We're definitely an acquired taste

Melvins Article from Kerrang January 1992

"WE'RE DEFINATELY AN ACQUIRED TASTE"...admit weirdo slow grunge sick rock 'n' rollers the MELVINS. They are not from Seattle, but they were there long before the likes of Mudhoney (who feature one of their former members), Nirvana (whose Kurt Cobain is their number one fan), this week's cover band Pearl Jam, or any of the other crop of rising stars they have had such an influence ???. you’ll have to wait until the Reading Festival to see ‘em, but meanwhile, Mike G???? investigates the oft-overlooked innovators-cum-heroes…

DON’T BELIEVE the hype. Oh, you’ll hear members of Soundgarden, Nirvana or Mudhoney go on and on about the band that first made ‘em piss peanut butter, the Melvins… But chances are, you ain’t gonna like ‘em.

When audiences in their hometown of Seattle yelled, “Faster!” the Melvins played slower, because the only thing they give a rat’s ass about is creating the heaviest, most distorted, sickest rock ‘n’ roll possible.

And really getting on your nerves.

“We’re definitely an acquired taste,” states Buzz Osborne, the Melvins’ singer, songwriter and guitarist. He’s at home in his current San Fransisco digs, taking a few days off from the sludgemeister’s current US tour with the gods of gore, GWAR. His ulcer’s been kicking up lately, landing Buzz in the hospital and canceling a week of gigs as his stomach acids burned away at his guts. No small irony that it’s the same effect the Melvins usually have upon unwary ears.

“There’s certainly enough people out there that aren’t annoyed by it but if we can annoy the right people, all the better!” the master of the slow-burn chuckles.

YOU GET the feeling that “the right people” translates as anyone coming to see them based on all the praise slobbered upon ‘em by number one Melvins fan, sometime roadie and Nirvana mainman Kurt Cobain. Kurt’s done for the Melvins in interviews what Mick Jagger did for Robert Johnson.

“Their audience just fuckin’ hated us,” Buzz recalls of the string of East Coast dates the Melvins did with Seattle’s most tuneful tripod.

While thought of as originally hailing from ‘Sub Pop Rock City’ Seattle, the Melvins actually come from somewhere darker, gloomier and more depressing: Aberdeen, Washington (population 16,900). It’s a place 60 miles from the nearest record store ….”loggerville at the b….. rainforest full of gur…. Rednecks”.

Not exactly a rock ‘n’ roll metropolis, it was a…… to Melvins drummer, Dale Crover, their original bassist Matt Lukin (currently in Mudhoney) as well as Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Chris Novoselic. The … mutant children of Black Sabbath, the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, guys tha…..do something to su…. In a small town at A…. most Northwestern…

“We took our sha…. Beats,” the burly gu… recalls. “I was a rea… mouth, big-mouth a… little kid that never … when to shut his trap …. Picked on a lot, getting the crap pounded our of me by these big redneck f…. player, truck-driver guys. It’s just a bad place to live.

“Since we’ve left, nothing’s happened. There’s no school of little punk rockers, there’s nothing! It’s totally mutant there…

THE MELVINS played their first show in mutant-ville in March of 1984. Seattle wasn’t a flurry of activity at the time – unless you count long-forgotten punk bands like the Ramones-ish Refuzors, suburban metallers Metal Church and a latter incarnation of the Fartz that included a bass player called Duff McKagan. SubPop was only a cassette fanzine put out by label owner-to-be Buce Pavitt and there was nowhere to play. Welcome to Seattle circa 1984 – a grey, overcast dead-end.

“Seattle has been blown soooo out of proportion, “Buzz groans. “Take it from somebody that was there from the beginning. It’s a real emperor-has-no-clothes situation.

“The undiscovered bands from Seattle were like the U-men, Malfunkshun (fronted by Mother Love Bone drug casualty-to-be Andy Wood) and the Blackouts (who boasted Ministry’s future industrialists Paul Barker and Bill Reiflin). Green River were amazing too. Plus, there was a whole school of bands like us that were really influenced by Flipper and Black Flag: like Mr Epp – now Mudhoney guys – who were extremely slow, grinding, punk bands. I actually thought we were fitting in back then.”

