Original subtitles

I mean, I know millions of people won't like what we do.

No question of that.

I put a lot of work into what I'm doing, and if people don't appreciate it, there's

nothing I can do about it.

I'm trying to make a living doing this and remain true to what I believed in from the

beginning. And mission accomplished.

The golden takin Gatling gun signaling non-linearized.

The nature of the band.

Smash.

Oo oo oo oo oo.

What the Melvins have meant to music.

I've always joked that there should be a.

Royalty based on influence.

The fact that they get to be the Melvins and do what they want to do and pay their bills

off of it is very rare.

It's just they just have a real strong discipline.

You know how they do stuff.

They're fearless, you know, They're just do whatever the fuck they want to at any point.

And if the people are want to follow along, great.

If not, whatever, you know, they just don't care.

Thing I like about those dudes is they don't follow trends, man.

They set them.

Melvins. Do they have a peer who's their peer?

You know, kind of don't have one.

If you're a little too ahead of your time, you don't get the credit until it's due.

It's like a kind of Captain Beefheart syndrome.

Hey, the Melvins are the Andy Kaufman of heavy music.

Anyone back? Are you back there?

They have great ideas and they're willing to, you know, kind of anything goes.

And I think that's real neat.

It really comes from Buzz and Dale.

I mean, they've had several bass players, as we know, but it still sounds like the

Melvins.

The buzzing Dale thing, It's like they're like Cheech and Chong, you know, like Batman

and Robin. They're an amazing team.

And I just think there's a perfect chemistry there between those two characters.

There's some humor involved there.

They don't take themselves that seriously, but they're very confident in who they are

and what they do. They're not weird guys at all.

They're their normal, red blooded, good, honest, hard working people.

You're like a force of nature.

Not even a band. It's a force of nature.

I heard of them. It was a stupid name.

I was in a band called the Butthole Surfers, so I had no right to say anything.

At the end of the day, if you don't have a large vocabulary, you can resort to this.

The Melvins are cool.

Why learn how to write something in four over four and stick to that?

I mean, if you're if you're just hearing something naturally in a different phrasing,

you know, it's going to it's unique immediately.

I didn't have a clue what heavy was until I actually heard that band.

And I love Eddie Van Halen's guitar tone.

I think it's amazing.

But Buzz Osborne is way better.

Yeah, he's got some.

Totally different style.

Yeah, that sounds awesome.

Perfect combination or collision of Black Flag.

I really liked and Black Sabbath, who I also really liked Loud.

Tension. Electrifying.

Wins every time, no matter what.

If I go to the bathroom five times before they start.

By the third Way, halfway in, I have to pee so bad because I get so excited a little in

The man in the boat's going drowning.

Maybe in 100 years all bands will sound like the Melvins.

You want a heavy rock band?

Here we go, man.

You know.

You know, try it on for size.

I have my own ideas about how things work.

I believe in everything we do.

A lot of musicians are playing checkers.

That mother fucker is always playing chess.

First time you can't get lucky sitting on your ass, you know?

That's like there's this saying in golf.

The more I practice, the luckier I get.

You know, it's like, that's right.

You know? I agree with that wholeheartedly.

Certainly musically, you know, the more I practice, the luckier I get.

The fact that they're still doing it speaks volumes.

And there's been a consistency to what they've done.

They've never, you know.

They've changed lineups a million times.

But there it's always.

Got a quality to it.

The workers, they've got that ethic.

They're always working and always creating, and that's why I really respect them.

Melvins are a good model for anybody, any young musician that wants to get into it and

try to stay in it and survive.

I think looking to the Melvins is a great thing.

It shows how it can be done successfully and realistically and healthily and, you know,

come out unscathed at the other end.

The freedom that they kind of let you know that you have as an artist, even on a label

or whatever. Just it's your it's everything you're doing is yours to do what you will

with it. And as far as your art project goes with your friends, you know.

When you're first starting out struggling to figure out what we were going to do, I was

pretty sure about the music.

Oddly enough, like most great dictators did, right?

They came from like some border zone, you know, where they were like, nothing and

outcast.

I really don't care about that place.

It's just. It just drives me crazy even thinking about it, you know, like.

And, you know, so the idea that we were able to put together avant garde, weird band out

of their.

I just started playing the drums.

I'd probably been playing for a couple of months.

And my friend Keith Folk was a good friend of Buzz's at the time, and he knew that Buzz

was learning to play guitar, so he kind of brought us together.

I met Dillard and probably grade school.

Yeah, it would have been grade school.

Somebody had said at school, you know, Hey, Matt, Matt, Matt has a guitar, he knows how

to play guitar. So it was like.

We called him up, Mike.

Dillard's. His his parents had this little had a garage and there's like this little

room up there.

This is where the Melvins were born.

In this room right here.

Can't remember what we were playing.

I think it was just fun to put a few chords together in some kind of semblance of a song.

1983 when I met Buzz.

And Mike and Matt worked at a Taco Bell.

And he'd come in for food.

Well.

At that time. I was.

Severely influenced by things like punk rock, but also was really into things like.

Aerosmith. Um, uh, you know, Judas Priest, a lot.

Of punk rock stuff.

It certainly came from from Creem magazine.

You know, I knew.

About a bunch of that.

Stuff because we all bought it because Kiss was always on the cover, you know?

And so that's how we learned about bands like Sex Pistols and Ramones and Stooges,

Riff Rock.

Black Flag, a lot more so than Black Sabbath.

That's one friend of mine had the damaged record, and since I was joining a punk rock

band, he he's like, Here, you should have this record and gave it to me.

And I remember putting it on and just, you know.

Not hearing anything like that before.

You know, it was like somebody turned on the blender, you know, production wise, it was

much different than than any of those other any of the other heavy metal records.

You know, it's much trashier sounding and intense, you know, But hearing something that

different from the first time, it was just like, Wow, this is really weird.

But just like made some records like let me generic Flipper and black Flag and I really

liked it.

They could listen to Flipper and void and then and then put on a Neil Young record.

No problem.

You know, the big question in my mind, and I don't know if the masses know it.

Where did the Melvins come from?

Who was Melvin.

O. Mr. Melvin.

Pete Lowman. Yeah, I did.

Not know until somebody told me.

Well, they started up a group and they called them themselves.

The Melvins.

Yeah, he was the. He was the manager of the store, basically the boss of all all of his

punk kids.

The only reason they did that, I guess, was because of the fact I was constantly getting

after them.

P Yeah, thanks fucking P.

The Melvins.

They could have gone for some heavier, cooler sounding name or whatever, you know?

But they just know we're Melvins.

What a stupid fucking name for the world's heaviest band.

The Melvins just wanted a stupid looking sounding name for a bunch of stupid looking

guys. That didn't sound like Venom.

Oh, before the Melvins, we had a lot of names.

The nerve being one of them, I remember.

And oh, and the remainders with an A, but the circle around anarchy A that would be a.

Name for a couple of days.

I'd be like, Nah, that's not going to be it.

That's not going to be it.

Nothing. It was serious.

We just stuck with the Melvins because I think we played a show or two as the Melvins,

so now we're stuck with it.

I mean, even to call us like a real band by any stretch of the imagination it'd be.

It's pretty.

It's really being generous.

I didn't even know at the time until somebody had told me that they were in a singing

group.

Don't worry.

I won't.

Never. I know a man by.

They pulled all kinds of stupid shit.

We just throw the gear in the back of the van and drive up somewhere, plug in and start

jamming.

Play anywhere we could.

Yeah. And then we played in Olympia was the very first show we ever played, and that was

in the very first real show.

The Melvins were kind of a big deal there.

They're from Aberdeen, but they played Seattle a lot.

And if we weren't playing a show with Seattle, we were driving up there to go to

some other show almost every weekend, you know, just to get the hell out of Grays

Harbor. It was just it was it was just like.

We to get out of here and go go someplace where there was actually some.

Told you. I didn't know for a while that they actually had a band.

You know, they weren't like, we have a band.

And, you know, they they didn't even play the the cocktails as far as I know.

I don't remember. I don't remember seeing them after that.

Probably later in 84, I was like, Holy shit, their band is really good.

My last show with the Melvins was at a place called The Gray Door in Seattle, and it was

just it was this shithole club in down in the basement of this building.

Dillard is married to the woman that he was going out with when I met him.

Great to know.

He lives in a house. That's how far from the house you grew up in.

Not a mile and a half.

Three kids, union machinist job.

It's a different down a different path than did, you know.

I mean, even if we even if we hadn't done that, I would not have stayed there.

And the chances are he wouldn't have left.

Had a lot of other stuff on my plate.

I wasn't I wasn't my head wasn't in it.

I wasn't I probably wasn't putting forth the effort.

You're looking for a different drummer.

After Dillard, we were looking for a drummer that could play heavy metal stuff.

That's what we wanted. Yeah.

Essentially I wanted somebody to play like an Iron Maiden.

Somebody like that, you know?

Certainly Clive Burr from Iron Maiden was was a big influence.

You know, right before I joined the Melvins, I was listening to that stuff a lot.

I was more or less a heavy metal drummer getting into a punk rock.

And you guys had actually seen me play before?

Yeah, I saw him playing some horrible cover band.

Unspeakably bad.

He was in some really, really lame band that played after us, and I think I remember him

telling us that a bunch of times that like everyone else in his band, like, hated us and

like, What the fuck are these?

Comparison. Let's do it here.

Just like. I think they're kind of cool, actually.

Some of the members of the band he was in were spandex and played covers of Foreigner

and REO Speedwagon.

Definitely the appeal was that these guys are playing gigs out of town and they weren't

playing high school dances. They're playing places like Olympia and Seattle and they had

their own songs. That was the thing right there.

I mean, Krist Novoselic brought you guys over to my house.

Oh, Chris Novoselic.

Taco Bell, Employee of the month, I think.

Right.

Yeah.

I was hanging out with.

Buzz. And he's like, Well, I need a do you know any drummers?

I'm like, I know two drummers.

Um. Dale Crover and Aaron Burkhart.

The day that they came over, before they came over to my house, my mom was saying, you got

to get in a band that's going to do something.

