I spent large chunks of my junior high and high school experience circa 1981-85 alone in my bedroom, awash in the sounds of an life-changing college radio station from Los Altos Hills, California called KFJC coming out of my clock radio. I had previously been a young music freak who tuned into America’s Top 40 every Sunday, as well as a budding “new waver” discovering Devo, The B-52s and Adam and the Ants; and to some extent, I remained (and possibly still remain) something of a new waver. Through KFJC, and definitely through KPFA’s “Maximum Rock and Roll Radio Show” on Tuesday nights, I discovered punk rock, which was then in the throes of branching into its full-on, light-speed hardcore phase. I bathed in English DIY and dark/gothy stuff, and some early favorites of mine were Siouxsie & The Banshees, Bauhaus, The Delta 5 and the Au Pairs. This station helped turn me from a music fan into a raging music obsessive, and to think that I’d be joining my DJ idols there in a few years was totally unfathomable at the time.

Yet it happened. After four years spent DJ-ing in college at KCSB in Santa Barbara, I moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989 with enough confidence in my chops, such as they were, to approach my formative heroes at KFJC with a proposal for my own show. It wasn’t that difficult – after a mere few weeks of toil in the 2-6am time slot, I landed first a decent morning show, and then a fantastic Monday night gig from 6-10pm.

KFJC was among the most creative of radio stations, drawing upon yearly traditions that had been started by long-retired DJs. Two of their best traditions, both of which continue to this day (!), are the annual “format change” on April Fool’s Day and the subsequent “Month of Mayhem”, where DJs put together hours-long overviews of particular artists, neglected genres of music, and all manner of musical ephemera, strung together in a manner not conducive for a typical radio slot.

April Fool’s was always a blast, and I remember being a stung listener several times during my teenage years when I’d forgotten what day it was. There was the time that the format change was reduced to a rotation of only six songs, played back-to-back in sets, then started over again – an exaggerated version of some awful Top 40 station programmed by a corporation. Except that the two songs I remember from this particular day of mirth were pretty cool – “Start!” by The Jam and “Watching The Detectives” by Elvis Costello – placing it around 1982 or so. There was another time where the format changed to all reggae, and all the DJs talked in a bogus Jamaican patois. Somewhat more recently, KFJC switched frequencies with New Jersey’s WFMU for the day, which must have been absolutely baffling for listeners on both coasts.

In my own brief time at KFJC from 1989-1990, I got in on one April Fool’s day. We decided to change the station’s format on 4/1/1990 to an “oldies” station, except the oldies here would be alternative/college rock songs that were no more than ten years old. I got a key slot on Sunday night from 6-9pm this particular day, taking the place of a radical left/conspiracy theory show hosted by a guy named Dave Emory. (I believe this show was later syndicated, though Emory worked out of our Los Altos Hills studio). I totally hammed up the format, announcing in my most weasel-like of milquetoast DJ voices after a song would end, “Ohhhh yeah, don’t that just make you feel so GOOD hearing that again? Going allllllllllll the way back to 1984, that was a real golden classic from the Meat Puppets”.

Then I’d do a fake “traffic report”, where I’d spin a sound effects record of a helicopter in the air and then play a pre-recorded tape we’d made of some phony, deliberately wrong traffic update. It would start off talking about local freeways (“problems in the MacArthur Maze, heavy backup at the Bay Bridge, metering lights are on”), and then would segue matter-of-factly into Los Angeles freeways that were seven hours away from us (“Injury-accident on the 405”) – keeping in mind, of course, that it was Sunday night at 7pm and there was likely no one on any freeways.

