Nirvana Legacy

Kurt Cobain, From Aberdeen: Last Tour Through the Hometown

Just a cool guitar signed by a whole series of past members of Nirvana including Dave Foster – a very rare autography, he doesn’t do this kind of thing – that they’re preparing for the Aberdeen Museum…The single below was handed to Mitch by Kurt Cobain personally…Oooooo…handled by the man himself! Oooooo…

Reflecting on the tour so far, reading comments and so forth, a few people have felt a little underwhelmed at what they’ll find if they choose to visit State of Washington in pursuit of Nirvana. My belief, my feeling, is that the issue is nothing to do with the physical reality of the Pacific North-West, nothing to do with the presence/absence of anything — its entirely to do with the inherent craziness of the decision to visit a state of over 70,000 square miles and seven million people in pursuit of, in essence, one long gone man. Once Jack Endino had finished reading the Dark Slivers book he kindly congratulated me including the line “you’re obsessed and insane, but what else is new,” and that sums it up; Cobain fandom of the kind of depth that would lead someone to ramble around the furthest corner of the United States trying to catch glimpses of houses and venues is lunatic — it’s the venture that is at fault not the locales.

There’s also a dichotomy in the sense that the entire point of such a visit is to come closer to the reality of the band and people concerned; yet by reminding oneself of their reality means shedding the ridiculous expectations created by glossy magazine images, illusions of wealth and/or artistic grandeur, plus twenty years of hagiographic coverage. No one tours the brothels and former brothels in which The Beatles learnt their trade while playing two shows a day high on amphetamine; no one goes to stare at the crack-houses Tupac Shakur’s mum frequented — it’s nicer spending a holiday in the Graceland mansion or scrawling on the wall of Abbey Road Studios…It all comes down to whether people would rather turn real life into blue plaques, glass cases and Disneyland style monuments or would rather the locations continued to evolve and change…And die.

You saw the minimal Aberdeen/Hoquiam maps I prepared the other week — here’s a slightly consolidated version and, of course, you’ll see immediately the value of a local guide; there’s a load of places we’ve looked at the last couple days that I’ve not included. The other venue I took a photo of then deleted (it was a bad shot) is The Pourhouse at 506 E. Wishkah Street, just by the bridge — I’m not even sure it’s the original Eighties venue and I forgot to check (https://www.facebook.com/ThePourhouseAberdeen). That’s a major sin on my part given it’s the one venue in Aberdeen at which Cobain/some precursor or variation of Nirvana ever played (in 1986 and 1988 respectively). Plus it’s nice to know someplace with history to have a drink at. You’ll see I forgot to note the address of the Schillinger house, of the various graffiti locations, of the YMCA, Maria’s Hair Design and so forth — I’ll have to get on this sometime and improve.

I don’t have a hometown. When people ask where I’m from my answer always goes like this; “well, I was born in Newcastle in Northern England, but I’ve lived a lot of places,” which leads into a long description of Low Fell, Gateshead, Clacton-on-Sea, Eaton Socon, Eaton Ford, Kirton, Sidney Sussex, St Neots, Battersea. The place though of which I’ve had the longest experience is St Neots and whenever I’ve been back there I’m always fascinated not just by what’s changed but by what’s survived or remains frozen in time. New facades and businesses appear inside the shells of much older buildings, some buildings become restored to previous glories while others are replaced — it’s not survival OR removal that creates the feeling, simply the tension between change AND stasis.

Aberdeen looks, in many ways, like a town of a former era — coming from a land where these boarded exteriors are only used for barns on farms the houses look completely foreign to me. So, though I think this post is about stasis, the building that stood out for me was the Radio Shack building; a corporate logo and survivor tying September 2013 to January 24, 1988 (http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/nirvana-plays-in-a-radio-shack-the-day-after-recording-its-first-demo-tape-1988.html) or on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHbX8Vsyyo8).
It emphasised me the importance of ‘labels’ — somehow a building with Radio Shack emblazoned on it did jolt the head in the way a persistent but anonymous house does not.

Speaking of the houses though…There are many. On one side of the sports field, opposite Judys and adjacent to the YMCA, here we are at the Schillinger’s residence — a family that seems to have done what they could for a kid who wasn’t exactly good at accepting care; the kind of lashing out as a defensive measure to keep people away and prevent the dangers that arise when you let someone get emotionally close.

Though I dwelt the other day on the deletion of Cobain’s home at 1000 ½ East Second Street, there’s a lot more still remaining. Walking back from the Schillinger’s carry on past Judy’s and you’ll reach Krist Novoselic’s mum’s former business premises, Maria’s Hair Design, where Nirvana practised. Again, it’s a well kept building, still in residential use.

I’m often a fan of pointing out where wider cultural, political or social waves moved people rather than placing the emphasis always on individuals shifting the world. But the significance of proximity in the creation of Nirvana (as well as the importance of Melvins) stands out when strolling down the back lane between the following two properties; Aaron Burckhard’s former home is on one side of the street while Dale Crover lived across on the other. Mitch explained the lane was known as “swagger alley” due to the droves of drunken/drugged youngsters weaving back and forth down that stretch. Credit where its due, it’s his theory that the weather over Aberdeen — generally tending toward the gray and wet — made it desirable for kids, in the days before widespread Internet usage and console ownership, to take up instruments and make music simply because it was something they could do indoors. I’m very sure he’s right — admittedly the same would then go for something like writing (requiring hours confined somewhere where one can get words down on paper), or for drug-usage or alcoholism; solitary activities are rarely encouraged by good weather, blue skies and great outdoors. Maybe there’s something in the parental desire to get kids out of the house and doing physical activity…

Most of Cobain’s residences have survived intact and in good condition; I’m not sure what comment to make on them baring the whistle-stop tour between properties…So this is the home of baby Cobain, the young family’s place in the rain…2830 ½ Aberdeen Avenue, Hoquiam.

A raise allowed the family to move from the small building at the rear into the house at the front — a brief and unspecified origin trailing back to the Grey Harbor Community Hospital….

…And forward to 1210 East First Street, Aberdeen; the usual progress toward a little more room, a little more comfort. It’s a standard family tale played out in homes that look so small from the outside. There’s nothing extraordinary in the birth circumstance of Kurt Cobain, no horses turning wild or strange omens in the sky — just young people crawling up the ladder. I admit compared to British homes the first home looked strikingly small unless I’m deceived I can’t imagine much privacy or space for anyone concerned; a family life lived out on top of one another. This property though, whatever criticisms readers of the Nirvana bibliography may aim at Don Cobain, was a substantial step forward and I’m glad there was a blue sky to background the home where Cobain describes living out his idyll up to age nine. If you wanted to trail a finger over a physical remnant of Cobain’s presence then this is it; this is the place in which he lived the longest, around eight years with Pear Street, Olympia trailing in second at a mere four. This was the last time Cobain’s life was rigid, before the fluidity of circumstance set in interrupted by the refuge provided by Tracy Marander.

Keep driving. We’ve switched towns now, we’re at 413 South Fleet Street, Montesano; three and a half years of increasing familial antagonism, fresh relatives and their rejection before his sojourn back over to the trailer and his grandparents.

From the time he steps off this doorstep in March ’82, a mere fifteen years old, he’s swirling toward the plughole — maybe it’s too easy in retrospect to see he made it but there’s a thousand people twirled and flipped to this same point of departure and many you’ll never hear of again except as bad statistics. He pirouettes from one relation to another so fast there’s little information tracking him around town, winding up back at 1210 East First Street in far less happy circumstance and heading toward couch-surfing before his father tracks him down on a couch in a back-alley and makes one last try at 413.

Beyond that he hits the Reeds, he heads back out to whatever he can find, then parental subsidy gives him less than six months in the rooms at the back of 404 North Michigan Street.

