I Found My Friends

by Nick Soulsby

  JAIME ROBERT JOHNSON: What made Seattle special to me was the fact in the space of one week, I could see Black Flag, Paisley Sin; head down to Portland and catch the Obituaries and Napalm Beach; head home the next night and catch a set by the angular artiness of bands like Infamous Menagerie doing a show with Lethal Gospel, or go see Skin Yard; then on the weekend catch Malfunkshun playing in a shoe store, go down to the Vogue to catch the Mentors, and for my Sunday hangover go hang at the Comet, where the bartenders had extremely good taste in music.

  DANIEL RIDDLE: Portland was much like Seattle in that it had many talented players and groups but its lack of a so-called music industry allowed for greater musical community, as where Seattle had a music scene. The difference being one of cooperation versus competition.

  SETH PERRY, Oily Bloodmen: As I see it, Portlanders [on the whole] have always had a slight inferiority complex when it comes to Seattle, even though they like to see themselves as equals, if not superior.

  JOE KEITHLEY: It’s got a really active punk scene—one reason a lot of people moved from California, as they couldn’t stand it or couldn’t afford it so they would end up in the Northwest. Portland currently has a better music scene than Seattle because you can live there cheaper than you can in Seattle, and if you want to go play in Seattle or Vancouver or down to California it’s just a few hours’ drive so it’s pretty centrally located and you pay half the rent.

  Portland became another staple of Nirvana’s gig diet; Seattle and Olympia are the only places they ever played more.

  RENÉE DENENFELD, Caustic Soda: It was an amazing, lively, outrageously active, and usually friendly music scene. In the beginning out of punk houses—there were famous punk houses, like Ether 13 in Eugene or Dirge in Portland—the clubs came and added more impetus. But being the rainy Northwest, the music was always largely born and created in basements … largely created by outsiders; street kids and rejects and poor kids and dropouts. It was not a college scene at all. It was very warm and welcoming to an incredibly diverse array of people …

  GILLY ANN HANNER: Portland was like the Wipers, Poison Idea, the Accused … More punky, but punky in a way that people knew how to play their instruments—I’m not saying that no one in Olympia knew how to play their instruments but … you didn’t have to play your instrument; it was almost like reverse-snobbery in a way, it was kinda weird … Tam was teaching herself to play drums: “I can’t chew gum and play the drums at the same time! I’ll mess up!” Heather, she could sort of sing … They were the cool people in the band. I was not cool, because I could play guitar and I didn’t have crazy hair …

  The hub for music in Portland was the Satyricon, and Sub Pop had made sure local tastemakers couldn’t fail to miss what they were building.

  GEOFF ROBINSON: “Touch Me I’m Sick” was on the legendary jukebox at Portland’s Satyricon. Eight months prior, “Six Foot Under” launched a newly coined “grunge” sound on the same jukebox.

  ERIC MOORE, Rawhead Rex: For all of us in the Northwest it was ground zero for punk rock and all kinds of cool music. Check these bands out if you want the real story about who influenced Kurt: the Rats, Dead Moon, the Wipers, Poison Idea, Sado Nation … playing on the same stage with those guys or even drinking beer with them was, like, “The Big Time.”

  BEN MUNAT: [It was] entirely black inside. It had some art on the walls, but it never really changed … it always had that black, DIY aesthetic … there were definitely stretches where it was pretty much the only punk/indie-rock game in town … Even if I didn’t go to a show at Satyricon on a Friday or Saturday, I would usually wind up there around closing to find out where the after-hours party was.

  SETH PERRY: That was our home. We were usually there at least five nights a week, just hanging out and drinking beer. George, the owner, or whoever was booking would just offer us shows, although I’m sure Rich or Dale were probably in their ear a fair amount … There were drug dealers all over the Satyricon … At one point George installed a system that constantly rained water down from above to try and keep the dealers from hanging out against the front of the club. For the more hardcore bands more often than not IV heroin and cocaine use was just part of being hardcore. The culture of the Satyricon was so open and nonjudgmental (and nihilistic) that hard drug use was not considered uncool or undesirable.

  Nirvana was hooked up with Mudhoney for a Sub Pop bill there, then with local favorites the Dharma Bums.

