What monstrous crimes against common decency and human hearing haven’t the Butthole Surfers committed? I don’t know, but it’s a short list, and that’s what I love about them. The band from San Antonio, Texas spent much of its career producing an obscene caterwaul, causing irreparable damage to both the ears and the minds of those human beings—and I count myself one of them—who couldn’t wait to hear what outrage the Butthole Surfers would perpetrate next. Distortion, transgression, and a dedication to doing the next wrong thing—these are the qualities that set Gibby Haynes and Company apart from the competition, and made their acid-fried freak rock rodeo a must-listen, must-see for anybody interested in finding just how far a band would travel the road of outrage to reach the palace of infamy.
The band’s live shows are legendary, and their albums remain wonderfully unlistenable despite the passage of time. I put them on whenever I feel the need to remind myself that some musicians simply do not care whether you like their music or not. It’s a refreshing attitude, and one that left the band penniless for the longest time; they spent many a day foraging through trashcans for food, and collecting bottles for the deposits. And as most people know, founders Haynes (vocals, saxophone) and Paul Leary (guitar) could have had good jobs; Haynes walked away from a top-notch accounting firm to starve, and Leary was on the fast track to respectability and financial success as well. They remind me a bit of Manson Family killer Tex Watson, another bright Texas boy who took an unexpectedly permanent detour on his way to the American dream.
When it came to freaks on the 80s underground scene the Butthole Surfers had no equals; nobody even came close. It speaks multitudes, at least to me, that they traveled for a while—and I’m talking the entire band along with a female pit bull named Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad—in a tiny, Chevy Nova with “Ladykiller” painted on it and a roll of barbed wire on the front bumper. In the studio, according to Leary, the band was committed to making “the worst records possible,” and in one infamous case involving the song “Creep in the Cellar” discovered a backwards fiddle on the recording, which resulted from the studio simply taping over a country band that failed to pay its bill. The Surfers, delighted by the addition, said leave it in.
Live, Haynes was capable of anything—the list of his on-stage abominations would fill a book—and the band’s songs were driven by dual drummers King Coffey and Teresa Nervosa, both of whom played minimal kits while standing up. Throw in bassist Bill Jolly, lots of strobe lights, some awful films of penis surgery, and maybe a naked dancer or even some honest to god sexual intercourse for good measure, and boy oh boy, you had yourself some good clean fun!
1984’s Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac was the band’s debut full-length, and in La La Land remains the most listenable of the band’s early recordings. Unlike most bands they would get weirder, and their albums more unpalatable, which is not to say that Psychic is in any way, shape, or form easy listening. No, it simply has a higher ratio of songs that won’t cause your average listener to scream, “What is this shit?” And it even includes a couple of songs that, recorded by anyone but the Butthole Surfers, might almost be called catchy.
Opener “Concubine” is super-saturated in distortion; Leary’s guitar is all fucked up, and Haynes whoops and hollers like somebody just tore his big toenail off with a pair of pliers, his vocals distorted to ridiculous length. And where are all those weird noises coming from? “Eye of the Chicken” is even more distorted; it opens at romp speed, alternating atomic blasts with a high-pitched guitar that sounds nothing like a guitar, while Haynes is all blurred out in the background, coming to the forefront occasionally to say things like, “Even though my mother threw furniture at me” before sinking back into the caterwaul. “Dum Dum” opens with some cool bass and incorporates drums lifted from Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave” (they would borrow from Black Sab again with their song “Sweet Loaf”) before Haynes comes in, voice not nearly as distorted as usual. Leary throws out some great feedback that alternates with scratchy riffs, and later plays one of the odder solos I’ve ever heard. Meanwhile Haynes jumps in and out, while the dual drums go at it like a galloping horse to the accompaniment of more feedback from Leary. Then the song, like, stops.
The propulsive “Woly Boly” opens with one deranged guitar figure and lots of demented vocals by Haynes before Leary launches into a solo that is just plain wrong, and never fails to make me happy. Then Haynes does some more hysterical vocalizing and before you know it you’re listening to “Negro Observer,” which boasts a great discordant sax by Haynes, who insists upon singing in an accent that falls halfway between Jello Biafra and Bryan Ferry, that is when he isn’t laughing like a lunatic. Meanwhile Leary plays an impossibly scratchy and distorted guitar solo that never fails to make my day. This one is bona fide catchy in an alternative universe, what with Haynes tossing off lines like, “Negro observers are counting heads in singles’ bars.” It’s followed by “Butthole Surfer,” a truly weird and great number that opens with a cool guitar riff and then zooms off, the dual drummers really going wild. Haynes sings while Leary shouts behind him, and then the song goes into several false stops, with each return being faster than the one before it. A must listen, brothers and sisters.
As is the pounding “Lady Sniff,” which Haynes sings in a fake redneck voice, being sure to add lots of spitting and similar vileness before singing, “Pass me some of that dumbass over there.” Meanwhile Leary plays lots of scratchy guitar while Haynes belches and spits some more, dual drums pounding, and you’ve got to hear it to believe it. “Cherub” opens with a neat bass riff and feedback guitar, while Haynes comes in, vocals heavily distorted. This one is a slow and haunting piece, with Haynes contributing lots of psychotic laughter before the tempo picks up, and things get really weird and feedback heavy. There are lots of noises that I can’t believe are coming from Leary’s guitar, and Haynes explodes into some powerhouse dementia amidst electric whoops and hollers, a madman singing, “Your body’s laying/All over there.”
“Mexican Caravan” is a fast-paced tune big on the distorted guitar, while Haynes—who goes insane as the song goes on—about how Haynes wants to head south to score “some of that Mexican brown.” “Cowboy Bob” once again features Haynes’ saxophone to great effect, while Leary plays a cool, no make that super-cool, riff. Haynes comes in kicking and screaming, his voice an extended and distorted wail. Meanwhile, the sound of all the souls tormented in Hell shriek behind him as he skronks away to the rhythm, happy in his dementia. The album’s highlight is closer “Gary Floyd,” a paean to the openly gay Dicks lead singer. The melody is catchy as hell, Leary goes wild on the guitar, and Haynes sings, “I could have a real good time if I had a gun,” and this one is an instant garage classic, that is if the garage is attached to a mental asylum. It’s miles away, in the listenability department from, say, “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave,” with its wild and untrammeled chaos and Haynes’ great scatological lines, “There’s a time to shit and a time for God/The last shit that I took was pretty fuckin’ odd!”
The band’ status remains unclear, but they haven’t put out a new album since 2001’s Weird Revolution or toured since 2011. Is this the end for history’s most shit-obsessed rock band? If so, we all have lost something precious, namely a band that produced some of the funniest, scariest, and most outrageous rock music ever recorded. Perhaps I’ve done the reader a disservice by not reviewing 1987’s Locust Abortion Technician, which is truly out there. One thing’s for sure; a band that could come up with the idea of eating creamed corn from Sammy Davis Jr.’s empty eye socket (see their 1986 EP, “Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis”) has always worked on a whole other level of weirdness than their contemporaries. They weren’t/aren’t just a great band; they’re a lens through which one can view a mad and topsy-turvy world, strobe lights flashing. And if you don’t turn away in horror you may come to understand, in the words of Neil Simon of all people, that “All humor is based on hostility–that’s why WWII was funny.”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
