Asshole

About this item

I went to see Eric Gaffney play at the Marigold Theater in Easthampton on March 20, 2026, and brought along this Sebadoh 7″ for him to sign. I thought he’d just jot sign it and hand it back, but it became far more personal when he also wrote “RIP Mark Sturm” on it.

What was REALLY weird was that while driving to the show, Mark had inexplicably popped into my mind. I must have known that he and Eric were close in the back of my mind, but it hadn’t clicked until Eric said told me that Mark had been his best friend when handing it back to me. The whole thing immediately pulled me back into a whole set of memories from Northampton and Amherst in the early 1990s.

I first met Mark at a squat on Kingsley Ave in Northampton in 1992. I don’t think i’d moved in yet, but i nevertheless, I hung out there a lot and was compiling memories, for better or for worse. One of them is a night when he and a “resident” named Pete were arguing about something stupid at two in the morning.

Both Mark and Pete were near genius’, so the argument consisted of one of them yelling an uncommon word and hurling a dictionary at the other so that they could find out what they had just been called. The insults were getting less and less common and I think eventually devolved into old English dialects. I can’t for the life of me remember what they were.

Through all of this, I was stuck sitting in between them, trying to keep my head away from the trajectory that the dictionary kept flying along. Eventually their argument progressed to wrestling, Mark landed a punch on Pete’s in the back, Pete yelped “ow my spleen!” and we all broke down laughing, trying to figure out how Pete could have possibly identified which internal organ got injured (of course, he was fine).

So, that’s a Mark Sturm story. I’m sure many people out there have other tales – everyone seemed to know him.

Over the next few years, I’d see Mark all the time at Classe Cafe, a restaurant in Amherst that was pretty much a home away from home for so many of us. We also worked together at Kinko’s on the overnight shift for a few months before his death in 1995: A house in Amherst went up in flames in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep. Mark was there and my understanding is that he was the first to wake up. He ran outside only, found that he was the only out there, and then went back into the house to get everyone else out. He succeeded – no one else was injured that night, but that act wound up costing him his life. When word went around Amherst the next day, everyone was in absolute shock and disbelief.

So, it was touching to hear Eric reflect about Mark entirely unprompted.

A side note about Kingsley Ave. I lived there in 1992 or so… Eric’s brother lived there before me and i’d often borrow the first couple Sebadoh albums from him. When he moved out, I moved in

Here Mark’s obituary. He’s buried in Wildwood Cemetary, right around the corner from my house.

RIP Mark Sturm

Also – obtained Lou’s signature on March 28, 2026 at the Barlow General Store.

How I got it

Eric signed for me out in Easthampton. Lou signed a short while later when i saw him in Greenfield.