The Melvins’ King Buzzo talks about his rescue dogs

03.13.2015
09:46 am
Topics:
Animals
Music
Tags:
Melvins
King Buzzo

There’s all kindsa Melvins news to report: they’re soon to be the subject of the documentary with the best name ever, The Colossus of Destiny - A Melvins Tale, which you can help Kickstart here, and they’ve announced a summer tour to support their LP Hold It in, with the Butthole Surfers’ Jeff Pinkus on bass (YAY!). But I’d way rather tell you about the band’s singer/guitarist Buzz “King Buzzo” Osborne’s recent interview on Dogster. It seems that the godfather of sludge-metal and his wife have quite a few rescue dogs, and frankly, I respond to dogs the way the Internet writ large responds to cat pictures. I have a rescue, myself, a terrier mutt, most likely part miniature schnauzer, part Boston, possibly part Scottie, named “Lulu” after Emily Flake’s alt-comic, and she happens to be the single most adorable goddamn thing on Planet Earth. (I’ll spare you the treacly “who rescued who” shit, as I hate that kind of naked mawkishness with the power of a million squirrels.) If I lived on a huge property instead of in a rented duplex, I’d probably have a commensurately large number of rescue dogs. Dogs kinda rule.

Osborne talked to Dogster’s Kezia Willingham about life with his two Jack Russells and his Staffordshire, Buster, Coco, and Gigi (cool that he’s a terrier guy, too…), and how he and his wife came to be serial rescuers:

The first dog my wife and I had was a rescue Pit Bull-Whippet-Lab mix named Itchy. He lived to be 17, and we had to finally put him down a little over a year ago. That was tough. He was pretty much the best dog ever.

When we got him, he had been severely abused and had never been indoors, never slept on a dog bed, and never eaten or drank out of a bowl. He was malnourished and extremely skittish. The people who had him before us used to let their children throw baseballs and other assorted garbage at him while he ran around terrified and helpless in their backyard. People who behave like that should be in jail. They ended up abandoning him to a neighbor of theirs, who told us the whole story.

He didn’t trust us at first, but once we started treating him right he warmed up and became a wonderful companion for the better part of two decades. I can’t imagine a better dog. The first time he ever tasted steak, I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head.

Rest in peace, Itchy. G’boy.

Obviously it wouldn’t be sporting of us to reproduce the whole interview here, so please, head over to Dogster and check it out. (This interview is the first I’ve heard of that site, which I’ll definitely be bookmarking for later perusal.) But I’m going to share one more longish quotation that I really loved:

My wife says who needs cable TV when you have two Jack Russells to take care of? Boy is that true. We don’t have cable TV, and a lot of that has to do with the pooches. I don’t mind at all. Dogs are always happy to see you when you come home, which I love. They stay in the moment and seem to be spiritual giants, as silly as that sounds.

If you sit on the couch at our house, then you immediately have a dog sitting next to you. I love that, and as a result I’ve become used to being perpetually covered in dog hair. The drummer in Napalm Death pointed this out to me like it was a bad thing. I’ve tried to ignore that comment.

I love dogs, and I love living with dogs, and I’m sure that the human race has developed for the better as a direct result of our association with dogs. They’re day hunters just like us; I saw a documentary that says you can trace all dog DNA back to day-hunting gray wolves.

I can’t imagine all the things they’ve given us, AND they’re amazing burglar alarms! Remember it was the DOGS who warned the Indians that Custer was attacking! Good dog!

Here’s some excellent footage of Buzzo doing a radio performance and interview last summer, when he was touring to support his solo acoustic LP This Machine Kills Artists.

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