The best part of this particular prank was that I got to make up new time slots for all the popular DJs our new format was displacing. I acted like this was now my new slot, and that these were the songs I was going to play every week in this slot. I then would announce stuff in my stupid hack DJ voice like, “Don’t worry, Dave Emory fans, Dave’s still got a home on KFJC. You can now catch his show each and every Sunday morning from 4:45-5am, only here on ‘The Wave of The West’”. I invented new slots for every show that day, all at preposterous times like 1:30-2am and the like – and then the calls started coming in. The lines just lit up like a Christmas tree after the “Emory time slot change”. And then I realized how unhinged some of Emory’s listeners were. They called me one after the other, totally freaked out, asking for clarification, begging KFJC to reconsider, completely not in on the joke.

This went on for about an hour before I got a call from Emory himself, who told me I needed to cut it out for my own safety – “You don’t know how dangerous some of these people can be – they’ll come down to the station”. Based on my previous calls that hour from conspiracy-engaged types (the big controversies/obsessions of the day were Reagan’s “October Surprise” and still, 27 years later, JFK’s assassination). I decided he was probably right, and cut this part of my shtick as my show was winding down. Of course, the station reverted to its normal free-form format the next morning, and all was well again.

I also only got one “Month of Mayhem” special in, because I quit the station in July 1990, fed up with the depressed, insular frathouse of lost souls that seemed to make up station personnel. Oh – that, and the commute from my new apartment in San Francisco. Yet I did get to do a three-hour special on THE FLESH EATERS, no mean feat when the band only put out four forty-minute albums in the 1980s and one single in 1978, and whom I never saw live and only heard for the first time a year after they’d broken up. My four years in college in the late 80s, however, had turned me into a rabid, posthumously worshipping fan of the band and their genius singer, Chris Desjardins, who I was by then seeing play in his new bands The Divine Horsemen and Stone By Stone.

At that point in my life The Flesh Eaters were easily “my favorite band of all time”. When I conceived of doing this special back in March 1990, I wrote a letter to Chris D (we didn’t have email back then, kids) and asked him if I could interview him on the show. I gave him my work phone number so we could work out the details (we didn’t have cell phones back then, kids). Well, two months went by and I’d heard nothing from him, and figured that the lack of interest from him was in keeping with his publicity-shy, disinterested persona.

One hour before I was to leave my job at Monster Cable and drive down to KFJC and do the special, I got a call on my work line, and whoa – it was Chris D himself. He’d love to do an interview. Uhhh…..OK. So I hustled down to the station, corralled an engineer to help me figure out how to patch him in, took Chris’s call live on the air, and proceeded to do what I remember as the most botched, hurried, unprepared, nervous interview I’ve ever done – with my idol, no less. And of course – I didn’t tape it, so there’s no historical record for me to check and assure myself that “it wasn’t so bad after all”. In my mind it was a friggin’ disaster – but Chris did break the news on our call that he was re-forming the Flesh Eaters that year, which was totally exciting until I realized that all it meant was that he had a new band put together, and he just slapped on his old, more reknown band’s name on top of it. (As it turned out, this new Flesh Eaters were actually really good for a few years, and played live and recorded albums up into the 21st Century).

When I quit the station in shame and disgust on July 4th, 1990, I remember driving back to San Francisco, straight to a FLIPPER reunion show at the Covered Wagon Saloon, totally angry and bummed about the circumstances surrounding my decision. I drank fairly heavily at the club. That day I’d done my final show, and as it turned out, it was my final show anywhere as a behind-the-glass, guy with 2-3 turntables disk jockey. To this day I still have anxiety dreams where the song on Turntable 1 is about to end, and there’s nothing queued up on Turntable 2 – and gasp – we’re about to have some “dead air”!!!

I still love KFJC and the ethos behind KFJC, and there’s a whole new generation at the station now who are keeping it among America’s most vital musical institutions. Sometimes I still wish I was there, just so I could cook up more pranks and Month of Mayhem musical OCD specials – then I wonder if anyone even listens to the radio at all anymore. If anyone taped that May 14th, 1990 KFJC Flesh Eaters special – or the April 1st, 1990 6-9pm show – please do get in touch.

Kurt Cobain partied with me at my house. 

