Butthole Surfers: Humpty Dumpty LSD

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: HUMPTY DUMPTY LSD (1982-1994; 2002)

1) Night Of The Day; 2) One Hundred Million People Dead; 3) I Love You Peggy; 4) Space I; 5) Perry Intro; 6) Day Of The Dying Alive; 7) Eindhoven Chicken Masque; 8) Just A Boy; 9) Sinister Crayon; 10) Hetero Skeleton; 11) Earthquake; 12) Ghandi; 13) I Hate My Job; 14) Space II; 15) Concubine Solo; 16) All Day; 17) Dadgad.

Although the Surfers never disbanded officially and, in fact, continued to exist as a touring outfit throughout the first decade of the 21st century, the release of this odds-and-ends compilation in 2002 was telling — it's like a shadowy retrospective of the band's entire career, where, for one last time, you can quickly browse through all their life stages and remind yourself what exactly it was that they brought to the table. That said, I must admit that there is pretty little here to go ga-ga over; mostly, it's just stuff for the loyal zealots and the historians, and much of it presented here in awful «home recording» sound quality, too.

Of minor interest are such tracks as the Rembrandt Pussyhorse outtake ʽI Love You Peggyʼ, whose title may be a not-too-subtle reference to Buddy Holly (Gibby does begin singing it in a slightly Buddy-ish hiccupy voice, but then the vocal overdubs quickly head into the realm of total insanity, and Leary's shrill folk-pop riff is the only thing that allows the song to preserve some structure); the instrumental ʽEindhoven Chicken Masqueʼ from the same sessions, with a lively mariachi brass fanfare section and a blazing guitar break from Paul; two outtakes from the Butt­hole Surfers sessions, ʽJust A Boyʼ and ʽI Hate My Jobʼ, reminding you of how this band actual­ly started out as an aggressive punk rock outfit — this stuff just sounds like frickin' Black Flag; and, all of a sudden, a cover of the 13th Floor Elevators' ʽEarthquakeʼ from the Hairway To Steven sessions — where you realize the uncanny resemblance of Gibby's voice to Roky Erick­son's — but, although Leary adds some excellent psychedelic guitar solos, I also find myself strangely missing the electric jug of the original.

The rest of these songs are even less memorable — some poor-quality demo recordings where the low frequencies drown out all the high ones; some chaotic noise tracks that sound just like any other chaotic noise track (ʽHetero Skeletonʼ; ʽSpace IIʼ); and some brief throwaways like an out of place thick fuzzy bass solo (ʽConcubine Soloʼ) or a «bonus track» that says hello to Napalm Death by being only six seconds long (no vocals, though). A keen musical ear may extract the beginnings of a few nifty ideas here and there, but it's all raw and unfinished. And they probably shouldn't have screwed up the sequencing — as I said, historically-minded people are more like­ly to be interested in these outtakes than those who are too lazy to care about what came after what, and this means that you'll have to re-assemble it all back together in chronological order. On the other side, you can say that Butthole Surfers never wrote music for lazy people — or, for that matter, that they never wrote music for organized people. A mess is a mess is a mess, whichever way you'd like to look at it, so here's one more chunk of mess for you.

Butthole Surfers: Weird Revolution

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: WEIRD REVOLUTION (2001)

1) The Weird Revolution; 2) The Shame Of Life; 3) Dracula From Houston; 4) Venus; 5) Shit Like That; 6) Mexico; 7) Intelligent Guy; 8) Get Down; 9) Jet Fighter; 10) The Last Astronaut; 11) Yentel; 12) They Came In.

Apparently, the Butthole Surfers' little romance with mainstream popularity did not last long. Despite the relative success of ʽPepperʼ, already their next album, After The Astronaut, fully recorded and ready for pressing, did not pass the Capitol quality test and was rejected, which ul­timately cost them their contract and a lot of nerves. The band did not resurface again until 2001, with a new bass player (Nathan Calhoun), a new manager, a new (smaller) contract, and a totally new musical face — and I am not too sure about how exciting that face was.

Essentially, Butthole Surfers' last ever completed LP is an «alternative hip hop» album, whatever that means. And do get this right: it is not a «Butthole Surfers album with elements of hip hop», which might have been an interesting thing to witness — it is simply as if Haynes and Leary be­came so fascinated with hip-hop culture that they agreed to subject themselves to its rules, where earlier they accepted no rules whatsoever, and trade most of their identity for some collective fetish. Sure, not all of the album is hip- or trip-hop, but much, if not most, is, and those songs that do not accept the trappings of hip-hop sound like generic alt-rock, which is even worse.

Actually, the really worst thing is the unapologetically solemn tone that the album assumes from the very beginning — with that spoken-word announcement dubbed over a boring beat: "On be­half of Dr. Timothy Leary, in association with the legions of illuminated social rejects..." Timo­thy Leary? Timothy Leary's dead, as Ray Thomas told us long before Timothy Leary's physical death, and this whole look-at-me-I'm-so-unbearably-regally-psychedelic stylistics last made sense maybe on some Parliament/Funkadelic records in the mid-1970s. This is just bullshit, as if they are trying to stupefy us with a 30-year old circus program. And no, just because they are trying to hybridize psychedelia with hip-hop does not make this any more forgivable.

As if that weren't enough, the first actual song here, ʽThe Shame Of Lifeʼ, is a collaboration with Kid Rock, which is sufficient reason for criminal prosecution in some well-advanced countries. The lyrics are reasonably intelligent — this is basically a reflection on the hedonistic-excessive nature of hip-hop and its imminent arisal out of the state we're all in ("my shallow mind is just a sign of your game of life") — but the music is limited to a simplistic heavy rock riff and some sound effects scattered around for creepiness' sake. If I didn't know this was a Butthole Surfers composition, I'd never have paid it any mind in the first place. It doesn't help, either, that ʽDracula From Houstonʼ, combining rapped verses with a garage rock riff that had already been used ap­proximately 50,000 times in the past three decades (and that's just the verse — the chorus rips off ʽSmells Like Teen Spiritʼ, if you can believe), is possibly the worst song these guys ever commit­ted to tape. What's up with this commercial pop-punk shit?