Even that first bout of independence is temporary and dependent on cash from mum, the next house is 408 West First Street for another brief period of time living on the sufferance and patience of others (the Schillingers) before crashing in the Melvins’ practice space (I can’t remember if this was still Dale Crover’s house or another place I didn’t picture) then over to 1000 ½ East Second Street, the denouement of his Aberdeen story, prior to the commencement of his spell in Olympia enjoying Tracy Marander’s largesse and enamoured forbearance. It’s a fascinating thought that from birth to age 23 or 24, until the advent of the major label in late 1990-early 1991, Cobain rarely has the wherewithal to stand on his own two feet financially and, therefore, domestically; parents, the Reeds, the Schillingers, Tracy — Cobain benefitted over and again from the affection others had for him and the kindnesses they showed him. It takes a force of will or a deep wound to feel so alone when so many tried to bring him near. Now that’s a sadness. How about we all look away at this picture of one of Krist Novoselic’s homes for a moment…

Now, I don’t think I’m revealing any secrets when I say that people make a holiday more than places. I also believe that there are some things in life where one simply enjoys the experience and keeps the camera tucked away — I didn’t take many shots of Sleeper Cell playing in Tacoma because I preferred to sink into the moment and enjoy the honour they were doing me. Two similar experiences occurred during the tour of Aberdeen and the surrounding area. Over in Montesano, at the former trailer home of Leyland Cobain, Kurt’s grandfather, I was lucky enough to meet Gary Cobain — Kurt’s youngest uncle — and his long-haired Chihuahua with her pleasingly rebellious streak. This wasn’t tourism, this was just meeting someone — I mainly stayed quiet, let these guys speak to one another (Mitch and Gary), shared a jokey line or two, let it be. Gary clearly isn’t one to trumpet the life and sad end of his nephew and that’s only to be respected. The trailer park had that well-modelled air of a golf course facility, tree-lines, well-tended lawns, tidy driveway branching off to the various homes; a comfy place it must be said. I don’t know what squeezing Kurt, his father, his grandparents into the single caravan must have been like — a little confined must be my nearest guess — but beyond the matter of space it was a pleasant and well kept exterior with a little set of steps to the door, a solid awning creating a porch/garage area, a not unwelcoming place. Again, letting people have their time together just gave me time to observe and agree I didn’t see a deep-set family resemblance.

The second experience of which I took no photos was the visit to the graves of Leyland Cobain, Iris Cobain, one of Kurt’s uncles and a distance relative who died young sometime in the 1920s (1926 I believe it said). Not everything needs recording, not everywhere is a tourist destination or fodder for sharing with the world. I believe there should always be places that are about communion with thoughts, a respectful pause in day-to-day concerns, some insufficient mark of respect for the dead. I didn’t want to do anything but stand, bow a moment, remember that these were real people and that this was their last remnant on Earth. Leyland’s grave proudly declares his time as a marine, flies a small flag, a vestige of what he was proudest of. I hope no one takes a photo of this place — there should be somewhere left that’s sacred. We stood a while — I tried to leave Mitch with his thoughts, Mitch worked for Leyland, they were close companions and having VERY recently lost someone dear to me the least I could do is share the peace. Eventually, nothing more to say or consider, we headed back to the car. It’s a well tended spot, a single stone for three/four relations then the earliest relative sitting a little apart.

We moved on from there, via Raymond, to a small park, site of the 1991 Cosimopolis Festival at which Kurt’s aunt Mari sang and played. There’s some brief footage of it, undoubtedly someone has a better edition but what the hey…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5hXSXeqk_s
Just a quiet glade, tree canopy, children’s play area and significantly sized covered picnic area which has been elevated by simply adding cement pillars under each leg — it served as the bandstand in 1991 when Cobain popped by to spend time with his family. Was curious picking a spot by the riverbank to stand, one of the rare times that man ever returned to the vicinity of his family and his own personal history. I admit I’m genuinely unsure he would have approved of this kind of ramble through his past — that Foo Fighters’ line, “there goes my hero, he’s ordinary,” feels ever more apt. I guess the motto is be ordinary but choose to do extraordinary things — it’s something anyone can apply if they have a desire plus the guts to fulfil it.

…Rest. I think I’ve poured out a few thousand words on Aberdeen, Hoquiam, Raymond, Montesano — a lot of memories and (probably too much) thought covering a place at the furthest edge of America away from where I live and breathe my daily air. I know I spluttered indignantly, and not perhaps in a balanced way, about the ups and downs and trials and tribulations of the area — I still need to go back and reduce the levels of inflammatory verbiage, try to move away from hyberbole. It’s both strange and wonderful to attend a place that is the nearest I might ever come to a Lourdes that suits my soul and loves. I really can’t get away from the sad sense of the place so quietly recalling its triumphs, even if I simultaneously acknowledge that this is a small place without the budgets a London or a New York might lavish; heck, when the highest paid academic officials in the U.S. are the football coaches it’s hard to imagine musicians or creative side souls being high on the list of ways to splash cash. I mean that line though, I travelled 22 hours from bedroom to hotel room door to get to Seattle. I trekked from Tacoma, to Olympia and onward over the course of a few days, all to get to Aberdeen; it marked the mid-point and simultaneously the furthest extent of my journey; all this travelling to make it there — that’s how significant Aberdeen is in my cosmology.

Any last thoughts? Not really. It was a physically pretty place with beautiful surroundings, but the declining fortunes of logging, the port, the industry has left it looking a bit baleful — ironic that the things that scarify the landscape and make it ugly make the town sadder for their fall. It maybe shows my naïve side that I’ve never been to a town where I’ve seen needles discarded in a public space, or someone twerking down the street (or on my damn bus!) thanks to whatever they’re on at that time of the morning — in a way it stands out for me because its rare and for good or ill I count rare as a good thing. I’ve also seen, however, good people whether Mitch, Dann and the Aberdeen Museum (check this! Do it! http://www.aberdeen-museum.org/kurt.htm), Gary, Ally from Raymond, Aaron Burckhard, plus all the people who’ve chipped into the blog this past week (I need to write up some of what you’ve all said — thank you Gary Lennon and Steven Friederich!). I’ve also seen the time and energies invested by individuals such as Lora Malakoff and her husband Kim, or by Tori Kovach (non-geezer, true trooper), or Kathi Hoder, or Denny Jackson, or the Kurt Cobain Memorial Foundation or the crew who made the ‘breaker’ happen (replace each ‘or’ with an ‘and’ and amend grammar and phrasing accordingly.) This isn’t an object of study, it’s a real place, with a lot of people putting time and energies into making it a better one. A genuine hope for that. Its also nice to know that Nirvana isn’t yet safe enough that everyone agrees on it – that counts for a lot.

Heck, all very well for me to snipe but given the number of Nirvana fans out there you’d think that a campaign that hooked in LiveNirvana, the Internet Nirvana Fan Club, the thousands of Facebook groups and Twitter feeds, the Tumblrs, the Reddits, all this other gubbins, you’d think there’d be enough loose change for the fans (like me) who give two hoots (I think I do…I’d like the four novel’s worth of words on this hobby site, plus the book, plus the several hundred graphics and photos spread across the 281 articles online and counting, plus the fact I flew across the world to look — all taken into account when judging whether I care or not) to put together enough for something that was a worthy conclusion.

Go to Aberdeen. There’s a walking tour, there are willing guides, there’s a wicked monument in a meaningful location, there’s a sign at the edge of the city, there are surviving properties, there’s a star on the sidewalk…There’s enough to make it worth your while. Go see how your hero lived — it just made me realise there’s not much stopping me doing something amazing too.
Very late night rant concludes here with apologies for late night ranting and with photos of the abandoned nuclear power station complex at Satsop. If they’d finished building it and had put it into operation before realising that a major fault line ran right through it then we probably wouldn’t be touring the area today…

Nirvana Tour: Aberdeen Deserved a BIG Part Two

As an aside, if you want to do the Nirvana tour, I’m really hoping I’ve been putting enough information up here that you can get around — maybe I’ll synthesise it sometime into a reduced PDF and just stick it up for free download, let’s see if I ever have time. As an extended coda to the aside, public transportation note! So, Seattle to Tacoma, you’ve multiple options. I took the Amtrak but there’s also some kinda light railway I never had time to check out that’ll get you all the way into Central Tacoma — get yourself to the King Street Station in Seattle. Cost isn’t exorbitant, the Amtrak was $11 U.S. dollars. Tacoma to Olympia, even easier, there’s a wealth of buses from Commerce Street (603, 605, etc.) and it’s a flat $3 fare — just make sure you have exact change, they’re insistent on it. Olympia’s bus station is the last stop and its central to everywhere you would wish to go bar the college.