  DAMON ROMERO: There was a little bit of showmanship. I rode down to Portland with Nirvana in their van and I remember the show at the Satyricon, Kurt smashed a guitar at the end of that show. It was one he’d bought at a pawn shop super cheap, spray-painted, then brought out for the very last song then smashed it—it wasn’t an impromptu spur of the moment thing. Maybe the first time, out of frustration—people loved it. Kurt was really good at giving people what they wanted—he believed in it. I remember speaking to Chad, out on their US tour everyone in the band was getting sick of playing “Love Buzz” but Kurt said “Look, that’s what everyone knows us for, we’ve got to deliver.” He wanted to give people a good show.

  A return to the Evergreen State College in February brought echoes of the past; Dave Foster was now playing with Helltrout, and Psychlodds was led by Ryan Aigner, another Aberdeen friend and Nirvana’s semi-manager in the early days.

  PAUL KIMBALL: That whole set of dorms [of which K Dorm was one] were brand-new in the fall of ’87. The thing was that they had decent-sized living rooms [and two two-bed bedrooms], so if you moved the furniture out you could put a band in there as well as thirty, fifty people. The K unit just happened to wind up with some serious partiers living there, both upstairs and down, so when they threw a kegger over there it would take over the entire building … Helltrout all took mushrooms that night before we went on, just to see how long we could keep it together. As it turned out, the answer was “not very long.” I left before Nirvana even went on that night, but don’t ask me where I went! I have no idea …

  There was perhaps some lingering (non-chemically induced) discomfort between the bands but this was a tight-knit scene and any awkwardness soon passed. Kimball’s previous band, Lansdat Blister, had played with Nirvana more than any other local act and he was a resident of the Alamo band house, so it was unavoidable that their paths crossed.

  PAUL KIMBALL: My connection to them was really through Dave Foster being in our band, and because they’d kicked Dave out of their band I felt vaguely patronized by Krist the first couple times I met him. But he warmed up, as did Kurt … We were having a party at the Alamo, and at one point I walked into the kitchen to find Krist Novoselic and Dylan Carlson standing at our kitchen counter in front of a huge pile of pot. It was a bunch of shake, not buds or anything, but these guys had a two-man assembly line going and were rolling joint after joint and handing them to anyone who walked by. Needless to say they gathered quite a crowd, and before you knew it pretty much everyone in the house was walking around with their very own joint hanging off their lips.

  The presence of Psychlodds was a display of Nirvana’s determination to support their friends and fellow musicians; something they would carry throughout the life of the band.

  RYAN AIGNER: So one day we’re sitting around talking about my guitar and that I wished I was better and how I admired what [Kurt] was doing and how he’d written a large catalog of originals and trying to understand how he did that. He said, “Get your guitar out, plug in—show me these riffs.” So I showed a few little things I’d done and he looked at me and said “Ryan, those are songs.” I said, “They’re just riffs, I don’t know how to arrange them, they’re not enough…” He said, “No, they’re enough. More than enough. That’s a full song actually. This is where you need to start—this is adequate.” … He said to me, “You just need to start a band.” I said, “Well, we don’t have any songs.” He replied, “No, you don’t understand. You just get a drummer, get a bass player, find a room and set up regular rehearsal, o
nce or twice a week, you’ll go in there, you’ll play these little things you have over and over, and two things will happen. One; song form will come, and two; you’ll mechanically practice your craft and get better and better each time you rehearse. The function of forming a group of people who have the same goal—it’ll do the work for you. You don’t get it all arranged then start the band—start a band and the songs will come.” … Shortly after, this was end of ’87, early part of ’88 I actually started the band … and it was Nirvana who said “We will do these shows with you.” Two of the three shows the Psychlodds did—we only did three concerts ever—two of them were with Nirvana. The reason was that it was Kurt’s dedication to his previous statement. He felt he should also support us by telling us that if we wanted to play a show then they would play it with us … that’s what I gave to them, too—I gave them encouragement and this positivity and that’s all they wanted from anybody. When the Psychlodds went out and played, Krist and Kurt wouldn’t come up and say “You were really awful, you really sucked” though we kind of did—they would say “You guys did all right, it sounded pretty good, keep up the good work.” We tried to support each other and we tried to be positive.

  DAMON ROMERO: [Kurt] cared about people, he cared about other musicians. I don’t think he really liked Treehouse’s music, but he was always supportive of us—he’d say “Great job on the single! I like what you did with the drums!” He’d always find something constructive to say. Always nice about it. I think he liked Lush a lot—it was more crazy, more up his alley. We played a show that Kurt and his friends came to and he started rolling on the floor and doing a worm dance to our music—that was cool.