All right, I will admit that it does get better as it goes on — ʽGet Downʼ, for instance, is funky as hell, catchy as heck, and funny: its angle comes across as parodic, and at the same time Leary gets to lay across some nice riffs and astral phased-out solos. ʽMexicoʼ, which has nothing to do with Mexico, draws some Eastern melodic overtones across a predominantly electronic arrangement, and makes fun of most of the world's major religions, past and present, in the process. A couple other tracks mix the weird and the normal in acceptable, though not necessarily mind-blowing, proportions. But for every track like that there's a ʽJet Fighterʼ, a surprisingly sincere-sounding piece of anti-war satire with a bland folk-rock arrangement, or a ʽLast Astronautʼ, which is barely listenable because of awful production (the main gimmick is a set of vocal overdubs that were apparently captured from space, and, predictably, they sound like shit).

The main point is: this is not «Butthole Surfers». Bands do change and evolve, sometimes turning into something you could never ever have suspected from them in the beginning — but it's all right as long as the original spirit remains alive. If there is a spirit in Weird Revolution, it is buried so deep under the ice of the synthetic, stiffening production that, for all intents and pur­poses, it may as well be dead. Not only does the record take itself way too seriously (I mean, what the heck? Just because they have embraced hip hop, they think that they now need to tiptoe through the tulips?), but it blocks their individual talents, especially Leary's, and asserts way too much discipline over a world whose main value used to lie in its undisciplined attitude. Maybe it's not awful — but it's a very, very, very disappointing metamorphosis.

And even if the band never officially disbanded (in fact, as a touring outfit, the Surfers were periodically quite active throughout the 2000s), the very fact that Weird Revolution was not followed by anything else is telling — I'm pretty sure that the band understood that it lost its way, creatively, and that under these conditions it would be more prudent to honestly rebrand them­selves as a nostalgia act than to continue this frustrating «modernisation». Come to think of it, the Surfers always were a nostalgic act, from the very beginning — they were always successfully busy carving out the future by peering into the past, and it is only when they began consciously peering into the future that success began to evade them.

Butthole Surfers: Electriclarryland

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: ELECTRICLARRYLAND (1996)

1) Birds; 2) Cough Syrup; 3) Pepper; 4) Thermador; 5) Ulcer Breakout; 6) Jingle Of A Dog's Collar; 7) TV Star; 8) My Brother's Wife; 9) Ah Ha; 10) The Lord Is A Monkey; 11) Let's Talk About Cars; 12) LA; 13) Space.

Okay, so we are not going to play it hip here and declare that the Butthole Surfers' brightest mo­ment of commercial glory was a proverbial pile of shit — but let us also face the inevitable: de­spite the gory album cover and the Hendrix pun of the title, Electriclarryland is simply not even close to Independent Worm Saloon when it comes to good music. It may have been the toning down of the ferociousness of their sound that was responsible for the album climbing up the charts, or it may have been the factor of prolonged exposure and publicity, or perhaps the world at large was a little more adventurous in 1996 before Britney Spears swept it all away, but the fact is, Electriclarryland is decent, but not very good.

With Jeff Pinkus out of the group and Leary taking over bass duties (occasionally shared with Andrew Weiss of the Rollins Band), the Surfers make one more step towards «being normal», and this time, they overstep it, because in the place of aggressive snarling rock'n'roll, fueled by Leary's guitar-god performance, what we get is a bunch of mid-tempo «alt-rock» songs, heavily dependent on lyrics and vocals rather than captivating instrumental work and also influenced by some of the more modern developments in music, such as trip-hop. It seems that the band, either of its own will or, perhaps, pushed by outside provocators, is trying to adapt to contemporary trends — big, big mistake, since for all their revolutionary mind-blowing prowess, the Butthole Surfers were always at their best when guided by their past, not present influences (note: this judgement certainly does not apply to any artist, but it seems oh so true for these guys).

The result is stuff like ʽPepperʼ, a song that got them into the Top 40 on the singles market — a miraculous feat, I guess, but the irony of the situation is that ʽPepperʼ, at most, is just listenable when it comes to separating the band's great stuff from the band's passable stuff. Leary still does his best to get a good psychedelic lead tone going on this slow trip-hoppy cruise, but the solo seems strictly confined to a single melodic pattern, the vocals, whether it's the rapped verses or the sung chorus, are somnambulant in a prison courtyard, and the gruesome story told through the lyrics only seems there to somehow introduce an element of belated shock into the commercially intended performance. No, actually, the groove is still worthwhile — closing your eyes to it and settling into a slow rhythmic wobble can be relaxing — but in the end, this... well, sounds more like the Brian Jonestown Massacre than the Butthole Surfers. And how on Earth this got into the Top 40 in 1996, I'll never know. Did people confuse this with a new Tricky single or what?

Echoes of Worm Saloon's rocky explosions are still felt throughout — even the album opener ʽBirdsʼ has a fast-'n'-furious rock'n'roll punch, although it adds little to the vibe already explored on ʽWho Was In My Room?ʼ and ʽDust Devilʼ. Another fast tempo number, ʽAh Haʼ, prefers to replace distorted hard rock guitars with jangly folk rock guitars, so that they sound like a home­less, toothless version of R.E.M.; and there is at least one bona fide hardcore punk number, ʽUlcer Breakoutʼ, with the good old chainsaw and dog bark and racecar drumming. But either it is the overall context in which they are lodged, or the lack of their own individuality, yet none of these songs suffice to turn the tide in favor of the record.

Oddly enough, when you look at all this with just a formal look, the album remains pretty weird. There is ʽJingle Of A Dog's Collarʼ, a dark folk-pop ballad that seems to have been written from the perspective of a canine character (and ends with some genuine sniffing). There's the risqué ʽMy Brother's Wifeʼ, with heavy use of vocal sampling, loads of white noise, and extra overdubs to reflect the psychosexual commotion of the title character. There's ʽThe Lord Is A Monkeyʼ, a technically successful stab at psychedelic hip-hop with cartoonishly evil rapped vocals and ruth­less wah-wah solos. There's ʽLet's Talk About Carsʼ, featuring a classy pop riff over which people seductively speak French for a few minutes. In short, there's all it usually takes to get a classy, involving, unpredictable pop album.

