my destiny
March 6th, 2010The Melvins are coming to town, and I’m going to try my damnedest to get tickets tomorrow. I don’t know if they’re the sell-out-fast kind of band, or if their fan base isn’t like that, or what. Whatever. Tickets. Mine. July.
It also makes me think about music again — playing music, what got me into playing in the first place, what I want to play now. Smashing Pumpkins and Neil Young got me into guitar, but it was the Melvins that got me into bass when I first started playing. I still can’t play June Bug right (trying to learn it way back when was what taught me the sound different between fingers and pick on a bass — thanks, Mike Amon), but damn that’s tight. They’re basically still making the sounds I want to make myself. I just started thinking today how great it’d be having a Melvins cover band, and then I realized — I’ve been listening to them for like 15 years, and I still have no idea what most of the lyrics are.
So it’s sort of coming together in my mind: create a three-or-four-piece cover band of the Melvins, call ourselves Berthas, and find out what passes for lyrics to some songs to cover. I still haven’t settled on doing it straight-up or campy, but I kind of want to sing myself. While playing bass. Maybe I’ll sing the way I normally sing along to their music on my own — kind of mumble-howling along, catching the stray word when I can. Or maybe we’ll stick to all instrumental tracks. The world is wide open. This has to happen.


