Regarding the infamous Argentina/Nirvana incident....

Calamity Jane in Buenos Aires, Argentina October,1992. Marcéo Martinez, Gilly Ann Hanner, Joanna Bolme, Megan Hanner.

Gilly Ann Hanner. Onstage Buenos Aires, Argentina October 30, 1992.

Yesterday I was asked to recall an infamous moment in my musical history some 30+ years ago that involved a world famous band and my completely unknown band Calamity Jane. An acquaintance wanted to do a blurb on the incident, (Read Al Melchior's article here) and as a result, I dug deep and tried to remember details.  I also utilized the other tomes that pay tribute to the holiness that is Nirvana, and quoted myself being quoted loosely, as well as some rather unpleasant quotes by some non-feminist South American rockers who dispute both my memories and those of the revered Kurt Cobain.
Then I ended up in a shitty mood. And had lots of strange dreams that drew from my rich history of strange realities..

Our set list was likely (I don’t have the actual one):
Say it
Magdalena
Little Girl
Love Song
Believe
Little Miss Hell
A lot o Blood
My spit
Come on

Calamity Jane had a 30 minute slot right before Nirvana’s set on October 30, 1992 in Buenos Aires at Velez Sarsfield. There was also a band called los Brujos that played before us, they had a Carnaval meets Chili Peppers vibe- very party with big puppets and people in the crowd were quite rowdy during their set. People were there to see the phenomenon of Nirvana and were hungry for the songs they heard on the radio and MTV, add to that the long lines to get in and a considerable wait before the band was to take the stage. Enter a scrappy looking band of non-traditional looking female/queer/trans punk rockers from Oregon, who for some unknown reason were awarded the coveted opening slot for this huge show(30,000+ capacity). Dressed in thrift-store fashion(I wore a velvet mini-dress, Joanna had on a square dancing dress, Megan and Marcéo were in cutoffs and flannels, all of us had combat boots in some form on our feet) we took the stage during a rousing chant of “Nir-vana! Nir-vana!.
We walked out on stage in front of the biggest crowd we had ever played to (the only other show that came close was NO On 9 Benefit earlier that year at Portland Meadows with Nirvana, Helmet and Poison Idea), we donned our instruments and looked out at the sea of shouting humans. At the sound check earlier, we had been elated to hear our music so LOUD and the first chord did not disappoint- blasting out into the stadium.  Although much of this is a blur, I am fairly sure we opened with our song Say It- (which was musically inspired by the PNW band U-Men). It involved some weird tempo changes and a lot of screaming vocals, loud guitars. I think we made it through the whole song, and started another one? But there was a moment of realization at some point that the crowd was competing with us- they were shouting something and objects were flying towards us… coins, ice, dirt clods, and the word ‘Putas’ became clear (it means whores in Spanish). It didn’t really compute until I looked down at the stage and noticed a circle of spit around us- spit coming from the crowd, and past that I could see the faces and middle fingers,
even a few penises that had been flashed at us.
They were not happy, they did not like us, and they wanted us to get off the stage.
I looked at Megan, Joanna, then Marcéo in confusion- I tried to keep playing, but things started to hit me, a coin then a dirt clod, and my adrenaline was already pumping at a bionic rate. I was PISSED. Tears of rage made me stop playing and storm off the stage. Megan followed me, but I seem to remember Joanna remaining on the stage and walking back and forth picking up coins and throwing them back??? Marcéo ducked behind his cymbals. Courtney Love was watching from the side of the stage and she immediately came over and put her arm around my shoulder and got right in my face and said “That is so punk rock- Go back out there, they LOVE you!”. My head was spinning, “They do not! They hate us!”  Megan was shaking her head. “Well, you are too punk for them- You rock- you should go back out there- fuck them!” Courtney continued. I didn't want to admit defeat, and I was pretty angry, so 
I looked at Megan and she nodded, we walked back out and attempted to finish our set.
It became pretty impossible to continue playing- I mean we weren’t the Sex Pistols! We didn’t want the crowd to actively hate us.  We didn’t get through more than another song or so before I ended the performance by smashing my guitar on the stage and screaming into the mic- and the band followed my lead, leaving the stage while the guitars fed back through the huge sound system.
 Afterwards we were in shock and huddling- we had put on sweatshirts and pulled up our hoods so nobody would recognize us and start yelling at us- our sound engineer had turned her Calamity Jane shirt inside out and backwards before she walked through the crowd because she was worried about getting yelled at.
There was a long gap before Nirvana grudgingly took the stage, they were not happy about how the crowd treated us, and considered bowing out. I watched Nirvana's long-stalled set from the side of the stage;  I always loved seeing Nirvana live- so much gorgeous noise and chaos, with catchy choruses and beautiful melodies. They did a long noise jam, Kurt messed up the lyrics to songs on purpose, and they faked out the crowd several times with aborted starts to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. 
 Mostly I felt pretty numb, but seeing Nirvana mess with the crowd was complicated-
it was culture shock wrapped in rock-star-dreams turned nightmare for me
and I think the rest of the band felt similarly.
It was a bit of solace to feel that our comrades cared what happened to us, yet it confirmed 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.
There is more to the story involving staying with my vomiting sister(vodka) while our guitarist and drummer partied with Krist and Dave, having a huge hotel bill from the mini-bar, stealing a pillow,
​getting chastised by our handler for being “ugly to the crowd”, returning to Albuquerque in November with broken guitars, a broken van and broken hearts.
Our band didn’t play another show together for over 25 years.
ANYWAY….