But somehow, in the end, it just doesn't want to click. Where the mix between «normalcy» and «madness» on Worm Saloon seemed just perfect, here it is as if «normal» and «weird» keep seg­regated to two different channels and do not mix at all. So I keep getting torn between the total sensual puzzle of ʽLet's Talk About Carsʼ — and the total openness and even genericity of something like ʽTV Starʼ (a ballad whose chorus goes "Christina, la-la-la, I love you so", if you can believe it). None of the individual songs are awful, but together, they do not amount to an impressive performance. Not that I would imply that «mainstream involvement» ended up eating away the band's essence — rather, they just tried to do something different here, and could not play up to their usual strengths in the process. The record is still well worth a look, but it not only seems weak and lagging next to the band's high standards of quality, it also seems kind of dated to its time period, and Butthole Surfers feel so much greater when they are not attached to any particular time period — not so blatantly, at least.

Butthole Surfers: Independent Worm Saloon

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: INDEPENDENT WORM SALOON (1993)

1) Who Was In My Room Last Night?; 2) The Wooden Song; 3) Tongue; 4) Chewin' George Lucas' Chocolate; 5) Goofy's Concern; 6) Alcohol; 7) Dog Inside Your Body; 8) Strawberry; 9) Some Dispute Over T-Shirts Sales; 10) Dancing Fool; 11) You Don't Know Me; 12) The Annoying Song; 13) Dust Devil; 14) Leave Me Alone; 15) Edgar; 16) The Ballad Of Naked Man; 17) Clean It Up; 18) Ghandi*.

Lookee here, Butthole Surfers go «mainstream», and all it took was the overnight success of one Kurt Cobain, which, for a strange brief moment in time, convinced major labels that people would buy all sorts of artistically independent weird shit from them, rather than just the carefully calculated and marketed crap — even stuff from a band called Butthole Surfers, who not only did not see it fit to rename themselves for their debut on Capitol, but actually insisted on the name being splattered in bright, shiny, ugly letters all over the album cover. And, considering that this is probably the friendly smiling face of a large tapeworm that we see framed by the name, now we actually know who might be the proverbial «butthole surfer».

But it's not as if the switch to a major label did not change the band one bit — on the contrary, Independent Worm Saloon is Haynes and Co.'s most normal, straightforward, accessible album to date, and could easily be regarded as a sellout by hardcore veterans. Produced by none other than Led Zeppelin's own John Paul Jones, this is a record of relatively conventional blues rock, hard rock, dark folk, and occasionally industrial-metal songs that may have some shocking power and may be somewhat offensive, but are in no way baffling to the mind. This is simply Butthole Surfers doing good old rock music — and seemingly enjoying it.

And I enjoy it, too, as it fits my observations — the best things in life often come out when we have weirdos acting normal, rather than weirdos acting weird (or normals acting normal, for that matter). The instrumental tones, the riffage, the little bits of studio overdubbing, the song titles and lyrics, the diversity of approach, the passion of delivery, the way the band so totally and reck­lessly gets into everything it does — I buy this approach completely, even if most of the riffs here are just minor variations on old hard rock, punk, and metal patterns (and what isn't?). Simply put, this is one of the most kickass albums of 1993, ladies and gentlemen.

Most of the songs are short, but when they're long, they frickin' deserve to be long — like ʽDust Devilʼ, which is like a rougher, crunchier, more psychedelic take on the ZZ Top rock sound, with a bit of Judas Priest thrown in, but really all of this is just an inspirational basis for Leary's love affair with the multiple avatars of his guitar, which start off simply enough, but then gradually build up — at near-top speed! — to a near-apocalyptic explosion, capitalising on the promise that was hinted at on ʽBarking Dogsʼ. On headphones, this does evil things to your brain, although even Jimi would probably suggest that the man is going over the top with this. But hey, if some­body is supposed to go over the top, let it rather be Paul Leary than, say, Joe Satriani.

Each and every one of the heavy, fast, «industrialized» rockers on this album rules to one degree or another — starting from the first one, ʽWho Was In My Room Last Night?ʼ, which takes an old riff from the fast part of Led Zeppelin's ʽDazed And Confusedʼ (no coincidence that John Paul was in the studio, right?) and gruffs it up to the point where you almost begin to believe that these boys actually mean business, and that meeting them in a dark alley would not be good for your health. The more punk-style ʽGoofy's Concernʼ is not nearly as serious, but it features the grumbliest guitar tone from Leary ever, and ʽDancing Foolʼ is the punchiest indictment of dance-oriented music ever written, with Haynes impersonating "a dancin' fool" and "the disco king" to  merry martial rhythms that actually have their roots in ʽThe Immigrant Songʼ rather than any­thing even remotely connected with disco, while Leary counteracts with a guitar riff that seems copped from some baroque chamber music suite. Yes, really. I know what it means, but I can't explain.

The more quiet tunes on the album are not as immediately striking, but eventually ʽThe Ballad Of Naked Manʼ, with its relentless acoustic guitar and banjo strumming, begins to come across as some sort of program statement — where the "naked man" in question is taken to be a symbol of Truth and Reality, scorned and shunned by the truth-fearing population ("so get the hell away from me, you goddamn naked man, go the fuck away from me back to Naked land!") — and Haynes is seen as the ragged travelin' minstrel, preaching folksy simplicity to the crowds. The problem is that the quality of the Surfers' music usually depends on the extent to which Leary's talents have been taxed, and he frankly doesn't have much to do on ʽNaked Manʼ, so I'd rather go with ʽThe Wooden Songʼ, where he does get a chance to crash through the monotonousness of its slow country waltzing with a scratchy, squiggly, quasi-atonal guitar solo.

But heck, I even have to confess that I love ʽThe Annoying Songʼ, despite the fact that it was al­most certainly recorded to annoy — what else are those «chipmunk» vocals for? Yet somehow, when used in the context of this novelty hard rock song, especially at the climactic screaming outbursts at the end of each verse, they sound... hilarious.

