Regarding the infamous Nirvana/Argentina show. October 30, 1992

The dramatic end to proto-riot grrrl band Calamity Jane..

Sep 25, 2024

October 30, 1992

Estadio Velez Sarsfield, Buenos Aires, Argentina

We are in a soccer stadium packed with 30,000 rowdy South American Nirvana fans on a balmy night in October. Local openers Los Brujos (think Chili Peppers with Carnival Puppets & costumes-party band) has just finished a rousing set, stoking the testosterone-laden impatience displayed by the audience in the hours before the concert commenced. From the side of the stage, I see the crowd is a roiling ocean of bodies, tossing each other into the air, shouting, singing, and throwing things soccer-fan style. There is music blasting through the PA system, but it can barely be heard over the sound of human cacophony. Next up: my band Calamity Jane, a scrappy looking group of female/queer/trans punk rockers from Oregon, who for some unknown reason were awarded the coveted opening slot for this huge show, flown here courtesy of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana to play in this alien landscape for which we are wholly unprepared.

Dressed in thrift-store fashion, we walk out onto the stage with purpose, taking our positions boldly during a rousing chant of “Nir-vana! Nir-vana!” I am holding my breath. I have never played to a crowd this size, never played in a foreign country. I feel ready, due to the overly warm welcome we received when we arrived: A handler met us at the airport, we were chauffeured about the city, heard ourselves played on the local radio station, were interviewed and asked for autographs, given hotel rooms at the Hilton.

At the sound check earlier, we had been elated to hear our music so LOUD and the first chord does not disappoint- blasting out into the stadium. We are the only women to set foot on the stage that night, and let me tell you, we won’t stay long. The crowd surges and roars, it is unclear at that moment whether it is a positive sound. I shout into the microphone something like “Hola! Somos Calamity Jane!” and we break into our first song. Our sound is not what would be called feminine or pretty- it is a caterwauling wall of distortion and angry powerful howling vocals set to weird tempos with heavy drum lines. If our sound isn’t enough to confound the public, our look is maybe confusing to the cultural gender sensibilities in South America: the guitar player and I wear dresses with combat boots, and the rhythm section both sport cutoff jeans, boots and flannels, with butch haircuts. Moreover, that crowd has been anxiously awaiting their personal Jesus in the form of Kurt Cobain- the unlikely underdog rockstar, since late afternoon when they were allowed to enter the stadium. They have been chomping at the bit to slam dance, to mosh, to sing along and bang their heads to the anthem of their generation “Smells like Teen Spirit”. These are people who have spent all of their not-so-disposable income on a ticket to be part of a movement, to rebel in a controlled environment, to release their workaday cares with the reassurance that they know the songs and are wearing the band T-shirt. “He’s the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun/ but he don’t know what it means”. So what is this weird shouty female shit up on the stage??

Somewhere around the second song or so, there is a moment when I open my eyes to finally take it all in, and realize that the crowd is competing with us- they are shouting at us and flipping us off, and even somehow penises are flashed. This really does not compute at first, I am in super punk rock overdrive, but I notice that there is a ring of spit gobs surrounding me on the stage; I look across the stage to my bandmates and there is dismay, anger, and dare I say terror in their eyes. We are now being pelted with clods of dirt, coins, ice cubes, more spit, and inundated with shouts of a word I fully understand “Puta!”(Whore). Looking out on a sea of penises and middle fingers, it is evident that they are not happy, they do not like us, and they want us off the stage. It becomes pretty impossible to continue playing- I mean we aren’t the Sex Pistols- we don’t want the crowd to actively hate us! My adrenaline is pumping at a bionic rate, making my hands shake, and everything feel like it is in slow motion and at the same time on hyper speed. Tears of rage blur my eyes, and I stop playing and storm off the stage, my sister (our bassist) running behind me. I notice our drummer is crouching behind their cymbals to avoid flying detritus, and our guitarist is actually picking up some of the coins and peering petulantly into the crowd.

