melvins

My first exposure to the Melvins, along with other underground tuneage was a K-Tel "indie rock" comp that was way more awesome than what The Kids are into these days, and my first tipoff that the radio sucked worse than I realized. I knew that Kurt Cobain was a fan, but it took a few years to get into.

Fast forward a good decade and a few years and I'm heading out to the east side with a new homie after drinking much coffee since we both work early shifts, and we missed Tweak Bird, and I forgot my earplugs, because now I'm too old since it's too loud, but holy crap this band has been larger than life for so long it's a little surreal to see Buzz and his incredible hair bobbing ten feet away from me,b because he looks like a cartoon character brought to life.

I'm shorter than most of these hesher dudes and my camera is little use. But yeah, upright bass amazingness, swank drums, I forget how many hooks and jazz runs are buried within that sludge, it's hard to describe except that it was awesome from start to finish, big deconstructed Sabbathy riffs and  harmonies.

Given that there's 25 albums of which I've only heard a few, I don't know all the songs, but the songs are all good, not a dull moment, and I wish I had an upright bass I could play that well, a bunch of dudes were moshing, it was mostly dudes unsurprisingly, a chick and her boyfriend were making out and bumping into everyone, we both ran into a lot of people we knew, good times were had by all, picked up a t-shirt a smidge big, we drove back to the west side, fell asleep on the couch where I'm housesitting next to the protective Jungle Puppy and miraculously am awake and coherent. Behold the power of the sludge, indeed.