To celebrate the life and music of Kristen Pfaff we’d encourage you to punch the volume, get out of your seat, and watch Janitor Joe drop the heat on Athen’s 40 Watt Club. Thanks for the music, Kristen.
Cheers~

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Frances Bean Cobain is currently 17 years old. Her mother Courtney Love already lost custody of her between 2003 and 2005 due to Love having a drug overdose.

Frances Bean Cobain’s trust, which was set up by Kurt Cobain before he committed suicide in 1994, is still under control by Courtney Love.

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Born: December 22, 1967, in Blackwood, Wales, UK
Disappeared: February 1, 1995, in Wales, UK
Band: Manic Street Preachers

Richey James Edwards of the Welsh Manic Street Preachers was a huge fan of Cobain and thought of him as a kindred soul who was also suffering from existential depression. After a post-gig interview in 1991 with New Musical Express’s Steve Lamacq—who inferred that the band’s image was an artistic mask and that the music alone should say enough—Richey took him aside and said, “Believe me, we are for real.” He carved “4real” into his left forearm using a razor blade. “I was really fucked off,” Richey explained later. “I didn’t know what I could possibly say to him to make understand.”

Edwards suffered from vicious bouts of depression, anorexia, alcoholism, and self-mutilation. The latter started when a fan handed Richey a cutlery set before a gig in Thailand with a note that urged him to cut himself on stage that night. He did.

“I’m on my own, I’m very selfish,” Richey said in an interview. “Self disgust is self-obsession—that’s the truest line on there, probably.” Richey referred to “Faster,” a song he wrote for Manic’s monumental The Holy Bible from 1994. The lyricist (and second guitarist) cut his wrists on the eve of the record’s release, but he convinced his bandmates that it wasn’t a suicide attempt. “In terms of the S word, that does not enter my mind. And it never has,” Richey insisted in an interview, but few outside of his closest circle believed him.

The Holy Bible is one of the top three records of the 1990s. 4real.

It’s a creative collaboration, a defining masterpiece with a fat sound, hard flanging hooks, and sinewy leads accentuated by drummer Sean Moore. The stark lyrics about religion, eating disorders (“4st 7lb”), and iconoclasms were emancipated from Richey’s troubled head, while bassist Nicky Wire filled in the last quarter. Guitarist James Dean Bradfield says he struggled to set music to the dire stanzas, but the result is astonishing.

Even though the record climbed to number six on the UK album charts, it took a few years for critics and listeners to wrap their heads around it. The Manics are virtually unknown in the US (partly because their US distributor insisted on censoring songs and album designs in the name of morals and decency), but the Brits revered them as the hippest in Brit pop. In a way the Manics filled the same role on Britain’s musical landscape as the Bunnymen had before them. Not coincidentally, the quartet sported military fatigues and draped their amps with camouflage nettings a la Echo & the Bunnymen anno 1980.

The controversy surrounding Richey and death continued with the Bible track “Die In the Summertime,” but Richey spun that one too, claiming it was written before he experienced self-destructive tendencies: “Die In the Summertime was basically an old man looking back over his life, over his favorite period of youth, his childhood, basically. Everybody’s got a perfect mental time of their life and that’s what that song is about. And it was written last summer.”

Sure, that’s one interpretation. Although mentally ill, Richey commanded an incredible intellect. He was drawn to very heavy stuff such as the Holocaust, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, and Joy Division’s Ian Curtis. His artistic, literary, and musical heroes lived short, depressed, yet productive lives.

“He’s just a mess. Fucking nutter, the boy is,” Nicky Wire said after Richey was interred at the Priory, the same mental institution that Brian Jones had stayed at in 1967.

In 1995, the day before a promotional visit to the US, Richey disappeared from the hotel where he was staying. A note addressed to his sometime girlfriend read, “I love you.” His passport and wallet were found at his apartment in Cardiff Bay, which proved he had stopped by there after he left the hotel. But no more clues were discovered until two weeks later when Richey’s abandoned car was found near the Severn Bridge. The battery was flat, and it looked like someone had spent several nights in the vehicle. Could he have jumped from the bridge, his body dragged from the Severn into the Bristol Channel and from there to the Atlantic Ocean? “That’s the only time that I genuinely ever thought that, you know, he’s dead,” Moore said.