I may have mentioned, but I went up to the information desk at the Olympia bus station and merrily announced “good afternoon, I’m trying to get the bus over to Aberdeen, was hoping you could tell me what I need to do and where?” The lady simply burst out laughing in my face; turns out it was 50% how cute she thought my accent was and 50% the fact I was asking for Aberdeen. You’ll get that a lot; mention Aberdeen and people don’t pay it many compliments; my raving post yesterday probably told you as much. The bus for Aberdeen is easy enough, the 40. I’ve included a deeply unexciting photo of the bus times from Olympia at the top of the page. It’s a gentle ride and, to be honest, peering out at McCleary, or at Satsop, it makes Aberdeen look like the most lively place in the area. All I recall from the bus ride – acknowledging that’s just an impression not a full reality and assessment of a locale – is the odd hair salon, childcare services, a garage or petrol station.

The view from the hospital is very fine indeed – as usual, impossible to capture in a lens what the eye can take in from up there. It emphasised, in a way that my scrawling over Google Maps had not, how unified Aberdeen/Hoquiam are and the size of the town being looked at. I admit I’d considered spending the night tucked in the emergency waiting room at the hospital to gain some small sense of the Cobain experience in his late teens but frankly it sounded like a horrible way to pass a night, I can’t even get any sleep worth a damn on a plane let alone in the brightly-lit confines of a hospital surrounded by random strangers, during the night hours when the drug/drink/domestic casualities reach their peak craziness, with doors whipping open, staff jogging through, calls going out for people to report/attend/visit…Regardless of whether it was for a few nights here and there or a few weeks at a time, this isn’t a life I’d want. It’s poverty.

I had a perfect night’s sleep at the Guesthouse Inn & Suites on East Heron Street – I crashed so deep I didn’t even notice the trains announcing themselves on the track running past. Part of the benefit of the place is to get there from the bus, so easy, with the station at your back, walk down the main street to the right, take the first left, go past the Jack in the Box and over the steel bridge at the end of the road and its on your right. Room was neat too – spacious, I could actually sit and write comfortably at the writing desk. Bed did my sore back a world of good…Though next morning Mitch greeted me in the carpark with the line “find any needles in yer bed?” Before explaining some incident that had been in the papers in which a kid was put to bed only to be jabbed by a discarded needle (http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Family-Girl-pierced-by-bloody-syringe-left-in-hotel-bed-157362125.html). Ow…Nasty. Anyways, frankly, given my past life in an Events division and my experience of hotels, a story like that doesn’t worry me too much one way or another – hotels are full of bad moments, inevitable with an endless population of transient people, regardless of where it is or how many stars it like to parade. I slept well. It also granted me a view back to the Burger King where Aaron Burckhard was manager – remember a lot changes in an American town, even one as merrily slow moving as Aberdeen. There’s another venue up the road that people mistake for one of Krist’s early places of employment, it ain’t.

The whole town is scattered with locations of more or less significance to the Nirvana story, names known (or I admit that Mitch usually reminded me of) from the bibliography. For example, the photo above is Judy’s, mentioned in Come as You Are as the location Cobain and co. got old records and so forth from – it’s still there but it’s entitled Judy’s Flea Market and it’s unclear if its still a going concern or simply waiting for someone to take a risk and clear out the mountainous stacks of books from the interior…

This piece of scrapland meanwhile has no great claim to memorialisation except it served as the address Kurt Cobain had used for a welfare cheque. Taking a photo of it has a certain purposelessness but let’s be real, is there ever a point to the millions of MBs of photos now flooding the world bar shared amusement and personal memorialisation of whatever possesses momentary significance or serves a storyline? Most photos say nothing unless one has a connection to what is being recorded. For me, it simply serves as a reminder of how thoroughly Cobain’s life and movements are woven into the landscape of Aberdeen.

Moving up the scale of references, this is the Aberdeen Library – same building, same location, internal refurbishment – in which Cobain passed time during his semi-derelict days. I admit I’ve never speculated on whether it played any role in the creation of his music, whether any of that dreadfully disjointed time yielded a song, a lyric, a note of later audibility…To me it represents another piece of his itinerant years as well as a gap in knowability, something that cannot be recovered unless someone knows something I don’t (which happens so often I wouldn’t be surprised…)

This is the YMCA where Cobain occasionally received casual work – the building is unaltered though the logo is gone from the exterior, I just wish I could find the photo at short-notice where the building is sitting in the background behind the band. Now we’re talking proximity, opposite is the sports-ground where Cobain would act as coach for local little league teams, the Schillinger residence is across on the side at right angles to the YMCA while Judy’s sits opposite and at the other right angle to the YMCA.

Now we’re into the realms of Cobain’s brief period of teenage delinquency; the building above was tagged along one side with “AiNtGoTnOwHaTcHaMaCaLlIt” as Cobain confessed in a statement written later that evening at the police station, the alleyway in which is cohorts hid in the bins is just alongside and brilliantly, just to emphasise what an amusingly dim-witted act it was, if you walk through the carpark under the building you’ll see the Police Station on the other side. Alas, our ‘hero’ was not always a genius it must be said. Again, thanks to Mitch for linking up these anecdotes for me so flawlessly and giving me a chuckle at Cobain’s expense.

This was the venue for the cheerily provocative “Homo Sex Rules” incident and then the following…

Was the building where Cobain was arrested for drunk and disorderly having been found on the roof in a bit of a state. This is where the mugshot image that has been circulating periodically comes from. Oh, and that YMCA building also got tagged at one point too – and Heavier Than Heaven said something about an arrest for underage consumption of alcohol in Seattle. I admit to feeling bad at this point, for all the high points of Aberdeen – the museum, the glorious view from the hospital, the comfy motel, the Cobain park and memorial – I’ve realised I’m a significant way through this second post and I’m recording Cobain’s burgeoning succession of petty misdemeanours. They’re kinda tedious in a way, part of the legend of a man who grew to be something but spent quite some time engaged in acts of such desultory insignificance – I feel bad now criticising the feeble nature of the graffiti decorating the ‘Cobain bridge’ given he himself failed to indulge his finer artistic abilities when set loose on the streets of Aberdeen.

Looking back at the photo of the Burger King where Aaron Burckhard was manager for a while I realise it’d be equally possible to tour Aberdeen on the basis of fast food joints, supermarkets, corner stores and other day-to-day interactions of the Cobain life. It similarly reminds me, however, of the point I made the other day about medieval veneration of the relics of saints; its strange transplanting pilgrimage from the imaginary landscape of medieval shrines, springs, castles and churches to the modern terrain of clapboard houses, anonymous box buildings, blank walls and quietly sleeping grasses. In a further time-travel though, I’m sure more than a few pilgrims, having taken the long treks across the country or continent may have paused and thought “this doesn’t look like anything” before remembering the deeper faiths, desires and venerations that had led them so far.

A final note of amusement and also one putting perspective on Cobain’s less desirable exploits; this sculpture was built from the remains of the Weatherwax Building of Aberdeen High School. The building was burned to the ground by two kids who were so worried about bad report cards that they broke in and tried to burn them only to end up with an out-of-control blaze and the desutrction of the entire building – way to go kids! Brilliantly dim and worth a ‘laugh or you’ll cry’ chuckle! (http://www.komonews.com/news/archive/4030841.html) The fact the town took the time to make something memorable and impressive from the remains is another great positive of Aberdeen – it’s a really wicked piece of work and very much worth a look.
(http://thedailyworld.com/sections/news/local/%E2%80%9Cbreaker%E2%80%9D-dedicated-weatherwax-high-stones-will-live.html) To my point, I actually end up feeling pretty good about the world when I see something like this; not just because of the making of something beautiful from a bad moment in time. What actually fills me with confidence is knowing that civilisation’s young are both smarter than ever and as capable of dim-wittedness as ever; there’s no need to be afraid of ‘the youth of today’ when they’re so similar to the youth of yesterday.