Melvins came and asked him to join them.

And so he did, you know.

Play gigs and stop messing around with these other guys.

Chris brought them over and yeah, there you were.

Yeah. In the band.

Later on she goes, I didn't mean you had to do it today.

You could play drums, you know?

I mean, sometimes that doesn't make much difference.

I mean, if you've got some, you know, chowder head guy, I mean, it doesn't matter

how good they are, you can't stand to be around them.

I saw him in, like, a shed big barn somewhere outside the city.

And I don't know where it was, but it was.

They really stuck with me and I thought they were amazing.

And then Deep six record, make it a.

Compilation, you know, bring some of our some other bands who were kind of into onto that

He goes, Yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah we should get like malfunction on it.

The U-men. He goes, Yeah, I was thinking of the Melvins and and he goes, that those five

bands, I think they might have some interest in doing five bands.

So we just run it out to six, three bands on each side.

They were bringing in bands for weekend little sessions, you know, a couple of hours

you'd be in and out. You didn't see any other bands or anything, and then the record

came out and so we were given our copies and went home to play it, and they just blew me

away on that record because I thought we were going to like kind of be a little

heavier than anyone else on the record, and that would be good for the band.

It's the first time we'd been on a record and this might be a good step for us.

And then the Melvins crushed us.

No one gave a shit.

Play some CCR.

That's all they wanted to hear.

They're all dressed up. Like in Star Trek films.

Know he took a different color shirt and started playing and we were just kind of

standing there with our mouths open and it sounded great.

It was really loud, but the sound was amazing and it was so kind of it was so aggro

that. Anyone that didn't completely get it, love it left.

And so all of a sudden you're like three songs into it, our mouths agape.

We kind of looked around and there was about a two thirds less people in the room.

But that's how it was early on.

You know, people stayed at the band like us at all.

And we thought.

Awesome. That's amazing.

Kind of ice is cleared out, except for me and about six people.

So I knew they were on to something because I was like, this is this is the future of

music.

It is very sophisticated music.

And so it was like deep and then it was really heavy.

And and it was, it was tight.

And that had a big influence on Nirvana when we started to play.

Right before they recorded the record.

I saw them play a bunch of times and they played.

They played the album kind of front to back.

That to me is when the whole scene finally came together.

That set that you guys did.

That's when.

Everybody just went.

Now we have some.

Wow.

You guys were the band that showed.

Boom! We have something.

That solidified how great they.

Were. After that, there was sort of a staple, in a sense, kind of looked up to them like

there was there were only a couple bands at that point.

When those guys started doing the slow plodding thing.

No one was fucking doing that.

Not even fucking close.

I think we played.

With Clown Alley.

And 85 at this warehouse.

A guy that we met at that show was Victor.

Victor Hayden, who.

Was this older guy, kind of artist guy hanging around.

And he liked the band.

Anyway, he after.

Not long after that, decided that he was going to start a record label and got Ahold

of us. And one of his partners was actually Mark Deutrom from Clown Alley.

Yeah. I remember when my time in the band came to an end.

It was right after we recorded that.

First album, the Gluey Porch Treatments.

Certainly Buzz.

And Matt were growing apart.

As far as writing songs.

Yeah, no, I didn't have a lot of input but seemed to have a handle on it and.

I knew what he wanted and I'm like, I don't know what he wants.

I'll just play what he shows me to play.

Right before we recorded it, he was just not having an easy go.

With what we were doing. But then Matt Lowrie, who was playing bass in a band called

Clown Alley.

And they started hanging out.

And next thing I know, Buzz wanted to move to San Francisco.

So Buzz was starting to date.

Lori and he was starting to go down to San Francisco a lot more and hang out there and

pretty much decided that.

People are like, I'm getting out of the music business.

I'm just moving down there to be with Laurie.

I'm not playing music anymore, blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, okay, whatever.

There's a lot of little personal issues about him that I just couldn't deal with.

I think I told him like, well, I don't really have.

Any reason to stick around here.

And I think that.

He thought that the move to San Francisco and started giving.

I was like, Why?

So they move on down there and then lo and behold, within a month they're already

playing shows, the Melvins, Dale living down there in their house.

And I was like, Well, that's kind of the opposite of what Buzz told me.

They got kind of talked him into like, well.

It's two of us. Why do we need to change the name Melvins?

Break up. That we hear a little bit later that, well, Dale and Buzz moved to San

Francisco. Why there?

What are they going to do music anymore?

Apparently, yes.

What are they going to call it?

The Melvins.

I trying to think? When Buzz moved, he probably moved down fall of 87 and then I

moved right at the beginning of 88.

He was moving to San Francisco.

He was supposed to pack up his stuff so that it wasn't all of the bedroom, and instead he

went off and recorded with Kurt.

November, December of 87.

I started playing with Nirvana guys.

And we went up to Reciprocal.

With Jack Endino.

It was myself and Dale.

Concur. And then Jack and we recorded that this demo.

They'd asked me to join, but I'm like.

Well, I think I'm going to move to San Francisco.

Dale was destined to be a Melvin.

And we knew that.

Kurt was Kurt was actually the last guy.

Last friend in Aberdeen.

That I think. Was really my friend.

You know who? He was there when I left.

But at that point, we really didn't have much of an audience.

We we couldn't get a show in San Francisco.

We shouldn't have couldn't get one in LA, you know, not for a long time after that.

But yeah, even even in San Francisco, I mean, we basically were starting over.

He started completely from scratch.

For years they played and people.

Didn't really show up.

And eventually they just they just made themselves a crowd because they were so

fucking good. When I got to the Bay Area, I.

Got to re-education.

And the Melvins was probably the.

First part of that re-education.

Well, it wasn't so much that they played slow, it was how they played it, you know.

Because it was slow.

But there was so much action.

They were into tone.

You could tell. And it was like it was part of the whole thing.

And God just made it different and unique.

Get crushed. My childhood, you know?

It made my guitar tone do this.

Like, you know, it was inspiring.

I think they introduced a lot of different bands like this is exactly how powerful you

can make music with just a three piece.

Was it weird to have Shirley Temple's daughter in our band?

That's really weird.

It would have been weirder that Shirley Temple in the band as well.

Like.

You know, I thought they were great.

And, you know, I was like, Well, what do you think about playing with her?

I'm like, Sure, let's give it a shot.

You know.

We.

Had been in San Francisco for a while and we were starting to get gigs.

We played this place called Covered Wagon in San Francisco a lot.

I saw them live in San Francisco and, you know, they were great.

And we were looking for a label.

We'd been looking for a while.

We sent we sent packages to a bunch of different places.

We covered wagons and was just.

We talk about doing a record.

I remember he showed up to the gig.

You might be interested in signing that band.

He's like.

Well, yeah, I'm going to see you guys first.

But typical.

Tommy's not. He never seems really excited about something, you know?

So it was kind of hard to read at first.

Maybe he's not interested.

And then after he saw his head, he's like.

Yeah, then I can do it.

Okay, great.

And they wanted to have enough.

Money to record it in a nice studio and.

And that's how we did Ozma.

I would say it's just like that's to me, that's one of the perfect records in the

world. And that's I put that up there with.

Back in black or static Volume four.

That's we're on Boehner and selling a little bit of records He paid us and paid us fair

and and with that and then touring right around the time of of like.

Especially Bullhead.

That's when things really started to kick in.

You know, it was also when all the other Seattle stuff was starting to take off, but

we were able to.

Tour and make enough money off of records that we were able to quit our jobs.

First tour. She couldn't do it because she had some health issues.

And so that's when we asked Tom if he wanted to do it.

He said, Sure. And I think we had him learn our set.

We practiced three times and played a show.

He was really good.

I mean, he was already familiar with them with the music since he put out our records.

But he was he was he's one of those guys that could just pick stuff.

Quickly before I went on the.

First tour with them, I think they had already.

Recorded. Oh.

I knew we were playing those songs.

Bullhead was great with Boris.

That song Boris that was another song.

I was like, Whoa, this is like there's just stretching it, making it slower and heavier.

And no one was really doing that, that those days.

Not with like a punk influence, you know what I mean?

There's like, maybe there was like Saint Vitus and Pentagram and Trouble and the

Obsessed and and those bands were awesome, but they all kind of had this sort of metal

thing happening.

Following the mokuren to Bullhead.

My. Bokurano. Random Balsis.

You did a couple of tours with us.

He did that one.

And then I think Lori was back in and we did a we did a tour of our first European tour.

Pretty soon after that, they started working on.

As with Lori.

We wanted it to come out.

We wanted to call eggnog and have a whole Christmas themed party.

We wanted it to be released.

It's going to turn out an honor.

God, By the time we got released, it was more like September or something, so.

This really is.

The first one I remember really grabbing me.

Was a eggnog, and I remember thinking that it seemed more.

Metal than I was used to.

Listening to, which is a weird thing in retrospect.

I remember liking it a lot, especially those high.

Vocals that Buzz does on that record are pretty great.

And I remember, in fact, I remember going to a Kaos rehearsal and saying, Wow, you should

hear that new Melvyn's It's pretty cool.

And that's the person I remember really hitting me the.

Way in a way that I understood.

We knew Joe.

Through trying to think how we knew him exactly.

Probably through the Nirvana guys, probably through Kurt.

When we were thinking of bass players, we were just like.

What about him? You know, he might be good.

He knows our stuff really well.

He's a fan. And I think we actually called the Nirvana guys to say, Hey, we're looking

for Joe. We want him to we want him to join our band.

And they ran out and found him and told him to call us.

Sometime in 92.

They started on the three solo EPS after Joe joined.

I think we'd already had the ideas to do solo records by the time we got him in the band.

And he was a bit confused by the solo record thing.

Just. I mean, it was a weird idea.

Well, the Melvins decided to do their solo records, and it looked very similar to his

Kiss solo albums that came out that everybody lambasted and which still went

platinum anyway.

It said something a lot about the band, which is at the end of the day when you go to

your grave.

Because we're all going to get our turn.

You can't do the.

I wish I would've. Could've, should've.

They live life in the here and the now.

Joe. I remember him saying that he felt like it was kind of like a homework assignment.