There, now please don’t ever accuse me of “burying the lede”. It’s actually a tale of little consequence nor much entertainment value, yet it’s also one I’ve fitfully used as an answer in organized “icebreakers” with co-workers for nearly thirty years – i.e., “What’s one thing that might be surprising about you?”. Or perhaps it’s just magically come up in conversation, I don’t know.

Invariably my story is met with incredulity, or shock, or wonder. “You?” is usually the first response, as in, “Why would this have happened to you?”. This is because Kurt Cobain occupies for current generations the sort of legendary/untouchable status that Jim Morrison did in mine – someone now dead from before your time whose music and vision and lyrics and overall bearing touched the world (or whatever). Let me be the first to say: we couldn’t have known it at the time.

Actually, my in-person and otherwise interactions with Nirvana, the band, began during my senior year of college at UC-Santa Barbara. I had a show on our college radio station KCSB and also helped out in other ways, and as a consequence found myself on the phone talking to Jonathan Poneman, one of the founders of Sub Pop records. The label was just beginning a new subscription-only mail-order singles club, and he told me to get ready to get excited about the first one in the series to come out later in 1988, from a new Washington State band called “Nirvana”. He said they were “a cross between Black Sabbath and Cheap Trick”, which sounded just awful to me. Thankfully the single that would eventually arrive in my mailbox, “Love Buzz / Big Cheese”, was marginally better than that. When I eventually sold it via a Flipside Magazine classified ad around 1993 for a whopping $75 – a year before Cobain’s death – I felt like a shrewd, record-trading Rockefeller. (The numbered, limited-edition single now routinely goes for $5,000+ and is easily one of the most collectable records of its era).

Not long after this time, in May 1989, the former hardcore punk band Scream came to KCSB and were slotted to play a live show on my Wednesday night 8-10pm radio program. Santa Barbara is a perfect gig-less Wednesday night pit stop between early-week gigs in the San Francisco Bay Area and weekend gigs in Los Angeles/Orange County/San Diego, or vice-versa. I was always happy to receive some touring band on my show because our music director, Eric Stone, had exceptional taste in punk rock and its offshoots, and even if he brought in some middling band like Scream it was still a feather in my cap that a band we’d heard of and sometimes liked was playing within the walls of our beloved radio station, and on my show, no less.

Scream were by this time sort of a grunge/emo hybrid, before either term was in heavy rotation, and I know that they counted among their members at least two former and current intravenous drug users, because one of the members told me so. That member was Dave Grohl, the fresh-faced 20-year-old drummer of the band, easily the most likable and extroverted visitor to our studio that day. While other Scream members sniffed & snorted and argued with other, Grohl came into the DJ booth when I was back-announcing records and hung out & talked music with me, then consented to a brief on-air interview during which he cracked jokes & made mirth that I unfortunately remember none of the particulars of. I don’t believe a tape of this encounter exists, but with god as my witness, it happened. 

As you may be aware, Grohl would, within 2 years be recruited to drum for Nirvana on their path to becoming one of the biggest bands of all time; become incredibly rich; form the Foo Fighters and become even more incredibly rich; and so on. I saw a book written by him at the airport just three weeks ago.

I recognize that none of this tells you anything about the time Kurt Cobain partied at my house. Hey, just like any good icebreaker, you’ll need to wait! Actually we’ve nearly arrived at that part. So Nirvana, the ones who put out that mediocre 45 I sold for a mere fraction of its eventual immense worth, would then put out a 1989 LP called Bleach that I liked better. The band was part of a great whoosh of heavy, punk-influenced Seattle-area bands releasing music that year, often on Sub Pop and/or on similar labels, catching all sorts of buzz and all seemingly touring up and down California during the year 1989.

