Where & when did you first hear The Melvins?

[Lylelovett666]

My first year in high school I had an art class with a guy a grade above me. We started talking about music & he offered to make me a mix tape of stuff I'd never heard. I was listening to the cure,the smiths,bahus,etc. The tapes he gave me had babes in Toyland,skin yard,soundgarden,rapeman,unsane,hole,mudhoney & two bands that immediately grabbed me by the collar & flipped me on my ass,The Jesus Lizard & The Melvins. The two Melvins songs were,Wispy & Hog Leg. I brought him cassette tapes the next day & asked for everything he had by the JL & Melvins. To this day two of my favorite bands. Last two concert I've been to were the JL last oct 28 &vthe Melvins fri 13 of this year.

[))))((((]

I wish i knew about Melvins at high school age. It was much later for me. I was 28!!! I had just brought the latest High On Fire album 'Blessed Black Wings'. On the cover was a promotional sticker that said "for fans of Motorhead, Slayer, Melvins". I knew the other two bands but thought "who the hell are these Melvins??" i looked online and was shocked to see they had a ton of albums out! The write up about the band and their records on allmusic.com sounded promising so i ordered two of the best rated ones - The Bootlicker and Stoner Witch. Bootlicker arrived in the post a few weeks later so i heard that one first. I thought it was weird but very relaxing sounding and cool. When Stoner Witch arrived a few days later it blew my head off! "Is this even the same band??" i wondered to myself. Over the next 4 months or so i ended up buying all the Melvins albums i could. I think i brought The Maggot and HAT next.

[Bigval]

I was in high school and got Stoner Witch soon after it came out I may have seen the video for Honey Bucket on TV prior but I remember loving half the album and hating the other half of the album so traded it in. My brother signed up to a music club where you got like 4 x CD's for fuck all and then had to buy another 6 full priced ones over the next six months or something after that. He 'had' to buy Stoner Witch, didn't like it so sold it to me I kept it for a few months and then traded it in again lol

Fast forward to around 2002 my brother bought HAT on a whim but hated it so sold it to me and I fell in love with it still my favourite Melvins album to this day. I probably didn't get into them properly though until I bought NWB and from then on started following the band closely.

[Colonel Cheese]

My brother bought me Honky on CD for my birthday when i was 14.

[Dumpster D]

Do you remember Cable when it was relatively new? Antennas and sometimes a switch box and the rain and weather affected the picture and we still had Local Stations.

It was late at night, I was downstairs channel surfing and when I came back through much music the program Loud was on and I Jussst caught the Mombius Hibachi Video, It must have been a brand new Vid at the time it was like 1997...and was like...The Melvins?...Hey these guys sound fuckin' Badass and Cool! Then I bought Live at the fucker club and the rest is history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGbp_3lfMDk

[Garnz]

I was still in university. It was Lizzy on maybe 120 Minutes or the German version and had to buy their fresh Houdini album that just came out. One of my favourites after fist listenings was Going Blind with this massive wall of sound they made. I was surprised to find this long backlog and my favourite became Lysol und Eggnogg with their slow and sludgy songs. By then I prefered vinyl over CDs again so I have all the early vinyl releases. Why Lysol? I loved John Zorn's Naked City project especially their Leng Tche album. I did not notice their reference to the Melvins in the booklet (CD art work with tiny lettering) but the sound and feeling is similar. Still like the Melvins but for me their killer songs became less over time. But hell yeah, they are still great and live they still rule.

[Tobias]

I had heard of them thru Nirvana. Saw/heard them the first time in the Hype! Documentary. I thought Night Goat was the heaviest thing I'd ever heard. I rewound the vhs tape so many times just to watch it over and over. The local library had Houdini on cd so that was my first exposure to a whole album. I remember checking out a vhs copy of A Salad of a Thousand Delights from Rainy Day Records in Oly around the same time. I think the first album I bought was Bullhead and HAT was just being released along with 26 Songs. My first show was their 20th Anniversary show in Oly with Mudhoney and Fitz of Depression (RIP Mikey), and I've seen them about a dozen or so more times since then. So thank you to Nirvana for exposing me to what is now one of my favorite bands ever THE MELVINS!!!

