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The Melvins ’51 States in 51 Days’ Tour Diary, Days 29 & 30: Rock Stars Don’t Care About You

Photo courtesy of the Melvins

Sludge-metal pioneers the Melvins are attempting to break a world record: 51 shows in 51 states in 51 days. Join SPIN for their exclusive tour diary of this ridiculous and completely inadvisable endeavor! Catch up here.

October 2, 2012 – Pawtucket, RI @ The Met Cafe
October 3, 2012 – Newhaven, CT @ Toad’s Place
October 4, 2012 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
30 down, 21 to go

Photo courtesy of the Melvins

As a result of this SPIN tour blog we have actually had people asking us questions like how we could say such horrible things about these bloated, multimillionaire rock stars. And they always leave it off like at any moment we’re about to get dragged before some rock’n’roll kangaroo court to stand tall before the man and pay for our ungodly sins against these talented and humanitarian pillars of absolute rock’n’roll dignity. Well clearly that should be the case, but let’s get real for a moment here: What’s Billie Joe Green Day or Rob Zombie or Bono going to do, not call us ever again? Are we going to be stricken from the rock’n’roll celebrity A-list as a result of these “outrageous” and pointless posted internet monstrosities? Will we receive absolutely no support from these people from now on as a result of actually having the balls to speak our mind in regards to this kind of bullshit?

Oh please, whatever they do to us don’t let it be that! I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to work and live our lives with no support from these blowhard, asshole bastard, multimillionaire talentless rock’n’roll idiots. If that happens I may as well just fold this whole thing up and call it quits! Come on. These senseless jackasses don’t care about me or what I think and I don’t really care what they think. Why would I?

Music Hall of Williamsburg / Photo courtesy of the Melvins

There is not one thing I or any of the rest of you can learn from a millionaire rock star. Nothing. There is not one piece of information, not one bit of advice that they could ever lay on me that I could use in any area of my everyday life. I suppose they could put me in touch with a good divorce lawyer but that does me no good since I’m one of the few rock’n’rollers who’s been married only once and I’m nowhere near getting a divorce. Of course they seem to know all about shit like getting divorced and surprisingly enough drug rehabs, but I don’t need assistance in those areas. I don’t need a coke dealer. I don’t need a divorce lawyer. I don’t need the number for a drug rehab. That seems to be the extent of the useful information they have to offer us lowly peons. To be fair though, they do provide us all with an example of what not to do. I suppose there is some good in that, and I suppose that is important.

However….We’re talking about imbecilic five-star clowns with imbecilic five-star clown managers and road managers and an army of imbecilic five-star clown sycophant assholes surrounding them at all times and nothing they do ever surprises me. It’s predictably boring and pathetic and it’s one of the reasons the Melvins operate the way they do. I can’t stand that fucking shit and I just don’t care. And besides, before you get mad at us for speaking our minds about this trivial bullshit, remember, these guys don’t want or need your help.

These rock star assholes don’t care about you. They don’t even care enough to try and make good music for their fans to listen to. What they generally care about has little or nothing to do with logic even because in most of these cases it’s not about money. These overpaid lazy fuckers already have more money than God. So what exactly is the motivation for these boring turds? I have no idea. Lord knows I can’t figure it out.

Photo courtesy of the Melvins

If I had to guess I’d say it has something to do with them liking having their asses kissed on and off stage all over the world. That’s what they miss the most when they aren’t “working.” On tour they get to strut around like Louis the XIV, but at home their just another pot smoking dipshit vegging out in front of a big screen cable TV. Wow. I remain unimpressed.

And I don’t mean to just pick on rich rock stars, my hatred in this department extends to all multimillionaire entertainers, be they comedians, TV personalities, news anchors, movie moguls, film directors, writers, artists, and actors, with actors being the lowest slime-crawling maggots of them all. Actors really are the scum of the earth. Their behavior makes overpaid rock stars look positively noble. But that’s another diatribe. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t fault anyone for making money. I fault them for being boring, talentless, inhuman fuckheads.

“But come on, Buzz, aren’t you worried about going a little too far with this insane and seemingly pointless shit talking?”

No….Why should I be worried? When I do ponder such things I just think back to one of my favorite Flannery O’Connor quotes which is, “I’m not afraid that the book will be controversial, I’m afraid it will not be controversial.” Of course! I’m not worried about a goddamn thing. Now if I could somehow work it to where one of these multimillionaires takes a swing at me. Ha!

Photo courtesy of the Melvins

Anyway….We played a great show in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, at a club I’d never set foot in called the Met Cafe. Everyone who worked there were really helpful and very cool and we had a great show. Great crowd and good times were had by all. It was raining as we loaded out and there were a handful of very friendly fans waiting for us as we left who were surprisingly well spoken and only a tiny bit ripped. I like fans who are just a tiny bit ripped. Ha!

New Haven. A club called Toad’s. We’ve played Toad’s a shitload of times over the years and it’s always pretty good. A few times ago we invented a game in Toads downstairs dressing room called “hall ball.” This is actually an extremely dangerous version of wiffleball except it’s played in a very confined space. You still throw the ball as hard as you can and you still try to hit the ball as hard as you can with the trick being to not get hit full in the face with a line drive. You have to be quick.

They also have a hot tub down there that I wouldn’t get near unless I was wearing a complete hazmat suit and even then. No fucking way. I usually don’t even like using the john at clubs let alone climbing into a fucking backstage hot tub for Christ’s sake. Screw that. I won’t even get in a hot tub anyway, or a public pool for that matter. In that horrid nightmarish thing swimming in piss would be the least of it. The club told us they thought the last people to actually use the tub were George Clinton and company.

I talked to yet another drunk after our New Haven performance who actually got irritated because I didn’t want to stand there and listen to him complain about our show. I try to avoid that kind of shit to the best of my ability. Guess why? We also had a “fun” encounter with a “fan” who we all dubbed “Tweaky Crank-enstein.” You can imagine how well that went. Some blown out dude who wants to gack-yak your ear off about nothing whilst on a crystal bender. Perfect. He went from band member to crew member to band member and drove us all nuts.

The best part of touring is playing the shows. I mean that is the point of touring, at least for me. I have been blessed in that I’ve always gotten to play with other good musicians. Our New York date was our 30th show in a row. Our last U.S. tour was about 30 shows total and they were not on consecutive dates. This is definitely a different animal.

We drove south after the show in New Haven to a lonely hotel in the middle of nowhere. The window to my second story room looked through a thick layer of evergreen trees straight onto the busy freeway. I turned on the AC full bore and between its incessant hum and the 70 mph traffic whizzing by 25 yards away I had a perfect white noise background to fall asleep to. As I was busying myself getting ready for bed for some reason, I was reminded of a quote from the movie Deliverance: “No matter what happens in the rest of the world, no one can find me here….”

Photo courtesy of the Melvins