Overdue Nirvana Tour: The Beginning…17 Nussbaum Road, Raymond

Very aware a post was due days ago but an absence of time plus an absence of a decent Internet connection has had me on pause, that’s on top of the ongoing travelling.

Nirvana. World-conquering demi-God band; significant in the short history of recorded music. Indeed, all true. And yet this is where they started…

A totally ordinary one floor home where they played that first house party in March 1987. 17 Nussbaum Road is a pleasant looking property but the image in my head is trying to count how many people I can imagine cramming into any of the rooms of that house, especially with a band set up in a corner. There might have been a few dozen in the building but barely more than a dozen could have been in the room and enjoying Nirvana.

I’ve tried to capture a few shots of the area around the house just to give a real sense of how stand-alone and isolated the property is. I’d always imagined some riotous suburban hangout akin to the Caddyshack Nirvana played at later…Couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m always suspicious of rags-to-riches narratives simply because its too easy and simplistic a story-telling mechanism, it’s the application of fiction to real-life. There is a degree of truth though in the humbleness of Nirvana’s beginnings and the fluke of their success which is emphasised when looking at the house.

Kurt, Krist and Aaron had been practising some six months by the time this show happened; they were comfortable sitting at home rehearsing endlessly. Listening to the recording of the 17 Nussbaum Road show (readily available and in suprisingly high quality) its pretty obvious how well drilled they are; even in the confines of someone’s living room, at a random party and all drunk to various degrees, the songs come through loud and clear with few errors. For sure, Cobain already shows that he was never a soloist in the Jimmy Page tradition, nor would he ever be, but he’s getting it together – scrappy but really fun covers wouldn’t be unheard of in future years either.

The show didn’t happen though of Nirvana’s own choosing. It happened because Ryan Aigner, after trying for ages to persuade Cobain that it was time for the band to play in front of a wider audience, finally pulled the trigger, turning up on Cobain’s doorstep telling him the show was happening and they needed to get in the van now.

The arrangement nearly cost Ryan his job given the van was impounded the next morning – he had to beg the pound to open specially on a Sunday to let him have it back. Incidentally, the exact date of the first Nirvana show is seemingly unknown – a shame no one can trace the birthday boy and ask him. For the record though, as it happened on a Saturday it would therefore have been either the 7th, 14th, 21st or 28th…I wonder which!

Anyways, while we’re talking about wrenching miracles and life-changing events from the everyday, this photo is from Montesano:

This is the location where Kurt Cobain saw the Melvins show that convinced him music was his future goal and destination. Nothing much to look at now but the acorns indeed grew.

Nirvana Tour Ducks and Dive Through Aberdeen

Finally! God bless Starbucks at SW Oak St/SW 4th Ave Portland (including Allison, Diana, Daniella and Mandy) for having decent WiFi service! Thank you guys – perfect service, hope the management knows you’re cool. A full day its taken me to get this uploaded. Phew. Now, let me confess to a serious error of judgment. A few months back I remember the articles about how Aberdeen, WA was considering removing the ‘Come as You Are’ sign outside of town — I thought it was just a case of local authorities drumming up interest and attention; It didn’t make sense to me, the idea of a town choosing to delete its most famous son.

It makes more sense now. I’m stunned how innocent I’ve been…A certain (small) portion of Aberdeen is genuinely embarrassed by an association with a man they see as a representative of drug culture and nihilism; regardless of the beauties of his art or the scale of his achievement, irrespective of how much inspiration and positivity was bestowed on people who came to love his music. I’d like to thank Mitch at this point for giving me a thorough and informed tour of the town — I couldn’t have been in better hands, he was there then, he’s here now, he knew Kurt and Krist personally and had a long standing friendship with Leland Cobain. If you’re ever thinking of heading to the area and you’re game to pay the man for his time and energies then I can totally recommend him to you. He’s a guardian of history, heritage and local memory.

My surprise arises from numerous sources, for example, there the statue of Kurt Cobain now located in a motor garage because the town wouldn’t accept it for the park. There is though a Cobain star on the sidewalk where he shares space with a guy who coached the U.S. soccer team for the Olympics and the inventor of the self-cleaning oven.

And the famous bridge under which Cobain spent time as a teenager, inspiration for the song Something in the Way? A gentleman called Tori Kovach, a man in his seventies who still saw the artistry and talent in the music of Kurt Cobain (albeit only loving the MTV Unplugged in New York performance) took personal responsibility for creating the memorial space and still takes the time day-by-day to clean and maintain it. Firstly, that’s a beautiful thing for a private individual to do, though he states plainly that a degree of support was provided by the town.

The ultimate expression for me though was how sad it was to see that the old shack at 1000 ½ East Second Street was demolished to leave a barren plot of waste-ground. It was on this site that the song Mrs. Butterworth from the With the Lights Out box-set was recorded and for mere pennies a place that lures many respectful and starry-eyed tourists to the furthest corner of the U.S. could have been purchased, maintained and turned into something of beauty. Instead it was torn down and left as a rutted piece of overgrown scrub.

I’m quite serious. THis is the site of 1000 1/2 East Second Street – sad isn’t it? Its hard to tell if this is just overzealous town-planning or a deliberate desire to erase Kurt Cobain from the history of Aberdeen. I mean, I was delighted to be able to stand on the exact spot where Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Aaron Burckhard recorded the song known as Mrs Butterworth (plus two other unreleased shreds) but still…Sad!

Aberdeen is a place with a few problems – perhaps this shouldn’t overshadow the good of the town but remember this was a very brief visit I made and my opinion based on a single day doesn’t add up to the totality of the place. I was still stunned though. I’ve never been to a town where a crystal-meth user got on the bus to town, body twitching and jolting, where I saw another couple as soon as I got off the bus, saw the lady from the bus again the next morning — and that’s not counting the number of alcoholics and visible homeless. The sheer quantity really did stand out; I’d already been surprised by the scale of the homeless situation in the Pacific North-West, I live in a city of ten million and still don’t quite see this many people in need – Aberdeen’s centre, given the scale of the town, seemed quite a magnet for this. Mitch showed me a photo of a doped-up guy naked on top of a Police car – hilarious but…No, hold on, I still think its hilarious. It explains Gillian G. Gaar’s mention of the guy arrested the other year in Aberdeen who kept protesting as he was carted off that he was Kurt Cobain.

On the other hand, it’s genuinely not an unpleasant place either, I’m not saying its an awful town – it isn’t! I was lucky catching it on a bright, sunny day — so hot my lengthy nose has burned — but the scenery all around is spectacular, the river and sea inlet lend that good vibe that always arises from proximity to waters, the town streets are clean and peaceful. It really did have a good vibe all day long – so quiet too, we drifted quite a distance round town, as you’ll see in subsequent posts, barely meeting a soul out among the houses. A very pleasant lady over by that Cobain address I mentioned earlier took the time to come out and tell us she still has photos of the place as it used to be – I always like it when strangers take the time to talk to me.

The town has a comfortable uniformity, mostly looking like the buildings are unchanged since the 1920s when a lot of the clapboard houses went up. On the other hand, those same features have their other side; the town streets are quiet because most of the main street is closed up shops. It did look like a town in a slump – this is not to overlook the truly wicked Star Wars shop, of course, the biggest collection of Star Wars I’ve ever seen and apparently a magnet for rich collectors. There’s a certain amount of Nirvana stuff tucked into one of the crammed corners of this place.

I was a bit surprised by the loan place, religious establishment and porn store sandwiched up next door to one another — it’s stood for me as a bit of a metaphor for that small minority who would refuse to celebrate one of the few spectacular lives to emerge locally then wonders why there’s not more ambition or spirit among its young. Oh, by the way, that’s the main street in Aberdeen I kid thee not!