Despite no confirmed sightings since February ’95, the remaining band members still deposit Richey’s royalty shares into an escrow account in case he resurfaces. Richey’s heroes fall into two categories: they either staged their own disappearance or they committed suicide. More than a decade has passed since he vanished, but The Manics, Richey’s family, and innumerable fans still believe he’s alive. Is he peaced out in a monastery somewhere, or was that Richey James Edwards someone spotted on the beach in the Canary Islands or Goa, in Mexico or Iceland? “He was a very intelligent guy,” says Simon Price, who wrote Everything (A Book About The Manic Street Preachers). “If he wanted to disappear, he could’ve done it.” At the end of 2007 New Musical Express, Britain’s leading music mag, named the Manic Street Preachers recipient of the 2008 God Like Geniuses Award in honor of their outstanding, unique, and innovative career. Prior recipients include The Clash, New Order, and Primal Scream.

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Born: May 14, 1971, in Queens, New York
Died: March 28, 1999, in Queens, New York
Member of: Lost Boyz, 134 Allstars

Like the blues, hip-hop’s ethos is to create something from nothing, makin’ a way outta no way, and it’s not surprising that a lot of hip-hop’s brightest came from the front lines of urban decay.

Take New York City’s E Line to the end and get off at Jamaica in the South Queens borough. In the early nineties rappers threw down hip-hop jams in Baisley Pond Park there. One of the young men who made a name for himself was Raymond Rodgers who called himself by Freaky Tah.

Tah’s high school buddies DJ Spigg Nice, Pretty Lou, and Mr. Cheeks were there too, and the crew began to jam as a unit. The Lost Boyz appropriated its name from The Lost Boys (a teenage vampire movie that featured Echo & the Bunnymen’s version of The Doors‘ “People Are Strange” on the soundtrack).

The Boyz slung drugs to get by but quit after another dealer they knew was shot. The Lost Boyz soon debuted the single “Lifestyles Of the Rich & Shameless,” and it climbed up Billboard’s Hot 100 thanks to its hypnotic creed “some died wit the name, some die nameless, it’s all the same game, all the same pain.” Based on the single and the promise of more party jams, Uptown Records added the Lost Boyz to its roster. “Renee” followed and was included in the spoof movie Don’t Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In the Hood.

“Cheeks and Freaky were the star players on the team,” Pretty Lou says. Freaky Tah’s throaty voice was the response to Mr. Cheek’s call, the story’s chorus, the adlibbing backup—the hype man. “He was that big spark that started the engine,” says his brother Tito. “He loved his fans and loved being on stage.” Like Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav, Tah’s role in the group was irreplaceable. Tahleek’s deep rasp is found all over their ’96 debut Legal Drug Money; he even rocked the mike on “1,2,3.” The record is part contemplation and part celebration of the Queens they emerged from. Even the song titles speak collectively of a greater story with “Get Up,” “Music Makes Me High,” “Jeeps, Lex Coups, Bimaz & Benz,” “All Right,” “Straight From Da Ghetto,” “Da Game,” and so on.

The album commanded the top spot on the rap/hip-hop charts and climbed to number six on the Billboard 200, going gold in the process. Several cuts from Legal Drug Money charged up the singles charts, such as “Music Makes Me High,” which outsold LL Cool J, Outkast, Jay-Z, and Mary J. Blige in November ’96.

The Lost Boyz managed to stay out of the East Coast / West Coast beef that claimed the lives of Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, and many others. In an otherwise bling-filled scene, the Lost Boyz pioneered plain white tees as part of the hip-hop uniform.

Tah never forgot about who he was and where he came from and invested time in prepping kids from his hood in the rap game. His crew was known as the 134 Allstars and included 50 Cent.

When Tah wasn’t hanging with his crew, he might ride the bus so he could sign autographs or pass out CDs and t-shirts. He was in the street all the time, and on his birthday he’d throw a BBQ for the south side of Queens. “That’s why 95 percent of everyone knew who Tah was,” Tito says.

