1-5-09

The New Years Eve show by the Butthole Surfers at the ultra
fabulous Fillmore (I love that venue, perfect size, rich history,
fancy chandeliers, free posters, etc) was just as amazing as I
anticipated and was possibly the weirdest and best way to ring in the
new year and purge your mind completely of 2008, the year i couldn’t
wait to be done with and forgotten. Many of my friends attended the
previous nights show and came into the Eagle Tavern afterwards where i
was spinning to report faithfully with wide grins and dilated pupils
what a great show they had just witnessed. Doug even brought me a
souvenir bit of merchandise from the opening band on that night, the
beloved and totally wrong Fuckemos who I was sorry to miss but my
super tight and slutty t-shirt with a homemade screen print of a
flying cock and balls, their name on top and below it the words
“frisco pussy” all rendered in red and blue on white, eased the pain a
great deal. Doug purchased a cum towel with the same print for
himself. I love it when the merch table is filled with treasures of
the D.I.Y. variety.
For the New Years Eve show, soundscape art/music
industry/terrorist provocateurs and visual video montage artists
Negativland were opening and my concert-going companion Michael Dute
was unusually dismayed by this detail. I assumed that their opening
spot would be harmless and consist mainly of film, considering that
the members anonymity was at one time something they liked to
maintain. The performance started out with some familiar video work
of theirs and Michael wandered off in dismay. When three men wandered
onstage in fancy tuxedos with tails and acted like orchestra members
preparing to conduct, then were interrupted by a phone call from
another member explaining technological features of some mystery
instruments to be used and all of this annoying electronic gadget-y
noise started and I immediately thought, “He’s right, this is heinous
bullshit,” and i wandered out to the lobby to people watch. Their
opus seemed to go on forever and Michael found me and vehemently
shared his opinion on the act with me ripping them to shreds. He was
in rare form, filled with disdain and not letting up. We then watched
the crowd and chose our boyfriends for awhile and smoked outside till
Negativland finished.
Thankfully breakdown and set-up took a surprisingly short
amount of time and the lights went down. I was surprised by the basic
comfort level of the room considering it was NYE. It was crowded but
not unbearable and the middle-eastern strains of the song “Kuntz”
played as the members took the stage and suddenly the recorded radio
talk show conversation intro from one of the creepiest Butthole Surfer
songs ever, “22 going on 23” filled the auditorium with its sad, sad
lament of a young woman, victim of sexual assault, who cant sleep
because of bad dreams about her attack. Then the band hit the ground
running with its depraved miasma of paranoid throbbing tribal rhythm
and searing yet mournful squalls of guitar and bass so thick and pure
it was like running in a dream, suspended and getting nowhere, just
like the girl explains in her next conversational interlude. It’s to
date one of the most chilling and hopeless pieces of music I’ve ever
heard. It’s Just fucked up, confined and doomed, ending with the
sounds of mooing cattle. It’s fucking genius. It’s great when the
first song they do is one of your very favorites and you know you like
it because you are some kind of sick fuck who derives pleasure from
such darkness. They already earned the price of admission with just
one song, and i knew they didnt perform that song at the previous
nights show. The also did a lovely version of “Creep in The Cellar”
yet another favorite.
The band had huge white screens behind and on each side of
them and projected on these screens were images from different camera
angles capturing the onstage action. Then these projections would be
manipulated and re-textured or melted or pointilized or blurred or
transformed geometrically with various filters and effects and
stop/start motion and moving from color to black and white. It’s kind
of difficult to explain the visual effects employed but i knew for
certain that it was entirely different than what my friends described
from the previous nights show. They had more of that bubbling oil
type 60’s psychedelic kind of effects and occasional girls with
hula-hoops melting in and out of shape or focus. The visuals were
innovative to say the least, and really added to the whole experience,
just like they always have with the Butthole Surfers only a lot less
sick. There were no surgical medical films or car wreck scenes or
clips from charlies angels but it was still quite effective
I also was thinking that they all looked pretty good in
general as well, especially Gibby who seemed more fit and healthy than
I ever remembered him. There were times when he looked very pale and
bloated and not the picture of health over the years. He was wearing
a wall clock around his neck like Flava Flav. For a man of 50 (can
you believe it?) he looked great, as did Paul Leary and Jeff Pinkus
who looked pretty sexy with his shaved head and pointy beard. I
couldnt get a real good look at the dual drum team of King Koffey and
Teresa Taylor who were set back on the stage a bit too far to see but
they played quite well. Two drummers will always sound special in a
band line-up.
The rest of their lengthy set included selections from nearly every
stage of their career, leaning heavily towards their eponymous first
LP and the psychedelic/stadium rock freakout period of Pioughd and
Hairway to Steven and Independent Worm Saloon. As always with the
Butthole Surfers in concert, the actual distinction of specific songs
becomes less and less possible or important really as they steamroll
the audience with an ever-growing monster of psychotropic chemical
imbalance-inducing, unhinged satan-inspired anarchistic
unstuck-in-the- time-space-continuum mayhem that cumulatively leaves
you weak, whimpering softly and wondering what happened but knowing
your better for experiencing it.
Right at the stroke of midnight when a huge mass of balloons were
dropped from the ceiling the band played one of my favorites, “Hey”
with its festive high-speed adrenaline charged ascent greeting the new
year in an aggressive flurry of motion and nihilistic balloon popping
in the crowd. They moved on through till the set ended and returned
for an obligatory encore and the stage began to fill with more fog
than i’ve ever seen in a rock show in my entire life. Then the
strobe-lights started in with their always creepy effect and the
instruments were surrendered by all players as they exited the stage,
screaming feedback reverbrating through the foggy hall of stuttering
light. It was then that i noticed a concertgoer in front of me fall
into a seizure, which is no wonder at all considering that is what
happens to some people, strobes can induce seizures. I had to wonder
if anyone had thought to tell him that Butthole Surfers=strobe lights,
that this equation was a definite.
The Butthole Surfers live have never come with a warning label, it
would be too hard and difficult to word properly.