Rumors have been circulating that Teresa Taylor, one very important half of the two-person percussive team that fueled the most celebrated, most notorious and most gonzo iteration of Texas’ inimitable Butthole Surfers, is in hospice and shortly to say goodbye. I don’t know the woman. I never met her, but the news struck me as terribly sad, as I have long counted myself as a fan of her band.
While the band accrued a reputation that, in many instances, is blithely reduced to cartoonishly profane shock-rock shtick, it must be emphatically underscored that no matter how bizarre their aesthetic, there was quite assuredly NO ONE like the Butthole Surfers, and Taylor’s contributions to same were a crucial ingredient. And, yes, indie cinephiles, she also had an iconic, fleetingly-star-making cameo in fellow Texan Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” (see poster image above).
I first went to see the Butthole Surfers — at the time, somewhat lazily lumped in with a slew of hardcore punk bands, although the `Surfers eschewed all semblance of that scene’s sonic uniformity — at a low-ceilinged, rec-room-like bar called Stache’s in Columbus, Ohio during my freshman year of college in 1986. The only problem was — they didn’t show up. Earlier in the day, we were told, the band had parted ways with their bass player. He’d either voluntarily exited — or was forcibly ejected — from their touring van while said vehicle was in motion. So we got our money back.
The Butthole Surfers returned a year later, though, in the much more expansive Newport Music Hall up the block from Stache’s, and promptly made amends for their earlier misfire.
You hear lots of talk about various bands being “scary” or “dangerous” or “volatile,” but with the possible exception of maybe the late GG Allin & the Murder Junkies, nobody really held a credible claim to those descriptors more than the Butthole Surfers. Assuming the stage in a thick, aromatic fog, the band arrived with a screen behind them, showing film loops of natural catastrophes, barnyard anomalies and some deeply disquieting footage of reconstructive genital surgery. Lead singer Gibby Hayes stalked the stage with a bullhorn and repeatedly smacked a lit cymbal doused with lighter fluid, sending splattery plumes of worryingly real flame towards the ceiling. One got the impression that this stage flourish had never been mentioned to the venue’s management. The sound was dense, impossibly loud and trippy in a manner that suggested all involved were experiencing a pronounced lysergic augmentation. Behind Gibby, guitarist Paul Leary, bassist Jeff Pinkus and a not-at-all-titilating topless dancer with devil horns and Fu Manchu beard named Kathleen were twin drummers King Coffey and Teresa Taylor, hammering away on their instruments with a synchronized precision that entirely belied their bug-eyed, bedraggled appearance. Beyond Gibby’s vocal theatrics and Paul Leary’s guitar squall, THIS was the core of the Butthole Surfers, a pounding, tribal battery that never stopped reminding you that this band was a living, breathing, moving, roiling organism. To witness the Butthole Surfers during this particular era was genuinely nothing short of seismically astonishing,…. fucking astonishing.
I’ve posted several entries about that show here on this blog. I went on to see the band several times after that, as well, and while never quite as jarringly indelible as that first experience, they absolutely never left an audience indifferent.
Bliss Blood from the Pain Teens posted the video below of the Butthole Surfers in action from around the same era as the show I detailed above, and it is perfectly indicative of the chaos of their live experience, and the force of supernature that is Teresa Taylor.
Godspeed, Teresa.
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