attempted journalist” (it is because, I said, this writer literally has a Masters Degree in Journalism). In the same response, I had also clarified my own background level of expertise with regards to research ability, fact checking, citing sources – and what is and is not appropriate.
A comment implying that Monica Nelson and the Obituaries are part of a bigger conspiracy
The comment asking if they’ve all had a discussion about the premature deaths of musicians from 1980s scenes in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and New York City.

All of that was deleted, and the whole post shut down thusly:

I’m closing down comments on this post, as the issue has been cleared up. Thanks in particular to James Burdyshaw for clearing up an interesting mystery. Also, one thing that this group has taught me is about the fallibility of memory, particularly about our misspent youth in the 80’s-in a way it’s amazing that we remember anything at all. Writers should strive towards the truth, but we should not read too much into the fact that aspects of the past will probably never be established for sure, especially when taking about murky, alcohol-fueled adventures that happened over 30 decades ago.
Matthew B Ward, Pacific Northwest Music Archives

So basically, information I gave establishing my own credibility was deleted. Information supporting the idea that there might in fact be a bigger story behind this was also deleted. And information suggesting that people are being harmed or even killed because of this bigger story – well that too, was deleted. Nothing to see here, folks.

I will be honest. Based on how the discussion unfolded, I think this thing about Nirvana opening for the Obituaries was a planned lie, and maybe even a clue about the aforementioned premature deaths. I’ve already seen this (calculated) lying going on, and written about it here (famous blue raincoat) and here (Satyricon riot) and probably elsewhere. I can’t yet quite figure out why they would lie about this, but a separate path of inquiry is leading me to see ongoing parallels between Nirvana and Napalm Beach as far as show dates, so it may have been an attempt to muddy that water. Also, I think that a trap was being set for me.

To be continued.

Pacific NW Music archives post series on Facebook

Posted on September 9, 2022September 13, 2022

9 years since Introducing Napalm Beach

We are now approaching the ninth anniversary of the publication of my article Introducing Napalm Beach. In these years it’s become really clear that the sit back and wait, be cooperative, don’t rock the boat strategy has been a sheer and utter failure. I can’t fault Chris for the choices he made because the situation he was put into was completely impossible. I can’t believe what he managed to pull off in terms of an artistic career and legacy under the circumstances.

As I sat back and tried to untangle whatever mysteries I was supposed to untangle with very little to work with, we were bulldozed by the wiping/destruction/death machine, and so were a lot of others.

Casualties included our band, Boo Frog and all the associated dreams we had (putting out records, touring, etc), as well as my Boo Frog YouTube page, my Skullman Records YouTube page, several loved ones, and 9 years of my life. Chris and Sam.

After Chris died, I no longer had to worry about him worrying about the disapproval of his community. I don’t know why people disapprove of artists who want to make a living off their art – or just this artist I guess, and I guess I don’t really care.

I know people are talking dirt behind our backs, behind my back, and I don’t care. It’s garbage talk. I know who I am and who I am not.

I also know something else now, because I was able to move forward a little bit – under the circumstances, from what I see of the structure built up around us, there is no way in the world that The Music Industry or The Pacific Northwest Music Community writ large will gracefully accept an unburied Chris Newman, and I know why. It’s nothing to do with Chris, and it’s everything to do with Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, Bret Bowman.

That said, there is no legitimate reason that Chris’ music should continue to be blacklisted, and I feel absolutely no obligation to protect those that led little lambs to slaughter, especially those who also profited, and continue to profit financially from the crimes and cover-ups (which include additional crimes). So I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing, and if you are out there trying to stop me, well I guess that says a lot more about you than it says about me.

It is incredibly frustrating to have been going through what we have been going through and I can’t even imagine what Chris went through after 1983 and especially into the 1990s.

I don’t know exactly why Kurt Cobain was taken down, but it increasingly looks like it was part of some bizarre set up planned out long ahead of time, same as Bret Bowman. I consider the entity behind all of this Satanic, because they seem to take pleasure in doing the biggest most heinous crimes to the most innocent people.

That cat is out of the bag. It’s out, everybody and it is NOT going back in.

