Top 10 Shows I Promoted Part Five
1989 - 2010
Melvins - June 3, 2000 - Last Place On Earth
To explain how I came to know the Melvins means I need to explain how I came to know Reed Mullin. When the Antenna started allowing all ages shows in 1986, it became my church. The year before, Corrosion Of Conformity’s Animosity came out and that record altered the course of my musical taste and it’s growth.
I was 15 when I saw C.O.C. for the first time at the Antenna with Metrowaste. I remember buying multiple $6 t-shirts from Reed since they were high quality, fit well, comfortable, and, most importantly, cheap. He was very fan friendly and we made a connection. He gave me a 1-800 number at his job which turned out to be his family’s business. He once told me he saved thousands of dollars in long distance phone bills handling C.O.C. business through that phone line. It definitely saved me money.
We stayed in touch over the years. One phone call in 1990, we were talking about what we were listening to at the time and he asked if I’d heard the Melvins. I had seen their wares for sale in the Toxic Shock catalog/fanzine and Maximum Rock N’ Roll but never listened to them. He implored me to check them out. When funds allowed, I marched directly up to Cheapskates and purchased Ozma, which wasn’t even a year old at the time.
Some records punch you right in the mouth when you put them on. Like Raw Power or Reign In Blood. Ozma did not affect me that way. It was more like a murder mystery that consumed me. I didn’t understand it. Probably still don’t completely. Why does it sound like that? Why do their instruments sound like that? God, they’re slow! At a time when everybody was trying to see how fast they could go, these guys did the opposite. Skulls, violence, destruction, blood, demons and death were all over the record covers of most all of hardcore and speed metal bands at the time.
The Melvins response?
It didn’t punch me in the mouth but I did like it and I wore it out. I purchased almost every record they put out for the next ten years. I was just getting started booking national acts at that time and I started rubbing my hands together, thinking about a possible Melvins show in Memphis.
One opportunity presented itself in 1990/91 and it was Tad with the Melvins opening. The guarantee was $2000. For perspective, Faith No More, at that same time when we booked them, got less. Back then, that show would’ve been worth about 100 people tops under the best circumstances. Tickets would’ve needed to be $25 to cover all the expenses and at that price, you would lose half or more of your audience. $10 was an expensive ticket back then. I was bummed but not stupid. I had to pass. It was a total “you must be this big to ride” moment.
We all know that time flies faster as you get older. A decade seems like a couple of years to me now but back then it seemed like forever. That’s how long it took for the opportunity to host the Melvins presented itself again and it wasn’t really me that booked it. That would’ve been the local major concert promoter representative who dealt with the big time agents like Creative Artist Agency, William Morris Agency, or International Creative Management and, as it turns out, went to high school with me. His name was Jim Green.
Jim and I first knew of each other when we shared a 10th grade Typing class, which was the most valuable skill I developed at Southaven High School (I’m using it RIGHT NOW!). He played on the football team and hung with the jocks, which are punk rock kid’s natural predators, so we never interacted, but he was never a bully. Jim graduated a year ahead of me and went to college. He started booking concerts in Oxford, MS and got a talent buying gig at the New Daisy Theatre on Beale Street. Jim climbed his way all the way to the top of the concert promoter food chain in Memphis by working for Bob Kelley and Mid South Concerts, the biggest promoter in Memphis.
If you put Jim’s concert resume and mine side by side, you’ll see that Jim is in a way different class. He did it for real. I booked a handful of concerts in 1000+ capacity venues and the stress of risk takes all the fun out of it for me. I’m having to gird my loins just to put on one show in one night and Jim is booking entire legs of tours in multi-thousand seat venues. Jim has a small crew of industry experienced people to support him and I’m hoping whoever I’m dating at the time has enough bulldog in her to run the door.
I’m sure I was a thorn in Jim’s side when booking agents would try to pit us against each other bidding up their artists, but that happened rarely. Once, an agent tried the divide and conquer tactic and told me that Jim was talking about me to him; saying things like: “Chris Walker isn’t a real promoter.” At the time, that chaffed me. Partly because it was obvious that the agent was stirring up stuff and partly because I knew it was true that he said it. I had heard from someone else in town that he said something to that effect before the agent had even mentioned it.
I was mad about that then and for a time after but the more I thought about it over the years, the more I realized how true it was. I wasn’t a real concert promoter. Not like Jim. Not like those major booking agents are used to dealing with on a daily, if not hourly basis. I was a dabbler comparatively. Real concert promoters do it for the money. Real concert promoters use words like “units” and “points” and “split”. Real concert promoters have real money. I remember whining to a booking agent about losing a few hundred dollars on a show and that agent responded “I just got off the phone with a promoter who just lost 75K over the weekend. It’s hard for me to hear this.”