And which I was.

I was I was kind of like, really, you know, I'm really excited about this, you know, And

you feel like it's more of a chore, but fine.

I mean, you know, he did his and his came out good.

A lot of people really like his a lot.

So. And I think that that eventually led him to realize that he could do it by himself,

you know, which is what he did after we after we kicked him out of the band.

I basically was working at Razor's Edge and they were sort of one of the bands that, you

know, was a regular there.

We went in and did the Night Goat image there.

And Jonathan.

I can't remember what happened, but he didn't show up.

And so that's when Billy Anderson was there and he was the second engineer at Razor's

Edge. And and so we just since Jonathan didn't show up, we worked with him.

I knew them from being around the studio and, you know, seeing them live.

I worked at.

The Kennel Club at the time and they played there a lot.

And. Um.

A super fan. Like I loved those guys.

And then I ended up recording all of the.

Vocals on Lysol.

Is well known.

Warner LAX's the well known.

Sound of that record is huge, you know.

So that's like one of their biggest sounding records.

And I know they didn't print titles for that, but when I heard the titles for those

songs, I was like, It's like you guys are cool because they're just hilarious.

Hung bunny. The Roman dog bird.

Was mentioned before the record Lysol.

That's a.

That's a very important.

Record for me personally and for, you know, influencing son.

And then the whole thing with Lysol, I guess Lysol gave them a cease and desist or

threatened to sue them, the company Lysol.

And so they had to Boehner had to go back and put like black stickers over where it

said Lysol, First time I heard.

Melvins, Oh, this is the this is the Melvins sound.

They're not trying to copy something that's really great.

Like, I can't say that's true for me at all.

When I first heard Nirvana, I was just like.

Okay. That's not new.

You know, when I came out here, you just like immediately was very dismissive of any

sort of post. Alvin.

Sammy. Of course, I can.

Barely enjoy Nirvana.

But first, Nirvana record.

Obviously very, very Deep Fluids by the Melvins.

Well, we certainly have created our own cottage industry, that's for sure.

Entrepreneurs to create something out of nothing, you know?

Essentially, I think that's what it is.

This relationship with Tom Hazelmyer is perfect.

He's he's a brilliant.

Businessman and he likes doing what he's doing.

And he.

You know.

They've given up on the music business model because it doesn't work.

If it ever worked, it doesn't work now.

I got this idea that not everybody in the world is going to be satisfied with an MP3.

I want something that, you know, they're going to want something that's more tangible.

I'm trying to do this thing with art meets records.

I don't want to do a record label the way I did it before, which was like trying to take

it on on an independent level and do exactly what Indies do, get a distribution, try

promotions, blah, blah, blah.

It's like, I just want to make fucking art and I want to make records because I love

both of those things.

And he was like, Fuck yeah, let's do it.

A lot of what we're doing is based on how the vinyl toy industry works.

The collectible vinyl toy industry, which I love, I love all that stuff.

We're only able to make 500 of these when we've got three months to get the job done.

That's what we can handle.

That's what we can actually physically make physically ship out and get done.

So that's what we're going to do.

Will your vinyl so expensive?

I'm not making it for people who can't afford it.

You know, if you want the music, it's online somewhere for free.

I'm sure you can find it.

That's the most important thing, you know?

But you're always going to have somebody who complains about something, and I just can't

listen to that kind of stuff.

You know, I mean, the music industry is such now that if you want something cool, you're

going to have to pay for it.

You know, if you're interested in the music, you can probably get that for nothing.

There's never been a time in history when that's been the case and now it is.

It's easier now for people to hear any kind of music they want to and they still bitch.

So it's like we're making stuff that's in the moment.

You can only get this here if you were here, you know you can't have everything.

Fuck you, kid.

You know, change or die like the dinosaur.

That's fine with me.

I'm up for the challenge, you know?

Um, so you have to kind of think of new things to do.

We are able to do 30 fucking things because it's a small run.

It's done and we're moving on.

And that's the shit that keeps it fresh and exciting.

As a musician or as somebody who produces art or releases records, that's what I'm in

it for. I like making shit.

I don't want to make something and then spend two years pimping that thing I made.

I want to make it sell out and move the fuck on.

Just take it all the way back to square one and go backwards to where, you know, we're

hand making a lot of stuff and selling it.

At a higher price than you would normally sell it and not selling it to any stores.

Art Edition. Small run thing for a tour with Night court with Buzzi's idea.

You'd have to ask him. I don't.

I don't even know.

It's like he said, like I want to redo night court.

Sounds good to me.

I'd love to redo the art.

You know the original artist, Harvey Stafford.

I'm a fucking.

Artist. Great guy.

Night, girls.

My favorite song of all time.

And I like the single version.

Especially that weird machine.

Whatever that is. This is up there with fucking anything Black.

Sabbath ever did. Or.

Fuck that. This is up there with the fucking Stones or Beatles.

You know, this is one of those moments where you get goosebumps and you can feel it.

You know that intro?

You're like, What the fuck? You know, That song was fucking monstrous.

And it was a just world.

That would have been a top ten hit.

Listen that song a thousand times, but it still had to have to call.

It's a fucking song about.

I mean, the way I listen to music, I don't give a shit what they intended.

I just take it my own way.

So it's like, what was that about?

Not junkies. Heroin.

All right. I'm going to do art based on junkies and heroin and goats.

Got.

Being able to. Redo a classic.

Sure.

Fucking. I'm all over.

It.

There's enough people out there who appreciate this stuff on a small level, and

that's good enough.

You know, I'm very satisfied with that.

Could be more hands on.

It couldn't be more grassroots.

It's interesting, Buzz being married to Mackey and.

The way that their sensibility became.

More refined, graphically sophisticated, yet still had that, um, sort of quirky sense of

humor to it.

The combination of the two of them is really powerful.

And I had no idea until later that Mackey designed that social distortion, the skeleton

with a martini glass.

I remember making a homemade stencil of that back in the 80s I think.

Mackey What Mackey is doing is like this very, like beautiful, sort of polished, kind

of like it's almost like fine art, you know?

And then it's like the Melvins.

So it kind of it kind of goes perfectly hand in hand in a way, because you don't expect it

if you like. If you know the Melvins, then you know that that's funny, kind of, you

know, And so.

You know, like a little cute dog on the cover and stuff.

So I bought that book and it was really awesome.

Like, you know, just just 20 years of the Melvins, Art Mackey and all her art or

whatever.

That's a cool story.

Yeah, lots of cool stories and just great live photos.

Her aesthetic for.

The Melvins is.

Dead on.

Also, like all the little weird special packaging things they do, like reissue

something with like letter press covers or silkscreen covers or whatever it is.

More hands.

On. You can make stuff, the better it is.

Because in this in this Internet download world, you know.

Don't you think that's how the CD covers all come out, put these together and then I think

they're totally one of a kind, you know, really weird art, you know?

And then that's a normal one.

Then you still have to sit there and glue it all.

Turn it into a CD.

Cd package. It's pretty crazy.

Well, she got the print or the press first.

And we kind of went from there.

Once you decide to do that, I mean, I was like, you're going to get a what?

You know, a giant printing press and figure out how to do it all and basically remodel

the whole thing. She did it all herself, you know, And I was just like, okay, go ahead.

Then we realized, you know, well, we can do printing, you know, at our house and not have

to have, you know, ship it out to somebody and just do it all hands on.

I mean, all this stuff has our fingerprints on it, you know?

I mean, it's it's couldn't be more homespun, you know, which I'm kind of into.

I mean, it's not it's not for millions of people.

It's for a few people and for the few people that really appreciate it.

It's very special.

You know, for the people who don't care, they never will care.

People who care, it's a big deal, you know?

I don't want a big warehouse.

I don't want to run a warehouse and have a warehouse full of albums.

That's not me, you know?

I don't want to deal with record stores and distributors.

I want to have that happen.

So you put things out on a wide variety and a wide variety of ways on a small scale.

We also will end up putting most of it out on ipecac in a regular way, you know, so you

can have it both ways.

You can and and people still pitch so, you know, you can't win.

They're basically a DIY band, a well known DIY band, but they do things whether it's

releasing records, just, you know, everything they do is on their terms.

One of the reasons I first started stenciling and screen printing on old wallpaper was

because of the Melvins bull head cover.

I would go and I would buy discontinued rolls of wallpaper from this hardware store

in Providence. It just had backstop $0.50 a roll because it was all this really lame 70s,

kitschy fruit and stuff on, you know, flowers and fruit.

And then I would do an Andre devil head over it, something where the, you know, the

imagery I was putting on there totally contradicted the background.

And that was really inspired by the Melvins.

One of the guys from Caroline told Tom Flynn that you guys would sell a lot more records

if your record covers didn't look.

Like they do some fruity looking.

Some tablecloth fruit bowl for a record cover.

Give him.

A big speech about how we were screwing everything up.

You know? Yeah, he's probably selling canoes now or something.

You know, I think Buzz.

Is kind of a something, you know, like a something of a fetishist about collecting

things and about obsession, his own obsessions.

And that's manifested through Melvins output.

Well, it goes from our hands to the to the people that buy them.

That's it, you know.

So it's a but it's a lot of work.

Punk rock spoke to me in a much.

More intimate way, and I like that more.

It's more hands on, which was transferred into what we're doing now.

I mean, you know, I mean. You know, if people want to argue with me about the price

of stuff, then it's time for me to raise the price, not lower it, you know, because that

nothing pisses me off more than somebody telling me what I'm doing wrong.

You know.

As a label.

Look at musicians as my clients.

He's the best fucking client, you know, He trusts me implicitly.

What I'm going to crank out or think of and vice versa.

And I really respect their business model.

They've got a good thing going on.

And I think Melvins fans are really lucky.

Around that time think Nirvana had come out.

So it was a big. You know, all that madness started.

So it's obvious they could get a big deal And.

The.

You're on the verge of signing with Atlantic Records.

I knew if we signed that contract with him on there, I would regret it.

Just being able to get along with somebody, you know on tour is hard enough.

I mean, if you're in a bad mood, that puts everybody else into a bad mood.

Um, and Joe was really moody.

