The first time I saw the Melvins live was back in 1995. Susan bought me tickets to go see White Zombie in concert — The Melvins and Reverend Horton Heat opened up for them. The Melvins have always been known as being a little bizarre if not temperamental, and when the anxious crowd began chanting “WHITE. ZOMBIE. WHITE. ZOMBIE.” about two songs into the Melvins’ set, lead guitarist\/vocalist King Buzzo announced something to the effect of, “Here’s our new song called ’30 Minutes of Feedback’.” With that, the band leaned their instruments up against the speakers causing a terrible squeal. The sound man, I suspect not knowing if this was part of the band’s regular show or not, let the instruments scream for a minute or two before cutting the sound. Everyone in the crowd looked at one another, slightly bewildered. A few minutes later the stage was cleared, White Zombie came on, and that was the end of that.<\/p>\n

Skip forward a couple of years and I discover and meet Oil Filter<\/a>. Everyone in Oil Filter loves the Melvins. A few years later I discover and meet Totimoshi<\/a>. Totimoshi cites the Melvins as a major influence. I keep meeting people who praise The Melvins. And so, repeatedly, I buy random Melvins albums and they’re all terrible. Then, when I tell people which ones I bought, they tell me “Oh yeah, that<\/i> one’s terrible — you shouldn’t have bought that<\/i> one!” Groan.<\/p>\n

Over the years I’ve found Melvins albums I enjoy, but more than that, I find their music more interesting and challenging than simply “fun”. Last month I heard that the Melvins were playing again in Oklahoma. I mentioned it to Susan, and she bought us tickets … which leads us to last Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

The Melvins were scheduled to play the Diamond Ballroom<\/a>, which holds, oh, 1,000 people (a complete guess). I assume due to low ticket sales, the show was moved to the Conservatory<\/a>, which holds a couple hundred. So the bad news is that the Conservatory was very packed and very hot. The good news was, Susan and I stood ten feet away from the band all night.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Since 2006, the Melvins have performed as a four piece — that’s one guitarist (who also sings), one bassist, and two drummers. The end result is very heavy, very bassy, and very loud. The show Tuesday night was no exception, especially in the small hall of the Conservatory. I had no problem hearing the band perform Tuesday night. In fact, I have no problems hearing the ringing in my ears still, two days later.<\/p>\n

The older Susan and I get, the more we tend to see entertainers as humans, and the less romantic the lifestyle of a musician sounds. Behind the club were a couple of white vans, obviously used to transport instruments and Melvins. Susan spent much of the night people watching, noting how curious it was that King Buzzo (the band’s lead singer) would wear a full length velvet coat in a 100 degree club, and how the girl next to the guy Susan was standing to would kiss her man every time she noticed Susan standing there. <\/p>\n

Without an opener, the Melvins played two full sets in that small club, taking a break in the middle to drink some water and answer questions from the crowd, and ending their second set with an a capella version of “Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee”. <\/p>\n

Much better than the first time we saw them, The Melvins redeemed themselves Tuesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I saw the Melvins live was back in 1995. Susan bought me tickets to go see White Zombie in concert — The Melvins and Reverend Horton Heat opened up for them. The Melvins have always been known as being a little bizarre if not temperamental, and when the anxious crowd began chanting “WHITE. ZOMBIE. WHITE. ZOMBIE.” about two songs into the Melvins’ set, lead guitarist\/vocalist King Buzzo announced something to the effect of, “Here’s our new song called ’30 Minutes of Feedback’.” With that, the band leaned their instruments up against the speakers causing a terrible squeal.… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}