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Butthole Surfers
April 8 at the Ritz, NYC, NY Surprise Buttholes show and I am there no matter what. The openers are the worst three bands I've ever seen. But everything is pitiful compared to what the Butthole Surfers offer. What they offer is a total lysergic freakout that draws out everything primal in you, whether you like it or not. Once in the crowd, it's a total loss of identity. You become just a scale in a many tentacled serpent of flesh. I drop some acid #7 knowing that it will only add to the adventure ahead of me. Out come the Butthole Surfers providing just the right spices and ingredients to ensure total entropy. Which are, by the way, thudding drums of doom along with blitzkrieging film images that melt into a confusing swirl of unreality. The films of sliced male genitalia mixing with inverted Charlie's Angels clips melange with insect documentaries and strange hypno-patterns. Fog cloaks the Buttholes and blurs the lines of what's real and what's not. It gets to the point where you believe anything can fly out of the screen and join in on the fun. The stage becomes the gate to a strange dimension door that can only be opened and closed by the Butthole Surfers. Jeffery the bassist stands pounding on his guitar like a stoned dope while creating a behemoth rumble. Paul plucks out whiny retro-riffs that call on the spirit of Hendrix with his eyes bugging out atop an evil smile a mile wide. Gibby acts as a schizo tour guide who makes everything come together with an uncanny accuracy that rivals God's power of creation. The whole thing is kept going by the symbiotic siblings, King and Theresa, who drum with such a fury not seen since the last voodoo ritual in Haiti. The Buttholes drive the crowd into such a frenzy and then nonchalantly slow it down to a riot. When Gibby yells Satan thrice, the whole place literally explodes like the Big Bang. The Universe expands and retracts while everyone is stomping around like a primate. You don't give a fuck anymore and you smash into everything in your way. You no longer have control cause now the Buttholes are holding the strings. It is so primal it can't be described, only experienced. Well, tonight the Buttholes were to lose control when the crowd became like Frankenstein and attacked its master. It all happened when King and Theresa disappeared and Gibby and Paul took over their drum chores. King soon mushroomed up between them as Theresa appeared, near the front. Suddenly I she was swallowed by the crowd as she jumped into the jaws of death. She was hoisted above the crowd and her clothes were ripped from her body in a millisecond. She was then deflowered by worming fingers and defiled by hungry hands. Without any control, I was drawn towards the fray because a God was among, Us. I wanted a piece and I didn't why so I shoved to get a touch of flesh. I was too late to get tit because the bouncers were working hard and effiCiently to get her back onstage. In a final effort, I gripped her hand and vowed to never let go. I had a taffy pull with a rugged negro boucer but I lost. As her hand slipped from my sweaty grasp I noticed her face had a blank look like that of a helpless fish. She then slunked offstage looking hurt physically and psychologically. It helped justify my conviction that if there was no wall that night between Us and Them, they would probably be dead. They whip the crowd into such a crazed state that it becomes a wanting monster that would rend them to pieces if it could. Just imagine what would happen to the naked dancer, if she was there and accidently slipped off or got nabbed by a mindless flunky from the audience. To make a long story longer, I spent the rest of the show in a LSD stupor while being mesmerized by the hyp-mo-tizing strobs and smoke. It became a 3-D Butthole Surfers nightmare that hung heavy on my senses. Believe it or not, I even seriously thought I saw that freako from the movie Mask slamming around. I honestly believed Rocky Dennis was there until I was reminded later that he had died a few years back. So, it was complete temporary insanity that night and I'll even go as far as to say that the Butthole Surfers live are the greatest thing I've ever experienced. It just gets better each time I see them; this alone makes them my only deity. I'm even pondering dropping out of society and following the Butthole Surfers around like people do the Grateful Dead. Instead of being a "deadhead" I'll be a "butthead" and I'll do drugs and jerk off a lot. That's the deal, so go fuck yourself. -Greg Chapman |