Dale Crover

Only the two brothers are the ones, uh, that are constant.

Um, right now, their lineup, uh, Dale Crover from the Melvins is their drummer.

Wow.

Has been for, like, the last 10 years or so.

They're still doing it.

They're, they're a great band to see live.

Now, Dale Crover got a lot of mentions in our, uh, uh, somewhat viral, uh, uh, reel that we put out debating the, uh, who is the best of the grunge big four drummers.

And of course, you know, everybody knows what the big four of grunge is.

Um-

It's Dale Crover.

I mean-

I mean, come...

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah

... and Dale Crover is just like-

Yeah

...

A three-piece, the band couldn't have looked more mismatched.

The drummer is barely seen behind his massive kit, but holy shit can he be heard, flailing about wildly with a distinct hardcore energy, the type that can only be learned on the makeshift stages of all-ages shows at VFW halls and in friends' sweaty basements.

The bass player is like, what, fourteen feet tall? A giant bearing down on his black Fender Precision Bass, making it look like a ukulele in his grip.

And the scrawny little singer next to him, otherwise an afterthought in comparison to the charisma-to-spare rhythm section were it not for his intensity.

He was ashamed because he had no one to call to bail him out, and he was nineteen years old and literally didn't have anyone, and it had been this way for most of his adolescence.

Kurt's mom, Wendy, kicked him out at the age of seventeen.

Kurt went to live with his father, Don, and in the beginning, it was okay, better than being with his mom and having to tell his horny friends to stop gawking at her.

But then his dad met Jenny and decided to start a new family.

All right.

Thank you, Dale Crover.

That's a hell of a substitute.

So if you don't know, Dale played drums in bands like Nirvana and the Melvins and Red Cross.

Because I had the only other non-guitar player I've had on here.

I had Dale Crover on here because he's a guitar player.

Same with Neil,

right? Neil's a great guitar

player.

Yeah, Neil's a great guitar player.

And Dale Crover had released a record where he played guitar and sang.

And he actually had a drummer on the record.

He was a roadie.

He once held Jimi Hendrix's drummer's kick drum pedal together in the middle of a show.

Um, and he also had an unexpected connection to the Manson Family inner circle.

Check that out next week.

Wow.

Now, if anyone doesn't know who the Melvins are, they're one of the greatest metal bands, heavy me- I, I don't even call them metal, just they're, they define heaviness, and they were one of the biggest influences on Kurt Cobain.

Their drummer, Dale Crover, was actually in Nirvana for a while, pre-Dave Grohl, obviously.

And in 2000, they made, uh, a record called The Cry Baby, and there's a cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with Leif Garrett.

He's fronted Conan Neutron and The Secret Friends, which is a boisterous, noisy spectacle of a combo, since 2015.

That band's recording lineup features Melvin's drummer Dale Crover and Tony Ashe on bass.

Conan also hosts the Protonic Reversal podcast, which is a live radio style interview show.

He's got over 470 episodes with like all the really cool punk and underground musicians and scene makers that we all love and admire.