Posts Tagged ‘Melvins’

Cope

Sunday, August 14th, 2022

I’m leaving for college Friday. All the finishing touches are being put on my departure, and the gravity is only now truly setting in. It’s overwhelming to think about sometimes. Not really terrifying, just overwhelming. Overwhelming in the way that thinking too much about something makes you feel, until you think too much some more and realize the workload is totally tolerable. It’s kind of annoying.

The Melvins have been the soundtrack to this pre-collegiate angst ever since I saw them over a month ago, and I assume they’ll still be there to help me through my post-pre-collegiate angst. Looking back, that show feels like it was the equivalent of stumbling into a church only to encounter a fire-and-brimstone preacher’s most imposing sermon and becoming a hardcore Christian on the spot out of fear and awe. To put it lightly, I’m hooked. It’s simple, really: I like things that go against things I don’t like, the list of which includes genre trappings, banality, the lack of a sense of humor, hypersensitivity, and stupidity. All of these things are incredibly overbearing, which makes it all the more satisfying to find a driving force of subversive defiance to those norms. Like the Melvins.

Looking at groups like DEVO and the Melvins feels like looking at a beacon calling forth all the boys and girls who are fed up with straight society and crave more than what it gives. Call me a moth to a flame, then—a calculated moth to a calculated flame, that is. I’m a freethinker, and I’m not into pledging blind allegiance. Following things mindlessly sets people up for failure. I say follow things that make you think. The Melvins make you think because one’s brain is constantly trying to decipher what the hell King Buzzo is singing whenever you listen to ‘em. Or sometimes I’ll find myself listening to a song (sometimes by the Melvins, sometimes by someone else) and questioning how their label let them release it in the first place or how it is even permitted to exist. Who green lights “Skin Horse”? Who? Seriously. This is no diss; I love that song. But on every listen, the perfection of its warped, tragic, alienating strain of insanity seems too good to be true. But it is true, and it’s concrete, and it feels very special to see.

Looking at the big picture, I don’t think that yesterday’s and today’s…what’s a good term…creative terrorists get the credit they deserve for their sheer bravery. Thanks to efforts like theirs, people like me get to hear things that tap into a very vital, rare, primal vein that satisfies many good, weird criteria. People are more pent up and frustrated than ever. And the things many of these people have always wanted to express but were too scared to, might just get belted into microphones by punk rock priests at sold out shows. Things like this encourage me to keep on marching. I wouldn’t be setting up for the real world with confidence without taking those influences with me.

Fun Times With Some Rowdy Guys

Tuesday, July 5th, 2022

My first log as a legal adult. Who would’ve thought! Yeah, I’m pretty hardcore. It’s definitely an interesting time to be going through so many rites of passage, from graduating to reaching adulthood last Sunday. It’s also pretty interesting how all these rites of passage seem to coincide with similarly wonderful concerts. I got an incredible DEVO show as a graduation party, which I’m still not quite over. This time around, it was the Melvins who brought me into adulthood on Friday, two days before my gestation completion anniversary. I wanted special for my birthday, dammit, and I ended up getting much, much more than I could have ever asked for. At the very least, I can check off my list seeing the mighty King Buzzo’s hair in person.

The concert also coincided with my first time to what was once a steel capital of the world, good ol’ Bethlehem, PA. Sounds quaint, doesn’t it? The town surrounding the venue and extending across the river itself is nice and quaint. The venue is located right by the old Bethlehem Steel plant, which was operational until, somehow, the mid-nineties. It now looms over a bustling little cultural spot, towering as a series of antiquated pagodas of rust and dead industry. (The morning after the Melvins my family checked out the self guided walking tour along the plant’s old material transport trestle, which allows for some incredible up-close action. It’s truly an incredible and fascinating sight to experience.) The venue itself also houses a movie theater and boasts an orange spiral staircase adorned with intricate blown glass art where we waited to get our tickets checked. Within the ballroom, concertgoers could’ve gotten a table at the also orange balcony looking out on the crowd and stage. The steel plant loomed behind the stage through the large glass windows and would later be illuminated in neon light when the sun set. All in all, it was very atmospheric.