Posted on September 9, 2022September 25, 2022

Special bands, regional scenes

It’s become clear that the music/entertainment business doesn’t work at all like Chris or I thought it worked. The way that we thought it worked was basically the way it has been portrayed in public media, in rock ‘n roll biographies and memoirs, or reflected by by our peers. Basically, you learn to play and to write, you form a band, you book shows, you book a tour, you work hard and contribute to the community, you present your music and your act and try to get support from a label. That is what we thought.

How does it actually work? I’m not sure, but bits and pieces are starting to come through. A lot of it seems to have been centered around keeping Chris and me down. The motivation for that seems to be finance, power, and perversion, and it may be at the behest of FBI/CIA.

It’s looking like a lot of liars, snitches, thieves, rapists, rapist apologists, child molesters, bullies, and hall monitors dressed up in punk rock clothing, feigning rebellion.

As I’ve been looking into this I began to see some unexpected patterns. One of the patterns is what I’d call “special bands.” These are bands that show up in unusual ways or unusual places or involved in unusual activities when compared to their peers. In many cases, I think these bands are finance grubers – in other words, while they tour and perform, they are also hooking people up with cash, instructions from above, connections, etc. At least that’s what I suspect. All I can say for sure is these are bands that are unique in that they are able to go places and do things their peers cannot or do not, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the overall quality of their work.

Black Flag from Los Angeles seems to have been one of these bands.

Another one was Agent 86 from my home town.

I’ve started making a list of “bands referenced by Kurt Cobain without actually being referenced” and I’ve put Agent 86 on that list (“Class of ’86”)

My research on Chris’ music and Seattle clubs in the 1980s shows Agent 86 showing up a few times, at least once with Green River. Green River/Mudhoney are also a linking band.

Agent 86 was basically a project of a guy named Mike Briggs. In the early 1980s he was in his 20s, hanging out with high school kids. He published a punk zine called Counterpeace and other than my parents’ more sophisticated early 1970s Stomatopod, it was the first zine I’d ever encountered. Stomatopod was hand made, but went to a publisher every quarter, while Counterpeace was a classic 1980s zine, xeroxed, with cut out letters and advertisements for upcoming punk shows and reviews of local homemade cassette releases, etc. I had one or two copies that I read over and over.

note from my friend Alicia with lots of punk bands and logos on it — June 1, 1984

My neighbor Michele introduced me to the hardcore scene via her Dead Kennedys and Black Flag records (she also had Blasters, X, Fear – lots of Slash records) and I got into it quickly. I’d been primed for it my whole life, I can now see – again, as things are so closely controlled. I’d been made to feel like an outcast and misfit beginning around fourth grade and through Junior High School. I now realize this was entirely by design. What punk did was help channel feelings of teenage depression or feelings of low self-worth into something activated and intense. I loved slam dancing.

There is a lot in this mind control system related to taking away power and agency from certain strategically placed individuals, and then when they are at a low point, offering or showing an unusual form of power and agency – in my case it was a search for freedom and empowerment through rock n’ roll, and punk rock. In other people’s cases it might be a “privileged” opportunity to harm, control, oppress or exploit another group. In some cases it was probably the ability to traffic illegal drugs like LSD, ecstasy, cannabis, or cocaine without concern for or even under the protection of the law (a protection that only lasts as long as the law lets it). All of this was going on in the realm of rock and roll, probably going back to the very beginning. One of the protection mechanisms for the FBI/CIA is the disparaging of artists, especially rock n’ rollers, as lesser human beings. When you get tired of playing with them, or after they serve their purpose, or when the price is right, they’re just eliminated from the field thanks to piezo-electrical biomedical CGI, plausible deniability, and silenced witnesses.

The Ramones – all of whom eventually died young of cancer – sang about this “Gabba gabba we accept you as one of us” (a “freak” – taken from Eraserhead – “erase her head”). Medically, GABA is a neurotransmitter. Ramone’s “pinhead” is about piezobiomedical implants used to directly control brain waves and/or to attack people in the heads. The Ramones were a special band in that they were able to tour early and widely, and they certainly knew about piezo-electrical biomedical CGI.

