I am having a massive Butthole surfers week, spurred on by a conversation with the bloke from the record shop about offensive material in music, paarticularly re: Whitehouse and Rapeman

Lady Sniff is the most fun gross-out song ever
22 going on 23 is downright disturbing, and i cant believe that anything more controversial than that has been sold in high street chain shops.
Then theres this for good measure.

Marvellous

I've never really found all that much by the Surfers disturbing or offensive, just a hilarious/kick ass/highly creative band. Lyrics are lyrics. Performance art is performance art. Last I heard they were planning on doing another record...hope that pans out.

I wouldnt call them disturbing at all. You certainly have to buy into what youre listening to before it makes any kind of sense, the first time through Locust Abortion Technician was like being attacked by a monster made of cheap rotting meat but eventually you learn to digest it.

I dont know if its a British thing but i tend to roll my eyes at the kind of gross-out shock imagery they present upon first viewing, as i do in almost all cases, but listening to them more showed there was something proper going on under there, and one of the best guitarists going in Paul Leary.

Gibby was studying economics or something at university when they formed, and i think Paul Leary was studying too (someone will no doubt correct me) so they werent REALLY rednecks, i imagine that just being from texas and making druggy music like that would have been enough to make people find them disturbing back in their early days. They used to project images of penis surgery on the walls when they played after all.

It is kinda sad how thanks to the internet bands cant self-mythologise anymore, buying into the whole "Buttholes as band of feral marauding rednecks set free by punk and Captain Beefheart" was probably very alluring before you could check out the reality on your iphone *sigh*

yeah thats what it conjures up for me too. I always find it fascinating how bands from back then would create a persona or an image as well as the music (Jandek being the ultimate example by having an anti-persona) whereas now its next to impossible to maintain any level of mystery whilst making music. I cant help feeling like something's been lost there

Yep, thats exactly what i mean. Look at how many people obsessed over trying to work out what those symbols on Led Zeppelin IV meant. Or the Paul is Dead thing

Ironically, people are more willing to believe political conspiracies thanks to the internet, whereas artistic ones like that are pretty much ignored

There will always be those bands that try and add some sense of "mystique" as a means of selling records, or perhaps sometimes to express some abstract idea or whatever. I think most of the time the fans create this sense of mystery themselves (as in the case, no doubt, of Led Zeppelin). Not all that much mysterious about a group of young guys interested in the occult that also happen to enjoy making music. In the same sense, not all that much "weird" about a group of young people (or older people too for that matter) that enjoy ingesting drugs before or during the creative process. It's all in good fun, usually. Some people take themselves a little too seriously, of course.

Of course I agree that very few bands these days have little to offer in the way of being "mysterious", but then again very few bands these days are offering new ideas, period. I think the older I get the less I care about the personal lives of bands, or the weird stuff that may go on behind the scenes. Very little shocks me anymore, unfortunately. What I do sometimes find "eerie" is history. Old crackily recordings made by old men (and women) long since dead. Field hollers and such....but just because it brings to mind a time and place to where this world was just very different.

Nothing at all unusual about a group of rednecks taking acid (living in the south of course I know this much). About as unusual as a non redneck that knows how to work on cars (happens a lot, too). I never really thought of the Surfers as rednecks? Maybe that's a reference to another band. Gibby's dad was Mr. Peppermint for cryin' out loud.

True that.

butthole surfers get better every year.
take me
mexican caravan


nothing like them

beauty and ugliness

four words:

drug teeth
brown noise

<Flaming Lips

My fave Butthole Surfers track is Blindman.

some kind soul has uploaded all their performances on the Scott and Gary show from the 80s. And the volume is better too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx_Z6...der&playnext=1