So that was, that was the main thing, just being able to get along with somebody.

It was just Buzz and myself on the deal.

So we played with Lori for a little bit.

The tour that we did with her in Europe that time would have been.

Lysol would have been out already, but we did.

Ready? I'm trying to think when that was.

Nirvana blew it up for everybody, like they blew the doors wide open as far as.

Bands, you know, that wouldn't have been recognized.

And Kurt spoke openly about how awesome the Melvins were, and.

They're about to just drop their album.

September of 91.

I got my gig there.

And their album just came out.

Three months later. They were the biggest.

Thing in the world.

What was it like? Because the Stones and.

Led Zeppelin were there? Aretha Franklin.

Atlantic wasn't a destination, you know, a lecture.

It was cool and Geffen was cool, but we weren't cool.

Atlantic was not cool.

So when we signed the Melvins, we got pretty cool for a minute, you know?

I mean, really, when we got signed.

I think the only people that didn't think it was going to work with me and Dale, you know,

we never had any ideas.

I never really had any ideas.

We were going to sell millions of records with, you know.

No.

Danny Goldberg always thought that the Melvins would be our our Sonic Youth.

Sonic Youth got signed by Geffen Records.

And then. That allowed Cole and Nevada to sign to the label because they felt good

about going to a label that already had Sonic Youth on it.

We felt like the Melvins were going to be an attraction band.

And to an extent they were.

Mean, also told us basically we would go over there and be Soundgarden Junior, you know.

And she didn't have much interest in.

Capital had the Butthole Surfers and, you know, I mean, all kinds of bands were being

signed that never, ever would have been signed, basically because Nirvana hit.

It was like throwing pasta at the wall, boiled pasta and see if it sticks.

Basically said to us, You guys are an already established band.

We like what you do.

And we even went in there and played them myself.

What do you think it is? This is what we're putting out next before we sign into this

deal.

Okay, Sounds great.

They walked in to the show and the Melvins were playing with their back to the audience.

And the crowd was going absolutely bananas, hating them, hating them, calling them names,

throwing shit at the stage.

It was like out of a vaudeville show.

It was crazy.

And then they just walked off the stage and they knew I was coming to see them.

And we went backstage and Buzz came up to me, You still want to sign me?

Everybody was shocked.

And it was like, you know, pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

It was like a magic trick, which is why he called the album Houdini.

It's like it's a magic trick.

We got signed to a major label and yeah, Kurt agreed to produce it or, you know, put

his name on it anyway, which definitely helped.

We started recording Houdini at Razors.

Edge and did maybe 3.

Or 4 songs recorded and mixed.

The day that we were supposed to start, there was a power outage in the entire

neighbourhood. And of course, you know, Kurt and Buzz were hours late, but they showed up

and we were, you know, me and Jonathan and I think Dale were sitting in a dark room just

waiting for the power to come back on.

And the whole day was awash like everybody had to go home.

I played bass, actually, because Laurie, by then, Laurie was out of the picture after

Buzz got back from LA. Laurie Black was out of the picture, and so there was no bass

player. Buzz played on some of it and I played on tight and haghe.

Um. Uh, because I have been playing bass at a couple of shows too, at the new music

seminar. I played bass at two live shows.

So it just made sense.

And it was easier to just have somebody who was around rather than teach somebody new, I

guess.

Everybody could play based on that.

Flea.

Flea play. Yeah.

Bootsy Collins.

Yeah.

We brought in Garth Richardson, who was a veteran of like, hair metal bands and stuff.

Atlantic suggested this guy Garth.

We liked him. I was really hesitant to work with somebody like that.

He was a character like Buzz and him and Buzz got along great.

He came in right at the end.

Laurie was out, Cobain was out.

We only needed like 3 or 4 more songs to finish the record.

And so it was like the last recording session.

And we picked this studio in San Francisco, bigger studio, and Garth was great.

He came in and brought like a whole PA system, and his philosophy of recording was,

We're going to make it like you guys play live.

You know, you'll be more comfortable that way.

We're going to have a big PA system in here.

We'll mike the drums, we'll mic the bass, mic the guitars and then Mike the PA that

way. And then you won't have to wear a headphones.

You can have wedges behind you to record and it'll be great.

And that was, that was awesome.

You know, he wasn't worried about things bleeding or having everything isolated and

having it perfect.

I mean, you know, rock n roll records.

Time is a big one.

And the football.

Me They could have watered their music down for Atlantic and made a real run at making

just a normal, you know, commercial hard rock record.

But those records, those three records they did for Atlantic are three of my favorites.

They're they'll they're Melvins records.

I mean, they're true to to who they are and what they are.

Houdini had only been out for less way less than a year when we're like, we want to go in

the studio and record right away again.

And. That.

And we wanted to do it with Garth.

Which is the first time we actually played with somebody in the band who contributed

something musically to the band.

Before that, when Joe was in the band, Mark was doing sound for us and.

I mean, we've always had people in the band that we've known and friends of ours and,

and, you know, we just decided like, Oh.

He's been on tour with us and and knows the band well, has produced our records, so.

We thought that he might be a good person to play bass.

Mark is very self-assured.

That's I think that's the one thing that comes across the strongest with Mark is he's

very. Some might call it cocky, some might call it self-assured, but he definitely knows

what he likes or what he wants.

I always thought Mark was a talented guy and he never had anybody quite like him before,

but he also played guitar.

Mark Definitely, you know.

Did more. Fills and and played you know, a lot of counterparts and more accompanying

parts and not necessarily the same thing.

So that was cool.

That was definitely cool.

Yeah, Mark actually had some songs.

I mean, he was a songwriter in Clown Alley, so it makes sense.

We just let him do whatever he wanted, Always wanted to let people do whatever they wanted.

And Garth hooked it up to where we could go to A&M Studios and record on their kind of

downtime. And his second engineer was Joe Breezy.

It encouraged, encouraged creativity, which I mean, that's like an engineer's dream, man.

We wanted to do stuff that was different and weird and play with the studio.

That's one of our weirdest.

Records, I think.

It was a fucking cool record.

We got it done fast. We got it done fairly cheap and man, it was some great songs on

there. So what are you going to say to that?

Really?

We were touring with the Melvins, and I believe I came up with the brilliant idea to

dress as buzz for Halloween.

And I was like, Why don't we all dress as the Melvins?

I was buzzed.

D was Dale and Jennifer was Mark.

Susie from our band ended up being the stoner, which you get bored on the road.

So you start to, you know especially we would do hijinx things all the time.

She'd maybe give me a tiny bit more.

Sure.

No shit.

That's cool. Who always dealing with the idea that the money we were going to get was all

we were ever going to get. You know, I'm sure that stands to this day, you know?

Yeah. Um.

And so when they want to do a stag record, I couldn't believe it.

For stag.

We went and did.

We were going to do a few different studios.

Stag was definitely a different record.

We attracted a smaller studio.

So it wasn't as an expensive record as stoner witch, but it was still, you know, we're

still recording pretty nice places.

We did like months and months and months of touring.

Open for a helmet for a long time.

Went to Europe for a big tour.

And then came back.

And we wanted to do another record.

And, you know, by that time, everybody that was at Atlantic when we signed were all gone.

You see how it works Is that like somebody down in like royalties looks over the

statement and goes, You know what, this band is like $3 million in the red.

I mean, like, what are we doing?

We got to get rid of these guys.

Here's this band that you know.

Had a lot of potential and then they were just cut short because of some bean counter

at a label rather.

Than going, okay, this band's a weird band, you know, and they've got their own audience

and already.

What can we do differently?

They said they didn't think that way at all.

In the 70s, they would develop bands and give them a chance to put out two three records.

And then in the 90s it was just brutal.

Like you kind of got to have that one hit right away or you're not getting at it on the

radio or whatever.

Then they just drop you, they shelve you.

So. We knew we were done.

And we went, we're like, We're going to record this record anyway.

We're going to do it with Joe and we're going to do it really quick.

Those fuckers are partial, man.

I've never seen a band say, Yeah, we're going to start at noon and show up at 1159.

Plug in. Okay, I'm ready.

And it's like noon.

I think that we already had that record done when we were talking to Atlantic about our

next record. You'll always have.

A home here to make whatever kind of records you.

Want. They wanted us to wait and hold off.

Let them think about it for a while and decide whether or not they wanted to do a

fourth record.

We don't do special packaging for bands that haven't gone gold.

Ready? Hit the button like, All right, I'm going to press it, but I got to get the word

because he's The Atlantic's being all weird.

You should consider yourself lucky.

Any other major label would have dropped you by now.

Right?

Well, we don't we don't want to sit around and wait.

We want to work. You know, just tell us now if you want to do another one or do you not.

And then they decided, okay, now we don't want to do another one.

At least your.

Records are in the stores.

You know, that record was ready to rock the second they said, Yeah, get the fuck out of

here. Boom, We're running with honky and going, You know.

The people here in radio just don't like your.

Band. The Melvins were in a place where they could always go back to their independent

roots. They always had friends at labels.

Well, we won't do a thing.

Unless the single moves that could have been Atlantic.

But you know, they were too busy doing Hootie and the Blowfish or fucking whatever.

Um, so good for me.

You know, you dipshits in New York don't know shit.

Fucking rubes in Minneapolis will fucking jump right on it.

And as soon as we were dropped, we then toured for one a.

Year after that. Yeah.

So after we were dropped with a new album out because I knew that we didn't want people to

think that we were finished.

We saw a lot.

Of bands that were kind of in the same situation.

They were on a major label that'll just support them special treatment.

Touring wise, we'd get a bunch of money from the label to tour in a bus and things like

that, and then once they got dropped, they didn't have that anymore.

They they felt like they couldn't go back to an independent and do things how they did

before. So they just break up, you know.

And we were we were very conscious like, we're not going to do that.

You know, there's no reason to.

We were making money and doing fine before we were on a major label.

If this whole thing doesn't work out, we'll just go back to doing things how we did

before. So what we did.

You didn't have a lot of supporters.

And as far as that's concerned and.

You know, now it's to the point where as long as I keep my feet moving and working,

it'll work.

