The Butthole Surfers -

Surfin' a Brown Wave of Nostalgia

The Butthole Surfers are one of those bands that introduced me to acid weirdness as a teen. That first self titled E.P. (the actual name is Brown Reason to Live) came out in 1983 on Alternative Tentacles, the DK's label. At the time, I was generally into hardcore punk, so other than "the Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave", there was very little that resembled HC on this disc. Even so, that tune was more psychotic than practically anything I'd heard to that point. Add to that the completely tasteless cover, and songs with titles like "Bar-B-Q Pope", and "The Revenge of Anus Presley", and I was left wondering if this was just some "shock" band or something. So, like all music that has a lasting effect on me, I had no idea what to make of it at first. I ended up spinning that disc a lot at high volume, much to my parents chagrin. "There's a time to shit, and a time to die, I smoke Elvis Presley's toenails when I want to get high", and "I shot the Pope, I shot the Pope's ass" are just a couple of the lyrical gems from that disc that my parents failed to find an appreciation for. The surprise to me was, these dudes could actually play. Paul Leary was a monster on guitar, the rhythm section pummeled, and Gibby Haynes was a certified wackjob on vocals. Everything about this band seemed demented. Next they released another EP, a live one called PCPPEP. A good name, but not such a great record because they end up playing most of the first record. The insanity of the originals is not matched by the live versions.

A year later out comes Psychic...Powerless...Another Man's Sac on Touch and Go Records, a label they would stay with for their best material. This album was even more demented than the first EP. This is the surfers at their creepiest. Everything comes together on this album; the two drummer sound, the megaphone, delay effect vocals, and more focused and bent guitar. There's a couple of fast songs ("Butthole Surfer" and "Mexican Caravan"), but for the most part this is an acid fueled journey, and not the sunshine and flowers variety. Around this time, the Surfers started touring everywhere, and I ended up catching them at City Gardens in Trenton. They played a good 1-1/2 hour set, then left the stage. Nothing too insane or over the top. Then they came out and played an encore, which consisted of a 20-25 psychedelic jam. There was less applause when they left the stage this time, and quite a few people had left. They came out again, same deal, 20 minute jam. They left the stage to even less applause, and maybe half of the original audience in attendance. At this point, the audience was not even calling for an encore, and of course, they came out again. They played four encores that night, and by the time they were done, there were very few people left in the crowd. It may not always be true, but in general any band that can clear a room is usually worth watching.

Around this time Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis, a four song EP, came out. It's one of my favorite Surfer's discs, though it's short. On "Moving to Florida" Gibby Haynes uses what a lot of people describe as "the old blues singer" voice (kind of like he did on "Lady Sniff" on Another Man's Sac...). To me he sounds like a character straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The song's got this staccato blues riff with weird sounds and the usual bizzarro lyrics ("they'll be making tadpoles the size of Mercurys in Florida"). "To Partner" is a great psych track with lyrics about selling quaaludes to monkeys, among other things.

A couple of months passed before my favorite Butthole Surfers album surfaced. Rembrandt Pussyhorse was different than anything they'd released to that point. There were programmed drums in spots, and the tunes were more sparse and focused. The production was clear, and, most importantly, the songs were surreal. "Creep in the Cellar" is a work of fucking genius.
There's a fiddle part in the song which fits right in with the eerie overtone. Weird thing is, the fiddle was actually on the tape before the band recorded the song. The Surfers bought a used tape to record over, and when they went to mix "Creep", they realized that there was a fiddle track from some bluegrass band that last used the tape. They were recording the tape in the opposite direction, so the track came up backwards. The cool thing was, the backwards fiddle track blended perfectly into the song. The rest of the album is definitely more subtle than their first. It's not over the top madness. It's more subtle, scary and psychedelic. Their version of "American Woman" is one of the greatest, most fucked up covers ever recorded, in my book. It's shrill female vocal and disjointed attack make for a much better tune than the original. Add to that songs with titles like "Strangers Die Everyday", "Waiting for Jimmy to Kick", and "Whirling Hall of Knives" and you've got a malevolent funfest that makes for a near perfect album. When the Surfers toured this album, they began their era of weird stage shows. I saw them in a few variations. The first included smoke machines, two very strange looking strippers, strobe lights, and Jacques Cousteau movies which were projected onto the stage. Later shows had other, much more disturbing movies, namely the notorious "penis surgery" film. Another thing they did was set up a fan facing the audience. They would drop hundreds of cut-out xeroxed roaches into the fan which would spray out all over the front of the club. The xeroxes had the top of a roach on one side, and the bottom on the other, so with the lights dimmed it looked like real roaches coming at you.

The Buttholes would release two more classic albums in the next couple of years, Locust Abortion Technician, and Hairway to Steven. The former includes two cool versions of "Graveyard", a tune that has one of the most wicked guitar riffs (literally wicked), and some seriously deranged vocals. It's also got a tune called "22 going on 23" that creates more mental discomfort than "the Hamburger Lady". Hairway to Steven was not quite as good as the albums that preceded it, but definitely had its moments. It's hard to describe in detail, because each track was signified on the sleeve by a cartoon drawing (hypodermic needle, rabbit shitting on a deer, etc.) I won't go too much into the Butthole Surfers career from this point on. They've had their ups and downs, with a couple of decent albums, some bad ones, but little of the insanity of the earlier stuff. It would've been impossible to keep that up. If you've never heard those first few albums, and you're into acid fueled insanity, you need to dig them up.