Butthole Surfers- Classic or dud?

all those shows at the old ritz in nyc were pro-filmed. I'm patiently waiting for the day they slip out of the vaults....

mind-boggingly detailed gigography here:

http://www.jasonramke.com/bhs/main.php

from their forum:

"Paul will not be going on the European tour but will likely join for the NY show after the European tour. The only US shows (as of now) will be on the East Coast - like Philly, NY and maybe DC.

Europe - so far looks like Scotland, England, Denmark, Germany, France, The Netherlands and possibly Spain."

scotland!!! so, i will possibly finally get to see them as they never played here back in the day. the question is, do i really want to see the buttholes 2008 version?

I'm asking myself the same question, for the same reasons. Find I haven't heard ANY of their 90's output.

".....probably with a slight flange."

I didn't read this whole thread, sorry if this is redundant. I am, like many of you I bet, supposed to be working!

i think everything up to pioughd is total classic, pioughd is still very good although the magic had started to fade, and everything post-pioughd is crap, bin it. i think they decided to take the grunge/alt rock dollar in order to fund their other projects. and why not?

that jack officers acid house album is a complete mistake though...

OTM except the Jackofficers record was a joke, get it?

everything post-pioughd is crap,

Independent Worm Saloon, Electriclarryland and Humpty Dumpty LSD do contain a lot of great stuff, though. The only ignoreable thing they ever did was Weird Revolution. (Don't know about any side projects, tbh)

I saw them at the Marquee in NYC (that obsessive site marks it as 4/25/91). One of only two shows at which I genuinely feared for my life. I had taken a whole bunch of cold medicine (for an actual cold) and then drunk a 40 oz. of Budweiser, and was somewhere between coma and hallucination for the whole set. The crowd was a massively oversold roiling mass, the films were scrolling, Gibby was shooting fireballs at the ceiling...I was terrified and exhilarated, and will forever regret not buying one of their tour T-shirts (a b&w photo of a newborn piglet being given an injection with a giant needle, with the Newport cigarettes motto "Alive With Pleasure!" underneath).

I recently stuffed Psychic...Powerless...Another Mans Sac, Rembrandt Pussyhorse, Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis, Hairway To Steven, Locust Abortion Technician and Double Live into my iPod after having not listened to them for about a decade. Brilliantly fucked studio work - I'd forgotten just how great. I'm revisiting Flipper lately, too - wish their second album had come out on CD at some point.

Classic, up to a point. When I was in college I had this little balcony off my bedroom. We'd go out there and blare records from my bedroom. Next door was an irritating little dog that really bugged us. One day, by accident, we discovered that when we played Psychic, Powerless... the dog went crazy; barking and jumping around, etc. So...needless to say, that record got played quite a bit that summer.

And no...I don't feel sorry for the dog. It was really an awful little dog.

http://www.buttholesurfers.com/tourdates.html

Butthole Surfers will be playing shows on the east coast and Europe this summer.
For these shows, Jeff Pinkus will be on bass and Teresa Taylor (along with King Coffey) on drums. This is the rhythm section the band had for most of the 80s and marks the first time this line up has played together since 1989.

Paul Leary has prior commitments and unfortunately can't play the European dates (he will be on stage for the New York City show and possibly more stateside).

However, fear not, our European friends. Joining the band onstage for all shows in the US and Europe will be The Paul Green School of Rock All-Stars. This mob of teenage geniuses will blow your mind, forming a virtual Butthole Surfers Orchestra when they play with Gibby and company.

Check back for more confirmed dates/ticket info (more European dates announced soon).

6/24/08 - Asbury Park, NJ - Asbury Lanes - get tix here
6/26/08 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club - get tix here
6/27/08 - Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory - get tix here
7/04/08 - Glasgow, UK - ABC1 - get tix here
7/05/08 - Manchester, UK - Academy 2 - get tix here
7/06/08 - Wolverhampton, UK - Wulfrun Hall - get tix here
7/26/08 - London, UK - Kentish Town Forum - get tix here
7/29/08 - New York City - Webster Hall - get tix here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Green_School_of_Rock

http://www.schoolofrock.com/index.php

No reunion shows in Texas, and only half of them with Paul?

boooooooo

Might have to go to that.

CLASSIC until they started to sound like a Goth band, thereafter DUD
-- DadaFrom way upthread, but funny 'cuz to my ears, a lot of their best stuff sounded goth nearly from day 1 ("Cherub", "Concubine", "Whirling Hall of Knives", "Waiting for Jimmy to Kick", etc.).

Love the Butthole Surfers. Paul or no, I wish they were playing some West Coast dates. (Wish, too, they hadn't been such dicks to Touch & Go, but I guess that's another thread.)

i love the butthole surfers because they just don't give a fuck.

They def give a fuck about $$$$$. At least some of them.

Which is fine. But, as already discussed ad nauseum, the way some of them have achieved this has burned some bridges in lame ways in the past...

Still doesn't stop Psychic Powerless from being one of the best rock records ever.

