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Released by: MVD
Released on: 2/18/2003
Director: Joe Smitty
Cast: The Melvins
Year: 1991
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Long a staple of the Seattle music scene, The Melvins achieved some notoriety during the so-called grunge explosion of the nineties. This video release captures the trio live at the North Shore Surf Club in Olympia, Washington in 1991 and features twelve songs performed over the duration of the roughly seventy minute long video. One of the longest running bands to come out of Seattle (they've been playing together about twenty years) and having the opportunity to collaborate with all sorts of great musicians (they've recorded with Hank Williams III, Mike Patton and his Fantoma's project, and more) it's unusual that they still, at least in comparison to say Nirvana or Soundgarden, remain relatively unknown despite having been a huge influence on those bands. Likely due to the fact that they're a lot more raw and eclectic, they have yet to garner the accolades of radio play or MTV rotation that served their local brethren so well.
But it doesn't matter if King Buzzo isn't as well known as Kurt Cobain or if Dale isn't as well known as Eddie Vedder because the Melvins are a far superior band to any of them. They're heavier, they're more energetic, and they're a lot more interesting and Salad Of A Thousand Delights is a good example of how they bring their furious sound to the stage.
The sad part about this release though is the fact that it was shot with a single handheld camcorder, and it shows. The video is washed out and blurry and the audio is at times pretty muffled and despite the fact that the audio has been remastered into a brand spanking new Dolby Digital 5.1 track, it sounds as bad if not worse than the audio looks.
Bonus features include an alternate 'fan shot' version of Antioxide and seventeen minutes of bootleg footage from a performance at the Off Ramp in Seattle. There is also some live footage from 1985 shot live in the studio. Sadly, the poor audio and video quality of this release make it for completists only.