  Nirvana had meanwhile acquired a second guitarist, Jason Everman, a friend with sufficient admiration for them that he invested his own savings to cover the recording costs of Bleach.

  PAUL KIMBALL: I know that they had buzz around them that I felt was largely undeserved. To my ears they didn’t deserve that buzz till Jason Everman joined … it wasn’t till the show Helltrout played with them at Reko/Muse … that I found that I finally genuinely liked them, that was a great show, and with Jason on guitar the whole thing really gelled.

  Cobain was still learning onstage, and as a trio the burden was on him to carry a substantial portion of the band’s presence while juggling guitar and vocals. Everman’s purpose was to take pressure off by duplicating the guitar work—a tricky position given that success meant the absence of error rather than any dramatic addition.

  RONNA MYLES-ERA: I remember thinking that maybe it would free up Kurt to make more mistakes, but I don’t recall thinking that [Jason] added too much to the sound. It’s always a little strange when you see a band for a while and then they add someone … He was also another “quiet” and shy guy, it seemed, so I didn’t even really talk to him much. He seemed nice enough though, and he was a really talented guitar player.

  The band made a quick hop to California to play a February 10 show supporting the Melvins.

  JOE GOLDRING: We had seen Mudhoney and a few other Seattle classic-rock-sounding bands when we had been up there, so we sort of suspected these guys would be the same type of thing … they were pretty quiet, just some small talk, I suspected a bit of a drug vibe with Cobain, or he might have just been a shy dirtbag. Novoselic was the most friendly—seemed like a very nice chap. The drummer had a crazy-looking ’70s drum kit—red flag there … But when they got going we became engaged—they were nothing like the Sabbath rehash that we had witnessed up north! I think they had another guitar player; honestly I can’t say a thing about him … The drummer was a bit of a throwback … Bass was interesting but it was definitely Cobain who drew you in; his singing and guitar sound owed more to Public Image than Led Zeppelin … There was an energy in the room emanating from this grubby little bloke—we all felt that. They obviously needed to work out the kinks … they were not the band they were about to become; the clues were in Cobain’s trip—there was something deeper going on within him.

  They then joined Mudhoney on Saturday.

  LINDSEY THRASHER: We were playing with Mudhoney, who I only knew a little bit about but I had heard they were great. They were immediately super-funny and easy to be around. They asked if their friends Nirvana could open the show [for free] since they were on tour and didn’t have a show that night … I talked to Krist a lot that night. He was super-nice and gave me his number to call next time we were in Seattle (or wherever he lived).

  But that’s where the roaming sputtered out. The band played only one show before April 1, after which, again, a splurge of four shows gave way to a month off.

  During what shows they did play, however, there had been a sea change; they’d become a name everyone remembered once witnessed.

  RONNA MYLES-ERA: When they played around town, they weren’t that good, I mean, they would mess up a lot and Kurt was off-key … their songs were strong enough to “carry” them even if they were totally destroying their own song. It was painful for me to watch them sometimes for this very reason! They were entertaining and things would always get smashed. In fact, when they would show up at a party, they were a lot of fun, but it seemed like Krist would always break something. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t ever invite him to my house!

  DAMON ROMERO: Krist would often get out of control at a party—at a Christmas party once, everyone dressed up and, being civilized, he came in and destroyed the place—did a flying dive onto the hors d’oeuvre table, got kicked out. Another party, more of a rockers’ party for New Year’s Eve—he let off the fire extinguisher and sprayed a bunch of people with that horrible dry dusty material—he got away with it.

  MIKE MORASKY: I’d met them briefly at a show with the Melvins in San Francisco but just as a visiting member of the audience. When they rolled up to the Vogue in Seattle, there was something kind of young and goofy about them, like they’d just barely managed to actually make it there. Since we’d already been on a couple of tours, they were also the “new guys,” and being from an even smaller town than us … they just seemed like nice guys struggling to get out on tour and not being particularly organized about it.

  GLEN LOGAN: The draw for that show had much more to do with Nirvana and Skin Yard. I hope and think we helped the bill, but we were not the big draw at this show … Nirvana were one hundred percent in the moment. There was no pretense; what you saw is what they were. There was a vital recklessness in what they did, and I mean that in the most positive sense. We … leaned to more of the rock side of this sort of music and may have paired better with a band like Alice in Chains.