There’s also that industrial edge to the place but not enough to keep the town in work and functioning smoothly – the logging activity is down to the bone so what the heck is left…?

As an example of that mood at work, the plaque by the bridge that Tori maintains, the town authorities took the time to come and demand he scrub the word ‘f*** from a Cobain quotation; yet it looks like its all on Tori to clear up the litter that people leave there. Whenever I mentioned, in Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, that I was heading out to Aberdeen, people laughed, it seems to be seen as the scowling alcoholic in the corner everyone makes jokes about — but then, I’m kinda sure a more celebratory attitude and a warmer vibe to the place would really help. I’m sure someone’ll say that its about zero tolerance, about tough love, about self-reliance – frankly all three phrases are euphemisms for fighting the lazy n’ easy battles rather than having the courage or endurance to deal with the hard, complex and lengthy wars; lazy phrases that sound tough but are limp-wristed and lame in practice. It seems that the Cobain memorialisation work has been primarily a private endeavour.

To be fair, I can understand nervousness about Cobain. I was shocked that under the bridge some people are coming along cooking up heroin and leaving their needles there as a tribute to Cobain. The idea that anyone would look at the absolute decay in his productivity and creativity and decide the moral of the tale is to celebrate drugs is imbecilic in the extreme — almost awe-inspiringly stupid. There’s definite criticism to be made of the truly ignorant fans who would do this.

But that doesn’t justify attempts to tar ALL Nirvana fans with the same brush (anymore than what I write here is an attempt to get at ALL people from Aberdeen, that’d be ludicrous) – I’ve got two degrees from Cambridge University, have written and published one book, work at a homeless shelter one Saturday a month, love my family and have a desk job for a major corporation; does that make me too normal to be a true Nirvana fan? In the eyes of a certain portion of Aberdeen, fans like me who love the music, are inspired by the man, but don’t approve of all his actions, don’t exist.

It’s also a tragedy that instead of fans taking the time for true art of the kind their hero dedicated himself to, they’ve reverted to lunk-headed “I was ‘ere” graffiti that lends nothing to any legacy, not even respect. But then, some people will claim its all part of ‘anarchy’ and ‘punk values’…Strange. I look at the music of Nirvana and see energy under control, precisely deployed, practised in a dedicated manner, expressed with polish and poise…Not daubs. For perspective, I love good graffiti art – there’s so much street talent out there; I’d just like to see more of it. Again, its a fair reason to be dubious about drawing yet more people in.

The positive side is people like the guy we met just as we were leaving who had chosen to come spend a little time in contemplation there, or the Spanish family Mitch met once who flew all the way from Spain to scatter their son’s ashes into the River Wishkah simply because Cobain had meant so much to their son (he died in an auto-accident). Heck, my take on the Cobain story has always been that history doesn’t have to be written by the landed gentry, by the corporate elite, by those with money or power — you can be anyone, from anywhere, and if you put your all into it you can do something amazing whether or not anyone else knows it. Aberdeen, if it chose to formalise and live out that side of the Cobain message could be a true inspiration.

The local museum was good fun by the way — thanks to Dann for being such a pleasure to hang out with there. It’s fun being in a town so small that they can even tell which was the very first piano in town — that’s incredible to me, wonderful when the origin of an item such as that can be traced so readily to a marriage between founding families.

The old fire engines were fascinating too; the horse-drawn fire engine was still being used as late as 1944! There’ll be a music exhibit opening at the museum sometime in the near future focusing initially on the Melvins — that’ll be worth seeing. If you do go to Aberdeen do pop in and take a look at the town’s donated items and relics. I did history at uni so browsing old items tickles me. They even have a Mrs. Butterworth jar — ironic that it should become the town’s main monument to that lost song when there was once a tiny place just down the road that could have been so.

I was told a story while we were in the museum, that a family came from Germany to visit Kurt Cobain locations – parents, two kids, a respectable family. They decided, while here, that they should buy a Nirvana CD in Aberdeen so off they went to the major local supermarket and into the music section where the Nirvana section stood empty…They inquired about whether they had any Nirvana CDs in stock and were told “we don’t stock that crap.” They were stunned. The guys with me didn’t believe it so went back, got the manager, asked again, and received the precise same answer. Stunning… In fact the museum is the only place in town you can buy a Nirvana CD in Aberdeen – they had to order to a different state just to get a few copies of the Heavier than Heaven book.

I will say though, its easier to explain the more troubled aspects of Kurt Cobain having visited Aberdeen. Its understandable that the vibe of the town, the attitude of certain portions of it toward creative arts types let alone teenager trouble-makers and drug-users (which he was, no mistake) would not have been inviting or welcoming. Beyond the flippant point though he really is a local product; people want to see him as a representative of some kinda wooly drug-addled liberalism when this really is a guy who believes fervently in gun-ownership, who has no truck with ‘hippy types’ and who has a sexually puritan streak in him too. Heck, he marries his girlfriend when he gets her pregnant – the boy from the town that looks like 1950 ends up acting like he is too. Kurt Cobain is Aberdeen’s son no doubt about it. It explains a degree of his self-criticism too; not only does he come from a town that was clear it hated most of what he was, he was sharp enough to know that he exhibited a lot of the same traits as his critics. Just a shame he expressed this complexity in a dour self-destructiveness.

I’ll halt there. More Aberdeen touring tomorrow – I promise I had a GOOD TIME!!! I’m sorry it turned into a bit of a rant but… My thinking is always the same; wishing away the downsides of something just makes one look like a liar, like a child who can’t stand scary stories so still reads kids’ books at age thirty in a pretence that real life isn’t more complex than good/bad, nice/nasty.

It’d be nice to come back see the city had seized control of Kurt Cobain’s story in Aberdeen; it would give the town the chance to speak and show that there was a lot of good to it — to speak more of the creativity and hard work and positive small town values that took Cobain to the pinnacle of world fame. A proper Cobain exhibit in the museum, a Cobain walking tour making use of the excellent presenting skills and long memory of a number of local residents, a small driving tour and more information online about how to do it, a touch of care and TLC to the places of interest and reinforcement of Tori’s efforts — the authorities in Aberdeen could be true neighbours. I’m serious that something as minimal as the ‘blue plaque’ scheme that operates in London to identify properties of significance could draw attention to the town’s legacy. If the town doesn’t want to attract troubled souls, if it wants to attract a higher-class of tourist, more trade for local restaurants and motels, more chances for local work for local people, mothers and fathers bringing their kids to check out the place where their own childhood hero lived, then the town needs to pick a strategy that isn’t about telling those tourists to piss off. I didn’t see much that was about official efforts rather than local enthusiasts. Both have their place but more of the former would give the community as a whole greater control.

Similarly, it’d show people locally that regardless of their sins and flaws, the city will live out Christian values by leaving God to do the judging. It would show people that they would be supported and celebrated for the good they do, rather than excoriated and spoken of only in terms of the worst they can be — maybe it’d be a more spirited message to present to the young of a town where there are few jobs and a few problems. I’ve taken out an over-dramatic end line here, I was wrong, it was writing for impact not reality so I’d rather show it by formally saying that a line had vanished in the reediting; I would go back to Aberdeen. And at its best it was a pretty place; for a Nirvana fan it’s a must-see place once in your life.

Nirvana Tour: Aaron Burckhard Whipped Me at Pool

I’ll let this stand alone. I can’t believe it!

…As in, I can’t believe I lost at pool. As I said to Aaron, “I don’t care if you were Nirvana’s first drummer, I still wanna beat you!” And I didn’t. Slim margins but he was a deserved 2-1 victor, he should have beat in the first game too if the black ball hadn’t gone down along with the white. We had driven over to a bar on Fourth Avenue in Olympia and after time spent in the yard enjoying the warm night we moved inside to play a bit longer.

Wish I was feeling more photogenic by the time we took a brief photo, I kid myself I ever look better than that in photos; a whole day trekking round in the car with Mitch had left both of us sun-fried and fuzzy-eyed. An excellent tour.

