Okay, a quick show of hands--who still cares about the Butthole Surfers? Seems like these Texas weirdos have spent the last decade alienating the fans they built up over the previous decade. Through none-of-our-business legal problems with former labels (which, I'll contend, is a. none of our business, and b. a story that's been decidedly one-sided when it's been reported), to albums that play a little too close to metal and bad jock-rock (Kid Rock?), it would seem that the shit had finally put out the flame of true shit-fuelled genius. Then, quietly, with no fanfare, Humpty Dumpty LSD appeared. A collection of outtakes and rarities from the past 20 years, though, to be fair, most all of the songs are from their pre-major label stint. Like a bottle of whiskey thrown onto a small fire, this little collection of rejects and forgotten-abouts, when thrown on the remaining cinders of their former glory days, literally explodes into a fire of brilliance. You'll find no Kid Rock here, and thank god for that.
Humpty Dumpty LSD is a smorgasbord of lysergic-tinged diamonds. Well, I take that back, because at times, such as on "I Love You Peggy," "Just a Boy," and "I Hate My Job," it's apparent that, back in the day, the Butthole Surfers were a bunch of kids who were really into that SST sound. Nothing too psych or weird about these tracks, unless you count understandable lyrics and something called melody weird--but, wait a minute, we are talking about Gibby Haynes and his crew of merry pranksters here, so, yeah, I guess that is weird. The only song I had heard on this was "Earthquake," a cover of Texas psych-rock godfather Roky Erickson, that was released on a tribute disk back in the summer of '89. It doesn't sound all that different from the original, and while it doesn't sound too particularly Butthole Surfers, it does sound like the birthplace of Mudhoney. History lesson for ya, kids.
There are plenty of weird moments here, too--such as the rather catchy ditty called "One Hundered Million People Dead" (an extended version from a compilation track from 1987) or the beautiful, haunting "Space I" (also from 1987). "All Day," another compilation track from the Butthole-released comp A Texas Trip (again from 1987), was a song I've been wanting to hear for years now. It's an odd, weird collaboration with another loveable Austin-based genius, Daniel Johnston--though his vocals are mixed into a sonic psychedelic stew--which makes everything else on Humpty Dumpty LSD a pleasant surprise. All Daniel's doing is singing his "Running Water" hit, but it's done in such a brilliant way, and it makes me wish that there'd been more collaboration between these two geniuses.
Did I just label Gibby Haynes a genius? Yeah, I did--and I stand by that claim. Am I biased? Yeah, I'm that, too. It's a Texas thing--and if you don't understand that, then, damn, you just don't understand. And if you think that these moments of genius are strictly limited to a timeperiod that ended 15 years, think again--two songs, "Ghandi" and "Dadgad," both from the 90's, clearly show that while the music they were making at the time may not have been very good, that didn't mean that their genius had run dry. After all, there's no crime in being misguided. Thank god, though, that the world has had a Butthole Surfers in it--the days wouldn't be quite the same, now would they? Here's hoping, too, that now they'll be able to relight the flames of their heyday. True, those days are long gone, but that doesn't mean that there aren't better ideas yet to come from a band whose name made parents upset and kids snicker.
--Joseph Kyle
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