Butthole Surfers - Good King Wencenslaus

(Trance Syndicate, 1994)

No surprises here. It sounds exactly like you’d expect a late-period Butthole Surfers cover of “Good King Wencenslaus” to sound: the massed voices, the squiggly/squealing guitars, the caveman percussion, the squelchy electronic breakdowns. The saving grace is the amusing blackout-drunk voiceover that takes over a minute or so into the song. “How come…there’s little…bugs out there…(hic)…having sex…a bunch of ’em are having sex and, and spending a lot of money…?” And so forth. Tee hee. No need to turn up your snoot at some honest, down-home sophomoric fun, especially when it’s being done in the name of Christmas cheer!

On the B-side, the nonsensical lyrics of “The Lord is a Monkey” are delivered in an evil drawl, and the whole thing is a loose, repetitive, squawking, and distinctly unpleasant bit of bad-trip, shitkicking guitar-psych. It could stand to be a bit more interesting – never gets anywhere exciting – but given that the song was recycled on Electriclarryland in 1996, it’s fun to think how noxious it must have been to innocent “Pepper” fans the world over. Did I already say “tee hee”?

While I’m on my high horse, please allow me to discuss a nice system I have for keeping track of multiple baseball games. I watch one on my laptop with the sound off (Red Sox), have a second on ESPN Gamecast on the computer (Rangers), put a third on the radio in my bedroom (Mets), and then there’s a fourth playing on the radio in my living room (Yankees). This way I can walk around my apartment and follow four games pretty much simultaneously. Your record might be OK, but did you ever follow four games simultaneously, Butthole Surfers?

Butthole Surfers - Texas Chainsaw Massacre

(???, 198?)

This is a mysterious record. In 1989, Killdozer released a 5x7” version of their For Ladies Only album on Touch & Go, catalog number TG-39. Attractive not only for its extravagant (and funny) packaging, that set is worth finding because it has an extra song – “Mr. Soul” – that doesn’t show up on the LP or CD. The 7” in question here was advertised on eBay last fall as a test pressing of one of the 45s from that edition, and I purchased it, hoping it’d be the disc with the bonus track. If it turned out to be one of the other discs, well, I’d just have a nifty Killdozer collectable and wouldn’t be too sad about that. It all seemed reasonable enough: First, the guy was selling many other Touch & Go test pressings from the same era. Second, it had the appearance of a legitimate test pressing – generic pressing-plant label (Electrosound Group) with a catalog number (TG-39) handwritten on it. So imagine my bafflement when I put this record on my turntable and had my ears caressed not by the sweet sounds of Killdozer but by the noisome nastiness of the Butthole Surfers. Whaaaa?!

Putting on my Sherlock cap, I did some research and eventually learned that the music on this was identical to the well-known “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” bootleg 45, meaning live versions of “Cherub” and “Come Together” from 1986 and 1985, respectively (thanks, internet!). Still, why the test labels and the Touch & Go catalog number? I suppose there are three possibilities here. (1) Touch & Go intended to release a live Butthole Surfers 7” as TG-39 but scrapped it after the test-press phase for some reason and reassigned the catalog number to For Ladies Only. (2) This is a test pressing for the bootleg, and the bootleggers chose the “TG” prefix as a joke. (3) Some copies of the actual bootleg look like this and I just bought a sleeveless one... although every copy I’ve seen has featured plain green labels. Does anyone have any info for me? Touch & Go ignored my polite inquiry, so here I sit, all a-blubber, dying to know the Truth. Won’t you help?

The music itself, I’m afraid, isn’t as interesting as the mystery (and, uh, is the mystery itself all that interesting??). “Cherub” is a fairly limp performance, hampered further by a lousy recording that flattens the drums and bass into a shapeless mass of low-end that dominates the track. Gibby is singing through the megaphone and doesn’t sound particularly engaged, nor does his voice blend well with the band’s playing. The whole thing’s sloppy, and not in an entertaining or exciting way. Zzzz. The snares do crunch more on “Come Together,” which sticks pretty close to the Beatles’ original when it isn’t blasting off into frantic bursts of guitar squall, but still… the ultimate impression this record leaves, even in its best moments, is, “Huh, guess I hadta be there.”