Of course, the Surfers are still patented jesters, and none of this should be taken too seriously, even with the vocals erased. But then, in a way, all rock music — heck, maybe all music in gene­ral — is sort of an absurd enterprise, and here the Surfers are just taking some aspects of it and driving them towards a logical height of absurdity. They do it more self-consciously than, say, AC/DC, which means that Independent Worm Saloon could never hope to achieve popularity among the masses, for whom it would still be way too weird; but I could easily see how it could be some stuffy intellectual's favorite rock'n'roll record of all time. Hell, maybe it's on the way to becoming my favorite rock'n'roll record — at least, ʽDust Devilʼ would most unquestionably land in a personal Top 1000 rock'n'roll songs or so. Thumbs up, totally.

Butthole Surfers: Piouhgd

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: PIOUHGD (1990)

1) Revolution Part 1; 2) Revolution Part 2; 3) Lonesome Bulldog; 4) Lonesome Bulldog II; 5) The Hurdy Gurdy Man; 6) Golden Showers; 7) Lonesome Bulldog III; 8) Blindman; 9) No, I'm Iron Man; 10) Something; 11) P.S.Y.; 12) Lonesome Bulldog IV; 13*) Barking Dogs.

Although a lot of critics seem to think that Piouhgd (on some releases, the title is spelt Pioughd, but I seriously doubt there is a «correct» way of spelling this) shows the beginning of the decline for the Surfers, I would disagree — in fact, I'd say that, in terms of being true to the spirit of the band, this is a major imporvement over Hairway To Steven. Where the latter was almost way too normal — and, consequently, boring — here they return to all sorts of banshee excesses that may be silly, meaningless, irritating, but give this band an actual reason to exist.

The opening bluesy jam of ʽRevolutionʼ may seem to start this off on the same note as ʽJimiʼ, but where ʽJimiʼ was meandering and murky and eventually just dissolved in an interminable yawn-inducing acoustic coda, this stuff is faster, punchier, and has a bite. The first part is all about Leary's fuzzy riff, a distant descendant of ʽFoxy Ladyʼ, losing some of that ancestral crunch but retaining all of its mind-melting psyche-delish-ness; and during the second part, it is slightly pushed aside to make way for a simpler, folksier rhythmic pattern and some arrogant vocals, as if they were switching from Hendrix mood into Jefferson Airplane mood — then the overdubs begin to pile up, and we get synthesizers, radio static, twenty layers of screaming, moaning, and blabbering, ringing telephones, wailing sirens, and all sorts of things to suggest a ʽRevolution 9ʼ type of chaos, only everything remains steadily underpinned with a rhythmic melody. In short, seems to be much more crazy stuff going on here than there ever was on ʽJimiʼ.

Other highlights here include ʽGolden Showersʼ, whose cheerful Farfisa organ and distorted sax, combined with the somewhat uncomfortable lyrical topic, would probably make this track eli­gible for a Bonzo Dog Band cover; ʽNo, I'm Iron Manʼ — another in a never-ending line of Black Sabbath deconstruc­tions, although this one, I think, only borrows the opening chord of the riff (it is the cavernously distorted vocals that actually make you think of ʽIron Manʼ, rather than the melody); and the hilarious remake of their old chestnut ʽSomethingʼ in the style of Jesus And Mary Chain, for no other reason, I guess, than to show how versatile the band's powers are.

There are relative lowlights, too — nobody seems to think much of their country send-up ʽLone­some Bulldogʼ, but I actually think that the silly song itself is merely a pretext for three more «variations», where they play the waltz theme with three different guitar tones/styles (my guess is inspired by Brian May first time around, by Lou Reed second time around, and... uh... is that Sabbath once again they are imitating in Part IV? Downtuning the guitar and bass at the same time? Could be, couldn' it?); which counts as funny in my book. The only real lowlight is pro­bably the «cover» of Donovan's ʽHurdy Gurdy Manʼ, where the main gimmick is a wobbly tre­molo effect on the vocals that will probably make you puke if your head is not too well balanced. But that's okay, we can take it.

I am not a major fan of the lengthy jam ʽP.S.Y.ʼ, because, once again, too much of it sounds like an homage to the psychedelic jam bands of old, from the Grateful Dead to Can: ass-kicking, yes, jaw-dropping — no. What is totally jaw-dropping, though, is the last track, which was only made available on the 1992 reissue of the album by Capitol Records: ʽBarking Dogsʼ is one of the greatest sonic nightmares that this, or, for that matter, any band has ever produced. Pinned against an unnerving pseudo-cello electronic pattern, you get banshee-howling guitars, blasts of white noise, agitated and/or screaming vocals, occasional bursts of gunfire, and, yes, barking dogs that crop up with the frightening regularity of enemies in some particularly creepy and bloody arcade game. This is actually their answer to ʽRevolution 9ʼ, and, frankly speaking, it's better, because the various samples and overdubs are much more thoughtfully put together — so that you get a very realistic picture of making a crazy nighttime run through the streets of a city gone mad with ravaging, burning, and killing. Technically, it should probably be called an «industrial» compo­sition, but emotionally, it goes way beyond «industrial» and into the realm of «apocalyptic».

If the album only had ʽBarking Dogsʼ on it, it would still be worth a thumbs up; fortunately, uneven as it is, and not breaking any radically new ground, its share of minor crazy-awesome ideas is still higher than its share of silly misfires and its share of "this-is-kinda-boring-when-will-this-ever-end" moments. A pretty damn good, unjustly overlooked album in their wobbly, perverted catalog.

Butthole Surfers: Double Live

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: DOUBLE LIVE (1989)

1) Too Parter; 2) Psychedelic Jam; 3) Ricky; 4) Rocky; 5) Gary Floyd; 6) Florida; 7) John E. Smoke; 8) Tornadoes; 9) Pittsburg To Lebanon; 10) The One I Love; 11) Hey; 12) Dum Dum; 13) No Rule; 14) U.S.S.A.; 15) Comb; 16) Graveyard; 17) Sweetloaf; 18) Backass; 19) Paranoid; 20) Fast; 21) I Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas; 22) Strawberry; 23) Jimi; 24) Lou Reed; 25) Kuntz; 26) 22 Going On 23; 27) Creep In The Cellar; 28) Suicide; 29) Some­thing.