In 1997, the Lost Boyz followed up with Love Peace & Nappiness and Tah stepped up on two of that album’s essential tracks “Why?” and “Get Your Hustle On,” while “My Crew” paid homage to their hood. The album went gold, and the single “Me & My Crazy World” placed in the middle of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.

March 28, 1999, the Lost Boyz entourage celebrated Mr. Cheeks’s birthday at the Sheraton Hotel in Queens. Well after midnight Tah said goodbye and left the party. As he walked through the main doors of the hotel, a man on the street shot him in the head and escaped in a car that sped off.

Freaky Tah was pronounced dead at 4:20 a.m.; the incredible hype man was only 27 years old.

In 2001, Kelvin Jones pleaded guilty to murdering Raymond Rogers and received fifteen years to life, while driver Raheem Fletcher was sentenced to seven years for chauffeuring the getaway car.

The socially conscious Talib Kweli pays his respects in “Good Mourning” off Reflection Eternal’s 2000 album Train of Thought. He raps “Freaky Tah, rock rock on.”

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Born: December 4, 1970, in Texas
Died: February 3, 1998, in Houston, Texas
Member of: Screwed Up Click

Thanks to DJ Screw and his Screwed Up Click, Houston’s rap scene rose to the top among late nineties Southern rap. An early member and collaborator was Mr. Fat Pat (or P.A.T), nee Patrick Lamont Hawkins, who went to Sterling High with Screw. The two were buds through thick and thin and slowly built the Screwed Up Click to underground prominence.

Fat Pat released Ghetto Dreams in 1998, and its single “Tops Drop” scored at number five in the US rap charts. Riding the wave he quickly put out Throwed In Da Game. An Austin promoter and notorious drug dealer known on the streets as Weasel (his real name is Kenneth Eric Watson) failed to pay the Screwed Up Click for a show, but taped, filmed, and hustled it without permission.

Shortly thereafter Weasel’s safe house was robbed, and he suspected Fat Pat had something to do with it—a payback of sorts. Fat Pat denied it and said he was no longer in the game—strictly music from now on.

A little later Weasel invited Fat Pat to an apartment under the pretense to pay him for the show. “I’m like, don’t mess with that cat,” Screw said later in an interview. Fat Pat went to the meeting anyways, and Weasel killed him with a shot in the head. DJ Screw: “Basically, because he thought Fat Pat had something to do with him getting robbed.” Fat Pat was 27 years old when he was murdered by Weasel.

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Born: August 8, 1965, in Louisville, Kentucky
Died: July 7, 1993, in Seattle, Washington
Band: The Gits

Raised in Kentucky on Bessie Smith, Jimmy Reed, Hank Williams, Billie Holliday, and hardcore punk Mia founded the Gits at Antioch College in 1986. A few years later, the band and a group of friends moved to Seattle in search of a new audience. Seattle’s alternative music scene, what was later labeled grunge, was about to blow up, and the Gits’ post-punk music, attitude, and poetic lyrics garnered the band a devoted following. They took the show on abroad by nickel and dimeing an independent tour of northern Europe.

The following year saw the band’s first release, Frenching the Bully. In 1993, the band was busy working on an anticipated follow-up when Mia Zapata was raped and murdered late one night on her way home, ending the band’s career. Kurt Cobain, who was a friend of Mia’s, was profoundly affected by her murder and Nirvana played a benefit concert for the singer August 6, 1993. After nine years on the run, Florida fisherman Jesus Mezquia was sentenced to 36 years in prison in 2004 for her murder.

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Born: May 26, 1967 in New York
Died: June 16, 1994 in Seattle, Washington
Bands: Janitor Joe, Hole

Born in New York, Kristen Pfaff picked up bass at Boston College and ended up studying women’s studies at the University of Minnesota. After graduation she founded and toured with a local trio called Janitor Joe.

While playing a club gig in California, Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson asked if she wanted to play bass for Hole, and after a few days she accepted. Kristin Pfaff moved to Seattle to be close with the band and almost immediately joined the band for the recording of Live Through This, Hole’s first major label debut. The record went platinum and many feel Pfaff’s bass playing, piano, and backup vocals that helped elevate the overall sound. Moving to Seattle was both good and bad: Pfaff became successful, but developed a heroin habit too (which she kicked for a while in 1993).

