For any band, having Kurt Cobain as an avid fan would definitely
have come in handy. For the cult metal band The Melvins, that led
to a record deal in 1993 with Atlantic Records.
The Melvins were eventually deemed the “Godfathers of
Grunge” after grunge bands that had made it big in the
popular music world ““ like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in
Chains and Pearl Jam ““ started citing The Melvins as a
pivotal influence. The trio formed in 1984 in Aberdeen, Wash.,
which has since been called the “birthplace of grunge,”
and became one of the first bands to counter the speed riffing of
’80s thrash metal by slowing its music to a death-like tempo.
Frontman and guitarist Buzz Osborne is also credited in many
quarters for introducing the now-ubiquitous dropped-D guitar tuning
to an entire generation of rockers.
The only paradox is how The Melvins, who are performing at Royce
Hall on Dec. 4, have always managed to remain just beneath the
mainstream rock music radar in its 20-year existence after having
such massive influence on what some would say are the greatest rock
bands of all time. Osborne, the only remaining original member of
the band, is perplexed himself.
“Our sound is very mainstream,” Osborne said.
“It’s just that the mainstream audience doesn’t
see it that way. Everybody should like our records and they should
sell millions and millions and millions. And the fact that we
don’t is a big mystery to me.”
But most people would agree the band is not as
commercial-sounding as those it has influenced, like Nirvana and
Soundgarden. Many of the band’s songs do not follow
conventional pop song structures and some last longer than 18
minutes, so The Melvins come across as experimental rather than
mainstream.
Just this year, the band released a collaborative album with
Ambient music artist Lustmord titled “Pigs of the Roman
Empire.” And in live sold-out shows across Europe, they have
been performing their self-penned soundtrack music to three short
films by underground filmmaker Cameron Jamie. The films explore
suburban rituals like backyard wrestling, America’s obsession
with Halloween and the Austrian fixation with the fictional
character Krampus, the archenemy of Santa Claus who scares
children.
Osborne was initially attracted to the idea of performing a live
soundtrack to films because the band had never done it. Keeping
things new and different is a high priority for Osborne and is
perhaps the reason behind his disdain for many mainstream groups,
which he thinks recycle material and musical technique. Osborne
believes dropped-D tuning in particular has been severely
overused.
“I wish (bands) would use their imaginations and come up
with a few different tunings,” Osborne said. “But for
most bands, like Soundgarden, it doesn’t make any difference
because they just quit. A lot of good it did them. Now
they’re finished and the singer’s in Audioslave. Wow.
Well, we all needed that, didn’t we? Thank god! Alice in
Chains. God! The seeds of what we’ve sown.”
It isn’t that Osborne is against commercialism itself.
Rather, Osborne is against the sense of predictability he feels
comes with things that are commercial. When writing the soundtrack
music for Jamie’s films, The Melvins made a special effort to
thwart predictability.
“One thing I didn’t have any interest in was doing
something along the lines of an MTV video,” Osborne said.
“Like with power cuts and with things that happen exactly
where you expect them to. I just think that music videos are a
severely played-out piece of commercialism that I don’t
really want anything to do with.”
The effort to keep its material novel, different and
experimental is perhaps why the band has been called a “weird
rock outfit,” but Osborne is perfectly comfortable with that
description.
“I guess that’s true, but we’re certainly not
the weirdest,” Osborne said.
True. Take, for instance, the band The Residents, whom Osborne
actually saw perform in Royce Hall several years ago. The
experimental rock group, which formed in 1966, has covered everyone
from John Philip Sousa to James Brown with a blend of electronics,
distortion, avant-jazz and classical symphonies, and appeared
publicly in uniform disguises: tuxedos, top hats and giant eyeball
masks.
Although his appearance may not be as bizarre as that of The
Residents, if Osborne were walking down the street, most people
would probably stare at his towering, crimped, dark-haired afro
with its skunk-like streak of white in the front. To some, Osborne
resembles the character of Sideshow Bob from “The
Simpsons.”
What’s stranger is that the band once featured Shirley
Temple’s daughter, Lori Black, on bass.
The group also has an offbeat sense of humor. In 1999, they band
completed a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with
former bubblegum pop teen idol Leif Garrett on vocals. When asked
if the group has any strange rituals, Osborne chuckled at his own
outlandish response.
“None that I really wish to talk about,” Osborne
said. “We don’t shoot heroine in our eyeballs or
anything like that. Maybe we should. Maybe we will for the Royce
Hall show. How about that?”
But for Osborne, being weird is just a part of being true to
oneself.
“It’s natural,” Osborne said, “but if
people want to look at it like we’re being perversely weird,
there’s not much I can do about that. There’s enough
normalcy out there. We certainly shouldn’t expect rock bands
of any kind to present us with any sort of normalcy.”