Due to their primal gangbang of punk belligerence, disturbing humor, occasionally transgressive behavior, noise-rock abrasion, and full-on bad trip psychedelia, the Butthole Surfers’ importance remains. Unsurprisingly, opinions vary wildly over exactly where in their discography these Texan loons began their qualitative nose dive. Looking back, a clear indicator that things were going south came via 1990’s Digital Dump, the sole LP from the Gibby Haynes/Jeff Pinkus side-project The Jackofficers.
In a manner similar to certain partisans of The Grateful Dead, I’ve met a slim few who persist in completely dismissing the studio catalog of the Butthole Surfers. It’s a line of thinking that’s always flummoxed me, though I do absolutely agree with the high assessments of their once formidable live ability and will add without hyperbole that my one occasion seeing them play in a modestly-sized indoor setting (1989, Washington DC, the original 9:30 Club packed tight as pickled sardines) was a life-changing experience.
But to totally deny the worth of the Surfers’ ‘80s recordings is a head-scratcher. Now it’s true that some might not want to begin with their ’83 Alternative Tentacles-issued self-titled debut LP, a disc also known as Brown Reason to Live or Pee Pee the Sailor. This is mainly due to its loose but obvious connections to the punk scene that spawned them; amongst the mayhem are a pair of moments, “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave” and “Suicide,” that are basically surrealist hardcore.
Nowhere else in the Buttholes’ discography is their relationship to punk so apparent, and if one loves hearing the genre steeped in whacked shock tactics, Butthole Surfers is a near classic. But curiously, those who do value the Surfers’ studio output often deride their first live document, ‘84’s skuzzy and bilious EP “Live PCPPEP,” though for this writer its potent stench has always wafted quite appealingly.
It’s true the fidelity is far from pristine, but I’ve never looked to the Butts for sonic clarity, and the murkiness assists in raising the debut’s “Bar-B-Q Pope” and especially the less uptempo reading of “Something” from their already troubling aura to a plateau even more threatening. But as much as I dig it, the EP is but a prelude to the band’s most fertile run.
Specifically, this timeframe includes ’84’s Psychic…Powerless…Another Man’s Sac, ‘85’s EP “Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis” and ‘86’s Rembrandt Pussyhorse, with their emergence commencing a fruitful (if eventually litigious) association with the Touch and Go label (both Psychic and Rembrandt were submitted to Alternative Tentacles, but neither was released by Jello Biafra’s imprint.)
Succinctly, the collective weirdness and sonic weight of these discs is still immense, and in the decades since their appearance the groundbreaking moves they offer have been copped too many times to count. The gnawing scorch of Psychic’s “Cherub,” the bruising thud of “Cream Corn”’s “Comb,” and the organ-driven eeriness of Rembrandt’s “Strangers Die Everyday;” just three examples revealing the Butthole Surfers at their twisted experimental peak.
This is not to insinuate that the ‘holes next two LPs, ‘87’s Locust Abortion Technician and ‘88’s Hairway to Steven, are negligible. To the contrary, both endure as major statements, but the pair also details the band’s shift away from their existence as a barely harnessed gaggle of cretins conjuring massively bent noise that was something like rock music into a troop of gruff smart-alecks brandishing a gradually more focused fucked-upness that in its overall heft was abundantly Rock oriented.
Though attempts have been made to detail the group’s decline in strictly indie/major label terms, the story is far from that simple, for it was during this period that a noticeable portion of their former devotees began jumping ship on the Surfers as a studio entity. While laugh-out-loud humor was always a part of their arsenal, accusations surfaced that the Buttholes on disc had degenerated into a situation not substantially greater than a joke-band.
And with yucks-provoking tracks like “John E. Smokes” and “Julio Iglesias” prominently placed on Hairway, the jokester tag is a bit difficult to deny (both songs are considerably less interesting than the found-sound warpage of “Kuntz” from Locust), but in fact Steven is the last of their full-lengths to find the righteous noise significantly outweighing the signal of diminishing returns.
In 1991 Pioughd appeared on new label Rough Trade and inaugurated a long and much lesser phase. Holding enough high-quality selections to populate a tidy five song EP (the two parts of “Revolution,” the cover of Donovan’s “The Hurdy Gurdy Man,” “P.S.Y.,” and the CD bonus “Barking Dogs”) the record is ultimately undone by wiseacre padding and their growing inability to distinguish inspired ideas from dubious ones.
Pioughd was a tipoff in plain sight to The Butthole’s creative sea change, but that didn’t stop me from purchasing a copy of The Jackofficers’ Digital Dump, an initially intriguing, largely befuddling and ultimately mediocre attempt at techno/house music from group members Gibby Haynes and Jeff Pinkus. To this day I remain bummed that I didn’t scoop up Surfer Paul Leary’s problematic but interesting and now insanely scarce solo album The History of Dogs when Rough Trade, prior to going bankrupt shortly after the release of Pioughd, issued it alongside Digital Dump.
Even though I should’ve known better, Digital Dump’s appearance was still personally irresistible, namely for the combination of the fledgling techno genre then-new computer-based recording equipment had helped to spawn with the assuredly oddball approach of these two particular Buttholes. But the first big problem was a palpable deficiency in the weird.
Instead, much of the LP (and it was indeed released on, or perhaps better said, dumped onto vinyl) feels like an indulgence afforded them by a label that had reportedly already awarded the group with a hefty sum of advance cash. To put a finer point on it, Digital Dump survives as a piece of techno/house detritus made by a pair of dilettantes from the rock scene.
Good ideas are few and far between. And when they do show up, as is the case with the mildly bizarre televangelist sample on “Time Machines, Pt. 1,” its combined with an overwrought variation on the Mission Impossible theme that felt hackneyed the first time I heard it (to say nothing of the M|A|R|R|S sample at the beginning of the cut.)
The befuddlement stems from whether Digital Dump’s realization was sincere, a rockist prank run amok, or (most likely) a combination of the two. Some of the record does indeed connect like they’d been legitimately inspired by the new music, in turn crafting second-rate approximations of club-jams (parts of “L.A. Mama Peanut Butter, most of “Do It.”)
But other tracks (like the insanely noodling “Swinger’s Club,” a real titular disappointment given some of the X-rated house that was around at the time) still radiate with the likelihood of Haynes and Pinkus’ failed intention to either blow or irritate minds. And the practical joke aspect is only enhanced by the report that Pinkus was paid for a live tour where he apparently did nothing but press play on a tape deck.
Just two cuts from the album’s second side, “Don’t Touch That” and “An Hawaiian Christmas Song,” transcend the mysterious and convoluted intentions to stand as something truly worthwhile. If Pioughd should’ve been an EP, Digital Dump’s mediocrity is underscored and its fate sealed by its holding only enough strong work for one 45.
Feeling burned by all this folly, I abstained from buying any Butthole Surfers product until the demos and live compilation The Hole Truth…and Nothing Butt came out on Trance Syndicate in 1996. After eventually hearing their Capitol Records-era material, it was clear I’d made a sound decision. But their long slump shouldn’t deter newbies from diving into the group’s prime ‘80s output. As detailed above, there’s a whole lot of specialness in the Butthole’s back catalog. They were once a great studio band.
Digital Dump’s lesson is this: always beware of the side-project.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C-
