Melvins
King Buzzo EP

The Melvins are one of those religions with axiological principles that only ask you to close the oven and enjoy. There’s a large assembly of dictionaries, critics, thesauruses, conspirators, atheists who will tell you that “yes, the Melvins are important... more important than good... because yes, I mean, no, I mean, well, good ideas but bad realizations... many poorly made records.”

At this point, your unwavering faith will propose two solutions, one fun (kick their asses) and one dutiful (explain that they’re stupid). “So, my little Ruock dictionary, we pair a pleasant ‘who cares’ to poorly made records... take your classmate, the one who’s fat and with enough imagination to make a comb-over with four hairs, put him on drums and make records for twenty-five years, at an average of three releases a year, don’t care about the audience and do whatever you want, invent a dozen musical subgenres, make people argue to classify your genre... well, having done all these things, little dictionary, come back here and let’s see how many poorly made records you’ve made. And then poorly made what does that mean? Even God makes mistakes, instead of a handful of mud, confused, He threw a handful of crap and out came Scaruffi and Borghezio. And what should we do, start blaspheming or sulking or enjoy the sight of my neighbor's butt for a small imprecision compared to all the wonders God has created?”

If after such a wise response your trustworthy dictionary replies “yes, but Frank Zappa...” you have every right, at the mere mention of Zappa - just to name one - to take off your belt and whip them across the teeth, for God is with you and He will bless you.

The record in question... the record in question is the last divertissement released by Boner in 1992, before moving to Major because it’s known that, after Nirvana's explosion, in Aberdeen, despite the Melvins having lived in San Francisco for a while, rock stars grew on trees.

As we were saying, the record in question... 14 minutes for four songs of musical fun. The then Melvins lineup decided to release a record each like Kiss and King Buzzo enlisted Dave Grohl, skin breaker on behalf of Nirvana and Scream, crediting him as “Dale Nixon”, the same pseudonym Greg Ginn chose for himself to play the role of bassist on “My War”.

The first, “Isabella”, is a tribal-steamroller rhythm with Melvins’ Style riffs; the second, “Porg”, is a freak delirium in an industrial key, industrial as only the song of someone raised in a lumberjack town could be, as if a Twin Peaks character were to dabble in industrial; “Annum” starts quietly, dress rehearsals for “Houdini”, you can even sing it while cooking and then there’s that bass-snare-hi-hat you expected, but it fits like a charm and then everything is alright, you enjoy; the fourth, “Skeeter”, credited to Dave Grohl, who talks over it, is a succession of riffs on riffs that reconciles you with yourself... it was much needed, ahh.

In Buzz We Trust... Yeah! And it’s no small thing.