BUTTHOLE SURFERS, 1984-1987

September 21, 1984. It was the day Adrenalin OD's first album was released. I was hanging out celebrating this fact with the members of the band somewhere out in Union, New Jersey. It was a Friday night and before too long there was talk in the air of moving our party elsewhere -- CBGB, to be exact, where a new band from Austin, Texas called the Butthole Surfers were headlining on this last night of summer. Somehow the boys talked me into using my car to transport us there, and off we went.

Truth be told, I was the least excited of all of us to be seeing the Buttholes. They had only just released their very first record on Alternative Tentacles and while I didn't dislike it, I didn't think it was anything special either, and I would never have gone to see them live had I not been talked into it. But there I was, entering CBGB to find a packed house and a band already in full flight onstage. I, at first, didn't know who this band was, but within just 30 seconds, I was head over heels in love with them. They had an almost 7-foot tall singer, a guitarist with a blonde crewcut, and two drummers, one male and one female. And they were making the most infectiously psychedelic racket my ears had ever heard in a live setting. The singer was just maniacal, the guitarist was wildly inventive, and the drummers, both of whom played standing up, were just lost in the passion of their tribal rhythms, sometimes trading drumkits with each other in mid-song. And needless to say, I was shocked, but ultimately very pleasantly surprised, when what I thought was one of the opening bands turned out in fact to be... the Butthole Surfers.

Hardcore punk was still my main thing before that night. But seeing the Buttholes convinced me there was something beyond that, and it wasn't long before I left the hardcore scene for greener musical pastures. A year after the CBGB gig, in 1985, I saw 'em again at the Show Place in Dover, NJ, by which time the legendary Mark Kramer had become their new bassist (for just three months) and they were fully established as a live force to be reckoned with. Those first two shows were basically just the band and their great music, and Gibby's stage antics; their "Blind Eye Sees All" video was filmed around this time and it's a fine example of what their early gigs were like.

I didn't see the Butthole Surfers live again until May 1, 1987, when they played the Ritz. What a night. Redd Kross were the openers, at the height of their "Neurotica" success. Before the show started I saw Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie just casually milling about the club, and when I casually waved "Hi" to them, they came right over and greeted me like a long lost friend. By this time the Buttholes had expanded their show to include autopsy footage screened on the stage wall behind them and a topless dancer named Kathleen Lynch -- who I would later meet once at a private party I was lucky enough to crash a year later -- dancing on a raised platform in front of it. They didn't take the stage until 2 AM (oh, the days when headlining bands rarely went on before then!) and promptly rewarded us for waiting up more than half the fucking night for them by playing their deranged noisefest "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave" as their opening number... for ten whole minutes. In the process they became the first, last, and only band I know of ever to smash their instruments at the BEGINNING of their set! The other Buttholes shows I saw were generally charming affairs, but this show, by contrast, was deep, dark and brooding, the most chilling music I've ever heard them make.

I saw the band one more time after that, just a few months later, at the Cat Club, a place once ransacked by GG Allin. The weird videos and nude dancer remained, but this time the show was a lot less disturbing. In fact, the entire thing can be watched right here. It's grainy but gives off some of the vibe of that night, as Gibby announces before singing "Lady Sniff" that he would never sing it again. I can't vouch for whether he kept that promise, for that was the last Buttholes show I saw. But in retrospect, perhaps Gibby's proclamation was a prophecy, for the band's downfall set in shortly afterward in a mess of increasingly disappointing albums and increasingly destructive drug problems. And by the time the band finally made it onto mainstream rock radio in the age of grunge with the unforgivable Beck ripoff "Pepper," they were officially dead as far as I was concerned.

But when they were alive, there was no band more transcendental than the Butthole Surfers, and I'm glad the boys in Adrenalin OD talked me into taking them to CBGB that night in September '84, for I may never have known what I would've missed if they hadn't.