  Preparation for Bleach lingered; photography wasn’t finalized until after an April gig in Olympia, which continued to demonstrate Nirvana’s reliance on nontraditional venues.

  RONNA MYLES-ERA: Reko/Muse was a space that was created to be an art space and a music space. It was also a collective. I don’t recall knowing what exactly the name meant. It was basically just a big echoing room, but it sounded great when it was full of people. The things I remember most about the show … was Krist throwing my old bass in the air and just barely catching it each time. (I had recently sold my bass to Slim Moon and he had loaned it to Krist.) I kept freaking out that he was going to smash it … The other thing was that I brought my own PA for the show and it ended up on the cover of Bleach … Usually local bands didn’t get paid. The money would go first to the venue to cover costs and most of what was left would go to the touring band if there was one. I’m sure we had enough to buy beer, though; it was a pretty packed night.

  BEN MUNAT: Blue Gallery was an actual art gallery. It was in a typical store space in northwest Portland. So, not a very big venue. Maybe a couple hundred people if you packed it out. The walls were completely white and had art on them, which changed each month. I can’t remember if they took the art down for shows … We had actually set up the show to have Cat Butt headline. But a few days before the show, the bass player for Cat Butt cut his hand opening a wine bo
ttle (he was a waiter) and could not play. They referred us to “this cool band from Olympia; you’ll like them.” I further recall that it seemed like the only people left at the show by the time Nirvana went on were the opening bands and our girlfriends … They blew us away. I remember thinking, These guys are gonna be big. Of course, at that point “big” meant they could headline a larger hall.

  DAVID TRIEBWASSER, Grind: Nirvana tore it up, and during their last song Kurt started rolling around the cement floor while playing guitar. I remember him bumping up to each of the eight or so audience members like a playful pup, soloing the whole time, mopping up spilled beer, discarded cigarettes, and shards of glass with his frayed flannel shirt.

  JAMES BURDYSHAW: It was cheap and easy to put shows on at art galleries or warehouses, as opposed to doing them in a nightclub … the Center on Contemporary Art was, and I believe still is, a collective in Seattle to promote and exhibit contemporary art of all types. When Larry Reid became the executive director of the group, he started bringing in punk bands to put on showcases locally. The space where the CoCA event was held with Nirvana was actually a group of empty buildings that used to be porn shops on First Avenue. Larry got funding to lease the space and converted it into a two-room gallery with a large floor space for people. It was way too small for the Sub Pop show, but he did it anyway … I’m sure you read about the washtub backstage that had been full of Schmidt or Black Label beer? I stayed back there after about half of Mudhoney’s set and drank a bunch of beer. It was super fucking hot in there, no A/C, and it was a massive sauna of sweat and sticky bodies. My friend Luke was given bags of sugar to sprinkle on the crowd and he threw mass quantities of it at the people, so the floor looked like it was coated with maple syrup—one of Larry’s ingenious ideas, I believe. The show was booked as “Sugar Sweet Sub Pop” … I dipped my hand into what was now cold-ass ice water in the washtub. When anybody walked through the door, I’d flick water at them. Matt Lukin [Mudhoney] got super annoyed by this and squawked at me. Then Kurt comes in and looks happy I sprayed him. He asks me to dunk his entire head in the tub, so I do it. I started getting nervous when it seemed like a minute went by and he was still submerged in the ice water. Then he springs up and joyfully exclaims a big “AAHH!” and thanks me. During their set the sound was so muddy and the air felt like hot molasses soup with all the sugar in the air. I don’t recall a single song they played. Just a huge swell of people gyrating back and forth while Erik [Peterson]’s older brother Ed lay prostrate on the stage under Kurt’s legs. Later that night, I was stuck outside on First Avenue with my L5 combo and Strat. David [Emmanuel Duet] wouldn’t take me back to where the gear was because he had too many hipsters and girls in his minivan. I was pretty pissed off at that point. I looked down the street and saw Kurt and Krist walking and got their attention, waving them to come back. They turned around and headed toward me looking like Mutt and Jeff from the old comic strip, heads bopping a little and big smiles on their faces. I asked if they were going south and could drop me off in west Seattle. Kurt looked confused and said he was sorry they couldn’t, but he didn’t want to leave me there either. He said something like “Oh man, I’m so sorry, we aren’t going that way.” Luckily for me, these uber-cute young girls offered to get me home, but first I had to go with them to this party. Everything worked out for me.