I was visiting my parents in San Jose toward the end of my time in college, and it just so happened that my no-question absolute favorite of these heavy bands, Mudhoney, were playing at Marsugi’s in San Jose that weekend on February 11th, 1989, with their openers Vomit Launch and Nirvana. Yes, a then- four-piece Nirvana, playing a 150-person club, themselves opening for Chico, California’s Vomit Launch before Mudhoney went on. I recall enjoying their set, which ended with Cobain deliberately tumbling backwards on stage, into the drum kit, scattering equipment everywhere as feedback squalled and the 35 or so people who’d arrived to that point hooted their appreciation for his showmanship. Over two years later, on June 13th, 1991, I’d also see a now 3-piece Nirvana, with Grohl, open for Dinosaur Jr. at The Warfield in San Francisco. It was the first and only time I’d see them in this form. They were still an indie band, still “one of ours”, I guess, but decidedly more popular than before thanks to a strong overall reception for Bleach, and about to become the biggest band in the world in 6 months.

Yet it was earlier in 1991, January if I’ve got my timing right, when my friend Bob, who happened to also be Mudhoney’s manager and jack-of-all-trades (merch seller, check writer, tour helper etc.), was visiting from Seattle and staying at my apartment at 941 Stanyan in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. We had plans to get some food on nearby Haight Street and then eventually walk over to the I-Beam Club that night, where The Melvins were playing. I wasn’t really a fan of that particular band, but it was a night out, and, as I’m sure you’d agree, sometimes you need a night out.

After we ate, we walked by a Thai restaurant and Bob spied Kurt and Chris from Nirvana coming out of it. There was a nice what-are-you-doing-here reunion between the three of them. It turned out that the Nirvana guys were driving back from Los Angeles to Seattle; perhaps, at least as I imagined it in hindsight, they had just signed their deal with DGC for Nevermind and were heading back home to figure it all out. They had plans to stay with a friend that night in San Francisco before starting for home the next morning.

Once we confirmed that they, too, were going to see The Melvins that night, Bob promptly invited the two of them over to my place for the pre-show drinks. The four of us walked across the street to Cala Market for liquid fortification, and I recall us bantering aimlessly until Cobain theatrically dropped a giant bottle of vodka on the checkout line belt and confidently proclaimed, “I want to have a hangover tomorrow”. To be honest, it’s the only thing I remember him saying of any consequence the entire night.

We then hoofed it back to my place and my room, whereupon the scene was set: Kurt Cobain sat quietly on my bed, drinking and not interacting much with the other three of us. He found much pleasure reading my Zippy The Pinhead comic anthologies, and immersed himself in those. Chris animatedly rifled through my record collection, getting super-excited when he’d pull something out he liked: “Oh! You have this Half Japanese record! Let’s play it!”. Bob, Chris and I talked loudly a bunch about music, while Kurt retreated quietly but respectfully in his corner of the room, not really getting into it with the rest of us at all.

We probably pre-partied for about an hour, three of us with our beers and Kurt with his bottle of vodka and a chaser, before we walked over to the I-Beam together. On the way over, I remember asking some dumb-ass question about their touring or their next record or something similarly sycophantic, and getting kind of a blow-off non-answer from Kurt, who clearly didn’t want to talk about his band at all. Once safely inside the club, we split up, and I didn’t see the two Nirvana guys again that night.

So this legendary night of Kurt Cobain partying at my house, the one I’ve used to grease the wheels of social interactions when called upon to do so, was about as inconsequential as any other night in my early 20s spent having a few drinks with various yahoos before seeing a band at a club. It just happened to be with a guy who’s now so posthumously world-famous that he’d be headlining Coachella or Glastonbury as a hologram right now if his bandmates had enough lack of integrity to allow it. 

There’s a postscript to this mediocre story as well. Only three weeks later, I went to see The Dwarves at The Stone, a club on Broadway in San Francisco. I immediately spied the insanely tall, aforementioned Nirvana bass player Chris Novoselic, with whom I shared much mirth and alcohol not even a month earlier. I bounded up to him while he was mid-conversation with someone and excitedly asked, “Hey Chris, remember me?”. He squinted his eyes, looked me over, and said with much finitude and no small amount of emphasis: ”NO”.