As Buzz Osborne (a.k.a. King Buzzo) rattles off a list of tours, albums and weird artistic collaborations he's been involved in, it's hard to imagine anything he hasn't done with his band, the Melvins, over their 28 years. Until now, one of those things was an L.A. club residency.
Starting Jan. 7, the Melvins descend on the club every Friday for a month, melding blistering full-album sets with their newest atonal material. That means two sets per night with no opener. For Osborne, the band's gray, mop-headed commander, the ability to showcase the Melvins' sprawling discography is something he's been waiting to do for quite a while.
Pop & Hiss: Since we’re just days into 2011, what’s the Melvins' main goal or resolution for the new year?
Buzz Osborne: The first goal is to actually survive as a band. That’s the first goal, which it is every year. We're just continuing to work and continuing to make music is another. And that encompasses a whole lot of things. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I don’t necessarily trust the outside world and their opinions. So it’s having the faith to be able to thrust yourself forward and make sure that as long as you think it’s good, everyone else will. And if you don’t, there’s nothing you can do about that.
Looking at the residency schedule that you guys have, the show seems to evolve every week. What conscious decisions went into planning the residency at the Satellite (formerly Club Spaceland)?
It’s one of the things I thought might be kind of a cool trend to get into, is this trend of bands playing whole albums. It gets people excited about the bands for one reason or another and it makes people feel like they’re gonna see something they don’t normally see. We’re always looking for something new and weird to do. So a residency for us at a club in L.A. is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time.
To me, the only way to make that make sense is to have it be a little different [each week]. So this is one way to do it. So we’re gonna do normal Melvins stuff as well as specific records. We’re doing the specific records as normally as we would [laughs] … which is to say not exactly how everything is [on the record].