Pfaff was deeply affected by Cobain’s suicide, whom she was friendly with, and decided to quit Hole and move back to Minneapolis where she had a new band lined up called Palm. Courtney Love supposedly didn’t take the news lightly. Kristin Pfaff was found dead in the bathtub from an apparent overdose the morning she was supposed to leave. Over the course of two months Love lost a husband and her band’s bass player. Conspiracy theories about Love’s supposed role in the deaths abound.

Janitor Joe
Courtney-Love.org

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Born: February 20, 1967 in Aberdeen, Washington
Died: April 5, 1994 at his home in Seattle, Washington
Band: Nirvana, Fecal Matter

By Cobain’s own account, he had a happy childhood until his parents divorced when he was eight years old. For the first year he stayed with his mother, followed by a couple of years with his father, Don Cobain. After Kurt’s rebellious teenage spirits reared its ugly head his life turned transient, as he was forced to live with various friends and family members until they could no longer deal with his negativity and tantrums. Don Cobain changed the course of his son’s life when he gave Kurt a guitar for his 14th birthday.

Kurt didn’t find many people to jam with in high school, but he set out creating songs and improving his chops. One of his first bands was named Fecal Matter, fittingly named by Kurt who loved anything gross & perverted. Nirvana’s first incarnation came to life in 1987 after Cobain convinced Krist Novoselic to start a band with him. The two friends went through seemingly more drummers than Spinal Tap until they settled with Chad Channing. The trio recorded Bleach in 1988, which Sub Pop released the following year to great underground acclaim. Cobain still wasn’t completely happy with Channing’s skills on the skins, so the latter was casually replaced when Dave Grohl was available for a new gig.

With Grohl behind the drums, Nirvana gelled better than any power trio since Cream or the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and with the music industry finally looking for something else besides hard glam rock, divas, and pop posers, Nirvana seemed to fit the bill. In 1991, Nirvana’s major label debut, Nevermind, crushed the charts with a vengeance. The press jumped on the “Seattle—Grunge City” bandwagon and Cobain became an involuntarily spokesperson and tastemaker for Gen X.

Kurt Cobain first met Courtney Love after a show in Portland, Oregon, but it remained a casual encounter until Dave Grohl introduced the two during the Nevermind recordings in the summer of ’91. The two quickly developed mutual crushes, which evolved to a cross-country courtship during the fall. They didn’t bond strictly through romance, however, both claim that heroin and pills were an important part of the mix too.

The following year, in early 1992, Courtney Love was pregnant, so Kurt Cobain soon proposed they get married. The ceremony took place on Hawaii’s Waikiki Beach and photos show Kurt smiling, but his eyes are sedated from shooting up that afternoon. It didn’t take long for the press to catch on, and Courtney Love was often lambasted as a new Yoko Ono. Kurt & Courtney preferred to be compared to punk’s dreaded couple, Sid and Nancy. Following a highly publicized magazine article in Vogue where Love was quoted as saying she’d been using drugs during her pregnancy, Frances Bean Cobain came to the world August 18, 1992, as a normal healthy baby.

Although the becoming a father turned Kurt Cobain’s life into something positive, the dichotomy of mainstream success and underground cred became sort of an existential struggle for Cobain, and he chose to self-medicate with copious amounts of heroin. Cobain overdosed on heroin in July 1993 before a concert in New York City, and again from a combination of champagne and Rohypnol in March 1994 at a hospital in Rome, Italy. Cobain’s last week included a failed intervention, followed by a heroin binge, before Kurt bought a shotgun, and flew to LA where he checked himself in to rehab. Unfortunately, the stay was cut short when he jumped the fence and went back Seattle. During the first week of April Cobain’s wife, family, and friends searched for him in vain.

April 8, 1994, an electrician found Kurt Cobain with a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. According to the coroner’s report, Cobain died April 5, 1994. He was 27 years old. For those interested in learning more about the conspiracy theories surrounding Kurt Cobain’s death, be sure to read Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain.

TotalNirvana.net
NirvanaClub.com

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