Yeeeeeeee… hah, the Buttholes 1985 line-up with two drummers gets the DVD treatment (just in case you don’t feel like watching it on a little screen via cialis canadian pharmacy). Yeeeeeeee… hah!!!
BS-BESA
“Hi y’all, I’m Gibby. This is Detroit, it’s March 2nd. It’s cold as fuckin’ shit. I don’t know what else to say.” The Butthole Surfers recorded their February 22nd and March 3rd 1985 live shows at TRAXX club in Detroit, Michigan, and edited the footage together (with more than just a bit of mischief) to create this pretty unique live DVD. Gibby appears at the beginning, naked in the snow but for a loin cloth that has a penis drawn on it. Nice. He also appears throughout the movie, ranting and raving between songs, usually in bed with the rest of the band but sometimes also as a young short-haired aspiring musician pleading with the audience, telling bad surreal jokes and spouting bloody nonsense that is often quite inspired. Hey – that’s Gibby! He blathers, the band eats pizza, smokes joints, trades cigarettes, comments on the wall posters, coughs, slobbers, drools – it’s like something out of an R Crumb motif. An example of one of these monologues is:
Thousands of the people that came before me that are descendants of me who had originally been here… there were thousands of people, all down the line to where there were worms, and there were flatworms, and Chinese men who were tied to walls would show worm movies out of their penises into the air in apparent disgruntlement and dismay and it would be wadded up like a little girl would wad up some tissue after she’s blown her nose into, and look in it and the horror of seeing little speckled pieces of blood in her snot, it was on that rag that she had wadded up and threw away, knowing that that was her life in there, and that her life would never be the same, because the world was divided up into four parts, there was the Maggots, the Tutor, the Fancor and the Durea, and the Durea and the Fancor were at war with the Tutor and the Farcols, who I haven’t mentioned to this point, because they were the fifth part, they were invisible and they were all-powerful, and they were beyond the worms and beyond the Chinese men tied to the wall, who would show worm movies out of their penises, and who had originally been non-existent at all and they never knew how to make fireworks, or ever rifles, or even – they didn’t know anyone from Saskatchewan and they didn’t know how to dial the telephone, and they had these Volkswagen buses that they had designed like they were cathedrals of God, and they had directed all of us, all of my relatives – the worms and the Chinese men themselves, they had travelled hundreds of thousands of miles. When they came they had the sea, they went under the sea and talked to the fish, and see, when the fish travel in a line there will be a little dot near their rear ends and a string will come out and I have made a kite before and I have flown it out of the string that I got from the dots on fishes bottom ends, and I have flown it so high that I have been able to see the Etruscans, the Bolivians, the Artesians, and the Wallhonkers.
The set starts off with “The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey’s Grave”, sung/shouted by Paul, with lots of groovy noise (Gibby’s playing guitar). Paul does a great job playing bass and screaming, especially at the end when he’s shouting “Shut up… shut up.” “One Hundred Million People Dead” does not appear on any of their albums, it’s a nutty piece of putty. Theresa Nervosa and King Coffey are going nuts on the drums, Paul Leary is dancing around in his black turtleneck, Canadian bassist Trevor Malcolm is bopping away in his white three piece suit and shades and thick sideswept blonde haircut, Gibby is confused in his white open chested shirt and bra as he howls with the Gibbitronics and destroys a pillow, it’s a fun and funky song (they also mess around and show footage from another show within the same song, people are seen wearing different clothes – Malcolm’s suit turns form white to black, etc – this happens all throughout the DVD). In “Bar-be-que Pope”, a bra-wearing Gibby is playing sax, Paul is doing the “singing”. Nutty! “Cowboy Bob” is nutty and cool, Gibby has Leningrad Cowboy hair, Paul howls like a demon possessed. The same shot of Trevor’s head is recycled over and over, at least once per song (probably to see if you’re paying attention, maybe to make fun of Trevor, who’s Canadian and deserves to be made fun of [as conventional logic seems to go]). You get snippets of clippets from the live show. “Hey” is nutty grooviness with Paul sweaty in a blue t-shirt, the audience going nuts, Gibby in a toga. “Tornadoes” has Gibby performing in his boxers, great stand-up drumming from Theresa and King. Before “Mexican Caravan”, there’s a scene of a young Gibby stark naked leaving the stage ( you only get to see his back side). In “Mexican Caravan” he’s unspooling a roll of toilet paper (and singing through the tube). Cool. “Cherub” is full of nutty feedback, basslines, drumming, horns, bullhorn rantings. This has to be the Buttholes’ best song from their first few albums. “Lady Sniff” is one of the most chaotic Buttholes albums, and this version is no less so, ha ha. It’s followed by a young Gibby on the bass talking to the audience between songs to stop pulling down his pants. “Something” picks up with Trevor Malcolm coming out with a giant white tuba, Gibby on bass, Paul doing his nutty slide guitar thing on a weird purple-striped guitar, and off they go! Paul handles the screaming vocals and minimal guitar. Great drum noise. In between songs there’s another scene in bed where the band does a weird “LSD” sound collage, making this nearly the only time King Coffey or Paul Leary speaks up; this quickly becomes a choral of “Blow The Man Down”. “Mark Says Alright” is cool groovy bass-driven boogying that is full of obscene guitar sound effects, Gibby donning a second guitar, spooky images floating in the air, bouncers fending off rowdy audience members, other insanity. The band launches into a proto-jam for “PSY”, probably my favorite Butthole Surfers song of them all, but this one doesn’t really get very far – it’s 12 minutes long on the 1991 release Pioughed, but here it’s only nine minutes long (about the same length as other live CDs, including The Whole Truth and Nothing Butt).
The DVD also contains some bonuses that you can’t get on YouTube – Butthole Karaoke, which is several of the live songs with subtitles (I might watch it all some day), and a series of pictures (band pics, naked clown line drawings, concert posters, etc). The music playing over the slideshow is the lost 5″ single of “American Woman”. Cool.
- A lot of things that can be said about time can be said about motion.
- A lot of things that can be said about something can be said about something else.
And, in case you missed it the first time around, here it is: