THE SOUND OF MUSIC HAPPENING THING: The Butthole Surfers – Love And Terror Cult/The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey’s Grave.

Of course, if they didn’t exist, you’d have to invent them. I love that horrid unease
in everything they do. I love the volume of their live shows and their terrifying
film shows. Heaven only knows what’s going on up there, not even sure if I
should like it, but it’s fucking different, my head is banging and all the drugs have
just kicked in at once.

There’s something intrinsically wonderful about a group that releases a record
called “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave”. No words I could write here
would ever do it justice. It’s just a cacophony, a swathe of unfettered noise,
coupled with some challenging lyrics about how dead people should get along
with each other. Isn’t it? It became one of those great ‘freak’ records in Probe on Liverpool, everybody got it blasted at them, like an endurance test of your personal mettle.

It became a must have, from a band who had no publicity, no double page spread in
the NME, they didn’t really even have a major record label attachment, as such. And they werecalled the fucking Butthole Surfers. If it doesn’t already sound like the most exciting proposition in the history of music, then maybe that sort of thing isn’t
for you. Music isn’t for everyone, don’t feel bad about it. Like buses – if you don’t
like this one, another will be along pretty soon to satiate your evil lust.
Theoretically.

Thirty odd years ago I experienced them live for the first time. They were conjuring
up their unique brand of Texan hocus pocus in some god forsaken shithouse Somewhere Lost In America to a handful of curious weirdos and some others who appeared to
be just drinking. From the first moments of utterly relentless shocking feedback
to the introductory garbled messages from front person and ringmaster, Gibby
Haynes, this was like no other live gig I’d ever seen. Every difficult strand of
music was on display: loud, aggressive, acid induced and utterly fucking relentless, they ploughed their way through a merciless strangulation of The Guess Who’s 1970 classic “American Woman”. In varying degrees, it got scarier, louder and more disturbing as the show went on. Nauseating levels of strobe abuse and the sound appearing to get louder and louder with every second.

Outta sight, man. To escape the din momentarily I repaired to the toilet. Like the toilets in all American ‘rock bars’ they were a fetid, horrendous mess that weren’t fit for
humans. The smell was unmerciful. Once I’d done my thang, I noticed a sticker on
the broken hand dryer, it said “PULL THE WOOL OVER YOUR OWN EYES! Send
$1 to the Church Of The Subgenius, box whatever, Dallas, TX”. So I did. That
opened up a world hitherto unknown to myself, a universe where nothing
seemed as it was described on the label, a slavish devotion to the sub-deity JR
‘Bob’ Dobbs and the space-time adventures aboard Jehovah One. This was all
facilitated by the Butthole Surfers. They had led me down a rabbit hole of satire
and a tireless quest for surrealism, taken me to places I would never had
dreamed existed. I was more than a willing victim and I want to do it again.

Sometime Later…..There’s something soul-quenchingly beautiful and shit yer kecks terrifying about The Butthole Surfers. No middle ground, just ludicrous polar extremes. It’s not the sort of thing you might ‘just like’. It’s a whirlwind of self inflicted wounds for both the performers and the listener. Where do you go, once you’re privy to that earth shattering audio nightnmare? it’s sometimes not that easy to digest, i’ve said this many, many times before. it’s where it takes you, or rather where you take it. For me, it was another wondrous portal into that space where music makes you uncomfortable. But that’s ok, it’s good to look in other areas for the things you think you might need when the balloon goes up. This record was released 35 years ago this summer. It was a clarion call for the dispossessed, those who need something more in their entertainment than a catchy melody and some clever lyrics. The clever lyrics are certainly here, but allied to that is an innate sense of sickness. Musicians who dispensed with the messy nature of the pop formula.

Even some of the Buttholes’ nearest rivals had an insane knack for matching the harsh, brutalist dreams of hardcore punk with psychedelia and a catchy tune. At this point in the game, our Texan heroes had not mastered this difficult technique. The results here are shambolic beyond reason. Tuneless and directionless and fucking loud. No lip service is paid to any of their contemporary cousins, or any other style or place of its day.

Its cacophonous dread is pretty much out there on its own. It was, and still is. It’s difficult to describe in mere words, the vocabulary to imagine the contents has still not been invented yet. Like, thirty five years down the line and the ‘Shah Sleeeps…’ is still in a field of its own. Screaming at the top of its unheard voice for attention. Those who picked it up and ran with it, found themselves in an unknown, often dark space. Even when the output became more ‘psychedelic’ as such, it was a very dark psych with all the playfulness and colour removed, till the only thing that was left was the acid paranoia, un-necessary sweating and warped, distorted imagery.

As a gateway, it allows you into the universe of the Butthole Surfers, bright eyed and receptive, open to anyhting. Where they take you is not necessarily where you want to go, you just have to trust these mad fucks and hope you don’t come to any harm. Every now and again, the ride becomes so terrifying that you have to ask the drivers if you can get off and breathe a little. But even if you do, when you’re actually doing it, you know perfectly well that it’s just a momentary break and you’ll be back on the journey as soon as you can catch your breath. Have some water, look out the window. Turn the volume up again. Remember, the Butthole Surfers are for life, not just for xmas. X

February 2018.

The Butthole Surfers – Live PCPPEP. Alternative Tentacles. September 1984.