Double Live? What is this — the Butthole Surfers tribute to the Golden Age of Progressive Rock? By all means, the length of this monster (130 minutes, give or take a few), which has since 1990 been available as a double live CD, not LP set, actually gives ELP and Yes with their triple albums a good run for their money. And in a better world, this record might be all the Butthole Surfers your record col­lection needs — a massive run through most of their highlights, a few of their lowlights, some on-the-spot stage craziness and stage sickness, and even an R.E.M. cover and a Grand Funk Railroad cover totally out of the blue (okay, so we already new Gibby was a Mark Farner «fan», but Gibby playing Michael Stipe is something else altogether). Unfortunately, the harsh reality is so harsh that I have a hard time not letting my tongue slip about how this album totally s... okay, we are not being objective here, so stop it, tongue.

Fact of the matter is, what they say is that Double Live was released primarily as an anti-boot­legging measure: since the Surfers weren't making a whole lot of cash from their studio albums (gee, I wonder why?), yet somehow the tapes of their crazyass live performances were in regular demand, they decided they would finally take advantage of that — by going all the way and re­leasing what really seems like their complete repertoire on this double CD monster. The only problem was, there was not a single tape in sight on which the Surfers would be professionally recorded: most of the tracks here are only very slightly above bootleg quality, and a few are quite solidly below bootleg quality. Not to mention that this is arguably the most awfully sequenced live record I've ever heard (granted, I'm not a big expert on underground live releases) — fade outs, fade ins, ugly sonic seams from track to track as if they were just cutting and splicing the tapes with glue and scissors. But the sequencing is really just a minor nuisance next to the con­sistently awful sound to which you are going to be subjected for over two hours.

Of course, seasoned fans of the lo-fi sonic crimes of the 1980's underground scene will not bother about such minor nuisances as the drums sounding like tin cans and the guitars sounding as if from under a thick slab of concrete — who knows, maybe some of them might actually feel that it adds to the experience, although I am not sure that Paul Leary himself, with his good ear for crazy guitar sounds, would agree. Too bad, because a track like ʽPsychedelic Jamʼ, which used to be a staple of the band's live show, features some awesome «guitar weaving» between Haynes and Leary, with the two occasionally flying off into space with more flash than the Grateful Dead and more fun than Cream, yet the recording does not properly capture the overtones to turn this into a truly blissful headphone experience.

Even worse, the mind-blowing sonic textures of the last two studio records, already seriously weakened due to the band's inability to reproduce them onstage (as far as I understand, they rely on backing tapes, particularly for all the distorted sound effects on the vocals), are further dama­ged by the sound quality, making this version of ʽJimiʼ nigh near unlistenable (in the bad sense of the word; not to mention that ʽLou Reedʼ, into which it promptly segues, seems to be a messy tribute to Metal Machine Music, nine minutes of dirty, crunchy, abrasive chaos that might have sounded cool back in 1975, or even way back in 1970 when the Stooges did it on ʽLA Bluesʼ, but hardly by the standards of 1989). ʽSweatloafʼ gains nothing by having its «regret» spoken bit replaced by a creative dirty rewriting of Morrison's soliloquy in ʽThe Endʼ, and loses almost everything by not even having the riff played distinctly, let alone everything else.

To cut a long story short — inevitably so, because I've only managed to sit through this once and have no wish to repeat the experience — if you want a shadow of some proper appreciation of the Surfers as a live band, please refer to Live PCPPEP, which was much shorter, much better recorded, gave a more distinct portrait of Gibby Haynes as frontman, and is available as a freebie with their first EP anyway. Double Live, on the other hand, has them dealing with the problem of reproducing all that crazyass studio experimentation on the stage, and bad sound quality does not alleviate that problem. As much as I like about half of these songs (and have little against most of the other half), the record gets a thumbs down — I am certainly not spending the next several years trying to get myself to like this attempt to convert carefully crafted studio surrealism into thin, muffled, wobbly psychedelic spontaneity.

Butthole Surfers: Hairway To Steven

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: HAIRWAY TO STEVEN (1988)

1) Jimi; 2) Ricky; 3) I Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas; 4) John E. Smoke; 5) Rocky; 6) Julio Iglesias; 7) Backass; 8) Fast.

A lot of people swear by this as the last great Butthole Surfers album, but... I'm not all that sure. I'm not even sure about the title, which is a kinky spoonerism worthy of a Mark Prindle review, but on the whole, seems just «silly» rather than «absurd» — and not even all that offensive, either, if you want to make a key point on the Butthole Surfers' importance as the ultimate Sacred Cow Irritant to be unleashed on a stuck-up world.

But outside of the title, the record seems like an attempt at relatively tame, even normal — for the Surfers, that is — psychedelic rock, with a heavy nod to their predecessors. It may well be so that, like many sensible people do, Gibby and Paul got tired of merely fooling around and decided to finally «make progress», «mature», or something like that (this rational assumption is almost de­stroyed to smithereens if you take the lyrics of ʽJulio Iglesiasʼ into consideration, but this screa­ming exception just proves the general rule). And this is not such a perfect idea, because the "songwriting" here is essentially centered around lengthy and/or repetitive grooves — almost  jam-like grooves, and as much as I respect Paul Leary as a guitarist, jamming is not what this band is truly about. Although, in a pinch, some Butthole Surfers jamming may be good (and, shh, don't tell anyone, but it is definitely more fun than the Grateful Dead anyway).

