The Butthole Express
In a last-minute bolt of spontaneity, I chose to hop a Starlight Amtrak train to Portland on Friday, October 30. Many wondered why. Why leave a big city that actively searches for excuses to party prior to the auspicious and bewitching Halloween festivities?
Why leave on the night that soon -to-be-legend Terence Trent D'Arby plays the I-Beam? Why leave without bidding farewell to The Farm, the most unique, tough and necessary hardcore venue in the city, whose financially troubled doors will finally close with a pair of shows featuring the mighty likes of Sister Double Happiness, Dr. Know, and No Means No?
Why leave and miss opening day of the plodding and relentless holiday season, a two-month chunk of parties, sloppy sentiment and extended credit limits? But, above all, why leave and miss those fabulous drag queens?
I chose to skip it all for three reasons. 1) The Butthole Surfers were playing Portland on Halloween night; 2) those letters from the Zodiac Killer really had me worried; and 3) 1 could finally be what I most wanted to be for Halloween - OUT OF TOWN!
There I sat in the train's lounge car, sipping the lemonflavored Stoli I brought along for the trip and listening to a 19-year-old thug tell me how he beat up his stepfather. This Chico-bound chap tossed me a can of warm Bud and asked, "Are you in a band or something? " A woman beside me told a horny lounge lizard that her mother died in a train accident. Behind me a man told a wideeyed Grateful Dead fan about visiting Jim Morrison's grave in Paris. The fan said she wanted to go there someday and "check it out. " I also spotted a teen with a Walkman playing air guitar.
Rock was everywhere, but I couldn't imagine it being more feverish and exciting than with the Buttholes on Halloween night. I also thought it had better be worth this long trip. After all, I sat next to the meanest old woman in the world, who resented sharing her seat and snored loudly with a Harlequin romance open in her lap.
The train slowly rolled into Portland and the old woman, who finally initiated conversation (the weather) during the final stretch, said, "The last 15 minutes are the longest. The train just oozes into the station. " She was not only right, but also the oldest woman I've ever heard using that word. My official Portland hostess, Ruth, whisked me away from the station and to her home for a pre-show preparation.
How does one prepare for a Butthole Surfers show, especially on Halloween? In our case, wigs came in handy. After the whole thing was over, though, I realized there is no way to prepare for the Buttholes' live show. This was the fourth time I had seen them and they still stood head and gonads above all powerful psycho-grunge rock, past or present, from Hendrix to the Cramps. Theirs was a monster of a show, a brainscrambling demon of brilliance, craft and complete control . If the world had ended during this show, I wouldn't have had much to complain about.
The Pine Street Theatre, a fine venue of the right size (small enough to feel intimate but large enough to draw groups like Wire, Love and Rockets, Husker Du, etc.), was packed but still comfortable. Beer was sold and consumed in a roped-off area in back with stiff ID checks. This measure allowed minors to see the Buttholes, a rite of passage that hopefully had more of an impact than killing a four-point buck or landing a part-time mill job.
There is much to be said about the boys of the Pacific Northwest, washed clean by the rain, the crop of young men in Portland look like a farmer's top grade livestock at a county fair, able-bodied, well marked, of substantial mass and docile, nonchalant about their aweinspiring classical features. I started to recall some camping and fishing jargon to. establish common ground if given the chance to converse with one of the stocky gents.
Suddenly the Buttholes hit the stage with a blistering version of "Cherub. " I was swept away from starry-eyed lechery and thrown into an avalanche of chemically imbalanced brains tumbling down to rock-and-roll .hell. The Righteous Brothers were wrong. Rock-and-roll heaven doesn't exist. Dead rockers are cast upon the lake of fire, like' all sinners. That night the Butthole Surfers, with a bullhorn in hand, hosted an asbestos boat tour of that very lake, complete with crude pyrotechnics and lots of fog.
With the best classic '60s psychedelic projections I've ever seen, the backdrop of the stage maintained a melting bubbling motion, augmented by the trademark strobes I've come to expect from Butthole shows. The unexpected surprise was the utterly cohesive manner in which their usually irreverent, at times unrecognizable music shot out from the speakers. For the first time, the Butthole Surfers played songs I could actually name and a few I never thought I'd hear live. A frighteningly perfect version of "22 Going On 23 " ended with the band members leaving the stage amid rumbling feedback and a taped, distorted voice repeating, "Get some sleep, " for almost ten minutes.
Gibby, head Butthole, did an incestuous, high-speed, spoken intro to one song that reminded me of the Doors' "The End," only Gibby went into the stepsister's room for detailed digital penetration, then he hit father's room, "who looked up at me in that sweet way of his, smiled and said. . .'Satan ... Satan ... SATAN!" The band caterwauled into "Sweat Loaf, " complete with synchronized highkicking from both the guitarist and bassist. This was show-biz - burlesque by the criminally insane.
After Saturday night's blowout on Pine Street, I decided that the Butthole Surfers, like LSD, is an illicit drug. As the dual drummers pounded out a high-speed tribal cacophony, they both melted into the backdrop of a flurry of arms and hair. Wow, I only had one beer and I was hallucinating. This was good shit! I'm still wildly dosed two days later. My vision is riddled with these funny shapes that' look like this: ***. They kind of resemble little buttholes, don't they?