"Gimme MAH BACON"

(it's about giving head when you're six years old)

it's about coming of age
it's about learning how to do it
it's about learnin' how to experience things the way they ought to be experienced
it's about growing up
it's about licking' the shit off the floor
it's about doing the things that you ought to do
it's about being a butthole surfer
it's about doing promotional work
it's about
it's about PR
it's about all these things
it's about loving yourself
it's about loving your mom
it's about loving your dad
it's about doing the things
it's about going to the go-kart track
it's about loving everything
your pop, your kitty
all the things
the catfood, the little bits of crayons
the melted pieces
the loving friends
all the things you wish you had

GREAT song. Always creeps me the fuck out (in a good way, of course). That's the thing about their early Touch & Go material - it's just seething with raw sickness. I remember reading an interview with the band circa 'LectricLarry, and interviewer guy was trying to get them to admit that there might be something, you know, a bit unwholesome about a song like "Cherub". And they flat-out denied it. Course, they're famous for being assholes to interviewers, but I wonder if in saying it they really believed it. That core of real (or real-seeming) pathology dropped after Locust Abo, in favor of the "weirdness" and strange comedy of Hairway and what came after. Wonder if they noticed the change, if they really understood just how disturbing/disturbed-seeming some of the earlier stuff was.

the Butts always knew and know exactly what they were doing in the grand scheme, with exceptions where they claim they had to live off recycling bottles while touring in varying cities in the mid 80s.

I interviewed Paul Leary circa Pioughd, one of my first college radio interviews. He was really nice and easy to interview, actually.

someone's been to any reunion show and can report?

Paul Leary is only with them at the NYC gig. The rest of the tour is without him (as far as I know)...

BTW these guys have the most entertaining and hilarious chapter in the entire Our Band Could Be Your Life book. Laugh out loud funny.

This sure makes it sound awesome

Nate - absolutely spot on about that Chapter. Had me recommending the book just for that - even for people for whom none of those bands weren't their lives.

jeebs , that's why i'm no writer, man. What an ugly sentence.

i saw em with stone temple pilots in full kiss makeup opening for them..and then once at an aids benefit w diamanda opening th show..crowd pleezinn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7EQY6tgCV8..oh yeah flamin lipz opened as well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7EQY6tgCV8

duh

http://www.buttholesurfers.com/tourdates.html

"The classic '80s lineup of Gibby Haynes, Paul Leary, Jeff Pinkus and the twin
drumming King Coffey and Teresa Taylor will be playing all upcoming dates.
Get your psych on, fools."

Oh Fuck , That Leary is a great guitarustist.
first admired in this head with Lady Sniff and Mexican Caravan. Genuistist.
Another man's ballbag

An enemy of Corey Rusk is an enemy of mine.

"Gimme MAH BACON"

-- Ned Raggett, Tuesday, May 20, 2008 6:17 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^

I have a hazy recollection .Perhaps I've imagined this?

An old mate of mine had a video of the Buttholes live - back when even live videos were an effort to snag.

There was a hilarious bit with some square looking suited up guy ( a real bad eighties white suit at that) came on with a fucking tuba and started blowing into it real earnestly - Buttholes style.

Cheesus Christ -I pissed myself. We had to rewind time and time again.

Whatever it was, must have been transferred to DVD?

Blind Eye Sees All is their live dvd (recorded in 1985, I believe) - I vaguely remember a saxophone being on there, but I'll have to rewatch it to be sure

Yeah, it's on there. Tuba, white suit.

according to wikipedia trevor plays the sousaphone on "something" on the blind eye see all vid - that sounds right. gibby plays the sax.

reunion footage looks depressing. it would be cool if they had something new to say but it looks like a cash-in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8NCijeX6Zg

Well, you did pick a pretty downtempo track there, though. Of course it's a cash-in, thank god they don't do anything new anymore after the last couple of years... I'm still psyched for the show in Ghent on Thursday, old reheated stuff or not.

in Ghent?

phenomenal. miss this tour at yr peril.

Lady Sniff.

yeah, I missed the show in Ghent. (xpost and xxpost)

that was the weirdest show ever yesterday, ending in a (sadly) Buttholic classic,weirdest way, as Hayens angrily throwing beer at the soundman, getting arrested,stopping the show (about after 75 minutes), leaving the crowd pissed off and amazed.
(good education for the scool of rock kids...)

http://www.prefixmag.com/news/butthole-surfers-concert-at-webster-hall-ends-in-n/20322/

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2008/07/butthole_surfer_1.html

weird show. felt stiff at first (esp. "Moving to Florida" but mebbe because Gibby was reading the gibbyerish lyrics?) and i really don't dig the IWS-era psychobilly stuff that the school kids played on the most. that said, the kids were perfect for "Cowboy Bob" (horns and shrieks) and right before the shit went down with the sound guy, they were really getting deep into the good stuff: "Cowboy Bob" "Two Parter" "Graveyard" and "Cherub." was praying for "Whirling Hall of Knives" (maybe the only Rembrandt Pussyhorse song that can actually get recreated live?) or "Jimi" when it all fell apart. even hoped that without Gibby they would've come out to at least encore "Psychedelic Jam" or "Something" (since Paul sings that anyway) but alas.
and is it just me, or is it Paul Leary the one who's actually been under a rock and hiding all this time?

at least they played most of it.great setlist, although the mediocre sound and that ?! ending.(i wonder what other songs were supposed to be played)
Setlist:

22 Going on 23
Fast
Suicide
Moving to Florida
100 Million
Watlo
Goofy's Concern
To Parter
Tornadoes
1401
Graveyard
Dust Devil
Ulcer Breakout
Roky
Cowboy Bob
Cherub
Sweat Loaf
Jimi
Cartoon Song
X-Ray
The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave

there's no way they played "Jimi," unless it was 5 seconds long or something.

The best detail out of that whole story is Genesis P-Orridge running onstage to tell everyone to calm down. I would have paid double-digits to see that alone.