I Found My Friends (16 page)

Bored, engaging in jet-black humor just to stay occupied, uncomfortable, fed up … Cobain brought the tour to a dramatic head by breaking down in Italy threatening suicide, ranting that he thought the audience was a bunch of idiots. While Cobain can no longer recount his own feelings, one musician described the influence of his own band's 1989 tour, giving a sense of the endurance test and reality check early touring provided to young musicians.

SHAMBIE SINGER:
The beginning of the end was that last big tour—seven or eight weeks, starting in the Northeast and moving counterclockwise around the entire country … I recall the entire time thinking it was a really tough way to earn a living even if we'd been making more money than the $5-a-day each person got from the tour fund. For me many things made it a tough situation, including the physical discomfort of being on the road—long, tired drives, smoky clubs, typically an uncomfortable sleeping arrangement … The boredom of sitting around every night for five or six hours between sound check and the show. Additionally, I didn't really relate well to many folks I was meeting in the clubs where we played. Everyone generally seemed nice enough. But I didn't feel like I had much in common with anyone. I was struck most by this issue in terms of our audience. Routinely at shows people would ask us to sign the Am Rep single … and so I had an opportunity to speak a bit to our “fans.” And at the end of the day the disconnect between who I felt I was while I was pouring my heart and mind and soul into the music, and the people to whom it seemed to speak the most, struck me as odd. And maybe even a bit disconcerting. I was never able to understand why I didn't feel more kinship with the very people who liked our music the best. And soon started thinking maybe I should put my professional efforts into something different. I realize most of those “fans” were probably not even into us in particular but had more generally embraced the scene we were part of. In either case, though, I felt like I should be doing something that would allow me to have more of a connection to the other people who were part of whatever I would be doing. So after two months of being tired, physically uncomfortable, worn down, generally demoralized by the lack of connection with the people I was meeting, I figured I probably needed to do something else. It was a tough decision for me. Because I loved, and love, music. Maybe more than anything else. But as in many other realms, I've since learned, there can be a huge difference between loving something and doing it professionally … But I was very conflicted. I loved being in a band that had had the opportunities we'd already had. And I generally loved being in a band with Mike and Sam. They're both excellent musicians. And also had become very good friends. But when I looked down the road—even in a best-case scenario involving enough money and hotels—I couldn't really imagine trying to balance a productive career as a musician with a healthy, happy home/family life. I wasn't willing to play music at all costs. That last tour was the experience that helped me understand that.

For all the talk of Cobain's fragility since his demise, he (and, indeed, the entire underground) endured a lifestyle that involved lengthy periods cut off from any kind of stable home life. Choosing to be a musician meant accepting it might always be a life of few comforts, no health insurance, and no regular pay in return for the chance to be heard.

 

9.0

Home Soil

January to February 1990

Nirvana returned
to Reciprocal Recording for their customary New Year recording session, devoting two days to “Sappy,” one of only two songs they recorded in studio more than twice. The time expenditure showed how far they'd come; not rich, but able to indulge some musical perfectionism while jostling for third place on Sub Pop's roster.

VADIM RUBIN,
Haywire:
It's funny, though, that when we played with Nirvana and Tad, it wasn't clear that Nirvana was
the
band. In fact, Tad was the headliner!

JED BREWER:
When I found out that we were opening the Nirvana/Tad show, I was actually a little more excited about Tad at the time.

Nirvana's arrival was perfectly timed at the crest of a wave. Over a decade of DIY efforts had created an infrastructure that provided all the elements of production, broadcast, and promotion that Nirvana needed. Even in the absence of mainstream awareness, word spread about the band, and other underground stars, via a number of means.

MATT HUNTER,
New Radiant Storm King:
College radio, fanzines, and word of mouth, mostly.
Spin
magazine,
NME
, and
Melody Maker
were sometimes useful, and once in a blue moon so was MTV. You'd be surprised how extensive informal networks were in the era just prior to the Internet.

GEORGE SMITH:
It wasn't terribly difficult to set up a tour; there was a really good underground network of all the clubs, and generally there were a few houses where there might be house parties—little beacons around the country where it was all about the music. And our house in Olympia, the Alamo, was one of those.

TIM KERR:
There was no radio or mainstream magazines for this music, so the only way you were going to find out about this was word of mouth and maybe, just maybe, you could start up a community and connect with other communities … By the mid-'80s things were beginning to change all over the US for this music. The scene was still small in the big picture and the mainstream for the most part was not interested, but there were more kids finding out about this “other choice” … There were more places to play now and shows became shows instead of crazy happenings. A grassroots network was going on so that bands could tour and college radio begin to play more of this music. Grassroots magazines writing about these scenes were becoming more abundant too.

COLIN BURNS:
I feel like it was the clubs where connections were made. In those days, at least half the audience was people from other bands. It felt like a very supportive scene … We won the WBCN Rock 'n' Roll Rumble in 1990, which was an annual battle of the bands hosted by a Boston radio station. Maybe twenty-five bands over five nights, a winner each night, to five semifinalists, down to two finalists … Iggy Pop was the host. And he was my hero. And used Dana [Ong]'s amp when he played between the bands. And got my blood on his face when he picked up the bloody mike. A stage diver kicked my arm during our final song, the mike broke my nose, blood everywhere, very dramatic—but the Rumble was said to be cursed; something dramatic always happened to the winner, which was most likely breaking up.

ABE BRENNAN:
Independent record stores were a good source of information … but many of the bands we got into we stumbled on through their touring and us playing shows with them and touring to their towns.