I got a call from Buzz.

He's like. I think I want to kick Mike out of the band, which I didn't think would

happen. You know, like really, those guys are really pretty close.

Is not that I don't want to do.

This. I said, I don't.

Want to do it with him.

All of a sudden we got an offer to open up for Tool and do a few shows around Los

Angeles. And we're like, okay, we knew we didn't want to play with him.

And we thought of G getting G, the bass player from The Obsessed, to fill in.

All we thought of what to do.

And so. We hadn't.

Had the chance to talk with Mark about anything yet, and we went ahead and confirmed

these shows.

And then all of a sudden Mark shows up in town without telling us, saying he was here

to do our solo. His solo record.

Like, Oh, and he wanted to do some stuff while while he was here with us.

Not making plans or anything.

I'm like, Well.

Actually. We don't want to play with you anymore.

Play with somebody else and we got some shows booked, so he obviously freaked out

about it.

So.

But, you know. Breaking up is hard to do.

I had left alternative tentacles and I was managing Mike Patton and Mr.

Bungle and all Mike's other band.

I had 3 or 4 records that had no home that I didn't want to sell to any other label.

Didn't feel comfortable with it.

So me and Greg, my partner at Ipecac, were like, Start a label.

Fuck it. I just contacted some distribution people and we kind of set it up to where we

would put Fantomas out ourselves.

And then I told Buzz, I told all the guys in Fantomas, Here's how we're going to do it.

We're just going to do it ourselves.

And Buzz was like, Oh, really interesting.

What are you doing for distribution?

I was like, Well, we've got Caroline in the US, we've got Southern in Europe, we've got

shock in Australia, so we've got the world kind of covered.

So we're going to see how it goes.

So because the Melvins don't have a home, what really made it the label sort of take

shape was when.

We told Buzz.

Hey, we may be starting this label.

He's like, Hey, I got four records.

You can have it. Bam!

Oh my God. You know, here we go.

We weren't even really thinking at that time of being a real record label.

We were kind of just going to be an outlet for Mike's All Mike's projects.

It was like, if we have the Melvins, we're going to be a real record label.

So the Melvins, in a sense, became the backbone.

You know besides my stuff of the of the late we're trying to decide on what to call our

label and it was buzz that suggested ipecac.

And at the time I didn't know what it was.

Mike knew what it was and was like, Oh yeah, that's great.

You know, it makes people sick, just like our music.

Buzz came out to Minneapolis and produced was actually turned out to be the Last Cows

record. But we didn't know that at the time.

And he we just he and I really worked well together.

Or at least I thought so.

Yeah, Kevin played really weird and I liked that a lot.

I always liked the cows.

I thought they were great. Certainly one of the most underrated bands.

Underappreciated, Really?

They were great. They were really great live.

I liked their records.

Yeah. And I didn't really want to play with somebody that was like in a rock school 101

type of, you know. I never have.

Really.

The way I've always played is I just played what I wrote.

I never learned anyone else's stuff.

We may have to describe.

Weird to Kevin.

It was already there.

He called me not long after that and said, Hey, I've got this idea.

I don't know how you feel about it.

And he asked me and I was like, I was pretty excited.

But at the same time I was a little bit worried because I wasn't sure I could do it.

It was such a different style of music.

He had a lot of confidence issues in his own ability to do stuff which I never could

understand because I never thought I never thought I never had any doubt that he could

do stuff. He had doubt.

He called me and dragged me into it.

I remember from the call from Buzz, where he was like, How would you like to help us try

to commit career suicide?

I was like, Oh, that sounds good.

Count us in. What do you got in mind?

He was like, Well, I'd like to release a record every two months, a trilogy.

So within six months the whole trilogy is out.

Bootlicker crybaby.

Help me, Megan, the maggot.

Smells like that. It's three.

And he knew how stupid that sounded.

Because you don't do that.

The industry standards, you don't put a record out every two months.

And we were like, maybe a little bit too many is like, This is what I want to do.

But I said, Yeah, it sounds great.

And if anyone was going to do it, why wouldn't it be the Melvins?

Having lived in New York.

And all that stuff written before he joined the.

San Francisco Buzz lived in LA, and Buzz had all these demos that he sent us, so I guess

he had a chance to listen to that stuff, but we didn't really have much time to rehearse

it.

And then he sent me the demo for.

The bootlicker. And I liked it so much that I said, I really want to be on this record.

And that really helped push me into.

Making it work. So he just called me on the phone, really started sending me tapes,

telling me lists of songs to learn, stuff like that.

Yeah. Come in and we'll start working on this.

And I won't take long.

And we're not worried.

It didn't take long. We did three records back to back.

With no streetlights.

Simlife, for instance.

We.

The other thing is those guys were really flexible about they wanted my they wanted me

in there. They didn't have they didn't want me to sound the way that other bass players

sounded. They asked me to do it because they liked what I did.

So there was a meeting of styles.

It totally worked out great because I played with several different drummers and often

it's hard for me to find that niche to lock in.

And I never had that trouble with Dale, you know, the feeling was there, so.

It was a different way of playing in the song.

Structures were very different, but I didn't really have to shift styles.

I just had to learn their songs, which was great.

It was a real relief to me.

That was fun. That whole thing was great and we all worked together really great and had a

great time. Yeah.

Really fun making those records.

Yeah.

You put a gun to my head, I'd probably say the favorite Melvins record I was on was

Bootlicker.

They had said that they were going to be releasing three records and that whatever

year that was the maggot, the crybaby and the bootlicker.

And and the Crybaby was going to be collaborations with other other bands.

Sort of other vocalists, but also other bands and asked if I'd like to do that, and I

said I would love to.

I was like, Who should we get?

I just remember making our dream list of, okay, here's who we should hit up and

remember the whole thing.

Like, let's contact Leif Garrett.

And was like, Yeah, why not?

And I don't even know where it came from.

I don't think it was my idea.

Maybe it was Buzz's, um, and I tracked him down on the computer and I found him and

we're like, okay, well, I found Leif Garrett.

He the rest is up to you.

And he's like, Yeah, I think he'd be good to sing.

Smells like Teen Spirit.

And it just is absurd.

But it all made absolutely complete sense for it to happen.

Everything they do they do seems to make sense.

They'll do things for the hell of it and do things to amuse themselves.

And they'll do things because it seems cool idea and not because it's.

Reaction strategy.

Anytime they turn in a new record, they're excited about it.

They're like, Yeah, we're really proud of this.

I hope somebody is into it.

I was aware of them, but hadn't really followed what they were doing.

Well, we had met the last part to the Tool guys, and I thought it would be great to do a

record. After all his records.

We'd done do a real collaboration with somebody.

The idea was that it would be some kind of blending, but we didn't know exactly how that

in what way. So it was more fluid as we were recording it.

It was kind of turning out in a certain way.

Well, we would do stuff and send it to him and he'd come and get it.

Like I was like, I don't know, maybe you could come up with something that's three

minutes long for an intro.

He brings back something that's exactly three minutes.

You said three minutes.

Roughly. It is.

Three minutes. Yeah.

I would work on stuff and then give it to them.

I don't think we.

Had anything.

Any of the songs really worked out.

No.

And they would add to it or they would go back and forth like.

So yeah, with bloated pope.

He and I practiced it for about I learned.

I learned it.

He probably he probably wrote it.

Before, but I learned.

It like a half hour and we're tracking it.

Yeah, tracked it down.

You know, there's a few other songs like that on there too.

I was like, Learn it, Track it.

There's a lot of that's kind of the way we've been working lately, too.

For years.

And I've got a lot of the time I'd be in the studio, even some some of the parts that I

wasn't so much on.

I wasn't sonically, I wasn't involved, but I would be there exchanging ideas and throwing

ideas around and stuff like that with him.

Who wants to do something where we use stuff that we did, stuff that he did and stuff that

we did together. You know, the same record.

They were doing, the kind of thing that I would normally do and I was doing the things

that they would might normally do.

People will say like, Oh, I really like that thing that Glasper did on that song.

Actually, he wasn't on that song.

Or vice versa. You know, like that thing you did on that last part.

I don't even play on that. You played on that one?

Yeah, that part of it.

Things like that. That was a lot of fun to see people's reaction, you know, just liking

or disliking, not knowing, not knowing, actually who contribute.

Assuming that I had done this or they had done that.

The whole record, when we were doing it, we were doing a record with Jello Biafra at.

The same time.

Right. But in Jello doesn't get up until.

He's he's a.

He's a night. He's kind of.

He has insomnia, so he.

Won't go to bed till.

Six in the morning and wake up at four in the afternoon.

Melvins came to his studio by 11 or noon, and then they made.

Uh, Pigs of the Roman Empire.

Till 5 or 6 in the evening, and the jailer showed up and then we walked on the album.

Gentlemen. Melvins, two albums.

We were touring.

With Hank Williams, a third through Jello was a pretty big fan of, and I know he'd seen us

before and kind of never really got the band.

I saw him over the years, but I didn't really know him.

Wasn't that into what we were doing, you know?

Certainly Melvins aren't an easy sell.

So anyway, but at this particular show, we played an Alice Cooper song.

They started.

Halo of Flies, which.

Is a really long, epic number.

Oh, my God. They're not really going to play all of Halo of Flies.

Jello saw that and came downstairs in the dressing room.

Oh my.

God.

They are like, I.

Finally get you guys.

You guys played that Alice Cooper song and it was amazing.

And then I was.

Hooked from.

That point onward and told him, Yo, sorry about not being as attentive as I could have

been, but you know, now I get it.

I really like this shit.

Our bass player Kevin said, Nah, you're just drunk.

Like I'm not that drunk.

And within.

Months we.

Were talking about making noise together.

So we talked to him and we were kind of joking with him, you know, knowing that that

he had had a bunch of trouble with the Dead Kennedys guys.

They approached.

Me about going on tour, doing All Dead Kennedys songs.

Joking. We were like, Hey, you should hire us to be your backup band.

We'll call ourselves the Dead Canaries.

When Jello was going through his whole trial with the other dead Kennedys, Buzz was just

always like, Man, I don't understand.

