Melvins: Melvins vs. Minneapolis
10 nights over the course of five-and-a-half years. 13 sets. 2 audio CDs and one MP3 disc. 127 tracks. 10 hours, 12 minutes, and 32 seconds of audio. 7.5 pages of notes. There were times I considered just throwing up my hands and walking away from my collection. I must be masochistic, given my willingness to jump into this after Pearl Jam’s 2003 tour.
I came away from this much happier with Melvins than I came away from that tour with Pearl Jam. There are a number of reasons I’ll attribute this to. First of all, I just had a higher level of affection for Melvins going in. Second, 13 sets over 10 nights is not even close to 73 sets over 72 nights, nor do the length of any Melvins sets approach the length of the single shortest Pearl Jam concert. Finally, this represents five-and-a-half years of changing set lists, not five-and-a-half months of the same. Plus it’s Melvins vs. Minneapolis, for crying out loud. How can you go wrong with that combination? Boner-ness commence!
I’ll be honest with you, though. This sounds like ass. I’d love to tell you these were lovingly recorded, mastered, and compiled concerts—and they very may well have been done out of love: the non-Walker shows, which is also exactly the set of Grumpy’s shows, were “recorded from the audience by Jeff Sebastianelli” and sometimes with Geoffrey Nicholson and the box set is dedicated to Sebastianelli’s memory—but no amount of love is going to burnish a non-soundboard recording in a tiny bar.
Still, I enjoyed this immensely. As opposed to the Pearl Jam debacle, which emphasized how much I hate several songs of theirs and how even the ones I like can’t quite stand up to that amount of heavy rotation, this experience reinforced to me just how much I love the Melvins catalog. Be assured, this is for fans only. Newcomers who don’t already have a robust Melvins collection will be confounded and perturbed. But if you love Melvins, you’ll love the passionate performances and live energy that cut through the terrible sound quality.
Even I got something new out of it. They hearken back to their very early Pacific Northwest days by covering Malfunkshun’s “With Yo’ Heart (Not Yo’ Hands)” from the legendary Deep Six compilation, which also featured four Melvins songs, and then they go right from that song into “Leeech,” a song that was given to them by or stolen from Green River, depending on who you ask. (This brings us all the way around because those were the two bands that merged to form Mother Love Bone, the predecessor of Temple Of The Dog and Pearl Jam.) Their covers of Alice Cooper’s “Halo Of Flies” are amazing; Melvins meets 1970’s glam-prog-rock? That’s such a fantastic combination I can’t believe it’s not a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. In fact, the performance of that track on 9/18/2000 might be the highlight of the collection if it’s not the Walker sessions where they do “Hung Bunny” and “Roman Dog Bird,” the first two songs on Lysol.
Still, my god, I’m not sure what’s better: Having this collection and listening to it intently several times, or finally allowing myself to move on through the rest of my unlistened-to collection.
Rating:
Mixers: None
Keepers: 3/20/04, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “Night Goat,” “With Teeth,” “Black Stooges/It’s Shoved”; 3/24/06, Soo Visual Arts Center: “Intro by David Scott Stone”; 2/8/03, The Walker: “Hung Bunny/Roman Dog Bird”; 9/18/00, Grumpy’s Minneapolis (Set 1): “Missing,” “Tipping The Lion,” “With Yo’ Heart (Not Yo’ Hands)/Leeech,” “Halo Of Flies”; 9/18/00, Grumpy’s Minneapolis (Set 2): “Revolve,” “AMAZON,” “Cherub,” “Youth Of America”; 9/19/00, Grumpy’s Minneapolis (Set 2): “Youth Of America”; 10/15/01, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “The Ballad Of Dwight Fry/Halo Of Flies,” “At The Stake”‘; 10/16/06, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “Intro/Oven,” “It’s Shoved”; 2/9/03, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “Black Stooges (first half),” “Black Stooges (second half)”; 3/25/06, Grumpy’s Minneapolis: “Pigs Of The Roman Empire,” “Hooch,” “Happy Birthday/Black Stooges”
Filed Between: Melvins’ Nude With Boots and Melvins+Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman Empire)
Tags: 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 3 lunchboxes, CD reviews, music
February 14th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Side note, I provided some of the recordings for this. There was no soundbaord for any Melvins Grumpys shows or SooVac show. Made do.
February 15th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Thanks, Geoffrey. Both for the note and information, and for sharing the recordings with all of us. I was pretty sure about the lack of soundboard…thanks for confirming.
January 29th, 2010 at 9:26 am
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