Butthole Surfers- Classic or dud?

My favorite is still LIve PCPPEP. First I heard, and I played it on the wrong speed without knowing it for months.

i understand why people don't like the 90s stuff but i think independent worm saloon is pretty good, i think this was one of the first ten CDs i ever bought

me too! though it didn't take me that long to figure it out. several of my friends have mentioned the same thing.

xp to ez

i'm okay with independent worm saloon. it's p great for what it is, but not really my kinda thing.

Whoa, is this thread on acid?!

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, July 10, 2013 12:21 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's so great this thread has gone all purple, cuz yeah, Buttholes = Drugs.

There's good tunes on the 90s stuff, but it's a different vibe to the 80s work. I don't mind it, but given a choice I never take them out to listen.

And I do think most fans of the band denigrate those records, maybe a bit unjustly, but in my experience most think they're pretty crap.

Hairway is great imo. Something a bit Thin White Ropeish about some of those songs eg X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas.

Late 80s New Years Eve gig I saw in DC: Cramps, Butthole Surfers and Dead Milkmen.

Wow.

Amazing how popular they were back in the late 80s, considering the vast uncommerciality of records like RemPuHo and LoAbTech (as I'm going to start calling them).

I only ever saw them once and that was at the Reading Festival, sandwiched somewhat incongruously between the Voice of the Beehive and the Wonderstuff iirc.

Only once for me too, at first ave mpls on the locust tour. This was before there was always automatically a mosh pit for every show. But there was certainly a huge pit for this one and it felt unhinged and dangerous to my health. The naked stage dancer was present and accounted for.

Haynes was a star on his high school's basketball team, and he attended Trinity University to study accounting. While at Trinity, Gibby was the captain of the basketball team, president of his fraternity, and was named the Accounting Student of the Year. After graduating, he went to work as an auditor for the accounting firm Peat Marwick.

Love the story of the dancer (Kathleen?) going to see a doctor for seizures after she had left the band and being asked "have you ever been exposed to strobe lights?" Her mental response - "you have no idea"

i remember the buttholes chapter in "our band could be your life" being pretty great.

buttholes = classic rock + punk + drugs + being "weird"

also: chrome

yes, that's where that story comes from xp

13the Floor Elevators + Chrome + The Residents + Dead Kennedys really. Shame the acid-fried craziness descended into fart jokes and Al Jourgensen collaborations, but that's the way it goes with most drug cases innit.

re: their politics, there's some open ridiculing of their peers leftist "principles" in Our Band Could Be Your Life as well that make it pretty clear their politics tended more toward the libertarian. factoring in their anti-pc-ness only makes this more apparent.

nonetheless, amazing band, occupied a bizarre space that doesn't really exist anymore.

the Ween comparison is apt to a point - these dudes were more evil, hostile, and generally unpredictable than Ween ever were. the jamband crowd was never gonna go for these guys, too many "bad vibes". They totally befuddled audiences at Lollapalooza (firing off shotguns onstage etc)

They seem like actual bad ppl not just nerds acting toughl like big black or Jesus lizard. Like they would probably steal from you if let them stay at your place

Most definitely. I always love when this thread gets bumped.

I think sleeve's strobe light story is actually Teresa, the 2nd drummer's? From what I remember of OBCBYL, the dancer wasnt much of a talker and refused to shower, so it seems kind of contrary to her character...? Just a Just how I remember it; sorry for bein nitpicky.

Ums i remember you saying something about Flaming Lips bein classic rock frat dudes who stumbled into a cult audiencr; I def feel this is in sone ways even more true for the Surfers.. Except that they were total music nerd/performance artist freaks at the same time. EZ came up with a great term for fratboy/avid rock strain of pigfuck tho: 'bro-hemian'

Anywats RPH is the only one of the 1st 4 LPs thst I havent spent much time with, and now I feel like,I really need ti rectify this, but I am p much a big fan. Also I dont hate Piouhgd...

piouhgd is tough. i don't hate it, but it's definitely the weakest of their indie albums, might even prefer IWS. for one thing, the production is horrendous, completely stripped of detail and intensity. worse, it sounds forced, like they're trying so hard to be all "hey, the butthole surfers, we're so wacky!" instead of just being themselves and doing it.

i made an edit while back, re-glued the jams arbitrarily broken into separate tracks (the 2 parts of "revolution", "blindman" + "ironman"). included just those two plus "hurdy gurdy man", "something", "P.S.Y." and "barking bogs". sounded pretty good to me, but still a low water mark.