I don't understand why he doesn't make a statement by going out there and doing a tour

and calling himself the Dead Kennedys and playing all the Dead Kennedys song and songs

because they're doing it with a fake jello.

Why doesn't he do it with another band and he'll blow them away because people will come

see him and nobody will go see the fake dead Kennedys.

You know, Buzz and.

Dale were really.

Offended by that and thought maybe there was something that could be done.

I thought, hey, wait a minute. If we're going.

To do this at all, I'd.

Rather do new stuff.

I got plenty of other songs.

You want to make a record?

It's hard when talking about Jello not to start sliding into an impersonation of him.

He's like, Well, I don't know about that, but I would do a collaboration.

With you guys.

So he's the one that kind of initiated the whole thing, whole project.

He's like, It'd be great. We could write songs and we worked it kind of around doing

that. Alice Cooper song with him, but we worked for a long time.

You would like I said, he initiated it and he would come down to LA and stay and work

for a couple of weeks on on, on songs with us.

Since I'm useless with.

Instruments.

And played the original Dead Kennedys.

Stuff, I wrote single string on a guitar until.

Klaus told me, You know, you sing.

Good enough, Just sing us the parts.

He knows specifically what he wants guitars to do.

He has he he doesn't sing super melodically, but he would keep singing it to you till you

hit the note He thought it should be.

No. Ha.

Bong, bong, bong. No, no.

You hit one. But he knew how.

He writes songs is he'll sing little parts into a tape recorder, guitar lines, vocal

lines, even, even, even guitar lead lines.

He'll he'll sing into a tape recorder and then sing the song to you.

And then you kind of figure out the riff.

Hurry up. Get.

Look around.

Leading up to me getting fired is, yeah, things slowly getting more and more fucked

up.

With Kevin again.

He had his own. He had his demons that were kind of affecting the band and affecting his

life big time.

And. You know, he we certainly give him a chance to kind of get it together and we

certainly help them try to get it together.

But in the end, he couldn't.

So we were again looking for a new bass player.

Finally, those guys were like, Look, we can't we can't work with you.

And I was like. It's a very upsetting.

I'm not going to pretend I wasn't upset.

I was incredibly upset.

It was.

Really heavy.

They were really worried about Kevin.

As far as my end.

They got to the point where I just felt like I couldn't deal with it anymore.

You know, really, to be fair, I was acting very poorly, and it happened.

And really my biggest regret is just the problems I created for them.

The extracurricular activities were way out of hand.

Just kind of. And.

I just felt like it was detrimental for him and for us.

Yeah, he told me later.

He said I could just see where it was going and I didn't want to watch it.

Yeah, no, I knew he was going to destroy the band.

I just didn't have any interest in his destruction trip that he was on.

You know, his nightmare.

I know Buzz and Dale well enough to know that they wouldn't just do it for no reason, you

know? It was a real setback for them to get rid of me.

You know, they lost a year, you know?

I know Buzz was really a little demoralized.

It was almost like he needed to get to a point where everything was falling apart for

him to get it back. Honestly, if we hadn't done that, I don't think he'd be alive.

I was just sinking so deep.

And that last tour.

Before I got fired, I remember.

And I'd never had this feeling.

I remember had this enormous feeling of dread when the tour started, and I didn't

know. God knows why.

I didn't know why I felt that way.

Like really thinking something bad was going to happen.

What amazing insight I have.

You know, it's hard to to do that kind of stuff.

Then, you know, you're right.

And they don't agree, you know.

It wasn't like I didn't like playing with Kevin.

I liked it a whole lot.

But it was time to move on.

You know, that was the right thing to do.

Sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest thing to do.

I don't resent them for firing me.

Nothing. It worked out the way it did.

And I don't know if they can say the same thing, but.

I'm super relieved to be friends with them again.

It's really good. It's a big deal.

Buzz could play any song ever written like and make it better.

You know, like I'm always been fascinated by the few cover songs they've done because they

can rock that song harder than the original.

It's insane what that guy can do.

We did discover his record just recently.

Everyone's loved sausage and got a lot of people to collaborate on that with us.

Scott Kelly during the Venom song.

Um.

Was just kind of called me and said, I have an idea.

You know, we're going to do these kind of split singles and we're thinking we're going

to do a couple of Queen songs and we'd like you to sing on it.

And.

You know, I'm on the phone. I'm like, Oh, yeah, awesome.

That sounds great. You know, click.

And then I immediately start panicking like, okay, I'm going to see Freddie Mercury on a

Melvins cover, you know?

No problem.

We like doing all kinds of stuff like that, and hopefully we'll continue to do more.

We have lots of plans.

We have plans from that just didn't work out quite yet.

Bowie never called what you mean or.

The guys from Venom. Never.

Hello, Buzz. You know you're a fucking cunt.

You know That never happened.

Buzz called.

Me and just said.

We want you to do a Roxy Music song.

And I.

Immediately thought of in every Dream.

Home a heartache because that.

Song just.

Cracked me.

Up even when I was in high school.

And it seemed like the the definitive Bryan Ferry kind of vision of the sterile suburb.

But then at the end, you know.

It blew up your body.

But you blew my mind.

I was thinking of the dude in the white dinner jacket with the.

The perfect hair and everything singing.

That was just so hilarious.

And I think they knew that I could do Fairey's voice too.

We brought that up way back when we recorded with him before, and he said, You're the only

guys to ever think of that, to ever notice that.

And we're like, It was totally obvious.

But yeah, it's funny, right?

Because he really is great, you know, he made it work and I couldn't believe how well

he nailed those vocals and so quickly.

Your swimming pool eyes.

I could see them doing a Kelly Clarkson song.

But they're going to do it Melvins style.

And it'll sound like something they wrote.

Whereas if Kelly Clarkson did God of Thunder.

I don't think so.

I played with Clem Burke and that was like a dream come true, you know?

That was really fun.

It was really happy to have that be the case.

You know, that was one of my favorite drummers.

And the guys, Dale and and Cody were were.

Beside themselves.

You know that's a like a monster fanboys.

We have a mutual friend with Clem Burke.

Our friend Bob and he.

We had met Clem.

A couple of times before that.

And then we were working on the Bride Screamed Murder album, and our friend Bob

brought Clem down to the studio to come and check it out.

I'm good. How are you doing?

Good. Very strange.

We're a little nervous for sure. When he was coming into the studio, especially since at

the time we were doing some drama for Dubs right in front of him.

So it was like, Oh, God.

Anyway. And Buzz wasn't there.

Buzz had gone home for the day and we were just doing some some drum stuff or whatever.

And and buzz is like, oh, man, you didn't get him to play on anything.

I was like, I was too nervous to ask him, you know, or, you know.

Added fear of rejection that he would say no.

And then our friend Bob had told us like, Oh, no, he'd probably do it so well, why

don't you ask him? And.

And we didn't quite know.

You know what we'd have them do.

But Buzz had an idea of doing a song that he'd wanted to do for a long time and think.

At first Clem was like, Well, what do they need?

What do they need? Three drummers.

But. What is it, like 16 bars or something?

Yeah.

It's great. It's like getting a getting a free Clem Burke drum lesson.

Sideshow appearance.

They all can be.

Who beat your.

As far as like a drummer in a pop band.

He's the king for sure.

Having somebody that you're very, very much a fan of and influenced by and somebody that

whose drumming I really like a lot.

To have them come in and and and say that he likes Mike's our band and likes our drumming

is really great.

Really special.

Can we play it one more time?

My first reaction when they decided to work with big business was why?

It was nothing against big business, but it was like when you have Dale Crover.

Do you really need a second drummer?

On the very last Nirvana tour.

And you're playing with those guys.

And we talked about doing this idea with Dave Grohl.

And he was even coming out and playing a song with us on this tour that we were doing.

He's playing Night Goat with us, and we were playing two shows in Munich at this old

airport. Turned into a club.

Really spooky place.

And on the second show, Dave was going to come out and play the whole set.

And the first show there had been a couple couple shows prior where he'd come out and

play one song, and during soundchecks we were kind of rehearsing the whole set with

him. So, you know, we, we knew that that it would work from doing that anyway.

Dave played the whole set didn't happen because that's when.

Shirt canceled. The rest of the shows said he had laryngitis.

Went to Rome and that's when he OD'd.

The first time.

He played did some shows with Jello Biafra or were his backing band.

And they played with us once. Big business did once or twice, I can't remember.

And we knew about Jared and knew he was a good singer and a good bass player.

I played the show Dead Low Tide.

Cody was the drummer.

I remember thinking, Man, here's a guy that could play.

We've been thinking about the double drummer thing for a long time.

Here's a guy that could actually do it.

He could play this down and, you know, it's not.

It's not a simple thing to do.

I remember playing in Tacoma with those guys and doing a sound check.

And Dale and Buzz were watching me check my drums and like, you got done.

And Buzz came up and was like, Hey.

Media like we like your drumming a lot.

When you're done playing with Kevin.

We were pretty discouraged.

I was not ready to start over.

I mean, it was. Miserable.

And did it that year.

Fortunately, I did a whole bunch of work with Fantomas that year.

When we got ready to put the band back together again, I said we should just ask the

big business guys both and just do something completely different.

Hope he was honking at me.

When Buzz told me over the phone like, Oh, we're going to have we're adding a second

drummer. We're, you know, this band, big business, we're incorporating them.

You know, they're guys that used to be in Karp and Murder City, and we're bringing

those guys in and they're going to join the band.

And I literally remember being on the phone with him.

I'm like, What the fuck are you thinking?

Like, seriously, you're the one band in the world that doesn't need a second drummer.

You know, I can list off a hundred bands who could actually benefit from a second.

You know, you have the monster.

And I remember telling him that, like, I don't get it, dude, that doesn't make any

sense to me. You know, seeing it live and just going, Holy fuck, he actually just upped

the game, you know, 25 years into his career, he actually just took a big step

forward. They like.

It's better.

Who the fuck gets better 25 years into a rock and roll career?

Like, literally makes a huge advancement.

So we knew what the big business guys we wanted to do something completely different

that was new and we'd never done before.

And we go get a bass player who can sing.

