Remembering the raucous national TV debut of Melvins
You do not get much more consequential than Melvins. Formed in Montesano, Washington, in 1983 and led by frontman/guitarist Buzz Osborne since then, the band has been vital in the development of both grunge and sludge metal. Duly, flecks of their sound can be heard in the works of a variety of others, including Nirvana, Soundgarden, Faith No More, Sunn O))) and Mastodon, to name but a few.
When speaking to Listen Next in March 2022, Osborne discussed the many groups Melvins have influenced and named the two he’s most proud of. “Oh, Nirvana, Soundgarden, for sure,” he said. “Those are the two biggest. There’s a lot of other bands that were influenced by those bands — that got big – that probably don’t even like our band. So I would never take credit for any of that, even though they’re indirectly linked to us.”
“What’s funny to me is it really shows you what little understanding those people have of Soundgarden and Nirvana. They don’t really get where that’s coming from for them either, which is OK. I mean, I just don’t concern myself a whole lot about that kind of thing,” he continued later. “I like the idea that our stuff, our ideas and my ideas about how music should be – what was missing from music that I thought of in the mid-80s – were all things that then ended up through other bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden changed music on a global level.”
Given how Melvins changed music and culture, it seems unfathomable that they had to wait until 1995 to debut on national TV in the US, but it is true. It eventually came by way of the short-lived programme Sound FX which aired on the FX Network.
The clip from the programme shows Melvins tearing into ‘Revolve’ from 1994’s eighth album, Stoner Witch. In one of the most 1990s videos you’re likely to see this year, the trio play the piece on set whilst a host of rolling Melvins facts pop up on the screen. One of these is that none of the band drink or take drugs. It was the era of the Parents Music Resource Center, after all.
Things are all well and good until the showstopper arrives. It occurs when Osborne and the rest of the band sit down with one of the hosts of Sound FX, Jeff Probst, who would later host the hit reality series, Survivor. Probst, the antithesis of Melvins, describes their latest album as more “user-friendly” than anything else they’d released to date.
In what must be one of their most sardonic interviews to date, the band toy with Probst by offering a host of hilariously dry responses to his inane queries. One of the standout lines is, “See, we don’t want money. We want respect.” The group then close their appearance with ‘Goose Freight Train’.
Watch the clip below.
