LIVE EYE: Butthole Surfers
eye WEEKLY
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eye WEEKLY October 10, 1996
Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday
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LIVE EYE LIVE EYE
BUTTHOLE SURFERS
with Starfish
Tuesday, Oct. 15. The Warehouse, 1 Jarvis.
$15.50 at Ticketmaster and usual suspects.
by
JASON ANDERSON
Fifteen years of the Butthole Surfers. No longer employ nude dancer.
Texans. Until surprising success with Electriclarryland (Capitol/EMI),
experienced a slow decade. True worth of 1993's Independent Worm
Saloon not revealed until one song was used on a Nintendo commercial.
Interim projects vary in quality. Guitarist Paul Leary made noisy
record about dogs. Singer Gibby Haynes formed unsuccessful P with
Johnny Depp. Drummer King Coffey runs Trance Syndicate (home to
Bedhead and Roky Erickson) and makes likeable dance records as Drain.
Much of Electriclarryland scrapped when band fall out with producer
Steve Thompson. Minor controversy develops over cover artwork --
cartoon of pencil shoved into ear deemed unsuitable by some U.S.
chains, since replaced with happy woodland creature.
Electriclarryland's success buoyed by the Beck/"88 Lines About 44
Women" pastiche "Pepper." Album most garish since 1988's Hairway To
Steven but a long way from relative heights (or depths) of Rembrandt
Pussyhorse.
Interview presented here conducted by journalist under the assumed
name of "Jimmy Ricola" (the Swiss candy treat) in local hotel. Four
vignettes follow.
MOULDY MOMENTS
King Coffey arrives in suite, joining Jimmy Ricola and Gibby Haynes.
King: How's it goin'?
Jimmy: Oh, it's exciting to touch a hand that's touched Roky Erickson.
King: Actually, Roky doesn't want you to touch him too much.
Gibby: Yeah, I was wondering when King touched him. He goes totally
Bob Mould on you if you try to shake his hand.
FLESH WOUNDS
King: Can I say that one of my favorite words is bubo? It's what the
bubonic plague comes from. You get bubos on your body, which are like
mumps.
Gibby: That's a symptom of many diseases.
King: Ah, but it's a classic symptom of the bubonic plague. If we were
back during plague days I could say to Gibby, 'Gibby, your bubos are
looking better today.' And Gibby could say, 'Why, thank you, King. My
bubos are looking better.'
King: I also like the word 'necrotic.'
Jimmy: That's the first word in the flesh-eating disease, right?
Gibby: That's a general term for death.
King: I thought it was for rotting flesh, dead flesh. So you just have
to hack that sucker off.
Gibby: You've got to be aggressive about the removal of necrotic
flesh. You really have to be.
King: One does have to be aggressive about the removal of necrotic
flesh.
Gibby: It's true.
King: Girl, you know it's true.
(King laughs a Krusty-size laugh.)
Gibby: You can't let it touch good flesh.
HOUSTON CALLING
Jimmy: In the last three years, did you guys spend a lot of time
together?
Gibby: No, we never...
King: We were busy working for the Psychic Friends Network. Seriously.
I have a lot of friends out there who call me up for advice or I can
just psychically have conversations with them.
Jimmy: As long as you're using Dionne Warwick as a medium. And do you
think she's an actual psychic? 'Cause if she is, imagine the things
she could tell you with those powers.
King: Oh, sure she'd give us the real scoop on Burt Bacharach, Whitney
Houston.
Jimmy: Maybe Whitney's one too. Could be a genetic thing, or a coven.
Gibby (gravely): She's an attractive woman.
King: She is an attractive woman. It's agreed. Attractive woman!
Resolved!
WORDS TO LIVE BY
Gibby: Did you know that Nostradamus was pretty successful in the
treatment of the plague?
King: Really, he was good with bubos?
Gibby: Like, yeah, he had a cure. It was never documented exactly what
it was, but he would've survived in history for his healing expertise.
But it was never documented. But returning to favorite words...
King: Leprotic?
Gibby: Well, uh, yeah.
King: Pertaining to leprosy.
Gibby: I like the hoi polloi.
King: The hoi polloi is good.
Gibby: There's something else.
King: I don't like cornucopia, but I do like the horn of plenty.
That's nice.
Gibby: I do think that cornucopia is up there with hoi polloi. But God
there's a word that's the general accepted way-it-is for the greater
part of the population.
Jimmy: Proletariat. The unthinking hordes. Bourgeois.
Gibby: I've had a... a... There's been a something shift.
King: Metabolic?
Gibby: No.
King: Quantum.
(Gibby gets up to pace the room.)
King: Gibby is a tortured artist.
(Jimmy and King discuss Burt Bacharach at great length in the
interim.)
Gibby (returning to couch): Was it paradigm?
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