The Melvins

Tweak Bird

Echoplex - December 30, 2007

Live Review by Alexis Roberts

Grunge icons The Melvins graced Echo Park with their presence and, as you can imagine, there were people lined up around the block to see them. Most of these people were over the age of 30 and wearing Nirvana t-shirts and combat boots. How appropriate. The opening acts that The Melvins brought along were Los Angeles local favorites 400 Blows and the new and soon to be “it” band of 2008 Tweak Bird.

Tweak Bird, despite their stupid name, are actually a very entertaining act to watch. They’re noisy and obnoxious and everything that you would expect from a band called Tweak Bird. 400 Blows somehow managed to suck so horribly that a whole three people were actually watching them. They normally deliver, but it just was not their night. Perhaps it was the pressure of knowing that everyone was waiting for them to finish so that The Melvins could take over.

The Melvins played a full set of all sorts of things including a brief cover of The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand". For being a bunch of old men they sure don’t let their age hold them back from rocking out or from being utterly goofy. It was a sold out show which meant that to see anything you had to be pressed up against a wall of sweaty people or standing on a chair in the back of the room. If you were one of the lucky few who could actually catch a glimpse of the stage all you could see was purple spandex, gold sequins and a mass of grey hair bobbing up and down. Ah, the price to pay to see the founding fathers of a dead musical movement. It was kind of perfect, actually. There wasn’t nearly as much flannel as I had hoped to see but either way they brought down the house. The high point of the night was when they closed their set with the National Anthem. God Bless America.