The Melotones appeared on the liverpool scene just a crucial few years too late.The national spotlight had recently gone,after all the Eric’s bands had either made it big or split.Only The Melotones and fellow seekers The Marshmallow Overcoat seemed left to carry the torch for weirdness and psychedelia in mid 80’s liverpool.
Their music was primarily a collision of Beefheart and wracked psychobilly but genuinely stranger again.Singer Frank Martin could growl out the acid lyrics with true Van Vliet abandon,whilst Martin Dempsey’s guitar sliced your head off.Their greatest moment was ‘I walked with a Bugs Bunny bendy toy’,which contains all of the above in excelsis and mutates it into a heavily fuzzed out dance floor classic.The general production quality is on a par with the Electric Eels and is likewise all the better for it and distinctly non-eighties.‘Burton buzz’ manages to constantly sound on the verge of falling apart and rip the shit out of Simon le Bon at the same time.What more could you ask for?
Liverpool’s Probe Plus label released this mini album and a slightly more subdued follow up to only local recognition.The band split,with some members going on to form The Walking Seeds.Both releases are still fittingly only available on vinyl but ‘…Bugs Bunny’ features on a cd comp ‘Unearthed Vol.1’ of underground mersey bands on Viper.