Anyways, Aaron has just been brought onboard as drummer for Under Sin with the gentleman who had been handling drums for them preferring to move to guitar. The band’s first show with him will be in October and there are a couple of radio sessions coming up — look out for them, link up to them and enjoy. Aaron played a couple of the band’s songs in the car stereo, we’re talking a more metallic edge than Nirvana, a heavier sound built around precise riffage — you’ll like it. Aaron was very clearly delighted to be involved with them, a sea of compliments about the talent of his new band members, incapable of not drumming along on top of his bag while sat in the back of the car, talking about the plans ahead of them…That’s the impression I’ll take with me, a guy who clearly takes drumming seriously, love to be involved with good musicians and wants to make sure his contribution is pin-perfect. It’ll always be a shame there isn’t more on record of his work (and Dave Foster’s work too actually) with Nirvana.

And I’m still not happy I lost; this is a holiday sulk! It’s not often I get competitive, and part of me wants to claim I’d have won if it was British pool not American pool we were playing (yeah, right…!), but…Nah, I’ll stop joking. It was fun just shooting the breeze, downing a few beers, enjoying the good company of Aaron and Mitch and just being real people rather than tourist, former Nirvana drummer and former childhood friend of Kurt and Krist.

Tacoma: Kurt Cobain Relics and Another Nirvana Venue

I’m not quite done with Tacoma. I mean, for a start, I wanted to put up just the one photo of the Tacoma Dome. Beyond being the location for a number of shows the Nirvana boys attended, its other claim to Nirvana tale fame comes from the link to the song Polly — Gerald Friend abducted his victim after a show here, grim. Hence, only one photo and a desire to focus on perkier things…

Bob and John drove me round to the former location of Legends. Back in late 1989 John had been chatting on with Kurt and they decided it would be cool to have a show featuring Machine and Nirvana together. Ryan (photogenic gentleman kneeling with the dog in yesterday’s photo) designed the well-known flyer for the January 20, 1990 show at Legends — label/management involvement is how Tad ended up tucked into the running order.

It’s nice they’ve preserved the exterior of the building — it’s a classy style — but the exterior has become, yes, you’ve guessed it; a car park. It’s another thing that unites the U.S. and U.K., the tendency to slam tarmac down over everything — I’m sure I’m paraphrasing from somewhere “they took culture and built a car park over it.” John recalls the upper floors being used by various gangs with access via the back windows. He even lived there at one point with a friend for a few nights when life had taken an unsteady turn. The other photo here is the bricked in and painted over entrance to the backstage areas where the bands loaded and unloaded their gear.

Now, as ever, anything placed online will always end up snatched and gone before one has a chance to blink. Well, a strong desire to be respectful here and preserve privacy for those kind enough to show me a number of items of their private property. I used to live in a town called St Neots it’s in Huntingdonshire; claims to fame? A fellow who shot the British prime minister on May 11, 1812, the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated, came from St Neots. Funnily enough, his name was John Bellingham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bellingham) — Bellingham being a town up the road here in State of Washington (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingham,_Washington) where Nirvana played in 1992 — isn’t the world full of great coincidences? There was also a small skirmish during the English Civil War and there’s a rumoured ghost of a Cavalier stood looking out the ground floor bathroom windows to watch over the river for the approaching Roundheads. The story of greatest relevance here, however, is that there was a Priory on the site of the present-day Priory Park dedicated to Saint Neot. There’s another Saint Neots (take a read, and let’s be fair, he’s one of the less impressive saints… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Neot,_Cornwall ), however, down in Cornwall and they claimed to have relics of said saint. The only way I can describe it is that a crack commando unit of monks was dispatched from Huntingdonshire all the way across the country to Cornwall where they launched a raid on the religious establishments there, stole whatever they could and dashed back home — a less-virtuous A-Team of religious fervour.

Why am I telling you this except for my enjoyment of the tale? Well, its an indication of the hysterical reaction to religious relics back then. Items said to belong to, to have been worn by, to be from the body of a sacred individual were venerated, stolen, traded, acquired by royalty and full pilgrimages were launched across national borders to visit them. When viewing the items below I had to snigger from my faint sense of absurdity; it’s more or less what I’ve done here.

John brought out items sent to him by Kurt Cobain. They’re kept securely in an undisclosed location of course and frankly they’re not historical items, they’re things given to him by a dear friend who died — they deserve to be treated with that reverence and care, as if they were leftovers from one of your own dead loved ones.

This is John’s copy of the Love Buzz/Big Cheese single accompanied by Kurt’s note saying how pleased he is to have it out, poking fun at his band and simultaneously saying he’s a little disappointed by it only being a run of 1,000 copies. I’ve half covered it with a shot of King Buzzo to ensure it can’t just be copied and faked.

Brilliantly John’s dad even managed to keep the packaging in which Kurt (Kurdt) sent it to John back in 1988; a bit smudged, smeared and grimy but there it is – 25 year old some-day-superstar mailing.

These two photos do exactly what they say on the tin; one is the copy Kurt made for John of the January 23, 1988 demo session, the other is the copy of the Bleach sessions. John says that Krist told him in 1992 that they had been worried for a time that John’s battered old cassette was the only copy left of Big Long Now until they finally learned that the master was in Jack Endino’s possession.

There’s also the last note Kurt wrote to John in late 1993 backstage at a show – the last time they saw one another. I didn’t photograph it. Tracy Marander also gave John prints of a number of her photos of Kurt, you’ll see the date on all of them plus her record of when she took them. Here’s a couple, again, I just cut them off if they were already well known shots…

We’ll leave it there I guess…Other shots of Tacoma? Ooooo…Let’s see…

Couple more shots of the port…

This is the old fort up at Point Defiance…

This is wicked graffitti posted in honour (and to amuse) my dear little sister Sophie who is presently occupying my rooom back in London while I’m away and having a well-deserved break. She’s the artistic one among we four siblings…

And this…Is a pretty fish.

Nirvana Tour of Tacoma Revisited: Hiding Out with Sleeper Cell

When I go on holiday it’s easiest taking pictures of the things that don’t move. What I’ve realized, however, is that I soon forget those things, the images don’t remain in my head. What remains is memories of people and their actions, words, or simple presence. It’s always the same, however spectacular the objects around me may look, it’s the stories that arise when people arrive that makes for the things I’ll speak of when I’m an old man.

I mentioned serendipity the other day, there are moments when life sets the path and all you need to do is follow — strange things just happen and everything clunks into place. In this case, I was just going to stroll the north-west, take some pretty pictures and roll on home. Instead, people have helped find me people and all these people are making this a spectacular holiday. A gentleman called Brian Naubert, formerly of a band called Yellow Snow who played with Nirvana at the Community World Theater in 1987 kindly told me “when you’re in Tacoma there’s someone you should meet…” He put me in touch with Mr. John Purkey, formerly of Machine, formerly of Noxious Fumes, formerly of a whole bunch of bands I wasn’t quick enough to note down, currently of Sky Blue Eye, Sleeper Cell (Tacoma) plus one other I can’t recall! Darn.

John was kind enough to invite me to his home, sit me down and just talk to me about Tacoma back in the late Eighties-early Nineties while sharing with me the items given to him by Kurt. Yes, I mean that Kurt — John attended most of the early shows under Nirvana’s various early identities, witnessed the shifts from Aaron, to Dale, to Dave, to Chad and to this day recalls being overawed by this band and this voice…Ryan L. joined us with his deeply patient daughter, poor kid is only three-or-four and had to sit listening to people talk about things that happened before she was born. Ryan said it straight, that John used to arrive at school raving about this band and when Kurt did him a copy of the January 1988 studio session John brought it in and everyone’s eyes opened wide as they heard how good this band was.

As an aside, recall that Cobain line “disease covered Puget Sound”…? I mentioned how looking over the port area and its mass of funnels and factories I felt I understood the line better, that Cobain wasn’t working in metaphor, he was simply reporting the truth. John did me one better and explained that in the early Nineties a particular smelter was pouring cyanide over the residential areas around Puget Sound and ultimately the resident sued and won compensation from the city. So! That’s one line that makes more sense now.