The plan was to portray Chris and me as freaks behind our backs while pretending to be our friends, to accept and care for us in the punk/music community. This creates an atmosphere of deception, endless in-jokes, cloak and dagger attitude. To this end, what I think right now is some of these special bands – these bands that toured early when other bands couldn’t book tours – were using the tours as an opportunity to connect with regional scenes and give special instructions to special people. We are talking about layers of handlers and use of cut outs and honey traps. Nasty spy stuff aimed at and involving children and teenagers – with all of it surveilled and manipulated by US government sources, police, hospitals, research institutions, and others. This is where the evidence is pointing.

Where the music industry comes in seems to be in financing record deals and passing out other benefits to those on the “team” suppressing, deceiving, defrauding, exploiting, and trafficking us. To this end, they hide behind, and funnel resources through, shell companies which often look like (and are) regional independant recored labels. Thus we have plethora of creatively named regional/independant labels like Slash (get it?), Death Row (get it?), Kill Rock Stars (get it?), Dirt Nap (get it?), Alternative Tentacles (get it?), Relapse Records (get it?), Cavity Search Records (get it?) – the list goes on and on. What I see is that every time there is a fresh kill and/or the entertainment business gets worried that this exploitation scheme might be in danger, a BUNCH of independent records come out, and/or new labels are formed with lots of money to put out professional sounding recordings on colored vinyl with professionally designed covers and even to make decent music videos. This is along with all the new cars and construction you see. It looks like the money is coming from nothing at all, but what it is, is money being moved around in a massive multi-tentacled criminal network.

Posted on September 4, 2022October 8, 2022

Blue Gallery, Elliott Smith, Sean Croghan

Blue Gallery

From Chris’ memoirs – Napalm Beach played Blue Gallery a couple of times. The club felt competetive with Satyricon. Blue Gallery owner Tim Brooks was the local champion for the sub-underground snobbery embraced today by the Olympia K records scene. It was his job to dismiss bands like the Jackals and Napalm Beach as worthless bar bands berift of art and unworthy of consideration. Brooks felt like his little bar was the true music mecca. He claimed the Satyricon was over run with ripped blue jeaned blues based junky bands. Sean Crogan of Crackerbash was Tim Brook’s friend and shared his sentiments. Croghan also played and promoted the X-Ray cafe, an all ages downtown venue run by his highschool pal Tres Shannon now of Voodoo Doughnuts fame.

Note: Blue Gallery was circa 1988-1992
Tim Brooks died of lung cancer in 2004 at age 48

poster for Tabasco Tim's acoustic showcase with Elliott Smith, Chris Newman, Sean Crogan, Birddog, Jerry Ann + special guests — July 5, 1995

Elliott Smith and Sean Croghan

I was playing an acoustic showcase with Elliot Smith and Sean Croghan at the Egyptian club (July 5, 1995). Croghan insisted he and Smith play first to the small crowd. I was on fire and excited to play with Elliot (sic) there. Before I could play my first chord, I saw Croghan pull Elliot out the door, sending me the message that I wasn’t worth listening to.

I have enemies in my little town of Portland, but the real problem fuckers are in neighboring Seattle and Olympia. If they continue to have their way, I will stay written out of the Northwest history of Rock n Roll Music!

I know the competition is based around the fact that I outshine most mediocre artists. I have put years of work into my passion. These days the DIY culture encourage the young to get out there and do it.

I hear some great stuff now and then. I do believe there are things more important than musicianship in this craft. You have to retain a sense of humor and to trust your gut feeling on everything. That is God’s voice speaking to you, I believe.

Posted on September 2, 2022September 14, 2022

Slowing the roll – Portland, Seattle club scene breakdown in 1983 and appearance of Satyricon

Trap Sampler record cover — Trap Sampler 1981

Beat Happening record cover — Trap Sampler 1981

I can parse the series of music-related set ups in Chris’ life going back to 1967. However, right now I’m focused on the 1980s, especially the Sub Pop era.

I’ve been trying to think of Pacific northwest punk bands who were touring early before 1987. The only ones I can think of are Wipers, Beat Happening, Go Team, D.O.A. – and Pell Mell? Green River toured beginning in 1985.

Pell Mell with Wipers at Evergreen Experimental Theater 13 July 1984

A lot of times people don’t include D.O.A. with these other bands maybe because they were from Vancouver B.C. or because, generally speaking, artificial divisions are made in the northwest music scene where they shouldn’t be made, almost certainly to misdirect attention.

D.O.A. – like Black Flag, the LA band with whom they shared a member – was a popular hardcore punk band on the move.