Wasn't Pioughd their fuck-off to Rough Trade? I seem to remember it being a contract-filler so they could get started with Capitol.

Haha brohemian is perfect

The whole SST crew fits that too

Haynes: Nixon was a good president.

Coffey: Yeah, but he had a potty mouth.

Haynes: LBJ had a potty mouth.

Leary: He used to bark his orders to his aides from the toilet. I used to work for a guy like that at the lumber yard.

Is that from the forced exposure interview? I'd love to read that again...

starting off again halfway thru Locust Abortion Technician

got kind of exhausted yesterday!

this is good...i think i might slightly prefer Psychic Powerless but it's close...

it's from this, Jon: http://ngro_obsrvr.tripod.com/articles/pachuco.html

Wasn't Pioughd their fuck-off to Rough Trade? I seem to remember it being a contract-filler so they could get started with Capitol.

Following a final EP for Touch and Go—1989's Widowermaker—the band left their longtime recording partners to sign with longtime supporter Terry Tolkin at Rough Trade Records who had also brought them to Touch and Go, for a reportedly generous one-album deal.[44]

the band signed with capitol the year after rough trade collapsed.

didn't they fuck over corey rusk?

yes

"22 Going On 23" is pretty fuckin gross :/

nah backstory behind it is hilarious

(ie woman was a habitual caller to the radio show, made up different shit every night etc)

so the story was fake?

features a tape of actual radio call-in show (Dr. Harry Reubens' to be specific) in which a woman described being sexually assaulted - it's a terrifying listen, although as it turns out, the woman was a pathological liar who called the show every night - This Band Could Be Your Life

The guitar part at the end of "22 Going on 23" is pretty damn righteous ....

They seem like actual bad ppl not just nerds acting toughl like big black or Jesus lizard. Like they would probably steal from you if let them stay at your place

― "If you like the Byrds, try Depeche Mode" (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, July 10, 2013 10:14 PM (Yesterday)

this comment is a great testament to the quality of their art tbh. albini's ooh-I-said-a-dirty-word steez always struck me as more weirdly conservative in bent than these filth-bathers, who were pro-gay and pro-woman in their actions (frequently playing gay bars, one of the few early T&G mixed gender bands which was a very dude-ly label), if not their art, which to my mind was an exorcism of america's fecal id and not necessarily a reflection of their own point of view. yes, there's an openly savage nihilism running through their best work, and a v real scariness, but you could say the same about throbbing gristle or the birthday party or flag-era rollins or hunter s thompson or w/e. plus I was an unfortunate witness to the moment when the abyss dumped back on them - when teresa was assaulted by the crowd at the ritz in '89 - and in retrospect their backing away from the edge during the 90s makes perfect sense.

that said, what they did to T&G was unconscionable, and I coined the phrase "the buttholes are assholes" after a run-in w/ their organization circa '91. but the 80s underground is littered with great, great music made by ruthless assholes and/or prejudiced jerks, i.e. greg ginn, bad brains etc.

ps rembrandt pussyhorse rules

hate that song. would always skip it, still do. back in the day, i figured the caller for a voice-modulated band member or friend making a prank call, but that didn't make it seem any funnier to me. whether or not we believe the story, there's something seriously ugly about the joke, moreso than gibby's usual "touch me doctor" grotesquerie.

too weak for the butthole surfers i guess...

albini's ooh-I-said-a-dirty-word steez always struck me as more weirdly conservative in bent

otm

i was looking online earlier to remind myself of the details of the butthole surfers-touch and go falling out and this is a really balanced look at what happened: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/touch-and-go-v-the-buttholes/Content?oid=898923

...I was an unfortunate witness to the moment when the abyss dumped back on them - when teresa was assaulted by the crowd at the ritz in '89 - and in retrospect their backing away from the edge during the 90s makes perfect sense.

― truth bomb lawyer mean mean pride (Edward III), Thursday, July 11, 2013 12:08 PM (21 minutes ago)

jfc, never heard that story :(

Yeah wau!

I've never read anybody in the band talk about it, for pretty obvious reasons. that was the last show she played with them. she took an ill-advised leap into the pit, actually landed on me and knocked me to the floor. I don't want anybody's imagination running away with them, at the same time I don't really want to go into details. but it was ugly. not woodstock 99 korn ugly, but ugh why am I still even typing this

so uh change of subject - contenderizer is yr ilx hooked up to yr email?

listening to hairway to steven now

on the 2nd half of "Jimi"....dudes basically just talking over a Meat Puppets outtake at this point