Butthole Surfers – London Forum

So, another reunion gig but who are the ‘Butthole Surfers‘? For the uninitiated, this is a good place to start for getting a feel for the Texan born psychedelia alt-rock lunatics who were one of the more unique bands emerging from the American post-punk scene in the mid 1980’s. I’m not their biggest fan, I have three albums and a live bootleg – but their live shows from the start of their career have obtained an almost mythical status so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see them reformed with most of the original line-up. As I expected they weren’t quite as insane as they used to be but still delivered a cracking show with all the requisite back projections, strobes, smoke and loud, loud guitars.

 

The band use two drum kits, up to four guitarists on some tracks and vocalist Gibby Haynes employs some weird voice distortion equipment so this ain’t exactly your traditional rock act four piece. I must confess that set list wise I only recognised about half of the songs as many of the tracks were culled from the album ‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse‘ and some of their EP’s which I don’t have. My two favourite tracks of theirs are fairly mainstream, ‘Cough Syrup‘ which they didn’t play but we did get a storming rendition of ‘Sweat Loaf‘ which made the night for me.

  
The Forum is a good, intimate venue where I’ve seen both ‘Nine Inch Nails’ ages ago and the ‘The Pixies’ during their storming reunion a couple of years ago. Here are some other links to Surfers material I’ve tracked down to give you an idea of their history. And madness. 

 

Frontman Gibby Hayes has certainly changed over the past few years – check out the before and after photos above. The whole tour was part of the Paul Green School of Rock project which aims to get kids on stage performing live with established acts – the world has certainly drifted further toward Apocalypse when they’re letting Gibby near children considering stories of his past behavior. For the only encore about twenty of the kids performed something of a stage invasion during a rendition of ‘The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey’s Grave‘, destroying equipment, wrapping each other in gaffer tape, throwing objects into the crowd as squeals of feedback rumbled around the venue, now that’s the chaos you expect from a Surfers gig!! 

  

There are some legendary stories about the antics these psychopaths got up in the late eighties which are part chronicled in this book, an absolute must read for anyone even passingly interested in the US alternative/punk scene of the 1980’s. If you’re interested further, here is a link to the Surfers website where they are giving away, perfectly free and legitimate copies of a live bootleg from 1988.