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Jason Everman...who?I was kinda curious about him, so i made a little research.
You kow, the ginger guitarist from the pictures with Kurt, Christ and Chad Channing?
Chad Channing has a new band called The Methodists.
Anyway, here're some facts that i've found about him.*Kurt Cobain, 1990:
"We kicked him out 'cause he didn't like to do the songs that we like. He wants to play slow, heavy grunge and we want to write pop songs."
"Jason didn't play on the record (Bleach, duh). He joined the band a week after we recorded it. But we put his name on the record anyway."
"He's from Seattle, he's a really nice guy. We met him maybe a couple of months before we recorded the record and really liked him and started hanging out with him. I started thinking that maybe I'd like to do a bit more singing and didn't want to worry about guitar playing that much. It wasn't a very good idea. We had to practice more."*Jason Everman, June 93, about Mind Funk:
"We're just a rock band. Labels like 'independent' or 'grunge' are just some kind of fashion-statements. But if it helps someone way out in the mid-west to understand what we're about, then it's fine with me."*hey did some outdoor festival-dates, for example the big Dynamo-festival in the Netherlands where they faced their largest audience. After that a long time passed, then MTV reported that original bass-player John Monte had quit the band. Rumours said that Jason Everman would handle the bass-duties from now on. (He played bass with Soundgarden on the Louder Than Love-tour) He instead left Mindfunk in september '94 to join the Army 2nd Ranger Battalion. Our sources tell us "he's currently trekking in Tibet and will be attending the Vancouver film school in january".
*The band Mindfunk toured for a while and made an appearance at the 1992 Roskilde Festival in Denmark. By then original guitar-player Jason Coppola and drummer Reed St. Mark had been replaced by Jason Everman (formerly with Nirvana and Soundgarden) and Shawn Johnson respectively, and the band had already started to work on their follow-up. The reason for the split was probably mostly due to musical differencies, the band stated in an interview that they looked for people with a looser style to fit their new musical direction. It was also during this period that the band changed their name once again, however this change was not as big. The changed from Mind Funk to Mindfunk, from two words to one. The reason for this is not known to me.
*Jason Everman was the bassist who joined the band after Hiro left in 1989. This occurred soon after Louder Than Love was recorded, and just before the ensuing world tour was about to commence. Several bass players auditioned for the position, among them Jason Everman and Ben Shepherd. At the time, Ben didn't know the songs, and Jason did. So with the tour looming, Jason got the job. In the end, however, he wasn't what the band was looking for and was fired after only six months; appearing on only one song with the band (a cover of the Beatles' tune "Come Together").
Everman, also a one-time guitarist with Nirvana, has since been enlisted as a U.S Airborne Ranger, recorded with Mindfunk and has now (from some reports) joined the U.S Navy.*"For the record," Thayil savs, "Soundgarden really don't care about their equipment. We just like it if it's loud and it works, Jason [Everman, briefly rhythm guitarist with Nirvana before replacing Hiro Yamamoto in Soundgarden] uses basses that don't cost too much. He broke a bass that cost him $1500 one time. He broke three or four basses on this last tour. I was in the middle of a solo at L.A.'s Whiskey when I noticed the sound was kind of thin for this part of the song. I turned around, and saw Jason jumping up and down on his bass because it wasn't working any more. I thought, 'How are we going to top that on the next song?'"
*Jason Everman is credited with playing on Nirvana's first album, Bleach, though he actually doesn't appear on the recording; his contribution was limited to paying the session fee ($606.17). Everman joined the band in 1989 as a second guitarist, but he left following a summer tour that year. He joined Soundgarden in 1990 but had left the band by June. He went from there to the band Mindfunk, and into the military.
*Jason Everman is the bass player that replaced Hiro Yamamoto. He played with Soundgarden for six months of their tour in support of LOUDER THAN LOVE. At that time Ben Shepherd, Soundgarden's current bassist, joined the ranks and finished the tour.
*Nirvana recorded their Bleach album for about $600, a dark, crunching album containing simple, guitar driven like Negative Creep and School as well as more sophisticated songs like About a Girl, and a modified version of Shocking Blue's Love Buzz. It was released in June of '89 by Sub Pop records. After recording, Nirvana went on tour after the addition of guitarist Jason Everman. Jason was added because Kurt wasn't sure he could handle singing and playing guitar at the same time. Jason also helped contribute quite a bit of the money to record the debut LP.
