Gather 'Round, Children, and Hear the Story of Courtney Love's Bumbershoot Secret Show

This sums things up nicely.

There is once in a lifetime, and there is once in a lifetime. Yesterday, a small group of about two hundred Bumbershooters (lucky End listeners, some VIPs, and yes, mostly press) gathered in a tiny room upstairs in McCaw Hall to see Courtney Love give a very intimate Hole performance.

Ultimately, it took up the biggest chunk of my Bumber-day, as we all excitedly waited in line for an hour, then waited for Courtney for half an hour, and then got four songs and a whole lot of talking from Ms. Love over the next hour.  I didn't know quite what to expect, and yet it went exactly as expected.

"Do we have an African-American child in our family now?" And so it began.

Over the next scatterbrained hour, Courtney went on to mispronounce "schadenfreude," rail against the Weekly's recent cover story on her ("the most irresponsible thing I've ever seen"), and occasionally answered a question from Red, The End DJ trying to conduct a Q&A--though it did take Red asking a question about the forthcoming Kurt biopic thrice to get a semi-coherent answer.

A few choice quotes:

• On oral sex: "I give good blow."
• On Billy Corgan: "Billy's a douche."
• On Britney Spears: "Yeah, Britney's not that smart."
• On Weezer: "Rivers is a nutbag."
• On Kurt: "I remember his peen."
• The ultimate Courtney Love quote: "I don't want to get into it too much."

So yes, there was plenty of name-dropping: Madonna, Brody Dalle, Brett Ratner, Goldie Hawn, Mariah Carey, Michael Stipe.  She's upset that "Jack White still doesn't talk to me," and claimed that her two bêtes noires were Nicole Kidman getting Moulin Rouge over her "and Madge."  Le sigh.

And she couldn't not talk about some of the difficulties in her increasingly estranged relationship with her daughter, Frances.

Charles Cross was on hand, in the audience, and so there was some discussion of the Kurt film biopic, based on Cross' book. Courtney isn't so sure about Scarlett Johannson playing her (that's who it seemed like she was talking about anyways), as her boobs are too big, and she's too "va-va-voom." For Kurt, her favorite actor is James McAvoy.  No comment on the inevitable casting of Zac Efron as Kurt Cobain. (I was far too scared to ask.)

In terms of actual songs, she performed four along with her guitarist Micko, who has somehow lived with her for five years now. "Samantha" features the chorus "people like you fuck people like me."  She took requests off of the new album Nobody's Daughter, but really wanted to play "Honey" (only her second song ever about Kurt), and that is exactly what she played. Her cover of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy"--which she also played at Memorial Stadium later that day--ended with a laugh and a panty flash. She closed with a song she had just written ("Pretty Your Whole Life"), and she broke out her reading glasses for the lyrics.

Her vocals were rough and ragged, with still the occasional prettiness shining through. But dammit if Courtney isn't having a good time.  And though I left the End session feeling kinda scatterbrained myself--is that transmittable?--I wouldn't have missed my hour with Hole for the world.  Don't get me wrong: bitch crazy, but it's a good crazy, and Courtney's certainly not deserving of all the hatred she's received.  Plus, apparently she's working on a short story for the New Yorker (though "they don't know it yet"), so that's one more thing from Courtney to look forward to.