There's a lead singer in and of himself and a drummer who's good enough to play the stuff

that we're doing. And I think it came out great.

It's really good. You know, we've done a lot of work with those guys, but a lot of

records, a lot of recording.

Don't look down.

You might be. All in good time.

They have it, we want it.

A lot of shows. Hundreds and hundreds of shows.

I think the proof is there.

You know.

I learned from Dale is that like, you know, he also, as well as I were, were cadence

drummers. And we we, you know, got we got we were trained and learned a lot of our drum

chops on in marching.

Having like Cody as a second drummer.

Allowed that.

Core style drumming present.

The Grateful Dead had three drummers.

They did.

But Jesus Christ.

Is so boring.

Nice that the Melvins finally.

Became one step closer to being influenced by the Grateful.

Dead.

So then how did we get the band?

Is that what you.

Want to know? I called up Jared and I'm like, Hey, we want to know if you guys would be

interested in joining the Melvins.

Whoa. Wow. That's a lot. Like, this is really sudden and totally unexpected, and I have no

idea. I mean, it would be cool, but I.

You know, Cody and I have big business, and that's kind of an important thing.

He's like, Oh, Cody, too.

As if it was just like, I would have naturally assumed, you know, like, Oh, well,

of course Cody too. Oh, yeah, of course.

Why not? Of course you need a second drummer because you're not good enough by yourself,

so you need help.

And we invited him down and just had them learn.

A few songs that we could jam on.

And we knew right away that it was.

Going to work and it would work out great.

So like, I don't know, I felt pretty nervous.

I think we were both kind of like, Don't make this really good.

And like every time we'd be like, to Buzz or Dale, you.

Know, Hey, what do you think about this?

You'll figure it out. It'll be fine.

Like, that was just like, the attitude there.

Like, it's going to be good.

It's going to work. It'll be fine.

So it was just constant. And just like.

All right. Like. They're not worried about it.

Like, you know, I don't know.

I guess I shouldn't freak out.

We just know it'd be really good, you know, doing a lot of stuff that was in sync with

each other and then also going off from each other too.

Um, I think we worked harder on drum parts in the beginning and just kind of trying to

figure out what the other person was playing more so than we do now, just because I think

now we've done it for so long that we're really comfortable with each other and it's

easy for us to take.

Every time I'd be like, I just don't know how to play here.

And like Dale, you know, just unflappable.

Dale Just like, oh, just use your instincts, okay?

I mean.

What a fucking bizarre idea.

Just to totally take a whole other band and incorporate it into your band and run with

it. The big business guys get more comfortable inside there and can stretch out

a little bit more.

And I think, you know, yeah, that union between Dale and Cody becoming some sort of

Siamese symbiotic fuckfest weirdness.

Um, yeah, it's it's awesome.

The two drummer thing is just a complete mind fuck.

That's amazing. And it just worked perfectly because, you know, Cody's left handed and so

you get this mirror image thing going on and it's just mind blowing.

But what an awesome way to reinvent your band.

Cody and.

Dale's drum styles to me.

Are polar opposite almost to me when I see it off the bat.

And then when you see them play together, it's like.

The total. It's a magnet, man.

And they're just like filling every void that each other has ever thought about.

Within and without each other.

So we do a lot of that and there's a lot of just kind of.

Knowing what the other guy is going to do a ESP going on.

And I think it's just us being kind of comfortable with each other.

You know, obviously I have a.

Real fondness for the very.

Early years with Mike Dillard.

Because that's when I first saw them and thought they were a great.

Band then. But you know.

Fucking now with.

With the big business kids in there.

I mean, they just keep doing amazing shit, you know?

The other drummer and I thought that was kind of a bold move to make that late in their

career. So hats off to them for that for sure.

You know, we really knew that we could do a lot with two drummers and.

We feel that we've only scratched the surface even though we go and play with other

people and they do their own band.

We'll always, always come back to the two drummer thing just because it's so it's fun

and it's and it's it's it's brutal live.

It's super brutal seeing two drummers do that stuff.

It's unfair to other bands, which is it should be you know because we'll just we'll

knock your dick in the dirt with this lineup, you know.

Buzz. Despite his hatred of.

Those early.

Years he spent in rural Washington.

He never forgot the friends, the people he loved.

Playing with Mike Dillard again was certainly a weird idea.

Let's get the old drummer in the band.

Let's go back to when we were sitting in a fucking shitty, stinky garage or basement and

let's bring Dillard back in.

You know, it'll be fun.

Alternative Tentacles had put out the original Melvins demos, which are called the

Mangled Demos. I remember saying, like, you guys should do shows now since you put that

record out and Buzz is like.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

But. But you have to play.

Bass because there's no way I'm going to.

I'm looking and I'm sure there's no way he's going to want to do this.

Sure, I'll do it. The thing that kind of made it happen was Jello Biafra was having

his big Jello Five-O, his 50th birthday party.

We got Dilla to play with us and had that version of the Melvins play.

And so that was the first time we did it and we pretty much just played old songs.

To go back and and play with Buzz.

First of all, was weird.

It wasn't weird. It was cool because just being reunited in a musical setting was was

really good again.

Mike. Can only really play with us when he has some vacation time.

I mean, Dillard's got a family that makes it to where we can't.

You know, I told I keep telling him, abandon them.

Just abandon the family.

Just leave.

Disappear.

Disappear.

You know, hanging out with Mike. It's just he's definitely one of us.

Hey, buddy. One of us.

Being big, dumb, stupid.

Looking. Yeah. Big, dumb, stupid looking.

Next, a brief discussion for the tip.

My that goes on as well.

Next, a brief discussion for the G20 that goes on as well.

Next to Greece technology company that does not connect the Greek citizens of the.

And it shows.

It is fun. It fucking reflects that.

It's still valid.

They're still able to go back and capture something, and that's where a lot of other

people fall short and those guys don't because they pull it back in.

You know, they're willing to go back there and do something about it.

You.

If I said the Dale Crover is the single nicest person in the music industry, Trevor

Dunn might be number two.

I don't have any real objectivity anymore, you know, because I'm part of this family and

this and and these voices.

So, yeah, like watching that the Melvins Lite tour were all of a sudden they're introducing

a stand up bass and making it fucking work.

And not only work, but work righteously.

I mean, that's amazing.

You know that he can recognize that.

And plus, then Trevor is such an insane talent that, you know, what he's bringing to

the table was was phenomenal.

That was Trevor. After we'd done three albums with the big business guys and hundreds and

hundreds of shows all over the world.

Um, I felt like it was time for us to do me and Dale to do something different.

I saw him play with Nels Cline, where he played the stand up bass with an amp.

Was playing upright and electric bass in that group and.

You know, it's definitely a lot.

There's quite a bit of.

Jazz elements in that band, but also rock and buzz.

I invited Buzz that show and he showed up and afterwards he said, Man, we got to

incorporate some of that stuff in the Melvins, you know, because I was using the Bo

and, you know, doing free improv and.

And I was kind of surprised.

I had played with Trevor a whole lot in Panama.

I knew he was a really good player, a really good guy.

I traveled with him extensively, so I knew he wasn't psychotic.

He might be crazy, but he's not going to, you know, he's not psychotic.

So I knew that touring was going to be a problem.

I mean, he also.

Is been getting more into jazz in the past few years.

He's been really into some of the electric.

Mild stuff and and a few different jazz things, which is, you know, again, it's

surprising.

Adding a stand up bass.

Yeah, that sounds a little bit crazy, you know, on the surface.

But if you saw the shows, you realize, hey, it's a Melvin show.

It looks different, it sounds a little different, but it's still the same animal.

I had this idea to do this, maybe try this Melvins lite thing, which is us playing

through me, playing through a smaller amp and playing through standard bass and through

an amp, and Dale playing a smaller drum set.

Fresno, Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo.

I mean, don't know how long buzz had been thinking about it, but I feel like I think it

was when we were doing that first sort of warm up tour in California.

I was staying at his place and one morning he got up and.

And and and had this idea for a long time that I wanted to do all 50 states plus D.C.

in 51 days.

Said, man, I have this idea to play all 50 states and 50 days.

And I said, that's insane.

And and the next day he got up and he said, man, I don't know.

I can't stop thinking about it.

This lineup, I think we could do it.

It's small, it's compact.

It's less people.

And so we started planning a then that was a year and a half before we actually started

that tour.

Literally the next day he called his booking agent and the guy said, that's that's nuts.

First day I.

Talked to him, they were like, you're insane.

That's never going to work. That's the craziest thing you've ever heard.

The next day I talked to him and they go, we think it's a great idea.

We could totally do it, you know?

But if you really want to do it, we should start booking it now, which was a year in

advance because there's there was no there's no flexibility with that.

You know, you can't take a day off and move a few days around.

And they had to be really careful with the routing so that we weren't killing ourselves,

you know, with eight hour drives every day.

So.

We booked that tour.

And had that tour booked before we had the record recorded.

So a full year before we did our first show, we had it booked.

Literally for my seemed like from my perspective, three days after his initial

idea, it was they started booking it.

So that's I mean, that's not the way I work.

I sit on ideas for years.

I know that he got the idea from.

George Stillgoode because he had tried to do it back in the 80s.

I was exhausted every night, all the way to the end.

I was just beat.

I would go back to the hotel and crash, and so I really needed my sleep and I needed to keep my stamina up

So we were saying, This stuff in the press like, yeah,

George Thorogood had tried to do this tour but

didn't make it, and we're going to try to do it.

We're going to try to go for the Guinness Book of World Records of doing all 50 states.

We'll throw in Washington, D.C., making it 51 shows in a row.

The bulk of the tour really the the middle five weeks of it really kind of kind of flew

by. It was towards the end of the tour we were we suddenly realized there were, you

know, ten shows left and, and we were all sort of surprised that it was that it had

gone that fast.

Generated a lot of hype, which was the idea.

We're gonna do this stunt, you know, total P.T.

Barnum hype tour, which worked.

Worked great.

They just never want to be in a position where I'm tied into one thing ever again.

It's too hard, you know, if something happens.

So that's why after those three records, we were able to do that record with Trevor and

Peak Records and Melvins Lite and.

