Malfunkshun make a lot more sense once you stop trying to make them sound like grunge.
I learned that the hard way.
I didn't really hear them until Return to Olympus came out in ’95.
Somebody at the store handed me the CD and said, “You like Mother Love Bone, right?”
Yeah.
“Then take this home.”
So I did.
What the fuck.
I knew Andrew Wood had been in a band with his brother before Mother Love Bone. I knew the name Malfunkshun. I knew they were on Deep Six.
Knowing that did absolutely nothing to prepare me for the record.
Glam.
Metal.
Punk.
Funk.
Kiss.
Cheap effects.
Huge guitar solos.
Andrew making noises like some alien version of a rock star broadcasting from his bedroom.
It was ridiculous.
I loved it.
Andrew and his older brother Kevin started the band over on Bainbridge Island in 1980, when Andrew was fourteen.
Fourteen.
Think about what you were doing when you were fourteen.
Actually, don't.
The early lineup moved around a little, but eventually it settled into the three people everybody associates with Malfunkshun: Andrew on bass and vocals, Kevin on guitar and Regan Hagar on drums.
Except those weren't really their names onstage.
Andrew became L'Andrew the Love Child.
Kevin was Kevinstein.
Regan was Thundarr.
They wore makeup. They dressed up. Andrew would turn shows into this whole little universe where he was already a rock star whether anybody in the room agreed with him or not.
That might be my favorite thing about him.
Most of the mythology around Seattle makes it sound like everybody spent the eighties staring at their shoes and trying desperately not to look like they wanted attention.
Then there's Andrew Wood.
Absolutely no problem there.
Malfunkshun never fit neatly with the other bands around here.
They were too glam for some people, too metal for others, too strange for pretty much everybody.
Which is probably why they fit perfectly.
In ’86 they got two songs onto the C/Z compilation Deep Six:
“With Yo’ Heart (Not Yo’ Hands)” and “Stars-n-You.”
That record also had Green River, Melvins, Soundgarden, Skin Yard and the U-Men on it.
I keep coming back to Deep Six on this site because you almost have to.
Pick up that record and half the family tree is sitting there waiting for you.
But those two songs were basically Malfunkshun's entire official discography while Andrew was alive.
No album.
No proper run of singles.
Just demos, tapes, shows and those two tracks.
That seems insane now.
By ’87 and ’88 Andrew was spending more time in Seattle with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament after Green River started coming apart. Regan was involved too for a while.
Lords of the Wasteland.
Then Mother Love Bone.
And that was pretty much the end of Malfunkshun.
No dramatic farewell.
No final album.
They just stopped being the place where Andrew was putting all that energy.
I obviously never saw them.
I was a kid in Queens while these guys were wearing makeup and playing weird little Northwest shows.
Wrong coast.
Again.
By the time I got to Seattle, Andrew had already been gone for two years.
So Return to Olympus was the first time I really got to hear what everybody had been talking about.
Stone Gossard put it together from old Malfunkshun recordings and released it on Loosegroove in ’95 — the label he started with Regan Hagar.
And Jack Endino had recorded a bunch of the original sessions.
Of course he had.
I'm not making that joke again.
Okay, maybe once more.
The thing I like about Return to Olympus is that it doesn't make Andrew sound like some tragic figure waiting around to become the guy from Mother Love Bone.
He sounds young.
Really young.
Funny. Horny. Completely full of himself. Completely insecure. Making up characters. Trying things that don't work and then trying something even stranger.
Alive, basically.
That's important.
Andrew died in 1990, and once somebody dies that young it's really easy for every record they made to turn into foreshadowing.
I hate that.
Malfunkshun doesn't sound like foreshadowing to me.
It sounds like three kids who had absolutely no idea what they were supposed to be doing and decided that was somebody else's problem.
Put on “With Yo’ Heart.”
Put on “Stars-n-You.”
Put on Return to Olympus.
Forget Mother Love Bone for an hour.
Forget Pearl Jam.
Forget Temple of the Dog.
Forget the word grunge.
Meet L'Andrew the Love Child.