I am intercepted by my friend and fellow musician Courtney Love who is watching from the side of the stage; she wraps her muscular arm around my shoulders and shouts in my ear with her unmistakably raspy voice “You are totally punk rock! They LOVE you! Go back out there!!!!” “They do not! They hate us!” I am rattled and fucking pissed off, shaking. I don’t really wanna go back out there, but at the same time I am surging with the very anger that drives my music- my head spinning. “Well, you are too punk for them- You rock!- you should go back out there- fuck them!” Courtney continued. I don’t want to admit defeat; I look at my sister and she nods, we go out and attempt to finish our set. I walk back into the spot light and strum my guitar angrily, to drown out the din of shouting. We launch into our next song, which I hope is “Little Miss Hell” since it is one of the most appropriate tunes we could have played at that moment, but truth be told, I do not recall. There is no mercy from the front lines of the audience: they boo, hiss, and shout obscenities in Spanish, pelting us with whatever they can find to throw. It is completely surreal, after years of playing in largely empty bars and shitty clubs from coast to coast, the high points being legendary dives like CBGB’s, to be finally invited to play a well-paid stadium show with your friend’s band who just happens to have become one of the most popular bands in the world. And at the moment of triumph, guitars ringing through the night, to be rejected violently by a crowd of 30,000 people; it is more than I can weather, and I scream into the microphone a very definitive “Fuck YOU!” I proceed to smash my guitar on the stage, cracking the headstock. I leave it howling feedback through the PA before I run from the stage, my sister smashes her bass to the ground as well, leaving it buzzing in waves and follows me. The guitarist and drummer leave the stage with a bit more control.

Courtney is supportive as we exit the stage area- there is a small group of fans off to the side that try and offer kind words as we rush by, my hoodie pulled up over my head- I just wanna hide, or die, or scream some more. Our sound engineer who we brought with us from Oregon, tells me she turned her Calamity Jane T-shirt inside out before walking through the crowd to get back to the dressing room area- she was a little worried that she would get attacked. We congregate shakily in the backstage and start drinking immediately. Courtney confides that L7 were treated in a similar fashion in South America, and when they were pelted with mud at Reading festival that Donita pulled out her tampon onstage and threw it at the crowd. I really wish someone would have briefed me beforehand on what to expect, but instead I get the equivalent of a lecture from the Principal in high school on how I “should not act ugly towards the crowd” from our traitorous handler, who had been our best friend the night before as we went bar hopping with Krist and Dave and Courtney, doing karaoke versions of “Now I wanna be yr Dog”. I mean wasn’t it her job to prepare us for this onslaught? Why tell me after the fact about the cultural (sexist)differences in South American rock audiences. Not very helpful.

Kurt seriously considers not playing after witnessing the awful scene- he is disgusted by the audience’s treatment of our band, but I think Nirvana are getting somewhere in the vicinity of $250 grand to play, and they have to support a whole cast of touring crew as well as the band. They ultimately take the stage and play a nontraditional set including some noise jams- they fake out the crowd multiple times by starting to play the mega-hit “Smells like Teen Spirit” and then stopping, and playing a mocking version of “Come as You Are” where Kurt sort of Tourette’s the lyrics rather than really singing it. I watch the whole set from the side of the stage, in shock. I’ve always loved seeing Nirvana live- so much gorgeous noise and chaos, with catchy choruses and beautiful melodies.
Mostly I feel pretty numb, but seeing Nirvana mess with the crowd is complicated-
it is culture shock wrapped in rock-star-dreams turned nightmare. There is a bit of solace to feel that our comrades care what happened to us, yet it confirms that we as musicians are subject to the audience, and the bigger they get, the worse it can feel when the hurricane of negative public opinion storms you.

