Trivia / Melvins

• Channel Hop: Melvins was one of many grunge bands that got signed to a major record label — Atlantic Records to be specific — thanks to the success of Nirvana. While they were granted an unusually large amount of creative freedom, the band knew that the label still had their limits and released their more experimental album Prick under an indie label and under a different name (read: "Melvins" spelt backwards) while they were under contract with Atlantic.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Buzz Osborne did not like how the Joe Preston EP turned out, which was part of a 'trilogy' alongside the King Buzzo and Dale Crover albums. According to Buzz, Joe had no interest in doing the EP whatsoever and recorded the whole thing in just several hours. Buzz personally considers it one of the worst releases the band put their name to, and it ended up being one of the reasons why they eventually kicked Joe out of the band.
  • According to the liner notes included with the 2021 vinyl reissue of Gluey Porch Treatments, Buzzo regretted letting Matt Lukin play bass on the album, citing his sloppiness on the intro to "Eye Flys" and saying recording the song "almost didn't happen":
  During rehearsals for the recording Matt couldn't fucking play it. He couldn't keep a steady rythm [sic] on the intro to save his life. He was struggling and struggling and Dale and I kept telling him no, no to the point he finally had a complete melt down, screaming WE CAN'T RECORD THIS SONG BECAUSE I CAN'T FUCKING PLAY IT and threw his bass across the room. By that time I was already pretty sick of him [...] I calmly told him we were going to record it even if I had to play his part. In the end we let him play it. It's totally fucked up. I should have played it myself, or I should have fired him on the spot and hired Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden to play bass on the album. That would have been truly glorious, and I wouldn't have to cringe every time I hear it.
• Creator Couple: Mackie Osborne, Buzz Osborne's wife, is an artist and graphic designer who primarily does artwork for rock albums. She's designed the artwork of nearly every Melvins album released since 1994.
  • Lori "Lorax" Black was dating Buzz when she first joined the band.
• Development Hell: Three Men and a Baby, a collaboration with godheadSilo bassist/vocalist Mike Kunka, was mostly recorded in 1999, but it wasn't until 2015 that production was finally finished and the album itself was released in 2016. None of the involved parties seem entirely certain about why it was shelved for so long.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: Streaming versions of The Crybaby are missing the opening track, a Cover Version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" featuring Leif Garrett, presumably due to rights issues.
• False Credit: Lori Black was credited on Houdini despite having left the band prior to the album's recording. Osbourne played bass on the album.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Pigs of the Roman Empire is a very divisive record amongst fans, but Buzz Osborne says it's one of his personal favorite records that he was involved with.
• Permanent Placeholder: According to Buzz, the scatting in "Hooch" was meant to be a placeholder for actual words he'd write later - it was Kurt Cobain's idea to keep the nonsense syllables in the song and print them in the liner notes of Houdini.
• Promoted Fanboy: Subverted. Kurt Cobain idolized the Melvins growing up, and auditioned for them a couple of times. Although he wasn't an official member, he did manage to land a few gigs being a roadie for them and producing/playing on the Houdini album. Unfortunately, he was chin-deep in his addiction and mental health struggles, and they eventually had to can him from the Houdini sessions because he was far too unstable by that point to be able to make it work.
• Throw It In!: "Vile" starts with a strange percussive noise, followed by a distinctive "woosh" sound. This was actually the sound of Lori Black turning her bass gear on - She's a bit short and was using a large amp, so some of that noise was said to be her getting on a stool to press the on switch.
• Troubled Production: Houdini. The band was able to hire Kurt Cobain as a producer but he was apparently in no condition to produce it and was more or less fired due to being too out of control. The engineer for the record, Jonathan Burnside described several issues occurring during sessions such as "Bad communication, drugs, major label profiteering, rehab, schedule blowouts, backstabbing, and album miscrediting" and called it a "devil album".
• What Could Have Been:
  • Beck was slated to appear on the collaboration-themed album The Crybaby, but the band apparently had trouble getting in contact with his management in time for the album's scheduled release. This sort of would have been the second time Beck became involved with the band - his single "Beercan" sampled their song "Hogleg", and Buzz Osborne appeared in the video.
  • The live "album" (read: the song "Eye Flys" stretched out with a cacophony of noise, feedback, and sampling) Colossus of Destiny was supposed to be the third album in the trilogy after The Maggot and The Bootlicker and was intended to be completely unenjoyable and a total Mind Screw for anyone who bought the album. However, the band came up with the idea to collaborate with several other musicians and released that album (The Crybaby) in its place. The band also held off on releasing Colossus of Destiny for another year, and in the meantime put out a redone version of Gluey Porch Treatments and the Electroretard album before the intended third album saw the light of day.
  • When Jello Biafra offered to collaborate with the Melvins, he had originally wanted them to write material that was more like their normal style, as a change from the Hardcore Punk sound he's normally associated with. Then the band wrote half of the music without him and much of the material they came up with resembled a heavier version of Dead Kennedys.
  • Prick was originally going to be titled Kurt Kobain, but was changed after Kurt Cobain died. They joked that the final title came from "Kurt being a prick for dying and making them change the title".
  • Speaking of Cobain, he auditioned for the band a couple of times. During one audition he was reportedly so nervous that he forgot their songs. He was also a semi-regular roadie and merch guy during their early days.
  • Dale Crover's solo 1995 EP Drumb consisted of songs recorded for Stoner Witch that didn't make the final cut.

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