Wipers, from Portland, was Greg Sage. Sage was linked to the all ages punk scene, to Pell Mell (Steve Fisk, Bruce Pavitt), and Napalm Beach. I don’t know, but I suspect Sage was linked more generally to K Records, Evergreen State College and the all ages punk scene. Wipers was one of the Portland bands who were liked in Olympia. (Dead Moon was another.)

There are things about Greg Sage that tell you he has some kind of background in, for lack of a better term, mind control activity (hypnosis, covert manipulations, etc). It’s in his sound (hypnotic drum loops, etc) and in the messaging he conveyed. This is true of a lot of people around Chris and me – especially those closest to us. How these people were trained to handle us, and who trained and/or handles them, I don’t know. The mind control activities do seem to be linked to bigger record labels and movie studios (I.E. the Hollywood entertainment business), and financial activity. Part of Greg Sage’s job was trapping Chris (thus the hidden in plain sight name of his first label – Trap Records) in the local scene. To this end, I suspect he coordinated with a number of other people and financial entities.

Beat Happening (Olympia) was of course linked to K Records, KAOS Radio/Evergreen, Pavitt/Sub Pop zine/label, and the all ages scene. Go Team (Olympia) was linked to Beat Happening, K Records, Bikini Kill zine/band, and the all ages scene. Part of the misdirecting used by bands like Beat Happening (and all of these bands, really) was an overt eschewing of anything corporate or “sell out.” That seems to have been a psychological technique to make it seem like being small and unknown and not standing out was “cooler” than being successful and “corporate”, and it was also a form of misdirection. I suspect all of these acts were involved in a number of subterranean financial transactions.

D.O.A. (Vancouver, B.C.) was linked to Black Flag (L.A.), the Dead Kennedys (S.F.) and the Seattle club scene. Chris remembered Joey Keithley from D.O.A. giving him a hard time because Untouchables formed in 1980 and therefore were latecomers to punk (D.O.A. were hardcore punk) – this is part of an ongoing pattern of psychological baiting that dogged Chris his whole life. Again with the arbitrary divisions – are you from Portland or are you from Olympia or are you from Seattle? Did your band form before or after 1979? Are you pre-grunge, proto-grunge, grunge, or post grunge? And so on.

It is not clear to me how Wipers, Beat Happening, etc managed, financially, to tour.

One thing about the situation around Chris and me is that it is highly controlled, and in fact our families have been highly controlled for generations. It’s done in such a way as to give people a modicum of power as long as they provide support to the system overall. The system works by tempting, enticing, entrapping, enslaving, threatening, coercing, baiting, lying, deceiving, changing the rules, etc – whatever it takes. There are layers of power/authority and layers of protection. One of the means of protection is financial connections. Another is getting as many people involved as possible in the various schemes, and then convincing them that the system is their only protection and salvation.

So our lives have been a series of set ups, usually involving lots of people in different roles (cut outs), with a bigger plan (world domination) at work in the background. In the early 1980s Chris was playing a lot in Portland and Seattle.

1983 Rock and Roll Hell cassette
Trap Records

During 1983, when clubs were closing in Portland and Seattle, Sam and Chris moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, but my recollection is that they decided to move back to Portland after Satyricon opened. They’d come up for a visit and had so much fun in Portland Chris said “let’s move back.” I now think this was all set up ahead of time, that they (the architects of his life) wanted to introduce Chris to Valarie who, even though she was much younger, already had a drug habit, and they also were going to introduce him to heroin. Chris met Valerie through his drummer Sam Henry, and he was introduced to heroin by his bassist at the time, a former member of SF band The Cosmetics, who was at that time driving cab in San Francisco. Chris was actually the last member of that lineup of Napalm Beach to try heroin. That was 1983, the same year Napalm Beach made a record with Greg Sage (Rock and Roll Hell), and drummer Sam Henry’s first serious girlfriend died of a heroin overdose.

Valarie must have returned to Portland with Chris and Sam or followed after them.

In Seattle, both Golden Crown and Gorilla Room/Gorilla Gardens seem to have had issues with under age drinking on the premises. A co-owner of Golden Crown, John Loui was killed along with 12 others in the Wah Mee Massacre, February 19, 1983. The 3bands3bucks calendar for Golden Crown ends after December 1982. It’s a bit chilling that one of the last listed shows is Napalm Beach and Next Exit (12/17/82) and currently the last show listed is Visible Targets (12/31/82).