So much more has happened but that is a moment that keeps getting revisited because of the impact my friend’s band Nirvana had on modern music and culture. And my proximity makes me a passing point of interest, but in a sort of tragic can’t look away from the train wreck kind of way.
Let’s face it, humans like tragedy.
Life as an artist becomes so much more interesting as a historical reference, and tragic death by suicide is the number one proven way to boost your career. Do I sound bitter? I am not, but I have noted this fascinating trend ever since my Women Poets seminar in college. Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson definitely did the right thing career-wise. It sucks, but if  Kurt Cobain had lived, how would he have remained relevant? I think it would have been very difficult. And if you have had early meteoric success,
​how do you come down gently? Nervous breakdowns are hard to avoid. I've definitely had my share.

 

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This is an excerpt from the book 'I Found My Friends, an oral history of Nirvana' by Nick Soulsby:
“GILLY ANN HANNER: We maybe got through one song before we realized the crowd's reaction
-it seemed possible-"might" be negative. There were things flying at us! Chunks of dirt! Ice! Coins! A lot of spit coming up on
the stage. I started taking it in. Up there you usually take in the crowd a little bit but mainly focus on what you're doing, singing, hitting the right notes, but then it was really obvious- I thought, Oh my God, they hate us! They're booing us off the stage! Throwing shit at us!
I just stopped, looked around, looked at my band mates and I think I walked over to the side- Courtney was over there.
She said, "Go back out there! They love you!"
​They clearly did not love us!
She's like, "Come on, it's punk rock, get out there!" So I went back out, started playing again, and made it partway through a song ..
My sister [Megan] and I had been on a US tour and played a lot for weird crowds, but we were completely bowled over. I can't imagine what the new members were feeling. Marcéo was hiding behind the drums trying not to get hit by stuff. Joanna was just walking around the stage ignoring it and doing a pretty good job of it too, not really reacting. But we were like, What?! They're being assholes!
They're flipping us off! Look- there's people actually pulling their pants down, taking their penises out! All kinds of stuff, it was unbelievable, all kinds of crazy shit..
.. Also, I've come from a place where there was a lot of stage diving and slam-dancing at shows and throwing things, bottles, hitting people. I'd taken to stopping the shows and saying, "Guys, you need to calm down or we're not going to play-people are getting hurt." I really wanted women to be able to come up and be in the audience without getting pummeled by some big huge punk-rocker punching people-trying to see a band when someone's elbow is hitting you in the eye, it sucks. I
I'd done that throughout the tour and the shows that year. On this scale though, I wasn't used to it.
Everyone is flipping out partly because we keep stopping -it's fueling the fire. So my band mates are like, "Don't stop playing! Just keep playing! Don't talk to them! Go, go!" I thought No, not cool, so I yelled obscenities through the microphone at the end- don't remember what I said but I was very angry, shocked. My sister and I ended up smashing our guitars on the stage and letting them feed back.
We left the stage-we might have played two and a half songs.
We went off, we're all really upset. The crowd is booing and yelling. There was a big gap . .. partially because we didn't complete the set and partly because Nirvana stalled after that; they were upset and didn't like how we'd been treated. So they stalled as long as they could. Then it was time, they had to. Courtney came and told us, "Hey, they were going to not play because of how you got treated but they're getting $250,000 for this show-they can't really not play . . " I totally understood, I didn't expect them to not play just because of us. They went up, played, Kurt was . .. he never engaged with the audience anyway, but he was real standoffish even for him during that show.”