Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [12]
When we started out, we were playing some Who covers and some Hendrix covers and Cream, a bunch of classic-rock stuff. I remember Lukin coming to Buzz and me about two weeks after he started jamming with us. He goes, “Holy shit, you guys are insane! I’ve smoked more pot and drank more booze in the last two weeks than I have my entire life!” We were probably responsible for him going down the road of drugs and alcohol.
BUZZ OSBORNE Alcohol was really amazing. In a hopeless situation, it makes you feel like you’ve got something to live for. If I’d have been left there and hadn’t discovered music, I’d have blown my brains out. No doubt. I would have killed somebody or killed myself. But I stopped drinking in the ’80s. I thought it was better for me and everybody around me if I didn’t do it. When I drank, I’d break out in felonies or break out in bandages, one of the two.
TIM HAYES (Fallout Records store owner) I was working at a chain record store called DJ Sound City back in Aberdeen, at the Wishkah Mall. I was about as fringy as you could get—I had a pompadour at the time. Cats would come in and buy their Doobie Brothers or Styx or Rush or Skynyrd. A lot of bad music. Buzz and Matt would come in and hang out, and I’d turn ’em on: “Hey, man, you gotta check out this Cramps record or this Black Flag record.” One day they came in and said they’d started a band.
BUZZ OSBORNE We named the band after this guy who worked at the Thriftway. Melvin was a fucking asshole. He was an adult and was in a position to give you orders. He was the kind of guy who would yell at you in front of somebody else to try to impress them. Horseshit. We wanted to call ourselves that because it sounded stupid. We liked the inside joke.
MIKE DILLARD Right behind the Thriftway, there was a park-and-ride place where you could park your car and catch the bus. We found this outdoor plug from a building next to the parking lot. We just drug a big extension cord over there and plugged all the amps and stuff in and set up at about seven o’clock on a Saturday night.
KURT COBAIN (late Nirvana singer/guitarist; Courtney Love’s husband; Frances Bean Cobain’s father; from his journals) I remember hanging out at Montesano, Washington’s Thriftway, when this short-haired employee box-boy who kinda looked like the guy in Air Supply handed me a flyer that read: “The Them Festival. Tomorrow night in the parking lot behind Thriftway. Free live rock music.”
Montesano, Washington, a place not accustomed to having live rock acts in their little village. A population of a few thousand loggers and their subservient wives. I showed up with stoner friends in a van.… There stood the Air Supply box-boy holding a Les Paul with a picture from a magazine of Kool Cigarettes laminated on it, a mechanic redheaded biker boy, and that tall Lukin guy …
They played faster than I ever imagined music could be played and with more energy than my Iron Maiden records could provide. This was what I was looking for.
BUZZ OSBORNE We did a bunch of stuff like that; it wasn’t really a show. What I consider our first show was in Olympia, Washington. That was in ’84 at a place called the Tropicana. We practiced our heads off for a long time, and we played all original material. A few weeks later, we played a show there with the Fastbacks, and all the kids who came up to see us play the first show came up to see us play again. So at that moment was when I knew, Okay, we did it. We pulled it off.
KURT BLOCH The Melvins were unlike any other band. They had this absurd sound, which was just pummeling, but at the same time it wasn’t like hardcore where you’re telling everyone how much you hate your parents and school and stuff like that. The lyrics didn’t make any literal sort of sense, but they’re yelling them like they mean them. They were very pretentious but without any pretense.