BUTTHOLE SURFERS: LOCUST ABORTION TECHNICIAN (1987)
1) Sweat Loaf; 2) Pittsburg To
Lebanon; 3) Weber; 4) Hay; 5) Human Cannonball; 6) U.S.S.A; 7) The O-Men; 8)
Kuntz; 9) Graveyard; 10) 22 Going On 23.
Okay, this time they're really just taking random words out of a dictionary. In fact,
they're taking random stuff out of everywhere, and piling it all up as long as
it sounds heavy, dark, weird, disturbing, and humorous at the same time. Now
do not get me wrong: if something sounds heavy, dark, weird, disturbing, and
humorous at the same time, that does not necessarily mean that it's good — which should be kind of obvious
to anybody who ever tried emptying the entire contents of a fully stocked
refrigerator into one big bowl and tasting on the contents. In fact, I am still
trying to understand whether this album has any artistic merits, and it is even
harder than with Rembrandt Pussyhorse,
because on there, they at least tried to hook us with verbal content. On Locust Abortion Technician, there is
not a lot of words in the first place, and what little there is does not even
make surrealist sense.
«Bad acid trip» is a typical description when
it comes to discussing this record, but so many pieces of music have been
described as sonic equivalents of «bad acid trips», it's hardly distinctive
any more — as well as most likely meaningless to those of us who have never had bad acid trips. «Evil clown music»
is more like it, especially when you take the album sleeve into consideration
— or, perhaps, «Zen music», if you take «Zen» not in its misguided meditative
interpretation, but in the proper meaning of «revelation through shock».
Almost any of these compositions / sonic collages could theoretically awaken
one of the many beasts inside you, as the Surfers cleverly choose «tasty»
soundbites and stack them on top of each other or twirl them around each other
and then invite you to step into the unknown and tell them what it is that you
feel, as they deconstruct and distort musical reality.
I wonder what Tony Iommi would say about ʽSweet
Loafʼ, a six-minute «tribute» not just to the main riff of Sabbath's ʽSweet
Leafʼ, but to the basic construction principle of Master Of Reality in general — brutal-heavy parts being divided by
soft acoustic interludes for the sake of sharper contrast. Silly it may be, but
it definitely sounds more «trippy» than the original — which, if you remember,
was actually an anthem to marijuana, and so, in a sense, you could say that the
Surfers stay more true to the original spirit of the song than Sabbath themselves.
And what would the original heavy electric bluesmen from Beck to Page say
about ʽPittsburg To Lebanonʼ, an exercise in distorting the 12-bar structure to
the fuzziest extremes of 1987? And what would the original masters of
psychedelic guitar say to ʽWeberʼ, thirty seconds of craziest, shrilliest lead
guitar overdubs ever that make Cream, Hendrix, and even the Stooges seem like
studio wimps?
Okay, they'd all probably just laugh it off,
and they'd have their reasons. But even on the least well structured numbers
here, the Surfers do their best to exacerbate everything, and they do it on a
highly professional level: this is not just a bunch of kids giggling with the
recording controls, these are experts that crank up to 11 whatever it is that
they are cranking. In fact, the album's only track that does superficially
resemble a «song», the speedy rocker ʽHuman Cannonballʼ, might be the weakest
link — it just sounds way too normal for this record. It could have been
recorded by, I dunno, Bad Religion, for instance. Whereas something like
ʽKuntzʼ — a totally bizarre mix of East European and Southeast Asian motives
(including a vocal track that they dragged off some Thai pop song) — as
deranged as it is, could only come from the inexhaustible trickster mind of
Gibby Haynes. And Leary's guitar work on ʽGraveyardʼ showcases his serious chops
as a blues guitarist (that solo would be well respected on any classic
blues-rock record), but it is more important how every once in a while he
dissolves the notes in a puddle of hysterical noise, while Haynes is mumbling
black magic incantations or something in the background.
It helps that the album is short (barely half
an hour in length) and yet its contents are so diverse; it also helps that
there is practically no toilet humor (or if there is, it's probably in Thai);
and it certainly helps that, deep down inside, these guys are really just good
old fans of the classics — had they been worshippers of avantgarde icons like
Henry Cow, this would have been «weirdness squared», but when you take Sabbath
and Zeppelin as your points of entry, well, from a certain cynical point of
view, these guys are just begging to
be deconstructed to some such effect. Not that Locust Abortion Technician cannot be enj... uh, assimilated on its own, without any knowledge
of its derivational base. But I don't believe that Haynes himself ever wanted
you to do something like that — most likely, he'd tell you to go do your
psychedelic, metallic, and punkish homework first, and then get back to him
later. In any case, my thumbs up here should only be relevant if one does
not regard the record as a
stand-alone thing, but sees it as a crooked mirror projection of its
predecessors. As a stand-alone thing, I would not be qualified to judge it
anyway. Besides, it's not 1987 any more — these days, what are the chances of
anyone hearing ʽSweet Loafʼ before ʽSweet
Leafʼ, rather than after? (Unless, of course, the anyone in question is a
12-year old with a particularly sick mind, surfing for buttholes on the
Internet).
Shouldn't this be backdated?
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