Long before the Ford E-series became the de facto transport for the punk nation, the venerable Dodge D-series/Sportsman (and, to a lesser extent, its Plymouth Voyager sibling) was the chariot of choice for transporting people, gear, and pompous arrogance cross-country in search of like-minded nonconformists hellbent on coloring outside the lines of society. Minor Threat, Negative Approach, the Misfits, and the Necros were but a few of the angry young groups to rely on Mopar power (the van used by Dead Kennedys had a camper-top conversion) for their initial forays into the alternate universe generally known as “Rock Band on Tour.”
But of all the derelict vans laid to waste by nascent hard-core, er, musicians, very few (Mike Watt’s million-mile E-350 a notable exception) can lay claim to genuine rock-star provenance. Here is an exception: Presenting the Melvan, an example of rolling art whose lineage is indelibly linked to not only to the Northwest’s most prolific purveyors of elegant bombast, the Melvins, but also Kurt Donald Cobain. You probably recognize the latter as the Nirvana front man whose hauntingly wounded yet melodic voice spoke to untold numbers of alienated youth and turned the music industry on its ear in the early 1990s.
Listed in the “Art > Art from Dealers & Resellers> Drawings” eBay category, it’s clear the seller, Ben Berg, realizes the value here is not in simple transportation but pedigree, validated in part by a “Kiss Mural on the (Van’s) side hand-drawn by Kurt Cobain using sharpie markers shoplifted from the Thriftway grocery store in Montesano, Washington. (Former employer of King Buzzo [of the Melvins]).” One of the first mentions of Cobain’s Kiss doodle appears in the Nirvana history, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana.
Two registrations are included with the van: one in the name of Roger Osborne, (Buzz of the Melvins); the second in the name of Matt Lukin, the original Melvins bass player who went on to form Mudhoney with the members of Green River who didn’t end up in Pearl Jam. Berg, a longtime Melvins/Nirvana fan, was gifted the van by Lukin’s mother as a surprise after receiving his driver’s license. Berg states that the odometer “shows 12,000 and some change,” and that he believes “it has been over more than once.” The van was last driven in 1998, and its plates expired in April 1994—how’s that for a coincidence?
As of this posting, the current high bid was $7300, although it’s been steadily climbing toward an unspecified reserve. It’s going to be very interesting to see how high this one goes.
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