Melvins and Dale Crover Band
Everyone talks about how influential the Melvins were to the music made by subsequent generations of sludge and alternative bands, but less discussed is their influence on fashion and the way musicians are perceived by the public. Before the ‘90s, rockers tended to dress and act in ways intended to make them stand apart from everyone else, to elevate themselves, by appearance if not by achievement, as rock stars. Bands like the Melvins, Nirvana, and their fellow flannel-bearing northerners made rock and roll look more like the neighbor’s laundry room than an arena, in a way that even punk, with its almost fascistic dedication to a fashion template more cartoonish than anarchistic, never managed to pull off.
Still headed up by Buzz Osbourne and Dale Crover, the Melvins will be plugging their newest straight-outta-the-laundry-room album, Pinkus Abortion Technician, when they kick off a short west coast tour (less than a dozen dates) at the Casbah over two nights on January 9 and 10. The show will be opened by the Dale Crover Band