Unlike Hairway To Steven, ʽJimiʼ is a good title — this opening 12-minute epic is clearly dedi­cated to Hendrix, which is reflected both in Leary's guitar style and in the band's heavy playing around with speeding up and slowing down their vocals; together with all the astral noises and guitar meltdowns, this is highly reminiscent of the opening «alien sketch» on Axis: Bold As Love. But ʽEXPʼ was over in a couple minutes, whereas this one goes on long after it has re­vealed all its potential, and even if you built up a case that Paul Leary is a much better Hendrix interpreter than Stevie Ray Vaughan (totally possible, if you value the «psycho» aspects of Jimi's playing more than his «blues» aspects), this is cool, but not jaw-droppingly amazing/original guitar playing by the standards of 1988. The unexpected transition into acoustic folk-rock jam­ming with chirping birds and crying babies all around during the last five minutes is kinda cool, but also most definitely overlong. Take five minutes off the first part and three off the second, and you have something nice and adequate going there.

Once we get to the shorter songs, we experience the problem of what it is when the Surfers sound «normal». Found face to face with a psycho-folk backing (e. g. on ʽRickyʼ and ʽRockyʼ), Gibby Haines begins sounding suspiciously close to Marty Balin, whereas Leary, when he is not paying tribute to Hendrix, seems to be surreptitiously tearing pages out of the Syd Barrett riffbook (ʽRickyʼ, I believe, uses some chord progressions from ʽInterstellar Overdriveʼ at least). That wouldn't be too bad if they used these influences to good effect — but much too often, it just sounds like humble tributes to their betters. I mean, it's probably good that the songs sound so timeless; remembering the sound fashions of 1988, it is nice not to see them reflected here in any way. But timelessness also comes at a price, and the price here is that this brand of groove-based, relatively humor-free psychedelia just does not seem to make a lot of self-autonomous sense.

The problem is, you either have great melodies or you have impressive atmosphere (if you're really lucky, you can have both), but these melodies aren't too great (at best, they're passable vari­ations on stuff we already know), and the atmosphere is confusing. ʽI Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gasʼ — is this supposed to be a parody, or is this the Butthole Surfers' twisted way of a lyrical and musical interpretation of what seems to be a routine visit to a local clinic? It's too twisted for the former, but too crude and offensive to be taken seriously. And if you pay no atten­tion to the lyrics (or even the vocals), it is just another syncopated rocker with a predictable acoustic rhythm pattern — although when Leary gets to the solo, he has a nice way of taking it high up into the stratosphere, I'll admit. But then, if we're heading into the stratosphere, we are no longer in the local clinic, so count me confused.

And, naturally, with tunes like ʽJulio Iglesiasʼ, where Gibby lambasts poor Julio ("Julio he had a mole / Went to the doctor with a fiery pole / Saw the nurse what did he see / Loved to watch his sister pee") to a frantic neo-rockabilly beat; or with tunes like ʽJohn E. Smokeʼ, a lengthy pseudo-live send-up of the country-western tell-tale subgenre, it is hard to take the album seriously. In the end, it's just a little frustrating: the record tries to be everything at once, and in doing so, fails rather than succeeds as a whole. Individually, there's plenty of good moments to be had — and the short coda ʽFastʼ, featuring the band packing a tight punch and Leary excelling both on rhythm and heavily processed lead guitar, might be one of their best songs ever. But as a cohesive (or even as an intentionally dis-cohesive) LP, Hairway To Steven is a first misstep that would ultimately lead to the band's losing it altogether.

Butthole Surfers: Locust Abortion Technician

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).

Butthole Surfers: Rembrandt Pussyhorse

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: REMBRANDT PUSSYHORSE (1986)

1) Creep In The Cellar; 2) Sea Ferring; 3) American Woman; 4) Waiting For Jimmy To Kick; 5) Strangers Die Every­day; 6) Perry; 7) Whirling Hall Of Knives; 8) Mark Says Alright; 9) In The Cellar; 10) Moving To Florida*; 11) Comb*; 12) To Parter*; 13) Tornadoes*.

On here, the Surfers are attempting to get a little more serious, though you certainly would not know it from the album title — which not even the real Rembrandt would have appreciated, I think, no matter how iconoclastic a picture is being painted of him in various urban legends. But then I guess, if you put the word «Rembrandt» in your album title, there's no getting away from at least trying to do something important. Even if it is followed by the word «pussyhorse». Okay, not that important, perhaps.

Most of these tracks rise high above basic street hooliganry, though not always above the level of parody — some sound like an absurdist take on Joy Division (ʽWhirling Hall Of Knivesʼ) or Nick Cave (ʽSea Ferringʼ), and some are noisy, irreverent deconstructions of classics (the Guess Who's ʽAmerican Womanʼ). The true name of the game, though, is «experimentalism», and the band tries on everything that works and some things that don't, with spontaneity and unpredictability as their chief guides.

One of the legends states, for instance, that they were recording ʽCreep In The Cellarʼ on a used 16-track tape without having previously erased a country-western fiddle track from one of the channels — which played something completely different, but they liked it and left it in, so here we have ourselves some dark piano pop with a merry fiddle «underdub» playing something almost straight out of the Beatles' ʽDon't Pass Me Byʼ. Does it work? Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. More important is the fact that such was Fate's decree, and if you call yourselves The Butthole Surfers, you just don't muck around with Fate.

Everything here is weird, largely because the Surfers have finally gotten used to the possibilities of the recording studio, and are using the whole power of effects, overdubs, loops, and samples to their benefit, if that might indeed be the right word for it. Some basic knowledge of American pop culture, as usual, wouldn't hurt to appreciate the record deep enough, but is hardly necessary: perhaps knowing that ʽMark Says Alrightʼ utilizes the growl of a pitbull named Mark Farner, in «honor» of the leader of Grand Funk Railroad (a band that could hardly be further away from the Butthole Surfers' ideal than any other — but then, at least secretly, deep down inside everybody really loves GFR), makes the track a little more hilarious — but its real charm lies in how it com­bines elements of musical suspense with musical clowning, starting off with surf guitar trills and then melting them into a sea of chiming noises and wobbly interlocking soundwaves. What's Mark Farner got to do with that, anyway?

