Great piece, Chris! If I could only score some toad. Loved listening to Alvarius B.
And then this moment ... such an interesting moment of life. There's no going back: " ... but I suspect this early show came at the very tail end of a period in my life when music could actually scare me. Kiss scared me, Ozzy Osbourne scared me, the Sex Pistols scared me, and so forth until at some point, fright became frisson, and I guess, childhood was good and truly over. Not that these early terrors aren’t in some unclear way foundational."
There was something nice about that charged moment of being afraid. I remember being afraid of David Byrne and Blondie and David Bowie watching them on Saturday Night Live as a kid. Scared in such an interesting way. Like I just had to open that door and go into the basement ...
This is a tour de force. I never saw the Butthole Surfers but you capture the terror and insanity of their live, psychedelic experience at what must have been their height (despite their later "success" as an alt-rock band lassoed by the majors and 120 Minutes). I recall pawing through the racks at my local record store in the mid-to-late '80s and coming upon their albums, the covers of which always caused me to break out in the very technical medical condition known as the heebie-jeebies. Not just weird, but purposely repulsive, essentially daring you to pick them and put them on the turntable, whereupon a new, ugly, phantasmagoric vortex would swallow you up. Or whatever. Just legitimately and darkly freaky. But then, in 1989 or so, my college radio station hosted a Butthole Surfers Corndog Roast one midnight during their annual indie marathon/fundraiser. One of the deejays manning the ones and twos that night was none other than David Berman. I've never forgotten the frisson (yes!) of dark magic I felt coming through my stereo speakers when he dropped the needle on one of their records, the one with a spoken word intro that mimics a father talking to a child about the nature of regret and ends with him loudly intoning something like "Oh, and when you see your mother, tell her—SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!!!!!!!" Anyway, thanks for this, Chris. I plan on getting a custom silk-screened T-shirt made with your mantra emblazoned on it: "I mistrust all drugs that require a change of underpants." I can't stop laughing at that one...and yet, so true.
Thank you! It’s so funny to recall the impact of that album-opening skit you mentioned, for “Sweat Loaf,” whose name/riff is a silly Sabbath gag that nonetheless got it done.
Great piece, Chris! If I could only score some toad. Loved listening to Alvarius B.
And then this moment ... such an interesting moment of life. There's no going back: " ... but I suspect this early show came at the very tail end of a period in my life when music could actually scare me. Kiss scared me, Ozzy Osbourne scared me, the Sex Pistols scared me, and so forth until at some point, fright became frisson, and I guess, childhood was good and truly over. Not that these early terrors aren’t in some unclear way foundational."
There was something nice about that charged moment of being afraid. I remember being afraid of David Byrne and Blondie and David Bowie watching them on Saturday Night Live as a kid. Scared in such an interesting way. Like I just had to open that door and go into the basement ...
oh man, thanks so much. It really helps to get any feedback at all, but especially on the topic of terror, without which there is no sublime.
This is a tour de force. I never saw the Butthole Surfers but you capture the terror and insanity of their live, psychedelic experience at what must have been their height (despite their later "success" as an alt-rock band lassoed by the majors and 120 Minutes). I recall pawing through the racks at my local record store in the mid-to-late '80s and coming upon their albums, the covers of which always caused me to break out in the very technical medical condition known as the heebie-jeebies. Not just weird, but purposely repulsive, essentially daring you to pick them and put them on the turntable, whereupon a new, ugly, phantasmagoric vortex would swallow you up. Or whatever. Just legitimately and darkly freaky. But then, in 1989 or so, my college radio station hosted a Butthole Surfers Corndog Roast one midnight during their annual indie marathon/fundraiser. One of the deejays manning the ones and twos that night was none other than David Berman. I've never forgotten the frisson (yes!) of dark magic I felt coming through my stereo speakers when he dropped the needle on one of their records, the one with a spoken word intro that mimics a father talking to a child about the nature of regret and ends with him loudly intoning something like "Oh, and when you see your mother, tell her—SATAN! SATAN! SATAN!!!!!!!" Anyway, thanks for this, Chris. I plan on getting a custom silk-screened T-shirt made with your mantra emblazoned on it: "I mistrust all drugs that require a change of underpants." I can't stop laughing at that one...and yet, so true.
Thank you! It’s so funny to recall the impact of that album-opening skit you mentioned, for “Sweat Loaf,” whose name/riff is a silly Sabbath gag that nonetheless got it done.