I was initially positioned directly stage right, up against the security gate as I’ve gotten used to at shows that feature them, for openers Harsh Mellow (excellent name). I was impressed at their energetic, intense brand of noise rock, and I’m really excited to see what they do in the future. I had drifted back slightly and more towards the front of the stage to talk with some of my dad’s friends by the time the second band, Helms Alee, took the stage and proceeded to turn everyone’s minds to sluuudge. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if their set went on for longer than the Melvins’. I had a good view of their drummer, who was a total powerhouse in her own right and also very sweet at the merch booth before and after the show. Fun times.

And then, promptly as the headliners took the stage, I was shoved—or maybe something in my consciousness pulled me a little bit—right up against the gate, just slightly off-center from Buzz Osbourne’s microphone stand. What followed was something akin to my mind being blown—or maybe it’s more like my mind being unfolded and refolded, like origami. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure the triple threat of “Oven”, “Lovely Butterflies”, and “It’s Shoved” that opened the show flipped some sort of weird, hidden, primal switch in my brain. I feel like a reformed young woman now after having seen the Melvins. As a result of the weekend’s sonic therapy, I feel respectable and healthy urges to put myself out there more, engage myself more creatively, and try different styling techniques that would increase the volume of my hair. Well, maybe the latter is just the aftershock of getting to see Buzz’s incredible hairdo in person. I am being completely serious when I say that no photograph or video can truly replicate how absolutely incredible it is to see with one’s own eyes.

But I digress.

To put it simply, the band was relentless. Songs launched into each other with the beat of Dale Crover’s pounding, primal drums with barely any time to spare, blending the night’s sequence of events together like a syrupy sweet molotov cocktail. Yet sonic blasts of pent up punk rock fury still played ping pong with sublime, smirking moments of teasing quiet throughout the night—thanks, complex and diverse song structures. “Bob” bless their current bass player, Steve McDonald, who wore what I initially thought was an ironically awful white disco suit before realizing it was some sort of fancy kung-fu jacket accented with gold, elevated from it’s previous Halloween costume status. He was clearly having the time of his life up there, hopping around, crouching, and striking many an audacious pose throughout the night. And then there was Buzz, the one perhaps most appropriately dressed up for Halloween in July in his iconic skeleton robes. I can safely say I’ve never been more intimidated by a man than I was there in my spot in front of the vicious King Buzzo himself, and that’s a good thing. I was even too intimidated to take photos when he got probably as close to my part of the audience as he could’ve gotten as he hammered on his transparent-body guitar. I was that in awe. He and Steve thrashed surprisingly precisely around the place, making good use of the stage’s expansive floor area due to Dale’s drum kit being placed so far back. Dale emerged from behind his instrument of choice at one point to use one of his sticks as a sword in a brief fencing match against the neck of Steve’s bass, which was extremely entertaining. The same goes for Buzz’s liberal use of hand gestures during breaks in songs where he didn’t play guitar, which I will always find very, very amusing no matter who is doing it (and no matter whether or not their hands should actually be strumming those strings at that place in the song). Yes. I dare say the whole band took it to twelve.

I got more used to my surroundings as the night went on. I was marked safe from the inevitable pit the entire time, though I briefly considered joining it before remembering how lucky I was to have acquired the best view of Buzz in the house. Besides which, it was really funny glancing over periodically at the antsy, stingy looking security guy at the front of the stage, who was jerking back and forth as he watched the pit with much concern. It was pretty great to glance back at, too—imagine “Honey Bucket” tearing up such a clean, modern, composed establishment! At the beginning of the show there was some sort of country band playing on one of the complex’s outdoor stages, visible through the glass wall from my initial standing position. I wonder how those guys would’ve reacted to what went on inside. In terms of my reaction, I was mesmerized, pulverized, and totally hooked even after the band left the stage. They could’ve gone on another hour and I still would’ve been wanting more.

But hey, the band is pretty well known for their tour grind, so it’ll presumably be easy to see them again down the road. I slept contently that night knowing that.

Two days later I turned eighteen. If it were 1970 I’d be old enough to kill, but not for votin’. I’ll probably be woman enough to not be able to kill or vote at all soon if this country keeps going the way it is. 246 years this week, huh? I see so many people nowadays wondering how many years it’s got left with the way things are.

Based on their hypotheses, it’s probably less than the Melvins still have in them.

(I posted some more photos here, by the way.)