But essentially, this is a record about madness, not as heavy and frightening as, say, The Birth­day Party, yet every bit as deranged — already ʽCreep In The Cellarʼ begins with the line "there's a hole in his brain where his mind should have been", an appropriate tag for everything that goes on here. If there is a problem, it lies in the fact that almost as many albums had been recorded about madness by 1986 as there had been about breakups, and the Surfers aren't giving us any previous­ly uncovered angle, although it helps that they are not being too serious about it: for instance, a surreptitious slice of social criticism is heavily disguised in ʽPerryʼ, an adaptation of the Perry Mason theme for organ, schizophrenic guitar, and distorted, barely identifiable vocals. A zombie mutant Vegas anthem, words, music, and meaning all corroded.

I would not go as far as to fall in love with the record, though. Like many experimental «try anything for kicks» records, this one has some brilliant musical ideas (like the flanger effect on ʽWhirling Hall Of Knivesʼ, drilling a nice see-through hole in your skull in four and a half minutes), some odd stuff that overstays its welcome (did the electro-tribal drumming on ʽAmeri­can Womanʼ really have to occupy five and a half minutes of space?), and some completely pointless tracks — for instance, the "church organ" + "bubbles" + "distant vocal noise" combina­tion of ʽStrangers Die Everydayʼ simply does nothing other than undermining the solemnity of the church organ with the silliness of the bubbles. So what was that all about again?..

The CD issue of the album increases its length drastically by throwing on the EP Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis (from the previous year) as a bonus, adding three more tracks in the same (lack of) style and one, ʽMoving To Floridaʼ that would have been a better fit for Psychic..., what with its vocal lambasting of the redneck stereotype. However, I am not certain that forty nine minutes is a good span for an album like this — what with the songs tending to drag so much and the sonic weirdness of it all not always coinciding with sonic amazement, so to speak. Of course, in the overall context of 1986 («the worst year for music», as I like to call it, although mostly in reference to the major label commercial stuff), Pussyhorse is a marvel of human in­genuity. But in the overall context of human ingenuity as such, I would refrain from a thumbs up judgement: there is not much here that I openly enjoy, be it with a giggle or with a shiver, and too many tracks that are too boring to respect.

Butthole Surfers: Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac

BUTTHOLE SURFERS: PSYCHIC... POWERLESS... ANOTHER MAN'S SAC (1984)

1) Concubine; 2) Eye Of The Chicken; 3) Dum Dum; 4) Woly Boly; 5) Negro Observer; 6) Butthole Surfer; 7) Lady Sniff; 8) Cherub; 9) Mexican Caravan; 10) Cowboy Bob; 11) Gary Floyd.

The process of creative unfurling from «probe EP» to «full-blown LP» level is always nice to watch, provided we are dealing with real, not faked, creativity — and in 1984, Butthole Surfers were on a roll, inspired and encouraged by the realisation that they were able to allow themselves just about anything. Punk attitude, offensive demeanor, dirty humor, psychedelic arrangements, and limitless intrusion into the territory of any randomly picked musical genre — these guys had the advantage of taking nothing so seriously that it would impose any unbreakable rules of musi­cal conduct on their career.

Commercial success not being even a distant objective, they were, nevertheless, not properly «avantgarde» — most of the melodies on this album respect regular blues conventions, and could be characterized as pop rock, blues rock, hard rock, punk rock, maybe a little heavy metal on the side, anyway, nothing particularly out of the ordinary; in any case, the band members did not have the chops to play something trickier than that (and how many bands did, anyway?). How­ever, it is not the core melodies, but the irreverent attitude towards these melodies that counts: the band prepares a package of hilarious shock value, inspired grossness, and unpredictable musical seasoning for each song, and have themselves a jolly good time as each package goes off like a shitbomb in the listeners' faces.

Actually, when I say «hilarious», I need to correct myself. The stuff that the Surfers do here is neither very intelligent nor very funny, and if you are even a little bit stuck up or hung up, it will be very easy to dismiss all these songs as pointless hooliganry. I mean, ʽLady Sniffʼ? Okay, some­body will be sure defend the song as a nasty parody on the redneck and/or white trash ste­reotype, replete with grunts, farts, expectorations, and verbal wonders like "lady walk that greasy gravy!", but somebody else will just as easily say that the whole thing is just a sorry excuse for finally putting some fart noises on tape, something so often used as a threatening allegory by us reviewers but, actually, so rarely encountered in real life. And here it is!

The hilariousness lies not in the offensiveness, though, and not in any alleged attempts at joking: the main strength is in the synthesis of various influences, or in the emotional inversion (corrup­tion!) of musical styles. For instance, ʽDum Dumʼ is really a spoof on Black Sabbath's ʽChildren Of The Graveʼ, borrowing the song's rhythm section and crossing it with trebly-wobbly, «clucky» lead guitar that sounds like a cross between Duane Eddy and Adrian Belew. ʽWoly Bolyʼ lifts the distorted descending guitar intro off some garage classic whose name escapes me at present (no, it is not ʽWooly Bullyʼ, as one might probably suggest) and reworks it into the general melody of the song, but that general melody tends to «melt» and become splattered against the wall, only to pick itself up and then be smashed again every now and then (fortunately, the rhythm section is tight enough to allow Leary to do whatever he wants). And ʽButthole Surferʼ is indeed like surf-punk, only much dirtier than your average Agent Orange.

If you get offended easily, the first song to be checked here is certainly not ʽLady Sniffʼ, but the six-minute plus workout ʽCherubʼ, which alternates between power-chord based sludge-metal sections and odd «astral» passages where one guitar sounds like a spaceship, plotting a complex course in an asteroid field, and the other guitars crash and bust around it like those particular asteroids, collision with which was inavoidable. And at certain intervals they even play a chord that makes you expect they will rip into Hendrix's ʽThird Stone From The Sunʼ at any moment, but they're just teasing you. This is really the kind of hilariousness I am referring to, certainly not the fact that they use the word "negro" in a song title or anything.