FIVE YEARS ago, Buzz and Dale packed up and moved, hooking up with a female bassist named Lori and finding happier hunting grounds in San Francisco.

“It’s funny,” Osborne remarks, “when we go back to Seattle now, we play to a lot of people that I don’t know who were not there when we were playing there every month.

“We played for a long time to 50 people every month and left. I think we’ve definitely done our best work since we moved…”

That best work includes their “Gluey Porch Treatments’,’Ozma’ and ‘Bullhead’ albums, all masterpieces of churning ambient power. There’s also an absolutely mulching live LP, the bowel-loosening four-songer ‘Eggnog’ and a clutch of singles. The most recent was ‘Night Goat’/’Adolescent Wet Dream’ made with new bassist Joey Preston.

“Lori wasn’t comfortable being in a tour band any more because of her health,” explains Buzz. “She had cancer and had to go through a couple of operations. That was really tough, we really liked playing with her. I’ve heard she’s starting a new band called Skinhorse…”

ASK MELVINS-man Buzz about the current state of Seattle Sludge City and you can hear a definite trace of irritation.

“Big deal, I’m really sick of it. Most of those bands are really sloppy and bad. SubPop is a rep-off. So many people want to make it into something it never was. As for bands like Alice In Chains or Pearl Jam, they just don’t interest me.”

Does it bother him that the Melvins were making the heaviest noise first, teaching bands like Soundgarden a thing or two about the meaning of grunge, and the last to get any attention”

“No, because we’re the most acquired taste,” Osborne reiterates. “We’re definitely the hardest to listen to.”

Not merely the hardest to listen to but the hardest to endure. Live, the band vibrate every bone, organ and piece of cartilage in your body as Buzz staggers back and forth like an angry bull wrenching the heaviest of riffs and the most hateful distortion he can out of his Les Paul and a nine-volt battery. Dale attacks the skins with a battery of stick-splintering rhythms as Joey lays the slowest, lowest, bass tone imaginable.

Pretty or pleasant it ain’t.

Which is why the man finds it funny that the majors have come been wining and dining the Melvins:

“I think it’s really hilarious to hear these major people talkin’,’Y’know, I really like ‘Eggnog’ ‘!” Buzz quips.

“Yeah, gimme a break, fuck you, tell me another one.

Believe it or not, we’ve had serious offers from three or four majors, cash one the table, ready to sign us.”

What do they think they’re getting? Not ‘the next Nirvana’?

“Since I’ve been talkin’ to them, I think that they’re into our band just for what we’re able to do. I think it’s that these record companies don’t know what’s going on. I think for the first time ever, a band like us or Sonic Youth can be on a major label and not have anyone coerce us into writing Brady Bunch hits.

“Leave us alone, give us a reasonable, not exorbitant, budget and we can deliver good records that might even sell a coy or two. I Think that they understand that I’m not going to write song as pretty as ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’!”

Osborne chuckles: “If any of these majors are reading this, don’t worry, I’ve been listening hard to the new Nirvana record trying to figure out my new gameplan!”

THE MELVINS already have three Kiss-style solo EPs and a new album, ‘Lysol’, in the can and due through their current label, Boner, in the Autumn.

Buzz assures there’s no trace of the major label sell-out aspirations creeping into their as-the-worm-churns brew: “Wait ‘til you hear our next record, fuck! It’s a real trial to sit through!”

There’s a strange humour about the Melvins, three guys that don’t drink Aquanet or any alcohol at all. Maybe they’re just plain twisted. Look at the album covers, adorned with…

“Skulls and pretty rabbits and Christmas presents and eggnog!” Buzz exclaims madly. “We always wanted people to look at us and go ‘What the fuck is this?’ just not have any preconceptions about us.

“Look at our name, the Melvins. Just what the fuck is that? Geeks? Weirdoes? Losers?”

Right on all counts. Nevermind Nirvana. Here’s the Melvins. Chances are, you ain’t gonna like ‘em…