With this year marking the 40th anniversary of the band’s existence and the 30th anniversary of their signature record Houdini, there’s quite a bit of lore and achievement for fans and casual listeners alike to celebrate. This year has seen the release of a Throbbing Gristle tribute LP titled Throbbing Jazz Gristle Funk Hits, a split EP with Helms Alee titled Controlling Data For a Better Future and a rerelease of their first 7-inch record called The Devil You Knew, The Devil You Know.
But the proverbial Champagne cork for this occasion is a co-headlining tour the band is doing with Japanese experimental metal band Boris, which will come through the Granada Theater on Wednesday. It’s especially fitting, seeing as Boris named themselves after a Melvins song from the 1991 album Bullhead, and Melvins are performing that record's songs in its entirety for this run.
Melvins' tireless output has cultivated a consistent following of fans who, over the years, have notably included the likes of Nirvana, Tool and Mastodon.
But those laurels notwithstanding, the world just wasn’t ready for Melvins when they first toured in 1986.
“We went through the South, and pretty much everywhere we went, it was all skinheads who wanted to kill us. I vowed to never tour again,” recalls Melvins guitarist and lead vocalist Buzz Osborne, by phone from Seattle.
That tour, which included support from California punk band Rich Kids on LSD, made stops through El Paso and Houston, and as Osborne has told it, most of those shows were sparsely attended. But one show stood out as a diamond in the rough: July 12, 1986, at Jed’s Bar in New Orleans.
This is not well-documented, but attendees of the New Orleans show included a who’s-who of the Big Easy’s music scene, who were far more receptive to Melvins’ sound than other scenes. Months later, Melvins released their debut album Gluey Porch Treatments, which proved profoundly influential to the New Orleans punk and metal scene.
Jimmy Bower from Down, Crowbar and Eyehategod once said, “If I had to define one album that changed my life, it would have to be the Melvins’ Gluey Porch Treatments.” When Bower first heard the record in 1987, he played the cassette to his Crowbar and Down bandmate Kirk Windstein on the way to and from band rehearsals. Another stalwart of the New Orleans metal and punk scene, Phil Anselmo, would later introduce Gluey Porch Treatments to his bandmates in Pantera.
Eventually, the fandom grew enough to make touring for Melvins profitable.
“There was enough interest out there to where we can go out and not lose our ass,” Osborne says. “[We] didn’t have money to lose. We come from very, very lower middle class [backgrounds], one step above abject poverty. So the idea of going out and losing money – I mean first off, you have to have the money to lose.”
Around the same time New Orleans got into Melvins, what many categorize as the “grunge” scene was getting hot in Seattle. In the early 1990s, bands like Nirvana and Mudhoney took off and preached the gospel of Melvins, but Osborne and Melvins drummer Dale Crover had been living in San Francisco for quite a while by that point. It’s well known that Kurt Cobain’s affinity for Melvins got them signed onto Atlantic Records and made them a common fixture on Headbanger’s Ball, but even during the band’s commercial peak, the world was still not ready for them.
One particularly infamous instance took place at Fair Park Coliseum in Dallas, where Melvins opened for Nine Inch Nails on their Downward Spiral Tour. The hours leading up to the show were rather low-key — Osborne was winding down somewhere, while Crover and then-Melvins bassist Mark Deutrom went to a Dallas bookstore to meet Buzz Aldrin at a book signing.
But the show itself was notoriously a disaster.
“We walked on stage, and before we play notes, a whiskey bottle was thrown and broke on our drum set,” Osborne says. “They were just rowdy and severely stupid. It’s not that we were playing so much stuff and they hated it. They were doing that before we played.”
From there, audience members tore off pieces of particle board that was covering an ice hockey rink and threw them onto the stage while booing. The band understandably responded to this by playing the same note repetitively while improvising lyrics about how stupid the audience was. At the conclusion of their set, the band members flipped off the audience and walked off the stage, leading Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor to take the stage and admonish the audience members for their behavior.“[We] didn’t have money to lose. We come from very, very lower middle class [backgrounds], one step above abject poverty. So the idea of going out and losing money – I mean first off, you have to have the money to lose.” – Buzz Osborne
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“It was a severely stupid audience that tore the floor up and threw it to where they were then standing on ice for the rest of the show. So who’s stupider, me or them?” Osborne says.
That same year, the band returned to the same venue on a tour as openers for White Zombie, an experience Osborne has described as Melvins’ worst touring experience ever.
“Imagine the most rock star-ish Spinal Tap shit you can imagine, and that’s what it was like,” Osborne says. “The White Zombie [tour], at this point, I wouldn’t put up with that for two shows. And now I would just say, ‘Fuck you,’ and I would just walk. I’m not going to shut up about it, because fuck you guys. It’s just the worst shit you can possibly imagine.”
Not ones to suffer fools or pompous rock stars gladly, Melvins gravitate now toward the down-to-earth environments of clubs and midsize theaters. They are a club act, just as they were 40 years ago, and they don’t need bigger crowds to carry them any further.
And while Dallas had “a severely stupid audience” at the Nine Inch Nails show in 1995, Melvins have consistently played North Texas at least once a year. And rest assured, the audiences have been less stupid.
“We always love playing in Dallas,” Osborne says. “If I had to live in Texas, I would live in Dallas. That’s the honest-to-god truth.”
Melvins are playing Granada Theater on Wednesday, Oct. 4, with Boris and Mr. Phylzzz.
