(Lukin would go on to co-found Mudhoney, then retire from music to pursue carpentry.) Lukin alleges that Osborne declined to formally fire him, telling him he’d broken up the band it wasn’t until Lukin ran into Osborne in San Francisco that he learned the truth. The fledgling C/Z Records picked them up and put them on a 1986 compilation called Deep Six that was meant to highlight the new sound brewing in the Northwest, but after cutting 1986’s self-titled EP for C/Z and 1987’s Gluey Porch Treatments for Bay Area label Alchemy, Osborne and Crover moved to San Francisco. As for Osbourne and Lukin: “The Melvins went from being the fastest band in Seattle to the slowest, almost overnight,” in the words of another Washington punk named Kim Thayil, who would form a band called Soundgarden that same year.īy this time, the Melvins had replaced Dillard with a drummer named Dale Crover, whose mother’s house in Aberdeen made for a makeshift practice space. Cobain started spiking his hair, spray-painting cars, and screaming to strengthen his vocal cords. Osbourne, Cobain, and Lukin all went, with Cobain selling his entire record collection to buy tickets.

One of these shows was Septemat the Mountaineers Hall in Seattle, with a hungry young band called Green River opening. That changed in 1984, when Black Flag confounded their fellow punk rockers by concluding their album My War with three six-minute-plus tracks that pulled away from the breakneck speed of hardcore toward the wounded crawl of doom metal.īlack Flag were enjoying an absurdly productive year, releasing three albums (starting with My War) and playing roughly 170 shows. The Melvins played covers of Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and Osborne’s beloved Kiss, mixed in with fast hardcore punk. When Osborne formed the Melvins in 1983, with Lukin on bass and Dillard on drums, he found a new vehicle for his crusade-and a way out of Montesano, as the band started gradually playing gigs closer and closer to the nearest major city, Seattle. He burned compilation tapes, made pilgrimages to the DJ’s Sound City record shop in nearby Aberdeen to talk music with clerk Tim Hayes, and even wrote an article for the Montesano Vidette arguing the value of small shows years later, Novoselic would credit him with bringing punk rock to their community. During this time, Osborne positioned himself as a relentless rock’n’roll evangelist, spreading the gospel of ’70s groups like Kiss and Cheap Trick and punk bands like Black Flag and MDC to his friends. He met Lukin at Montesano High School, and their social circle would expand to include Osborne’s coworker Mike Dillard and a couple of kids named Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic. Osborne’s dad wanted him to sign up for the Army, but when Buzz fell sick he went to the local recruiter’s office and got a permanent excuse from service instead, he got a job at the local Thriftway, where a disliked employee named Melvin became the inspiration for the name of his band.

Melvins houdini kurt cobain