GLEN LOGAN,
Bible Stud:
There seemed to be so many local record stores owned and staffed by people who were fans of music. To many of these record-store people it was more than just a job or just a business. These people did a lot to support the local scene by stocking many of the local releases.

DUANE LANCE BODENHEIMER:
Russ and Janet owned Fallout Records for a long time, couple, very nice people—my friend Tim Hayes worked there as well. It was a skate shop, comic shop, music shop … I always felt at home with them, very welcoming. A small close-knit group of people who loved music and thrived on it.

VADIM RUBIN:
I grew up in Long Beach … In that area it was centered around Zed Records, an alternative and import record store that was full of great vinyl … This is where you found out about shows, what bands were coming to town … Another central point locally was Fender's, a show venue. Goldenvoice put on many of the big punk shows, and the guy running it was very close with the Zed Records guys. So I remember going to Zed's and finding out that we got a spot at a good Fender's gig for the first time.

Print media had been a link in the underground chain since the start—Sub Pop itself having been an example, given it began as a fanzine publication.

GLEN LOGAN:
It seemed like more folks were writing their own music. There were also fanzines like
Backlash
,
City Heat
, and music-oriented papers like
The Rocket
. There were record stores by the score. There were legit music venues as well as lofts, basements, and empty warehouse-type places where folks would put on shows. The
Rocket
magazine covered the scene, and for many of us it became the go-to source for info on all things local music well before the proliferation of the Internet. This probably focused the information on the local/regional scene in a way that would not be possible in today's world. I think it made a large regional scene seem smaller, maybe a bit more intimate.

JAIME ROBERT JOHNSON:
We had the
Rocket
, which was an amazing, maddening, annoying, and indispensable part of what was going on. We had peers, dedicated to building a rock 'n' roll community and playing shows together and having a great time; we had some good people who were willing to take chances.

TY WILLMAN:
Backlash
and the
Rocket
—if you were in a band, this is before Internet, that was your Internet. You would sit and look for your name, and if you were in there then you'd succeeded … It was pretty easy to get mentioned—I was on the cover once, but that only came when the
Green Apple Quick Step
record was out and was somewhat successful. But if you were in a band and you played, then you could get into those publications somewhere.

In 1990,
Rolling Stone
was still featuring Paul McCartney as their crucial February cover star, but it didn't matter that the mainstream music media was still fixated on bygone eras and sacred cows. Many key underground publications now had circulations in the thousands—crucially, all to people active within the community.

LORI JOSEPH:
Going out and meeting the bands you liked, asking them if they needed a place to stay, and getting to know the local promoters were how we got our shows.
Flipside
was probably hands-down the best magazine that gave us the most attention back in the day.
Maximum Rocknroll
,
Flipside
, and
Alternative Press
were the only ones I read. In Chicago, WNUR was the biggest college radio station that we did interviews on and promoted all the local shows. I kept up with music by reading
Flipside
and
Alternative Press
as well as going to local indie record stores to see what was new.

VADIM RUBIN:
The influential L.A. punk “fanzine” called
Flipside
 … A really important venue that emerged there was Gilman, connected to the people that ran the even bigger punk fanzine
Maximum Rocknroll.

JOHN MYERS:
Maximum Rocknroll
magazine was a great network. People wanted to share gigs and swap gigs. They would invite you to their town in exchange for you inviting them to your town. There was a certain camaraderie although sometimes there was abuse, too. But generally DIY people were pretty cool and helpful. There wasn't much money, though. And that was the hardship at that time. As a musician you had to have a day job and then get time off to do your shows.

The Beatles' success in the United States had occurred in part as young music fans began listening to FM radio. By the late '80s, a similar—though less dramatic—shift was occurring as stations, particularly college radio, found their niche playing what mainstream radio wouldn't.

GLEN LOGAN:
There were local/regional radio stations like KAOS, KCMU, and KJET that played more than the standard AOR radio format stuff. TV shows like
Rev
featured much about the local music scene. Musically there was diversity and a degree of acceptance of that diversity that led to more of a vast number of shades of musical styles versus a few hard and fast colors or categories. The scene especially, on the west side, was incredibly vibrant.

JAIME ROBERT JOHNSON:
We had a radio station that was doing the same—KCMU, now KEXP, which still to this day does totally amazing radio.

SCOTT VANDERPOOL:
I made enough of a stink at KCMU that they hired me at one of the big commercial rock stations, KXRX, just before all this Seattle shit took off. I was somewhat instrumental in getting Soundgarden, Nirvana, the Melvins, Green River, Mudhoney, Love Battery, the Posies, and others on the air and
more
importantly getting '80s hairspray butt-rock
off
the air—a personal goal … I remember interviewing Bob Mould from Hüsker Dü and Sugar on my Sunday-night “new music show,” and he observed that all the American rock stations he went to were staffed by his fans, frustrated they had to play fucking “Stairway to Heaven” every day and shit like Bon Jovi, while the people at “alternative” stations were frustrated that they had to play him instead of the Depeche Mode and Alanis Morissette they really liked.

Just as KAOS and KCMU had given Nirvana early coverage, this same benefit was extended to a whole swath of bands—an entire scene was rising.

GLEN LOGAN:
There was a rise in college radio everywhere at the time and it did seem to be friendly to this genre of music (or, more accurately, these multiple types of music). The folks going to these schools were in large part the demographic that “got it” … That seemed to make shows at colleges more viable, especially where the college radio station was co-located with the college putting on the show.