*"The only change of personnel is that Rich Castillo did not play on this record. The member named Tackle Box is fictitious. The band is Mark Fullerton who played drums on the record, Mike Jensen from KMFDM and myself. Tackle Box is a photo of Jason Everman fresh out of Army Ranger School. He's now in the special forces and was the original guitarist with Nirvana and went on to play bass with Soundgarden. He was also the guitarist in Mind Funk on an incredible record they put out. I did one tour as bassist in Mind Funk and Jason and I have become pretty good friends. We've continued our relationship. I told him I would use the photo on this album. He was quite amused when he saw it." (Spike Xavier)
*"Driving With Jason is a book I wrote which chronicles a friendship formed in the unique world of alternative, underground bands touring. Meeting each other in strange places, criss crossing each other in various cities and getting together under the most unusual circumstances. And continuing a friendship and inadvertently ending up in a band together. When we did end up in the band together, we ended up in Copenhagen, Denmark. I ended up going to see Mind Funk there never expecting I would end up playing bass for the band for a tour. Jason and I ended up taking what's called a 'mini' which is a tiny excuse for a car. We drove all over the landscape so it ended up continuing because when we toured with Mind Funk Jason and I were the only two guys who didn't smoke dope. It's very irritating to being a locked van if you don't smoke. We just drove the equipment truck and ended up driving that thing through hell and high water. Just the conversations at the point we were in our relationships as far as being able to be poinently honest plus the exchange of tour stories from his Nirvana days and me with my stories about Mark Fullerton, our drummer. The book is all the way through his leaving the band and going into the Special Forces." (Spike Xavier)
*"It's not published yet. It's just in my computer. I've been so busy with my other band, The Humble Gods that I really haven't pursued it far enough to get a publisher. I did think it would be published by now. Jason has sent me a bunch of photos from his early guitar playing days and pictures we have of us together. Jason is part Cherokee and my wife is Puma so we went up to the Custer memorial on the reservation and took a bunch of amazing photos in Montana." (Spike Xavier)
*During their twelve-plus years of existence, Soundgarden made a career of defying expectations and turning conventions inside out. Moving to Seattle from Chicago, lead guitarist Kim Thayil formed the band in 1984 with another Windy City transplant, bassist Hiro Yamamoto, and singer/drummer Chris Cornell. The vocalist soon relinquished the kit first to Scott Sundquist, and then to Matt Cameron shortly thereafter. The lineup changed again when Yamamoto departed from the band in 1990 to pursuit academic studies. Jason Everman stepped in for a six month touring stint but Ben Shepherd became the permanent bassist later that year and remained in the band through its duration. Making their first appearance on the legendary Deep Six compilation in 1986, Soundgarden followed that a year later with the Sub Pop release Screaming Life, an EP that soon became a classic of the post-punk-and-metal era.
*July 18: Nirvana appear at a New Music Seminar concert at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey, sharing a bill in the 200-capacity club with Mudhoney. After the show, Jason Everman quits the band to join Soundgarden. The remainder of the tour is cancelled.
So Soundgarden -- a band formed by Robert Plant-like singer/guitarist Chris Cornell, bearded guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron, and bassist Hiro Yamamoto (replaced first by ex-Nirvana guitarist Jason Everman and then by Shepherd) -- were certainly important or significant on some level. They might not have popularized the grunge aesthetic with the same categorical commercial force as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but they were the ones who laid the groundwork for the Seattle phenomenon by proving to the record industry that the scruffy style could be passed off as metal to the hair-spray-addled fans of MTV's now defunct Headbangers Ball. And now? They've become the unwitting bearers of the message that grunge turned out to be every bit as disposable as the disposable pop it was meant to boot out of the spotlight. Perhaps even more so, since its eminence seems to have lasted barely five years.
*Jason Everman: Credited as a second guitarist on Nirvana's Bleach album, he merely came up with the $606 the band needed to record it. Everman, a former commercial fisherman, never played a note on that or any subsequent recording.