Longtime Butthole Surfers acolyte Jill from over at Blah Blog Blah has launched a new blog devoted solely to Texas' favorite sons, Gibby N Me. While I'm not quite as slavishly committed to the band as dear Jill, I too retain a soft spot for the `Surfers. I first went to go see them in 1985 during my freshman year of college out in Ohio. We drove forty-five minutes to High Street in Columbus on a cold October night. I'd only been at the school for a couple of weeks, and this was my first big trek to the nearby city, and my first experience with the Midwest's underground rock scene.
They were playing at a tiny, ramshackle club called Stache's (don't bother looking for it, as I gather it's long since been torn down). After getting inside (thanks, fake I.D.!), my fellow geeky rockhead friends and I (we were a tiny minority at Denison University) muscled our way to the front to be greeted by a blistering opening set by a then-fledgling Die Kreuzen. A hirsute gaggle of listless noiseniks, DK's average song at the time, basically, sounded like this: "WAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!" To be fair, the band went onto record some great music a couple of years later, but at the time, they were a bit of a chore. Eventually, they left the stage. Funnily enough, however, no one followed them. After an impatient, uncomfortable hour, some flunkie got up to announce that the Butthole Surfers wouldn't be playing because their bass player had literally jumped out of their van and vanished earlier in the day. The announcement was met with a chorus of violent groans, but somehow, I remember everyone actually getting their money back. Ultimately, this meant that we got to sit through Die Kreuzen for free. Lucky us.
I didn't get the opportunity to see the Butthole Surfers again until the following year, when they were touring in support of the truly phenomenal album, Locust Abortion Technician. This was at the much larger Newport Music Hall just up the street from Stache's, and this time, they showed up with a vengeance. Between the smoke, the fire, the nudity, the strobe lights, the decibels, the profanity and the projected film strips of reconstructive genital surgery (I'm not making that up), my first live encounter with the Butthole Surfers left an indelible impression. This being Ohio, local authorities didn't take kindly to the band's nude dancer (a disquietingly unerotic display, featuring a woman with a shaved head, metal teeth and a fu Manchu mustache). Cops actually assumed the stage three quarters of the way into the set and shut the show down. Suffice to say, it was awesome.
In any case, I was hooked and went onto to see them several times after that show. In celebration of Jill's new site, this seems like a perfect opportunity to dust off the band's infamous "Texas BBQ" film (introduced by Alex Winter of "Bill & Ted" fame). I first saw this on a VHS "video-magazine" cassette whose name escapes me, but it's great. It's not entirely safe for work, however. Enjoy.
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