Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [106]
MEGAN JASPER I was in the poor man’s version of Dickless. When Kelly Canary left, the other girls didn’t want to stop, so they must have hit a level of desperation and they asked me. The funnest shows were when you could provoke someone in the audience and they would get really upset. My sister had made me this wand, which I called the Herpes Wand; if I touched someone with it, they got the herpes. So at shows, I kept giving people wand herpes. Some people loved it, and some people thought it was the worst thing in the entire world. Mark Arm didn’t seem to mind; Krist Novoselic didn’t seem to mind. The funny thing was, all the girls made a mental note of everyone who bitched about it: Don’t kiss that guy, because you know he just had a herpes outbreak.
COURTNEY LOVE I moved to L.A., and I had about six months left ticking on my 25-year-old clock, so I was hurrying as fast as I could to put songs together and to put a band together. I became acquainted with the ins and outs of the grotesque L.A. scene: the Bordello and Taime Downe and girls named Marilyn that Axl bought pink Corvettes for. Just the Strip. Strip culture.
I remember being in Portland once and looking at a “Love Buzz” seven-inch and a Cat Butt single. I still don’t like that Kurt’s wearing a Harley-Davidson shirt on the cover of “Love Buzz.” It was just so part of the Strip, and it signified to me that he was trying to fit in, like that guy Jason in his band who had long hair and was doin’ whatever the fuck he could to make it. I didn’t like that Kurt was wearing a Harley-Davidson shirt, so I bought the Cat Butt single instead.
MEGAN JASPER When I moved to Seattle, I used to go to this bar called the Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill. I was in there with the Dickless girls and a bunch of other people who were giving me the scoop on Seattle, and one of the first pieces of advice I got was, “Whatever you do, don’t fuck anybody in Cat Butt. They just went on tour with L7.” Apparently L7 liked to enjoy themselves with a lot of men, and it was implied that if you went on tour with them you had some skanky experience.
STEVE TURNER That trip with L7 was legendary for Cat Butt. I remember getting the heebie-jeebies hearing about it. Like, Ughhh!
JAMES BURDYSHAW I was the first person from Cat Butt that L7 met, so the whole L7–Cat Butt connection happened because of me. It was on Cat Butt’s first tour, in January/February of ’89, and a lot of crazy shit happened—sex, drugs, debauchery, acid, weirdness. In L.A., we went to the NoMeansNo show at Raji’s. Our drummer Erik [“Erok” Peterson] and Dean and I got super-fuckin’ drunk and started flippin’ the singer shit, even though we love NoMeansNo. All of a sudden, this real cute girl keeps comin’ up to me and goin’, “Hey. Hey. Hey. Who are you?”
It turns out it’s Jennifer Finch from L7. So I go to where she’s staying, with her bandmate Dee [Plakas], and this guy who Dee was dating or friends with. I’m waitin’ for them to go to bed so I can make out with Jennifer. And this dude sits in the chair and waits for me to fall asleep. He won’t leave me alone with her. I can’t remember his name, but I’ll always fuckin’ be pissed at that bastard, ’cause that was my one chance to hook up with Finch.
The only reason why that connection was created was because Jennifer was flirtin’ with me. Though Jennifer might deny the whole episode even happened.
JENNIFER FINCH (bassist for Los Angeles’s L7) I had just met a girl whose mom was dating Bruce Pavitt, so she gave me the phone number for her mom. This is kind of how it went when L7 would book shows—you just get a phone number and call. Danny Bland, who was in Cat Butt, answered the phone at Sub Pop, and we started talking and I sent him a promo pack with a cassette, and he set up a show with Cat Butt.
DANNY BLAND Shortly after I moved there, Dave Duet got in touch with me and wanted me to join Cat Butt. I replaced John Michael