Dude, man, dude, shit, man, how much do I love the Fork? I got stoned for this review. Blizzard-stoned. Pilgrim-stoned. Perestroika-stoned. What, man? What'd you say? Laser who? Mom, I know you, man! I will murder you for an omelet! Hey, zoo-keeper. Say it, it sounds so alien, man. Zoo-kee-per. Zoo-bie. Run from the Zangler! A fifty-foot Nancy Reagan brain beams out for me to Just Say No. I got grandkids. Hey, sleepyhead, answer me this: how can we sleep while our beds are burning, huh? How?
Ahem. The most entertaining chapter, by far, in Michael Azerrad's mammoth Our Band Could Be Your Life, is the chapter on the Butthole Surfers. Their exponentially high jinks way outshine the runner-up bits about Ian McKaye being afraid of beer because of his tippy pappy or the chronicle of Lou Barlow's impulsive mid-show revolts against J. "The Masticator" Mascis. The Butthole chapter documents how they wiped their testicle-sweat on a suitcase that Jimmy Carter came to pick up for his stranded daughter, and how the Surfers moved to Athens just to stalk/pester R.E.M. And everyone knows that Gibby Haynes called his major label tour opener the Stoned Pimple Toilets just as the second or third wave of fake grunge was cresting. Black Heart Procession's Pall Jenkins told me at a concert a couple weeks ago that right up there among his influences with Brian Eno, Black Sabbath, Johnny Cash, and the Residents lurk the Buttholes and their "total drug songs".
Though Independent Worm Saloon served up some viable trash-rawk while cashing in on the sound of the Flannery O'Connor-inspired Ministry team-up "Jesus Built My Hotrod", the Buttholes' output has been snoozy of late, with drumloops, tame material, predictable song structures, and perfunctory freak-outs that feel half-freaked. Humpty Dumpty LSD, though, is a gathering of home recordings, four-trackings, practice-space jams, comp tracks, and outtakes from 1982-1994. Meaning: it's a hell of a good time, taking us listeners all the way back to when we used to repeat Hairway to Steven on our headphones while the adults in proximity worshipped God or beat each other with telephone books. This is the trippier-than-a-napalm-Slip-N-Slide band, powerful enough to convince haters than the Buttholes' career isn't an extended prank but a piece of redneck performance art.
The tracks are predominantly instrumental, and some of them, such as the apocalyptic lurcher "Eindhoven Chicken Masque" or the panoramic synth-plus-feedback picnic of "Space" parts I and II are excellent. In fact, much of this raucous release makes one wish that post-rock would unbutton its stiff shirt already. The Buttholes' grinding pedal-messes and tribally intoxicating drums sound like dumb fun, but they display a visceral intelligence, far from the vibe of certain Grubbs/O'Rourke theses-readings.
Gibby (going by Gibson Haynes on this outing, in the fanciest formality upgrade since Red Heat's Larry Fishburne metamorphosed into Laurence Fishburne III) is a profane Robert Pollard, and you get all his great bad sides here: the voice so distorted it's monstrous, the panic-attacked insect voice, the buzzsaw, and his natural Buddy-Holly-meets-Yosemite-Sam nasal/guttural yowlp. The album forms a kind of Texas-nut triumvirate since Roky Erickson's "Earthquake" gets covered and Daniel Johnston performs vocal assistance on the eight-minute hellstomp "All Day". And for every nugget of nonsense ("Night of the Day" is just pretty chords getting pitch-shifted and whammy-barred mixed with some distance screams, snores and wet farts), gurgly anti-symphonies such as "Hetero Skeleton" spaz all over the place. Plus, you get treats like the hilarious intro to early punker "I Hate My Job".
Whether the band is in flailing or militaristic mode, this is the soundtrack to those nights you don't deserve to have survived, when only your Converse All-Stars saved you from that electric fence, or when you wake up with the taste of rust in your mouth, blood in your Cheerios, an oboe-sized bruise, and a tattoo that says "I Am a Thundering Herd".