[amazonAMAZON]

I've probably recounted this before. Was a grungebaby Nirvana fan in middle school. Read Kurt produced Houdini in a few interviews. Put in the disc at the listening station at CD Trader. Liked Hooch and read the nonsense lyrics. Skipped ahead to the two songs where Cobain was listed which turned out to be Sky Pup and Spread Eagle and probably decided to go buy some lame alternative CDs instead.

Next year I did the same with Prick. Checking out Pure Digital Silence and something else based on song titles. Decided this was not my band.

A music friend recommended Stoner Witch and I probably ordered it from BMG Music Club with 18 other CDs for a penny then promptly canceled like my big brother advised. That album just about changed my life.

I was an arm's length fan, though for another decade. Stag and Colossus and Singles all had severe "cooling" effects on my unready brain. Even HAT and Senile threw me off, though Bullhead and Stoner and Maggot and Bootlicker had become reliable loves.

I finally saw Melvins on stage for the first time around 2009 maybe. That started a fuller appreciation that caused me to revisit the gaps and succumb to everything Melvins.

[Pelican]

I was (still am) a huge Nirvana fan. Shortly after moving to NYC, looking thru the back of the Village Voice at concert listings, I saw the Melvins were playing the Knitting Factory. I told my roommate that we need to go see this band because of their influence on Nirvana and all that. I'd never heard their music before that night and had NO idea what to expect. Needless to say the show changed forever the way I thought about music. I was so blown away that I stayed after the show to meet the band and tell them how great I thought they were. I felt like a total dork, but at the same time I was so excited I didn't care. Buzz said little, like "thank you!", I think Kevin said about the same, Dale was more upbeat and then told me to "go buy all of our records!" and last, Adam Jones (I didn't know it was him at the time, even though I was a Tool fan and for years assumed he was DSS until I saw the footage below) told me, "thanks, but I'm not really in the band."

Anyway, image how stoked I was when so many years later someone uploaded that full concert to youtube. I couldn't believe it. Seeing it so many years later I understand completely how my head was blown that night. I had forgotten (blocked out?) the Cosmic Psychos guy making the nude cameo during the Melvins set, but remembered it and laughed my ass off upon seeing it again.

Still have the ticket to this show in my The Maggot CD case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMd5RjuiFxI

[John Schuller]

05/16/1987 @ Crescent Ballroom, Tacoma WA (w/D.R.I./Poison Idea/Painted Willie)

I was 14 years old and there to see D.R.I. on their Crossover tour. Melvins played first, all in Star Trek uniforms. My mind was blown. The next day I found a copy of the Deep Six compilation at the record store and my life was forever altered.

[Stonergrunge]

If I'm not mistaken it was in 1998 when I watched the Hooch video on Mtv Latino. Two years later I ordered Houdini on CD... mostly because of Hooch, then five years later the Melvins mania came into my life and the rest is history.

[Nizamark]

Still have the ticket to this show in my The Maggot CD case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMd5RjuiFxI

nice. i was at this^ show.  i brought a girl i was kinda sorta seeing and for her the gig was.... overwhelming. she wasn't used to that level of heaviness.  shows in that room were notoriously loud, and that night was no exception of course.*

wasn't my first melvins show tho. i caught em in 97 and 95.  not really sure how i got into melvins at first.  i have a vague memory of impulse-buying 'bullhead' at kim's on bleecker. that might've been the conversion





(*loudest show i ever saw in my life was six finger satellite at the knitting factory nyc)

[AMBloch]

May 5th, 1984

Behind the Gray Door, Seattle

My first time seeing them and their first time playing in Seattle. I was 15 and mind blown.

Serendipity!

[John Schuller]

May 5th, 1984

Behind the Gray Door, Seattle

My first time seeing them and their first time playing in Seattle. I was 15 and mind blown.

Serendipity!

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[amazonAMAZON]

Edit: Ha! I already replied in this thread. I'm a dunce.

---

I've probably told this story before.

While desperately waiting for new Nirvana to show up at our record store, remembered Kurt said in an interview he worked on the Melvins Houdini. I went to the listening station and opened up the CD case

I heard "Hooch" and thought it was cool but I could understand the liber notes ("nose tick a toe...")

I read the credits and skipped ahead to where Kurt was listed. "Sky Pup" was weird. I heard all of "Spread Eagle Beagle" and put the CD back.