My desire with whatever I’ve ever done on this Nirvana trip I seem to be on has been to be respectful of people’s privacy and to remember these are real people talking about their friend not some abstract guy in a book. So, at this point I can only thank John for being willing to show me the remnants of what Kurt shared with him, and also to bow respectfully and say how impressed I was by the depth of emotion he displayed; a true man and true friend.

My time in Tacoma was rapidly become the trip’s highlight so far. A long and winding coffee break with a fascinating lady called Bernie — personal assistant to Mike McCready, retired therapist, thriftstore owner, antique store owner, general all round deep soul (a further thank you to Bernie for spending time with me and to the deeply cool Madame Abby for putting us in touch) — filled a lunchtime with tales of Cobain and others arriving to buy old clothing and the levels of pain some people in the scene were carrying almost openly on display at all times.

This is when kindness took another turn; John returned with Bob, drummer for Sleeper Cell and the man with the most mellow gold smile imaginable.

Of course they arrived in a limousine, the plush leather backseat is a fond memory already. We all headed over to join Pat, former singer of Yellow Snow, present-day bassist and vocalist for Sleeper Cell. Chat, beer, a browse round a real ‘man garage’ including horrifying childhood haircut photos and tales of musically talented families…

…And suddenly I was invited to an impromptu Sleeper Cell performance in the basement. These guys have been at this game so long, they took every element so seriously, I watched them running round for twenty minutes tracking down gear, replacing a string, tuning up, checking setting, preparing gear — it’s just a practice yet these guys put in the kind of sweat I’d imagine comes for a full performance. Instead it was just me, with my feet up on a beam, beer in hand, being persuaded gently that sitting directly in front of a number of the speakers was possibly going to be a dangerous idea…

…It was an honour to lose a little bit of hearing to these guys. I felt a complete dork trying to say “you were really good”…I tried anyway and yeah, it sounded gawky and awkward, but true. I’ve had a song called Dharma running round my head a while now — Pat and John harmonise on the vocals throughout, the whole song heaves itself between meditation and rock-out seamlessly, it’s a really great song that I hope gets out into the world. Having reduced me to eyes closed rocking on the spot they still had the modesty to close and say “not bad, we’re a bit rusty.” This was rusty…?!

Following this we had a long talk about Nirvana days, about long-ago shows and life in Tacoma. It’s a nice town, a little hard given its dependence on the port and the influence of the massive military base up the road which floods it with current-and-former servicemen, but there’s enough life to it, a few jobs and certainly enough bands. I looked again at the list of the bands Nirvana played with in 1987 and its clear these aren’t just North-West bands, this is a slew of Tacoma bands specifically; Inspector Luv, Yellow Snow, Soylent Green, Silent Treatment.

The night dissolved into food and beer and Ryan, Pat and Bob improvising around the massive organ in Ryan’s basement — I ended up staying over with Ryan and his partner Rochelle (plus the dogs) — another couple, Mike and Sally, hearing about my levels of Nirvana-lunacy were even sweet enough to dash back to their house solely to pick up their copy of the Nirvana/Jesus Lizard split single, a bona-fide original from 1993! Amazing. It’s one of the few Nirvana releases I’ve never purchased because in the late nineties there were so many copies around I was positive it was being churned out and that I had no chance of proving I was getting a first edition. Now I do, all because two people decided I’d love to have it — they’re so right. I’m thrilled. So much so I insisted they all sign it, I want it clear this means as much to me because they passed it on as it does because of what it is.

Now, to correct a false impression, though the port area of Tacoma isn’t exactly pretty, there’s a whole lot making up for it. In Britain, frankly, our ‘nature’ is simply the bits in between the housing, roads and railways; Britain has lost 90% of its forest cover in the last 2,000 years. That isn’t a problem in State of Washington despite the best efforts of the logging industry. I was driven out to the truly awesome Point Defiance Park, acre upon acre of woodland and trails with a view out over the water. Breathe it in urban dwellers…This is something else…

The city itself too is not devoid of beauty, they’ve made a real effort and the steep roads in the downtown area do give it interest. I do recommend that you don’t do something like my crazy attempt to walk from 541 to 5441 South M Street at dusk/nightfall…I kinda stopped taking photos once I got to the point I was waving a camera around a darkened road in a city I didn’t know but before that there were a few cool images of the surburban landscape:

So. There ended my trip to Tacoma. My hangover was righteously earned thanks to Ryan’s stellar homebrew and I had a great sense of how good a town this is if you know the right people; John, Ryan, Pat, Bob, Rochelle, Sally, Mike, Bernie and Abby — thank you! Oh, except I’ve had the Yellow Snow Theme Song running round in my head ever since and the only way to drown it out is to recite the Dharma riff, over and over like a Buddhist mantra…

Next step tomorrow…? Should I tell you about my trip to Aberdeen, Hoquiam, Raymond…?

Nirvana Tour Hits Olympia: Inside Kurt Cobain and Tracy Marander’s Former Home

Yeuch, I think I’m going to have to apologise immediately; the title today is very ‘tabloid expose’, how horrible…Read it more that I’m still slightly stunned by good fortune’s turns. Genuinely the most important word these past few days has been serendipity — the moments where the world has clunked together like a Lego kit only for me to realize it’s a Mona Lisa level of Lego beauty. Tomorrow I’ll rewind to Tacoma for a while, there’s more to say about the place.

Today though, the day commenced with a well-earned hangover courtesy of Ryan’s truly excellent homebrew and when the mist departed and was replaced by scorching heat, I discovered immediately I had at least two layers too many on and that towing 25-30kg of luggage with me was going to add a certain piquant delight to my time in Olympia. The bus network in State of Washington is actually superb. $3 dollars got me from Tacoma to Olympia on the 603 bus from Commerce Street, less than an hour’s ride with an extremely cheerful and chatty driver and general comfort. There also turns out to be about three other bus options too.

The bus station in Olympia has a real convenience about it too, a store owner explained to me that the area around Fourth Avenue is the central shopping area; quite a closely clustered and well-packed set of streets. Olympia lived up to its reputation for having an artistic vibe — antique shops, arts and crafts stores, a couple of record stores, a milkshake bar, relaxed cafes. The proximity of the waters (the Budd Inlet) made for a pleasant hour or so chilling in a park in sunshine looking at the trees lining the hillsides on the other side of the inlet.

So, it had to be done. Walk along Fourth Avenue, cross Plum which is a fairly big road, then Pear Street is next up. Number 114 Pear Street NE being literally one block up and within sight of Fourth Avenue. No prizes for recognizing the photo at head of page.

This is where fate decided to play some games. I was lining up a photo which I never got to take because I noticed this young bloke walking toward the house. Realising he wasn’t just another fanatic cult worshipper (like me) and that he actually did mean to be walking toward the front door my gut took over and I hollered. Thus I met Jeff.

Jeff is a student at Evergreen State College and a thoroughly pleasant fella — and Jeff just happens to share 114 Pear Street NE with a number of other student housemates. Hearing what I was up to, about the book and so forth, he was totally wicked and gave me a brief tour in exchange for a copy of the Dark Slivers book. He explained the set up of the house is that its divided into three premises hence when you approach you’ll see a series of numbered boxes at the door with the separate entrance to number three being round at the side in a passageway.

The understanding of the flat-mates is that the young couple lived together in one of the front two sections then Cobain moved into the back area accessible via the side doors – the little side section of the house being where he lived for a time.

We sat in the lounge for a while, chatted on a bit, Jeff explained that on February 20 each year the residents are really used to finding gifts and offerings on the front door — there’s even one that now has pride of place up on one of the ceiling arches in the lounge. Jeff let me look around, I tried to be considerate of the fact this isn’t some museum, nor is it a public space, it’s home to people who are as bemused by the twenty-five year old history of the house as I was to be allowed to walk through its front door — not something I’d planned on or even imagined!