After the show, my sister starts vomiting on our van ride from the stadium to the hotel. To cap off an already miserably memorable night, I stay in the hotel room holding her head while she pukes endlessly, her boyfriend standing by with ginger ale. The guitarist and drummer party with Dave and Krist, and probably have a passable night. I never really hear the details on that because the next day is more misery as we check out of our hotel with mega minibar tabs and no cash on hand, our unhelpful handler scolding me at every turn, and every one of us sports varying degrees of nasty hangovers. We have to fly back to Albuquerque, NM where we left our broken down Ford Econoline van mid-tour to take part in this rock star fantasy. I steal a pillow from the hotel and take the metal ladies room symbol(because she is the equivalent of a mud flap babe) from the airport as souvenirs. The flight is long and forgettable compared to the events of the past few days and nights. When we get to NM, our van is still unfixed in an auto shop, my guitar and my sister’s bass are both broken and in need of repair, and we discover that we cannot get our payment of $5000 due to the management company that handled the show in Argentina being absorbed in a merger with a bigger company. The band is stressed to the teeth and we are starting to really dislike each other. Our next scheduled show is not until a week later in Chicago where our gear will be shipped. We suffer in the cold November sunshine of New Mexico, eating green chile on everything and drinking too much beer, we vote for the president, and at least are pleased that Clinton defeats Bush.

To say the least, we all have lost our spirit. We divide off into factions: my sister and I start to resent the newer members of the band, and they feel it, plus I am quite certain that I am acting like a shell-shocked dictator whose heart has been broken by my own delusions of grandeur being blown to bits on stage: I am a complete mess. I want desperately to keep going, to continue our tour, but when I look at the facts: we have a broken van and two broken guitars in repair shops, $900 in long distance phone bills (incurred by the rest of the band and their long conversations with their boyfriends/girlfriends- certainly not by me as I have been excommunicated by mine), and we cannot access the big check we were promised by Nirvana’s management for what turns out to be another 3 months. And winter is coming.

After my nineteenth nervous breakdown in broad daylight, repeatedly directing my venom towards my unfortunate bandmates, we have a band meeting of sorts. We weigh the pros(virtually none) and cons(all of the aforementioned) of continuing our tour, and decide to bag it. When our van and guitars are finally out of the shop, we take the highway out of Albuquerque, and immediately get pulled over for speeding.

I can’t wait to get out of this purgatory of self-judgement- I have basically failed at my dream, one I felt this close to realizing. There were moments when we were playing shows on tour- in LA, SF, Albuquerque and people were singing along, hailing us as a wonder- they seemed to get it. And Kurt believed in us enough to pay us $5000 and fly us to Argentina to play with Nirvana. But now there is no more drive left in me, I feel scooped out by grief and failure. It is all too much to bear, I feel that I have done too much of the work and the balance is forever off; that it is only me who is baring my heart and soul, being crushed. I want to give up. We drive miserably back to Ashland where my parents are, and send the other half of the band on a Greyhound bus back to Portland.

I do not wish to return to Portland, I stay at my parent’s house in Ashland for weeks, avoiding the location of my lost music scene. When I do return, I am shaken every time I encounter my ex-bandmates or their cohorts. When I see bands play live, or even hear them on the radio, a vast emptiness swallows my heart and I cannot help feeling deep loss. I am traumatized by the experience; I have a kind of PTSD and cannot even listen to any rock music without crying and curling up in a fetal position. A particular journalist hounds me regularly when I go to get coffee; my boyfriend offers to kick his ass unless he leaves me alone. Thankfully there is not yet ‘social’ media save newspapers, but local press preys on our misfortune like hungry dogs on fresh meat- ‘local band makes good, then blows it’. There is more as we fall apart- the sordid details of trying to get the check just so we can pay our outstanding bills upon breaking up. The quarreling over money, complete with threats of lawyers getting involved, the poking of holes in speaker cones, and an equipment hostage situation. I have no recollection of that winter, no holidays; I smoke so much Marijuana in order to function, paired with coffee and then beer that my synapses fail to fire correctly and hardly any memories are stored.

I feel that if I never see my bandmates again, it will be too soon.

*that was our last show for 24 years, but we did reconcile finally and played a Reunion show with this same lineup in 2016. (mostly so our kids could see that their moms were kinda cool, once)