Jim Green and I were never on the outs. Any time I saw him, we chatted about shows. He kept threatening to put some shows in Barristers and I dared him to do so. He finally made good on his threat and put a Geraldine Fibbers show in Barristers that was lightly attended, and while I was grateful we finally got to work together, no issues materialized, and the Fibbers are a high quality band, this wasn’t the kind of show I was lobbying for.
The Melvins have been handled by one of the “big 3” booking agencies for over 25 years. Those big 3 had me on the pay-no-mind list. I was a small fish in a small pond. If I was ever going to get the Melvins, I would need an advocate. Jim knew the Melvins booking agent and had dealt with him. I had not. I had introduced myself to him and he verified that I’m to be trusted but he had no use for me or what I offered: a crappy little punk rock room with a crappy P.A. in a crappy market.
As I sit here at my computer, I can’t recall Jim asking me for the date holds that eventually became the show I’m writing about but it happened. The main thing I recall after Jim confirmed it with me was how excited we both were at the time. Me, because I finally got one of my favorite bands booked at my venue; Jim, because he could finally see me out in public and not have to worry about me pestering him about a Melvins date.
You would think that I would have a better memory of one of my favorite shows ever, but I don’t. If you haven’t noticed, I don’t have photos or video for once. Maybe that’s why I rank it so high. I just have nothing but positive memories of that show. Since the memories are scant, I’ll bullet the rest:
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen the Melvins and in how many different cities. The tour I ended up getting was unlike any I’ve ever seen them do before or since. There was no support. It was “An Evening With The Melvins”.
Two 45 minutes sets with a 30 minute intermission. A Melvins fan’s dream.
Here’s a review from themelvins.net/wiki of the show the night before in Nashville:
They played 2 sets... its was an Evening with the Melvins.. (328 had previously done an Evening with Mr. Bungle)- I remember they did a noisy set 1st followed by a Cry, Maggot, Bootlicker + hits set, including Smells Like Teen Spirit (with a "random" female singer from the crowd which someone yelled "i saw her at the last show" - which Buzz? replied "don't ruin it for the people who haven't seen it yet"- more?
I can’t speak to the voracity of the above review but that is not how it went down in Memphis. The Melvins rarely chat during their shows but when they took the stage, Buzz Osborne, the lead singer/guitar player, greeted the Memphis crowd at Last Place On Earth and was talkative, friendly, and hilarious throughout the first Melvins set.
They did covers of songs and also invited someone on stage to sing “Teen Spirit”.
Buzz told a story of when the Melvins opened for Kiss in Memphis at The Pyramid Arena and as they watched from the side of the stage, a guitar tech for Ace Frehley handed off the famous fireworks guitar to Ace (see below) then hauled ass past them and dove behind some road cases…
…they asked why he was doing that and he said “I basically just handed someone drunk off their ass a rocket launcher.”
They finished their first set and went into intermission. One strong memory that still sticks is one of my regular customers came up to me and said “This is amazing! You have got to be SO proud.” It was and I was.
When the 2nd set began, it was with a single Melvin making a hellacious noise by scraping a toilet brush across a wire and contact mic being run through 9000 levels of distortion. There was no chatter afterwards. They just started sonically laying waste to everything within range. They made it apparent that set 2 was strictly about business.
It was song, song ends, 15 to 20 seconds of silent preparation, next song begins. Rinse, repeat for 45 minutes.
Jim came by twice. Once, at load in, to make sure everybody was good, then, at the end of the night for settlement. No issues. All clear.
As a pretty serious Melvins fan to this day, that was the best I’ve ever seen them play. I’m sure there’s bias there but I’m willing to defend my position. If you saw that show, you got 2 very different performances along with King Buzzo’s “tight 5” comedy set and I’d put his 5 minutes against any mid-level comedian. You also didn’t have to sit through a band you didn’t come to see. That’s huge for me.
After the dust settled, the band had shipped out, and cleaning the venue began, I discovered some mini-discs with the word “Melvins” written on it left by the band. In case you don’t know what that looks like:
I had access to a player and listened to them. They were single tracks of instruments from a session, some radio interview, multiple takes of one song, etc. I felt like it wasn’t anything top secret but it also wasn’t mine and they might want it back, so I locked it in a box and put it in a closet until years later, when Tomahawk played the New Daisy Theater, I got the opportunity to return them to Buzz.
At first he didn’t want to accept them. He took me for a crazy person. I explained that he had played my venue a few years before and left them behind and that when I listened to see what it was, it sounded somewhat personal and wanted to return them. He was nonplussed. I told him I believed the sound engineer accidently left them and I don’t have a mini-disc player. He dismissingly told me I could keep them, obviously not taking me seriously. I asserted myself and said: “Buzz, if you don’t take these mini-discs you left in my club, I’m going to put them on eBay with the same story I just told you.”
He sighed, said “Ok”, took them out of my hand and walked back in the venue.