This is Priya. Priya sings and plays violin in the band Kreamy 'Lectric Santa. Originally from Miami, now in Asheville, NC with stints in Atlanta and California between, they have been rockin' shit way hard since 1992.
KLS' last show as Oakland residents, 2011
Sometime around 13 years ago Priya was involved in an accident that left her paralyzed. Please help my friend get a new handicapped accessible van so that it may improve her life, perhaps even allowing KLS to go on tour! You can vote once a day. Answering the bonus question counts as an extra vote. The voting ends May 9, 2014.
Below are some links, but the first one is the important one (where you go to vote).
FYI: I had some problems with this page. I never received any emails when I created an account or when I requested a password reset since I, of course, never got one in the first place. I suggest using a facebook account, granted you have one, if you have the same problems I did.
Asheville Freemedia, an independent online radio station, was easily one of the most special things for me during my time in Asheville, NC. I got involved from their start in 2009 and stuck around until early 2013. There I was not only able to continue my radio show (Crescent Fresh Radio), which dates back to 2000, but was also given some great opportunities, one example being my long run as music director. Parting ways with Asheville FM was easily one of the hardest things about leaving Asheville and I miss it so.
In fact, when they got their LPFM license approval recently I began to miss them even more. This is something AFM had been working on for years now and it finally is becoming a reality! Almost makes me wish I was around to be a part of all of this. But, I'm not. I'm far away. Boo hoo.
But I still want to help, even if I am hundreds of miles away. If you are in Asheville or just want to help a special radio station do something awesome (and trust me, this is definitely awesome...the airwaves in Asheville, outside of 100.7, currently SUUUUCK!) please donate to the cause.
20 years ago today my life changed forever. No other event in pop culture history has
even come close to affecting me in the way that Kurt Cobain’s death did. I came home from school and almost immediately
after got a call from my friend Ben. He
says I should turn on MTV. I did so and
it didn’t take long for my heart to completely sink.
I was 12 years old and Nirvana had a pretty strong grip
on me. One of the more surreal aspects
of this moment in time is the fact that I was about two chapters into Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana…which
is kind of a big deal considering that back then I probably thought reading big
books was typically “stupid” or something trite like that. The news combined with my devotion to the
band wrecked my world. I clearly
remember crying like a baby in the shower.
At the time I was grounded for shoplifting, but the punishment was
lifted so I could go mourn with the few friends who would “understand”.
Let’s back up for a moment. When I was 9 (I’ve been obsessive about music
for a long time, y’all) an MTV VJ sporting her typical “alternative” appearance
simply known as Duff introduced the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Like many bands I got heavily into, I
initially thought the song sucked total balls.
It’s too simplistic and that guy’s singing sounds like dogshit. My favorite band at the time was Guns n
Roses, a band that Nirvana was the very antithesis of. It wasn’t until their third single off Nevermind, “Lithium”, dropped that I
began to get it. I picked up a copy of said
record soon thereafter and a lifelong fan was born.
Fast forward over a year to the fall of ’93, a time that
was the beginning of my mall rat phase in middle school, I stopped in at Tape
World to pick out a CD to take home. And
there in the new section only holding enough money to buy one disc was a choice
to be made: Nirvana In Utero or GNR’s
The Spaghetti Incident. A more musically experienced fan of both
bands could make a simple argument in Nirvana’s favor. At least if nothing else the GNR album was
just a bunch of cover songs (and not all of them did they do so well
either). A year or two before GNR would
have been the easy choice. But not on
this day: I went for In Utero and my
Nirvana fandom reached a new level.
Then, on April 8, 1994, they found Kurt’s body. Nothing more was to be done by a great whose
work countless fans like myself had fallen head over heels for. We suddenly had nowhere to go but backwards
into Nirvana’s catalog. I had never
heard Bleach or Incesticide at that point.
It didn’t take me very long to get my hands on those albums and that was
when I finally experienced Nirvana in their more raw form. Then I wanted to hear everything Nirvana had
ever done: b-sides on single releases, tracks on compilations, live sets, them
tuning their guitars at practice…I didn’t fucking care what it was, I wanted to
hear it all!
But at a point I realized there was only so much Nirvana
out there (keep in mind this is before the box set or even the billions of Outcesticide bootleg volumes that exist). It was time to dig into Nirvana’s influences
and the bands Kurt kept mentioning in Come
As You Are. Sonic Youth became my
fave band soon thereafter and they still hold that honor. I have no one but Kurt to thank for
that. Other bands followed: the Melvins,
Black Flag, Germs, Babes In Toyland, Scratch Acid, Flipper, Mudhoney, Bikini
Kill, etc. I sought these bands out
simply because I knew Kurt liked them.
He set the bar.
And Kurt’s influence on early teenage me was more than
just what music I listened to. He had
his head on his shoulders; he wasn’t some dickhead rock star guy. He was as real as could be. He was very vocal about gender equality and
standing up against sexual violence. He
was an ally of homosexuals, even once stating that he wished he was gay just to
piss off homophobes. He loved standing
up for the little guy and loved pissing off assholes that deserved it. Growing up in a fairly backwoods area in
northeast TN where kids I went to school with still used words like “nigger”
frequently, Kurt’s stances were a refreshing influence. It’s nice to have someone to help you cut
through the ignorance growing up.
From there I went my own path, eventually embracing the
punk ethos that shaped me further. But
even since those days I can still say Nirvana has been a larger influence on me
than any other band that has ever existed.
And what’s funny is, while I often have opinions not of the norm, I know
there are thousands upon thousands of other people who can make the exact same
statement. In fact, this is one of the
last times that I could legitimately relate to a popular rock band. There’s a good chance that will never happen
again…for any of us.
Now I leave you with a “gift”. Here’s an early pre-Bleach show I found when
looking to see if I could find a live version of my favorite Nirvana song, “Aero
Zeppelin”, which happens to be included in this set. The show takes place in the town of Hoquiam,
WA (fun fact: the town’s name translates to “hungry for wood”…insert Beavis
& Butt-Head laughter here), a neighboring town of Aberdeen (Nirvana’s place
of origin). There are several songs in the
set that have rarely been heard in their live form.
A big reason I wanted to share this show is because it’s
often very sloppy and there are tons of technical difficulties plaguing the set. Every musician in every punk band or perhaps
even every rock band can surely relate.
Kinda crazy to think that the band you see here ended being the kind of
band that sold millions a mere 3-4 years later eh? But it’s still great, even if the footage is also
a bit hard to watch (you know what else is kinda hard to watch? Kurt sporting that pony tail…egads! However, kudos to Krist and his tighty whitey
styles.).
Note: the video
footage of the show cuts off where there’s still about 20 minutes left of the
set. Sadly I couldn’t find a more
complete version on video but here’s the complete audio source as a consolation
prize.