Here’s perspective; though Cobain recorded at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard, there’s no evidence that between January 1994, when he moved in, and his death in April, that he wrote even one song — Do Re Mi may have been recorded that year but there’s no evidence whether it was written in those short days too. 114 Pear Street, on the other hand, can be definitely linked to the writing of around 46-50 songs, a full 75% of Cobain’s total creations.

That’s how significant this house is — its where he writes everything from Smells Like Teen Spirit to early versions of All Apologies, its where he writes the first shot at Big Cheese and probably Beeswax too. Even the Montage of Heck was likely fused together here. It’s a surprisingly lovely home. Large windows let a ton of light in, its south facing, plenty of floor space — just a decent place. The present residents have kindly heaped luggage and junk all over the front room to give it that ‘Cobain clutter’ feel though without the creepy meat collages or the old crosses!

Across the road is the apocryphal Washington State Lottery building that Cobain (and Grohl) used to shoot the windows out of with an air-gun. The flat-mates say that a while back they had a knock on the door and Dave Grohl was stood there with a camcorder and said he was filming a documentary, used to live there and would they mind…? Gee…Did they mind?!

The awareness of the history of Nirvana was heartening, to meet someone and ten minutes later they’re mentioning the video experiments Nirvana attempted at Evergreen State College, or the gig at the library, asking questions about Calvin Johnson and K Records — the new generation knows the past history of creativity in the area just fine. Jeff introduced me to the music of Naomi Punk while he was at it:

http://pitchfork.com/artists/30746-naomi-punk/

I took my leave eventually and headed back toward town; there was no way I was going to make it out to the Evergreen State College, or to Library 4300, so I stuck to town and spent time over at the Capitol Lake Park where Nirvana played support in 1988 to Soundgarden alongside My Name and Swallow. A picturesque place, quite funny imagining grunge bands playing in blissful State of Washington summer on a day like today.

I eventually headed back to the bus station where the lady at the counter laughed openly when I announced my destination — “its not that, I just think your accent is the cutest thing!” Ah bless. Sitting around waiting for the next step on the travels, definitely didn’t see much of Olympia but to be fair it’s a small centre, I’m unsure what more I needed to see and in that heat the walk to the college would potentially have caused frazzled nastiness and sunstroke. My “Tacoma: Love it or Leave it” t-shirt (worn with pride) was already clinging to me. Plenty of small incident in the next twenty minutes; tragically a genuine moron was riding a bike with his dog in a rucksack on his back when the dog slipped out while they were going up a curb and he proceeded to run over the dog’s leg — sad, dog alive but clearly in pain going by the extensive howling. On the other side of me a guy was negotiating to exchange substantial quantities of marijuana in return for some tattoo work from a fella. Life is full of curiosities if one doesn’t mind eavesdropping.

And sometimes it bestows real treats, like getting to shoot the breeze with a cool bloke on the sofa in Kurt Cobain’s house from spring 1987 until mid-1991. Wow. Day over.

Nirvana Tour: Community World Theater Inside n’ Out

Its become customary to begin these posts by telling you guys my latest boob…Well, last night, I was a little tired and so successfully wrote down 541 South M Street rather than 5441 South M Street. The difference? Many many miles and an awful lot of city blocks. Today I paid a taxi driver from Kenya £30 to drive me out from downtown Tacoma and back again…Last night, on the other hand, I walked out by twilight and walked out by fear n’ moonlight after 2 1/2 – 3 hours lost as hell. I mean, technically, OK, it was all along one road but in reality single roads look a lot further when you’ve no idea where you are and you’ve never been someplace before.

Well, I did better this AM. I walked out…And surrendered. Taxi. Taxi is the way to do it. And I was in luck too, they were conducting a service at the present day location of the Community World Theater and permitted me to come in and take a couple of quick photos of the place. Doesn’t it look so recognisable?

It’s hard to explain this to people but I’ll try. I’ve seen photos of the Community World Theater since I was 13 years old, over two decades ago. Yet this is a real location, a barely notable building on a street that I can’t even fathom how far it is from the centre. And inside, the place has barely changed, look at it, see the short stage, the minimal space? I could have paced it out from front to back from side-to-side as 30 paces front, 20 paces side-to-side and it tapers too, wider at the back. Its that weird mystique of looking somewhere and realising I’m not sure it isn’t the exact same speaker set up, mic set up, stage set-up it was 25 years ago when, for a full year, this was the single most important location in the existence of Nirvana.

Nirvana only lived for seven years, count it out – March 1987 to March 1994 – and for a remarkable extent this single room saw the evolution of Nirvana from another hopeful set of enthusiastic amateurs to, at least, an outfit with a label willing to get them out on vinyl. That still isn’t a huge distance, recall this was a time when a lot of go-nowhere bands managed a 7″ or an EP someplace or other. Yet this still makes the Tacoma Community World Theater a place of genuine significance in the history of Nirvana; the place they started to learn stagecraft, the place they started to learn to be a band. If you listen to side B of Incesticide, if you add on the couple songs on With the Lights Out plus the holdovers to Bleach, then what you’re hearing is a 1987 Nirvana album that died upon contact with Sub Pop, you’re hearing what came before.

Anyways, ladies and gentlemen, this is the Community World Theater and this is the present-day interior of the building (with huge thank yous to the present day proprietors who were trying to run a service as I bowled in). Enjoy. And remember magic comes from the everyday.

Nirvana Tour Continues: Cobain’s House at 171 Lake Washington Boulevard

It had to be done, though I consider the house in Olympia to be a more celebratory and beautiful element of the Nirvana story, there’s still no way to observe a tale without acknowledging its ending.

Nothing much more to add essentially. This is a beautiful upscale suburban neighbourhood, quiet roads at 9-10am in the morning on a Saturday, greenery and foliage dividing property from property and streets from streets or screening curves in the street. Twenty paces away there’s a parking area with a view out over the waters of Lake Washington, on a clear day you can see Mt. Rainier and its snow cap. There’s no number on the house, I can understand them removing it if it was ever there, it took a few passes to confirm the location was correct but essentially the water-side properties are even numbers, the opposite side of the road is all odd numbers. Its a beautiful looking home, not something I think I’d appreciated before given the standard context in which the house is viewed. On a good day I’m sure its stunning. Definitely millionaire territory, that was so clear that we were in the land of rich people; this isn’t a criticism, merely an observation and one I’m fairly sure Cobain would have been aware of and probably uncomfortable given he never gives off the sense of a man steeped in luxuries – this is the guy who sold off the Lexus Courtney Love purchased because he thought it was too ostentatious.

The loneliness of the property compared to the urban territories of more central Seattle or even of the suburbs with the board houses with lawns, that did strike me. With the tree coverage up and down the street at night it’d be near impossible to see people outside the property; similarly, anything going on in the gardens or yard of the property is concealed by the gates and wouldn’t be visible anyways except to one, at most two properties situated opposite. A procession of taxis could arrive and leave without the neighbours ever noticing or having cause to give a hoot. On the other hand, the peace of the neighbourhood makes me realise how noise would travel and disturbances to the peace would register.

I once stood on the spot in London where Guy Fawkes co-conspirators were hung, then cut down just as they were reaching their last breath, then resusitated sufficiently to be able to feel it as a red-hot blade opened them up from neck to navel in order to draw out their innards with the crucial point being to show each victim his own heart before he died at which point the body would be quartered and despatched to different regions of the Kingdom as a warning. It did enthrall me to tie a locale to a moment in time and of course I was interested. I’d say the same of this little visitation, to turn a place I’ve only ever seen in pictures into somewhere real and tangible, that makes a difference. Plucking somewhere from imaginary space and assigning it a reality feels a positive thing – if I didn’t believe that observing, exploring and where possible trying to contact the past made a difference to perception of life I wouldn’t have done history at uni.

That isn’t the same as a place like this evoking a vast emotional force within me. What makes the most substantial difference to me is, and I hope will always be, the feelings and emotions in peoples’ faces and voices. 171 Lake Washington Boulevard is a pleasant looking house in which people are making their lives. I did my best to keep disturbance to a minimum and roamed onward.