The Melvins – “Honey Bucket” @ The Showbox in Seattle 7-26-08
“I gotta tractor named ‘Johnny’ … my little boy likes to ride on it! … Got myself a JOHNNY! Ya buncha lazy fu-Ck-in’ dweebs!”
“I don’t know what the fuck his problem is, some kinda amateur.”
“You people have no clue, and you people have NO IDEA what you’re in store for.”
“You can tell all your punk-rock-stupid friends that they missed the SHOW OF THE YEAR!”
“Keep it for somebody who wants it; I don’t want any of your applause.”
“My brother used to fuck my sister. That left me with the family goat.”
“Ooooooh we’re too punk-rock to play here!” - the preceding all allegedly uttered on stage by Smelly, of Plainfield
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“I don’t really think things up here on the stage are gonna change much.” – [Whomever is on the Melvins' side]
“Raise your hand if you wanna jump off the stage.” [some club-owner guy talking to the crowd at -- presumably -- a Melvins show]
“This is getting ridiculous; I can’t stand it.” [musician-to-crowd banter; I just can't decide whether it's King Buzzo or some really, really sensitive lead-singer guy. I just can't believe Buzzo would say something like this onstage.]
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I can’t decide if I just made one of the biggest mistakes of my life or lucked out and struck some odd sort of jackpot. The Melvins/Plainfield split 7-inch, which I just found in a Corpus Christi record shop, is nothing but between-song banter. And, from what I’m reading online, the Melvins’ side isn’t even MELVINS BANTER … it’s some classic-rock band (I’m also reading on melvins.net that this actually is King Buzzo, but I’m just a bit suspicious because the voice on their side of the 7-inch doesn’t sound like Buzzo to me) …
This whole between-song-banter-as-album idea … I’m not sure I’m sold on it. The fourth side of Nirvana‘s From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah is also nothing but banter, but at least you have three sides of MUSIC to tide you over, rendering the fourth a nice little curiosity (and only a quarter of the equation).
Buying this is good for collector mojo and little else. I remember buying a double-CD set of the Melvins’ wayyy back in 1996 or ’97 and being SO disappointed in what I found — nothing but random splicing experiments, bits of ephemera, songs run backward (if memory serves) and — you guessed it — between-song banter. I ended up selling that double-CD and regretting it later, as it’s become insanely valuable. Still, I’m proud of myself for not letting collector-motivation cause me to do something out of character (i.e. liking something because of style, not substance).
The question is, do I hold onto this now that I’m perhaps more of a collector than I used to be (back then I was too POOR to be a collector, after all)? Do I cling to a document I know I’ll never listen to again just to POSSESS something that may be of value (can’t find any copies on eBay or anywhere else on the Web, for that matter)? Do I … give in?
Yep. When it comes to The Melvins, you just gotta suck it up like a champ or get left behind with the stodgy SUCKERS. And so it goes — I will store this record in hopes that someday I can trade it for a copy of Honky or maybe get a coupla bucks knocked off a case of booze. Yay.
I’m going to drown my sorrows in a few jelly beans and Dead Raven Choir’s My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind.
These two lines on the Plainfield side are actually The Cosmic Commander of Wrestling introducing Plainfield at 924 Gilman Street:
“You people have no clue, and you people have NO IDEA what you’re in store for.”
“You can tell all your punk-rock-stupid friends that they missed the SHOW OF THE YEAR!”
haha, SWEET! I figured there were some different people speaking but it’s also hard to tell what’s going on. i mean, are the Melvins even on this 7-inch at all?
you tha man, thanks!