In Portland, The Met, an all-ages club located where Dante’s is now, closed, I think also in 1983.

It sounds like the similarly named Seattle Metropolis (also sometimes called the Met) had been a favorite of Chris’. It was an all ages space run by Gordon Doucette, Hugo Piottin, and Susan Silver. Silver worked with Jonathan Poneman and later went on to manage Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Screaming Trees. She became co-owner of The Crocodile. According to 3bands the last show at Seattle’s Metropolis was March 6, 1984 and featured Alien Sex Fiend from London, with Red Masque and 3 Squirrels From Hell.

Violent Femmes at Mediterranean Tavern - May 18, 1983 — Violent Femmes 1983

What I find interesting about this is it is just about exactly when Satyricon started. It’s actually not clear to me exactly when Satyricon made it’s debut as a rock club as I’ve heard a couple of different stories, and it probably depends on what you consider the first show to have been. Was it a Violent Femmes show at Mediterranean Tavern in May 1983? Or was it Theatre of Sheep? Or was it The Jackals? If I had to guess based on trying to remember the dates of reunion shows, I’d guess Satyricon marked their birth date as October 1983. Is it possible there was a link between the closing of Seattle’s Metropolis and the opening of Portland’s Satyricon?

In 2002 I made and updated a website for Satyricon and then around 2005 or 2006 I created a MySpace fan page for the club which had shut down after 20 years, in 2003. One of the things that several old-timers mentioned on that MySpace page was the song “I Walk The Line” by Alien Sex Fiend as being “the favorite song” on the Satyricon jukebox. I’d never heard of the band or the song before. In any case Satyricon soon became Chris’ new favorite haunt and place to play, and from what I can tell, for several years he headlined there twice a month, and drew calendars for Satyricon and advertisements for Taki’s Souvlakis next door. Chris played other clubs around Portland and Seattle as well, as well as the occasional festival and/or small town gig, but it looks to me like Chris was playing fewer shows in Seattle after the 1983 transition period, and especially after 1988, especially if you compare to how prolific he was in the early 1980s. Under normal circumstances, someone who was doing what Chris was doing as well as he was doing it would have caught the interest of a label somewhere. But there was already a plan for Chris, as there was for me, and both plans were basically a series of traps, along with, it appears, plans/intents/set ups intended to harm us and endanger our lives. I believe that Sub Pop took advantages of opportunities that presented themself within this context. Specifically, in order for them to be successful with their selected group of artists, they would have to help make sure Chris and I stayed put, stayed on track. In order to do that, it seems that everyone around us – friends, family, etc – was instructed/bribed/coerced to keep us in certain locations, and out of other locations – but not to be obvious about all of this. So there is tempting bait (Satyricon as sort of an ad hoc family and artists playground), enticing us to stay close to home, along with messaging warning us away from moves towards financial/professional success. It was a pattern of luring, honey traps, sabotage, psychological warfare. The idea was to make our failures seem like bad luck or our own fault. Meanwhile, terrible reports are sold in hopes that FBI/CIA black bag ops will retaliate with assassinations, because apparently, that’s what they do. It does seem like there are people in these communities who habitually and maybe even as a tradition pick out people (or offer up people) to be marked for death. Audacity is one way the crime hides – the idea being that the nature of the crime is so audacious, no one will believe your story.

So 1983 was a very transitional year, and it was a year in which a number of personalities who would appear later, associated with grunge, were becoming established.

One question would be, did the establishment of Club Satyricon in late 1983 have something to do with the origins of Sub Pop and possibly also K Records? And I think that the answer is yes, especially with regards to Sub Pop. What I think was happening is that Sub Pop was making deals specifically at Chris’ expense, and at my expense as well. And while following the money would be ideal, if you can’t see the money, you can see the flow of wealth in the form of material goods and other benefits, and even more so, you can see the matching of dates and movement of people in key positions at key moments. Generally speaking, I think Satyricon served both as a holding cell for Chris, and a transition point for Seattle bands making their moves down the coast and beyond.

Posted on August 30, 2022September 5, 2022