How my love of The Melvins set this all in motion and why Taipei Houston is the sun in this journey.
Editor’s Note: As requested by my friend Pietro Brezzo, I am going to try to put together a small playlist of songs from the bands I talk about at the end of each blog entry. I refuse to use Spotify because I’m not giving a penny of my $$$ to a company that pays Joe Fucking Rogan. So these playlists will be on YouTube Music. If you use Spotify, feel free to copy my songs and put them into your own playlist. Thanks.
This is how my journey into small club concerts began. It’s a multi-step process. This is Step 1.
To help you understand, I need to take you on a trip. Let’s go back in time. It’s August 1992, the day before my birthday and I’m in downtown San Jose at a club called f/x. Helmet is one of the biggest bands in the land, scoring a huge success with their song “In the Meantime.” They’re playing at f/x with The Melvins, Quicksand, Grey Matter, and Hammerhead. It’s an absolutely EPIC lineup, and it’s even better because the doorman is a friend of mine who is getting me into the club for free as a birthday present. Seriously, one of the best gifts I could ever get.
Fast forward to September 2022 and I head to a club in downtown San Jose called The Ritz to see The Melvins (headlining this time) with opening bands We Are the Asteroid and Taipei Houston. As I arrive in downtown S.J., I realize that The Ritz is the exact same club that used to be f/x back when I was in college. So I will have seen The Melvins twice in the same venue 30 years and 1 month apart. The Melvins sound even better in 2022 than they did in 1992. More about them in a later blog post.
I head to the club to meet my friend Ryan for some food and brews before the show. But I am WAY early. As I pass the club, I see two young men unloading a bunch of gear. Possibly roadies for The Melvins? I have to walk past them to get to the bar and as I get closer, I realize it’s Layne and Myles, the two 20-something members of Taipei Houston. At the time of the show,they only had a few songs available to hear on the internet, but those songs kicked ALL KINDS of ASS. I stopped and told the guys how much I loved their songs and looked forward to hearing more. They stopped unloading for a few minutes and took the time to talk to this old man, which was really nice.
This band will play arenas one day and I will always remember when there was one dude standing in front of the stage.
As the youngest band on the bill, Taipei Houston opened the show. There were maybe 50 people in the club at the time, and I was blown away at how much sound they produced from just a bass guitar and a drum set. Bass player and lead singer Layne is a tall, skinny bundle of frenetic energy, moving constantly while he effortlessly switches sounds between the different sound pedals on his board.
Layne brings out so many sounds from this bass. Next time I see them, I'll have to try to get a picture of the pedalboard he uses. It's crazy.
Drummer Myles is tall and powerful, beating the everlasting SHIT out of his tiny drum kit. He gets so excited about what he’s doing that sometimes he stands up during a song, I’m guessing to get more power out of his sticks.
Myles abuses his drum heads every show, and we benefit from that abuse
Taipei Houston has a sound that takes elements of garage, grunge, stoner rock, metal, and lo-fi. On one song, you can almost hear Jack White doing a guest appearance with the band. The next song, Tony Iommi or Dickie Peterson would step out of a 1970s time machine and rock right alongside the boys.
The one band these two insane musicians DON’T sound like is Metallica. I mention that because Layne and Myles are brothers whose father happens to be Lars Ulrich from Metallica. You would never know it from listening to them. But one look at them and you know.
During their set, the boys played some songs from the record they had just finished recording but had not yet released, so I got a sneak preview of what was to come. They also dropped a cover tune, an absolutely mind-bending version of one of my all-time favorite Beatles songs, Eleanor Rigby. Video Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E17mXUG2P3Y
The reason this all starts with the Melvins is because I’ve been a HUGE fan of theirs since a San Jose State classmate gave me a copy of their album Bullhead in 1991. If I hadn’t wanted to see the Melvins so bad, I never would have heard Taipei Houston live. How does this relate to my newfound love of music shows? Stay tuned for the next blog entry to find out.
The Melvins: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbvDkQCkp0908JeepTd95cZ5KiHExG1WM&feature=share
Taipei Houston: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbvDkQCkp093ZwRZ8gsN-s6JBm0deOQU4&feature=share
Deficit of Wonder 
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