Recently I was doing research on the 90s music scene in Hawai’i.
I found this guy JonHawaii2003 had posted footage of Tool and Stone Temple Pilots at the first Big Mele—an alternative music festival that ran in Hawaii for seven years—on YouTube. Turns out Jon was one of the sound guys for the show, and knows a thing or two about getting quality concert footage.
I contacted him to thank him for the hard-rocking flashback, and a week later he reuploaded the Tool footage in even better quality!
Here’s the link to the entire 10-part playlist, or if you just want to hear my favorite (aka most popular on Radio Free Hawaii) song of the day, that’d be Opiate featuring a surprise guest appearance from singer Layne Staley of Alice in Chains:
The one thing you can’t see here is the waves, they are going off(!!) in an area of the island where huge surf is not that common. Despite Kualoa being a Ranch and having an abundance of ranchly things like cow poo (and the fungus that grows upon it), I can hardly imagine a more beautiful backdrop for a killer music festival.
I wasn’t even a huge Tool fan until that day, when the bass in my face—an emotionally blown state since I’d just been dumped that day—rocked my world. Other artists that played the Big Mele were Stone Temple Pilots, Fishbone, Violent Femmes and Primus.
No subsequent Big Mele ever packed as much of a punch as this one did, for me. They lost even the little bit of diversity they had, becoming way too alterna-punk-heavy for my tastes, tho I did go in ‘96 (No Doubt! plus Cypress Hill and their ginormous inflatable Buddha) and ‘97 (Wu Tang, sorry guys, that is *not* Wu Mountain behind us). Lineups of all The Big Mele festivals on hawaiibase.com.
If you recall, Radio Free Hawaii was conceptualized and piloted by Sheriff Norm. Below is some classic audio of Sheriff Norm calmly ranting about the corrupting influences of television and superiority of radio as a broadcast medium. Then he smashes his television set with a sledgehammer, in the studio. Because that is the kind of man Sheriff Norm is.
Considering it is over 10 years old, the battered cassette tape this came from is lucky to be alive! Quality is poor, there is Hawaiian music running underneath and all kinds of strange distortions and static, but that just gives it a way-back feeling. Hope you enjoy?!
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This bit of violence against consumer goods was recorded from a rebroadcast on the late-night talk show of the inimitable Mad Mohammad, a popular and controversial dj. The topic that evening was violence on television and “do you agree with Sheriff Norm’s decision to sledgehammer his tv?”
Because he cares about the kids, Mohammad also offers some helpful safety tips for listeners who might decide to sledgehammer their own television.
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These snippets came from cassette recordings by Shawn Speedy Lopes, former production director at Radio Free Hawaii and current owner of Stylus Music and Clothing Exchange.
