The second part of Matador’s reissues of the essential early records by Texas’s Butthole Surfers continues with three of their most insane slabs — 1985’s Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis, 1987’s Locust Abortion Technician and 1988’s Hairway to Steven
The period during which these records were first issued parallels the Buttholes’ transition from being weirdo Texas outcasts to becoming internationally recognised smut-kings of the American underground. In 1985 they were still the sole province of hallucingen-soaked punk rock freaks. By 1988 they had toured Europe, had records licensed by internationally, and bought a house in Driftwood Texas to serve as their home base. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Cream Corn plucked two tunes from Rembrandt and added a couple new ones that had been recorded on their home studio 8 track in Winterville Georgia. ‘Moving to Florida’ (the best example ever of what Beefheart probably sounded like when he’s tripping) and the other three tracks blew peoples’ minds by being so precise and fully-messed-up at the same time. Cream Corn was a perfect bite-sized taster for what would follow.
Without anyone looking over their shoulders, the band really rose to the occasion with Locust Abortion Technician. From the opening track, ‘Sweat Loaf,’ which quotes Black Sabbath with results both hilarious and bowel-stomping, to the scuzz-guitar riven “found” vocals of ’22 Going on 23,’ Locust is a non-stop face-full of hallucinogenic gas. Maniacal sludge guitar figures and Gibbytronix vocals are smeared everywhere, with most excellent results. For many folks. Locust represents the album with which the Buttholes fully fulfilled their insane potential.
Hairway to Steven is a blast, ranging from the blood-smeared guitar-overload of ‘Jimi’ to the acoustic guitar-based sing-along sweetness of ‘I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas’ to the Fugs-like ranting of ‘John E. Smokes.’ Yet somehow, the album managed to get the straight media to actually notice. For all its strangeness, Hairway got rave notices in places that had never paid the band any attention previously. It was the Buttholes’ last album of the ‘80s and marks the beginning of their ascendance into something akin to commercial success. Not that the band actually imagined anything at all like that occurring.
When I interviewed them in February 1986, I asked Gibby about their plans, he said, “We’ve got a bunch of new songs recorded that don’t even have names. We don’t know what they’re called or anything. It’s totally out of control. We have no plans whatever. We never claimed to be quick or smart or anything. Maybe we just have one song and we fuck it up so much people think we have more. I guess the album after ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ might be called ‘The Butthole Surfers Buy a Synthesizer.’ We’ve written lots of songs, we’ve forgotten lots of songs. That’s the way it goes.”
Of course, that’s not the way it went. But I don’t think anyone was more surprised about that than the band themselves. And so it goes.
–Byron Coley