Record with Mike Dillard.

You know, I mean, that's not that's all part of the same thing.

What happened with this acoustic thing was it was something I wanted to do for a long

time. I didn't know if it would really work.

So I did this thing with Ernie Ball.

Strings. Where?

I go on there and let them.

Screw with my guitar, and then I play a live acoustic song.

And I did that mostly.

Well, mostly because they were super nice to do it, but also as a way for me to see if

anyone is interested in that sort of thing.

And it went well.

I got a good reaction from people, so I was like, okay.

So then I recorded a ten inch EP with with six songs, two of which were acoustic Melvins

songs that weren't good.

So then I was like, okay, I'm ready. I'm going to do an album, full album.

And then.

Do a bunch of touring all over the whole world by myself.

I'm not sure. A brand new thing, so we'll see.

So it was the first time I've ever done this.

And since you guys didn't pay yet, bitch.

Yeah. That's right. Okay, well, you can bitch, but no one can.

I didn't want to do anything that was too obscure or too singer songwriter obscure.

Meaning? You know, like me up there singing like a bad version of James Taylor, which

seems to be the main thing that people do with acoustic guitar is I didn't want to do

that. That's not me.

What good is at least.

At least left with following?

Holding the head of the.

Not slowly, not lightly.

I wanted to do something that was more.

More like what? What I would sound like with an acoustic.

The funny thing, you hear some absurd stuff like people saying things like, well, you

know, this acoustic record just sounds like the Melvins with acoustic.

Well, what would it sound like?

I write this stuff, you know?

Hey me and and weighed.

In. Our hard men are invisible.

I was appreciated everywhere I went in a way that I could never have imagined.

And I couldn't have been happier.

I'm more than willing to go out there and do that a lot more in the future.

You know, it went good.

I had a great time doing it, but, you know, you're up there by yourself.

I don't have any other instrumentation to hide behind.

I kind of like that.

It's a roll of the dice every single night.

And. You got to.

You got to convince these people on your own.

I like that. I like that a great deal.

Plus called me up and said, you know, this solo thing is going better than I thought it

would, and I feel bad.

Can you? I heard you guys are kind of looking for someone to, you know, fill in for

Mario. Do you think you could throw the guy a bone?

When you're being initiated into off, you've got to like give up part of your life.

So he's doing this first tour for free.

What he has to do, he has to load everything in and out of the trailer on the van.

We're going to be in Florida, and we're going to be right in the middle of Alligator Alley,

and we're going to stop for gas, and I'm just going to drive off and leave all these

guys at the gas station.

When it comes to the Melvins, to me, it's like they don't sit, you know, sit around

doubting whether they should do it anymore or do people care, or should we break up to

make people care about us so they'll go to our next reunion tour?

It's like, no, just keep going.

Don't ask anybody's permission whether they want you there or not.

You know, just like, just keep going.

Jared from the big business told us that his girlfriend is going to have a baby.

And so we had this big tour we were going to plan.

It didn't seem like a good idea for him to go.

So we got Jeff Pinkus from the Butthole Surfers to sit in on that tour, and it went

great. He did a great job.

We had a lot of fun.

They asked me if honky was available to to open up for the Melvins for tour, and I was

like, oh fuck yeah, I don't know what's on my schedule.

But of course would do that.

And, uh, it turned out that it was for me to play bass with them and for Dale to play

drums with honky, which he has done before.

So basically it was a good money saving move by bus because he's quite a business man and

he got a really great deal at a, on a really mid-range kind of band.

And, you know, we just kind of got to talking and decided that maybe we should do more and,

and that we could involve Paul Leary.

And do an expanded album that's a melvins album with me, Dale, Paul Leary and Pinkus

and the record. I'm really, really, really happy with it because we're huge fans of that

stuff. Huge Butthole Surfers fans.

I think Paul is one of the my favorite guitar players of all time, so it's a real

treat to be working with him.

So this is.

This is almost a way where we could work with him.

And then also he brought in songs, you know, both those guys brought in songs and which is

good because I think if you're going to do a collaboration with somebody like that, you

know, let them do their thing.

Well, I got a call from Pincus one day asking if I was interested in playing on an album,

and my first response was just hell yeah.

This is a good experience working on this record, and I think buzz being a baseball fan

like he is, he sped up the song.

That's kind of like a lineup card for the hitters, and it starts off with a heavy

hitter, and I think he thought he wrote the Poppiest song Brass Cupcake and to kind of,

you know, pop up the record a little bit and he got out popped by Paul.

Had written three songs before Pinkerton contacted me, so I brought those to the table

and got Dale to play drums on those.

And then I took them home and edited and added guitars and.

Had had the boys come over to do some overdubs and whatnot at my house.

Just one of those kind of things seem to all happen really quick.

I think it's worked out great, you know?

I mean. We've been able to do different things with people like that and keep it

interesting and and make it.

You know, those those guys are so, so fun in the studio.

You know, they come in with a great, positive attitude and everybody listens to

each other and everybody wants to please each other.

And and at the end of the day, you're all smiling and joking as opposed to wanting to

strangle each other.

People are influenced by the Melvins.

Don't really wear it on their sleeve that way.

They're more inspired by the concept of the Melvins and like the longevity and the the

humor and the art and stuff like that.

Their impact is so huge that.

It's not calculable.

At this point.

They brought.

They bring a lot of people along for the ride, and those people get on the bus and

stay on the bus.

Got to be the most unmistakable person anywhere, whether it's on stage or at a

ballpark. Camera's on him.

You're going to know that's buzz.

Going to come around to this philosophy of just knowing.

What would Buzz Osborne do in each moment in my life would be a lot easier.

Pleasantly surprised to find out that buzz was a big sports fan.

Big baseball fan.

So we were talking quite a bit about sports and baseball.

Buzz.

Has a mind that moves in a non-linear direction.

It was pretty cool meeting buzz and and everybody in the band, and have been and

always will be a big fan.

They stick up for the underdog, which is what punk rock is.

They surround themselves with really good people.

They don't work with.

Assholes and jerks and egos.

It's just very family oriented, which bring up a little light bulb at ring and it turned

bright and it said, that's the key to make a band last for 30 years, just like the people

you're with.

There were a couple of times where I'm like, man, the Melvins are going to just endure

because these fuckers are great, and I don't care if I'm like the only one who knows that.

You know, things. Things for the band are.

Better than ever. I mean, we just did a really successful US tour, which was.

I don't know, possibly our best one that we've done as far as attendance, a lot of

sold out shows.

I don't feel like.

It's a good idea to start saying, this show's important.

This one's not as important, you know.

They're all important.

They're all part of the same thing.

I think that nose to the grindstone work ethic is why the Melvins have been able to

continue playing, and even growing and even growing their audience all these years.

What's weird that I've noticed is that our audience still seems to stay the same age.

25 to 35 all over.

So you know.

Certainly. I can see there's older people at our gigs, but but, you know, they're the

minority. There's there's definitely a younger crowd and.

You know, you look out and you go, yeah, we'd already been a band for like ten, 20

years before this person was even born.

I just like the fact that they didn't strive to be like anything else.

I mean, they sort of created their own thing.

And then people follow them.

It was really interesting watching an audience come to them because, you know, back

then nobody liked it.

Everybody fucking hated it.

I'm happy that there's people that want to see us everywhere we go.

I'm really happy about that.

It's good. I think they let everybody know pretty early on that they weren't, you know,

that they were just kind of going to do their own thing with the Melvins.

It wasn't just about the music, it was about the attitude that was fueling that music, you

know? And we just naturally gravitated towards that.

We just naturally gravitated towards the fact that it was like, fuck you.

We're going to fuck and play what we want and we don't give a shit whether you're with

us or not. This is what we want to fucking do.

As music fans, we operate the way that we would appreciate other bands operating.

That's the best way to look at it.

The strongest thing I've learned from them.

And taken.

From all of that, is that the vision, your own vision is.

To be defended on all all fronts and no compromise is is is a good thing.

There are groups that that have lasted a.

Really long time, but they're just constantly repeating themselves.

And that kind of gets old.

And then there are artists that constantly reinvent themselves, which is very difficult

to do. And it's like, that's going to be a more of a roller coaster ride, because you're

not going to be able to please everyone all the time.

So there are going to be periods.

It's, you know, your career is going to be judged upon like these, these periods in, in,

you know, like David Bowie.

It makes sense to me when you look at the arc of a lot of people's careers where there

might be like a really high high and, and the, the lows are almost identical at the end

and in the beginning.

But the joy of doing it never really changes.

Sometimes the high highs is the area where the joy of doing it is the lowest.

I've seen that a lot.

One of a kind for sure.

You know, 30 years still try to make.

I can think of many.

Bands or artists like that.

Maybe David Bowie is like that.

Each album sounds different, you know?

And I think when you play.

The music you want to play and you, you don't consider outsiders, you just consider what

what do we want to do?

You're sort of always happy.

It's like. Like going to a burrito place.

Where?

They go flour, corn and you just make your own.

You always love that burrito because you made it yourself.

You know. So they're like an awesome burrito.

That's what's amazing about them, is they.

Have this ability to.

Adapt.

Yet still be themselves.

I don't know.

What buzzes imagination would have, but if know like if he and Dale wanted to play with,

you know, if they want to play with jello again, or if they wanted to play Devo or

whoever, like or be in the Stooges or be in the Stooges, like, or whatever, like that

could totally work.

I have seen the Melvins collaborate with many, many different things and people, so I

would love to one day.

Well, that's good because we're going to ask you, okay, let's do.

It. It's done. Excellent.

We're a particular incarnation of the Melvins.

Yeah.

And when it's happening, it's happening.

But I mean, ultimately, you know, the Melvins are buzzing.

Dale, there's no end in sight for.

The Melvins, that's for sure.

I can't foresee us stopping any time soon.

I don't know why we would.

You know, the Rolling Stones can host hoist themselves on stage.

Why can't we?

Good luck to you, and it's always a pleasure.

Thank you.

Hey, it was the first.

Were the first and then the last.

I'm sure.

The last band standing at the Melvins.

Long lived Melvins.

That all that I can do, man.