But the quintessential BS song on this album is probably ʽCowboy Bobʼ, which was already made available earlier in the live version on Live PCPPEP; here, the production is cleaner, but Haynes is delivering his lyrics through a bullhorn, so you can take your personal pick — anyway, the song has it all: silly irreverential title that has nothing to do with the lyrics or melody, a nasty, repetitive, droning hard rock bassline à la Budgie's ʽBreadfanʼ, supported with a saxophone part for contrast, wild screaming in the background (and sometimes in the foreground), psychedelic guitar soloing, and schizophrenic lyrics ("I've always got a knife in my back!", which could be a good tagline for the band's entire career). This is what you get, basically, when you cross Iggy Pop with Keith Moon — yes, that's the very essence of Butthole Surfers.

To call this record an overall «classic» would be an insult to the band itself, I believe: they are not here to amaze you or make you rethink your life, they are here to introduce a bit of creativity and imagi­nation into the old art of grossing-out. But in the somewhat parallel (and sometimes a wee bit perpendicular) universe of flippy-freaky, it is a classic, unquestionably deserving its own flip­py-freaky thumbs up; I am still trying to imagine how that would look on brown paper, but per­haps I have not had my proper fill of ʽCherubʼ and ʽCowboy Billʼ just yet to understand that. 

Butthole Surfers: Butthole Surfers

BUTTHOLE SURFERS (1983)

1) The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave; 2) Hey; 3) Something; 4) Bar-B-Q Pope; 5) Wichita Cathedral; 6) Sui­cide; 7) The Revenge Of Anus Presley.

Like Kurt Cobain, you just gotta respect any band that calls itself «Butthole Surfers». On one hand, the name is more «irreverently amusing» than flat-out gross (like Anal Cunt, something that requires even more imagination than the idea of a butthole surfer but ends up being disgus­ting in any case). On the other hand, the name totally and utterly precludes such a potential em­barrassment as «commercial success». Let's face it, fame and fortune are for losers — real men find satisfaction in anything but fame and fortune, and what better means are there to get them completely and permanently out of your way than calling yourself «Butthole Surfers»?

This debut EP was originally released in 1983 on the Dead Kennedys' label, Alternative Tentacles; apparently, Jello Biafra was so overwhelmed by the guys that he promised to release their stuff, pro­vided they could find somebody to lend them some studio time — which they did, proving that truly nothing is impossible. The band's lineup at the time included Gibby Haynes on lead vocals and saxophone; Paul Leary on guitar and occasional lead vocals; Bill Jolly on bass; and a whole set of different drummers, some of whom they probably even forgot to mention on the cre­dits. And who'd want to look at the credits, with that album art, anyway?

The music... okay, this is music. Basically, Butthole Surfers play «punk rock», but not «regular» or «hardcore» punk rock — rather something like absurdist or dadaist punk rock. Unlike union­ized punkers, these guys have little concern for the evil grin of The System, or the everyday sweat of The Working Man: what they are more concerned about is testing the limits of the punk idiom, whether it can incorporate humor, purely artistic offensiveness, raffinated craziness, and just about anything else you'd like to insert, at random, inside the idiom. For instance, you might want to play a bit of college-style folk-rock with psychedelic guitar overdubs (ʽHeyʼ), or some repeti­tive one-chord blues vamps (ʽSomethingʼ), and they'll all fit in with the more overtly punkish material like ʽThe Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Graveʼ (does he really?).

It may all seem silly, but the band gets by on the sheer strength of its imagination — their musi­cal and cultural knowledge are undeniable, and they mix small pinches of everything in such incre­dibly unimaginable combinations that it never feels like the only purpose of making this EP was to gross out the audience. So there's a lot of predictable offensiveness thrown at religion, the Pope in person (ʽBar-B-Q Popeʼ — does there exist a Sinead O'Connor cover of this anywhere?), pop icons like Hendrix and Elvis, and dead parents, but it's all funny, and some of it is even catchy: simplistic vamp or not, that "something she said to me last night" bit from ʽSomethingʼ really sticks in the brain. And speaking of surfing, there is a little bit of surf guitar on ʽWichita Cathed­ralʼ, as if they were actually influenced by Agent Orange.

In addition, Paul Leary is quite an in­ventive guitarist who likes to introduce just a wee bit of dissonance in his overall smooth lead guitar playing — not a lot, like Greg Ginn, but just a bit to throw you off balance. That's on the less messy songs, like ʽWichita Cathedralʼ, but then there are also intentionally messy trips — like ʽSuicideʼ, an unlikely marriage between old school rock'n'roll and free-form avantgarde music where, I suppose, rock'n'roll symbolizes "the walls of my life" and free-form avantgarde suggests suicide. Or there's just total hooliganry, like ʽThe Revenge Of Anus Presleyʼ, as full of obscenities as if it were the band's take on an underground rap ritual, while the guitars spiral around you in a psychopathic, but humorous manner. Like a comical, lighthearted take on Stooges-style madness.

In January 2003, the album was re-released on CD together with its follow-up EP, Live PCPPEP, recorded live (indeed) in a club in San Antonio and originally released in the fall of 1984. A sepa­rate review for this EP would be rather superfluous, especially since it mostly just reproduces Butthole Surfers in its entirety, although the show does start off with a ravenously insane take on ʽCowboy Bobʼ which is a preview of the version on their next studio album. There are a couple bonuses on the CD release, though, such as the previously unreleased blues-punk-rocker ʽGary Floydʼ, and a bass-heavy post-punk rocker ʽSinister Crayonʼ which, fairly speaking, sounds rather dull and un-ironic next to the obscene hilariousness of the trailblazing EP, and was pro­bably left off for a good reason — this kind of stuff would rather suit, say, Pere Ubu. Oh, and if your ears are sharp enough to penetrate into the stage banter, you do need this by all means — Haynes is constantly spouting insults to the public, at one point even remarking that they have managed to clear out most of the audience, as if it were a good thing...

In any case, both the original EP and the new, much expanded release get a thumbs up rating — it might be safe to say that in 1983, nobody took punk as un-seriously as these guys, and that is quite a refreshing thing to remember. Of course, as far as irreverent songwriting is concerned, this is not Ween-level quality, but these guys are Ween's spiritual ancestors, and we at least have to respect this, even if we don't necessarily have to enjoy all the jokes or be amazed at all the little experiments.