A History of Bad Men - Melvins

The Melvins are another band from the state of Washington, the band was formed Buzz Osborne (aka King Buzzo), Matt Lukin, and Mike Dillard while they were attending Montesano High School in Montesano, WA. Out of the founding members, only King Buzzo remains in the band, who is, apart from his well-known ties to Kurt Cobain, famous for his weird hairstyle (I love it though), bizarre humor, and his sludgy, mid-tempo guitar playing. It is difficult to tell the genre of music they are playing; the easiest thing would be to call it alternative or alternative punk, but a sludge metal, doom metal, or a stoner rock label could also suit it. The Melvins is a case in which these labels definitely fail to tell you the whole story, they have changed and reinvented themselves countless times, for example, their current lineup includes two drummers, which is rarely used in popular music.

Osborne's guitar of choice has been the iconic Gibson Les Paul for a long-long time, which can be seen on the picture on the left, but while rehearsing in the same building as the band Isis, he was introduced to his new crush, an Electrical Guitar Company Standard Guitar, which is made out of aluminium, equipped with Les Paul pickups.

King Buzzo's approach to effects is to keep it simple. As you can see in the video embedded below, currently he only uses 5 pedals in his live rig: a BOSS ODB-3 Bass Overdrive, a BOSS DD-3 Digital Delay, an MXR Blue Box, an MXR Dyna Comp, and a BOSS TU-2 Chromatic Tuner as his tuner. His pedalboard is the perfect example of 'less is more', even with these few pedals, he can achieve various tones and sounds.


The two most exciting pedals on this board are the BOSS Bass Overdrive and the MXR Blue Box (which is a relatively new favorite of mine). The Bass Overdrive is, as its name implies, primarily made for bass players, but King Buzzo decided to use it for his guitar as his main overdrive/distortion. This pedal gives that special, sludgy sound to the newer Melvins records; we have to be grateful to BOSS that this pedal happens to be able to function at higher frequencies too. The other intriguing pedal is the MXR Blue Box, which is a Fuzz and an Octave pedal combined. It has real simple controls, one knob for the output and one for the mixing of the fuzz and the octave. Turned to the left, it gives you only two octaves down, and all-out fuzz when turned to the right. Gotta love this glitchy stompbox.

Grunge is Dead - Nirvana

An iconic band, lead by an iconic guitarist/singer/songwriter. Nirvana's raw power swept the world of popular music, their breakthrough album, Nevermind, single-handedly overthrew the pretentious glam scene. Though Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and others are all great bands on their own, Nirvana was the one that allowed all of them to become commercially successful. The huge stardom eventually led to Kurt Cobain's downfall, he died on April 5th, 1994, joining the 27 Club. The circumstances of his death were quite strange and controversial, it was officially ruled a suicide, though you could make a strong case for murder. You decide, check out www.justiceforkurt.com.

Kurt was sort of an anti-hero of guitarists, he was not caught up with the nuances, but his songwriting skills and characteristic voice made him a legendary player. After a few hours of playing Nirvana songs, probably your hands will be stuck in a power chord shape, but nevertheless, as he once said in a Fender FrontLine interview: "I can't play [guitar] like Segovia. The flip side of that is that Segovia could probably never have played like me." (You can read the interview here http://tinyurl.com/6plz2wq and here http://tinyurl.com/7ruj546 - Segovia was a famous classical guitar player, regarded as one of the greatest guitarists ever to play) Bob Dylan was also a fan of Kurt's songwriting, after hearing Polly, he remarked: "That kid has heart".

Kurt's guitar sound is probably one of the most easily and inexpensively recreatable ones, but the feel-oriented style he played with is probably impossible to emulate. The guitar most widely associated with him is the Fender Mustang, which was, at the time, a cheap guitar, one you could probably pick up at a pawn shop. Kurt replaced the bridge pickup for a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails humbucker, and installed a tune-o-matic bridge. Other "pawn shop pickups" include his Fender Jaguars, now, needless to say, going at a much higher price than back then. Fender now offers Kurt Cobain signature models of both the Mustang and the Jaguar. Kurt was also experimenting with a new guitar he called the Jag-Stang, which combined the strengths of both guitars. Fender eventually created it for him, but it was rarely used. Japanese-made Jag-Stangs were available for purchase for a short period of time, but it has been discontinued since.


Kurt's pedalboard's mainstays were the BOSS (Roland) DS-series pedals, he started out with the DS-1, then switched to the DS-2 Turbo Distortion in February '92. Other overdrive/distortion pedals he used include an MXR Distortion, a ProCo RAT, an EHX Big Muff, and a Tech 21 Sans Amp Classic, which was his main distortion during the In Utero era. His choice of chorus pedal was the EHX Small Clone (which is still surprisingly cheap), its sound can clearly be heard in the song Come As You Are. Other pedals he used include an EHX PolyChorus/EchoFlanger, but he used these sporadically. You can't go wrong if you get yourself a BOSS DS-2 and an EHX Small Clone, then rock away.

Lots and lots of videos, books, websites, and films have been made about Nirvana and Kurt, some good, some terrible, but there are two things I recommend you to check out if you are interested. The first one is http://www.kurtsequipment.com/, which covers everything you can possibly know about Kurt's gear. The other is a film called Kurt Cobain: About a Son, which is narrated by Kurt Cobain himself, the autobiography introduces us to the world he grew up in.