Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [107]
DAVID DUET Mike was a sweetheart and the greatest guy in the world, but he had a drug problem. We were gonna play Squid Row, and I wasn’t living with Lisa anymore; she was still at the Blaine House, which became a notorious house and was constantly being watched by cops. I was over and there was a knock at the front door, and there are two cops asking for Mike, using a fake name he used. And we’re like, “Uh, I think he left town.” And they were like, “Oh, really?” and lift up a Cat Butt flyer for Squid Row. They’re like, “We’ll just catch him at the next show then.” So not only did they know him, they knew I was the singer.
So Tom Price agreed to play Squid Row and the next Vogue show. And after that, people were comin’ up to me after shows saying stuff like, “He owes me 60 bucks, can I get it from you?” I had to kick Mike out of the band. It was one of the hardest things I ever did.
DANNY BLAND Every band that I ever was in, my main thing was to go on tour. So Cat Butt was doing West Coast runs and going into Texas and all that. That got the attention of Bruce and Jonathan, because a lot of other bands were not touring, and we were the biggest fuckups around, and for some reason we could get it together enough to go on tour. One day they just sat me down and asked, “How?” I explained that I had this Rolodex of phone numbers, people that I knew, and I’d just call and set up shows. So they asked me to do booking for Sub Pop.
JAMES BURDYSHAW I get back from that tour and all of a sudden I’m at a party in Seattle and guess who’s with Danny? Jennifer. I was like, “What the fuck are you doin’ up here?”
“Oh, I’m just visiting. I’m hangin’ out with Danny.” I put two and two together and realized that they’d shacked up, and I was like, “Oh man, how come he gets her?” I didn’t realize at the time how entrepreneurial, shall we say, she can be. She was basically trying to find out, What’s happening in Seattle and how can I get L7 involved?
JENNIFER FINCH We were received incredibly well in Seattle. Sub Pop gave us the single of the month. Sub Pop as the tastemakers declared this was the next thing. Eventually we went up to Seattle so much that people in Los Angeles thought we were from Seattle.
DANNY BLAND Before that tour with L7, we did shows together in California. Yeah, somewhere along the road, I woke up on top of Jennifer one morning, I guess. (Laughs.) My girlfriend, Kerry Green, who was in Dickless at the time, found out. Yes, that was awkward. Awkward, disastrous, all that good stuff.
L7 were badasses. They were guys. They were an all-male female rock-and-roll band. They fuckin’ smelled as bad as we did.
MEGAN JASPER L7 came into the Sub Pop office, and I think I told you how we would rate bands on how much they smelled? No? It wasn’t an official list, but our accountant, Geoff Kirk, would make jokes and write it down. L7 were on the list, but Babes in Toyland were the smelliest. Geoff actually followed them around one time with a Glade air-freshener, spraying them.
Nirvana was also on the list. Those were the three biggies. It was mostly the drummer, Chad. One time it smelled so bad in the office when Nirvana was there—it was beyond a human smell; it smelled like yeast or something—and everyone was trying to open the windows. Because I didn’t think it was a person, I said, “What is that smell?!” And Chad said, “Oh, I think it’s me.”
JAMES BURDYSHAW Donita named our big tour together Swapping Fluids Across America. Why? Guess. Donita was with Dean, and Danny was with Jennifer. It lasted about seven weeks, across the entire country. It was five of us, four of them, plus a roadie, all in the same vehicle. It was like the fuckin’ Partridge Family. We had this Aeroporter bus, which we painted metallic gray. It looked like a big bullet, but Donita called it the Poon Tank. L7 loved