[atsonicpark]

weird revolution is garbage. Everything after hairway kinda sucks, aside from INDEPENDANT WORM SALLOON which I honestly think is their best album (aside from Hairway), very strange eh? I mean, INDEPENDANT WORM SALLON is the guitar album. THE guitar album. "DUST DEVIL" .. wow. Has a better 4 minute guitar solo ever been recorded? How did they manage to record an album that was meant to be commercial as fuck and make it AMAZING? You've got Al Jourgenson on the thing, you've got (guitar god) Helios Creed on the thing; this was the time when Boredoms was playing Lollapalooza and doing the major label thing, too. Sigh. Major labels used to be kinda... cool? I mean, there was a bidding war -- a bidding war -- at one point for the rights to release Beefheart's stuff, on a major label. Let's not forget one of the strangest trilogies of major label albums ever: Mr. Bungle's 3 GREAT (especially DISCO VOLANTE) albums on Warner Bros.

Anyway, WHO WAS IN MY ROOM LAST NIGHT is the perfect example of a sound that is both commercial/radio friendly and still rocks. You can write creative, SMART, good music, without dumbing it down too much -- though it was certainly a departure from the hazy, psycho-delic stuff of Butthole's early days, it still had its share of insane moments, all it did was make the guitar a lot louder and in your face -- it was produced by a Led Zepplin dude!

WHO WAS IN MY ROOM ended up being a Guitar Hero song. GOOFY'S CONCERN (with lyrics like "I don't give a fuck about the FBI, I don't give a fuck about the CIA", etc) was used in an SNES commercial (seriously. it's on youtube). If I remmeber correctly, it wasn't for any one game, I think it was for stuff like STUNT RACE FX, Super Metroid, DK Country, and shit like that, just this overarching "we're Nintendo. Our games rule. We have an attitude. We censored blood in Mortal Kombat and LOTS of people think that everyone bought a Genesis specifically to play a bloody version of the game. And that was probably true, as insane and ridiculous as that sounds today.") Can't forget HURRICANE NEDDY episode of the Simpsons wherein Rod was a "SURFER!" of the Butthole variety, probably thanks to the success of this album.

Now, nothing will beat their early days. The two drummers who looked alike, played alike -- in unison -- and smoked Elvis's and/or JFK's toenails to get themselves high, whatever. IF YOU ALL HAVEN'T SEEN BLIND EYE SEE SALL DVD OR VHS, GET THAT MOTHERFUCKER. JOE: IT'S PROBABLY OIN CINEMAGEDDON. I DUNNO. I MIGHT BE ON BTJUNKIE. BUT IT'S AWESOME. I HAVE ITY ON DVD-DVD. LIKE AN ACTUAL DVD. IT'S LIKE 40 MINUTE SLONG AND I SPENT LIKE $15 ON IT. IT WAS WORTH IT. FORGET NIRVANA LIVE AT REDDING. THIS IS THE DVD OF THE YEAR. EVEN THOUGH IT CAME OUT 9 YEARS AGO ON DVD.

All in all, my favorite album is HAIRWAY. I have always had a soft spot for PIOUGH'D, which I thought was just ridiculous but surprisingly, perhaps, entertaining. One big dumb 45 minute joke. But hey, they'd done big dumb jokes before (REMBRANDT PUSSYHORSE) which I loved.

PSYCHIC..POWERLESS..ANOTHER MAN'S SAC is another favorite, it's just screaming for a good remaster, eh? I think it would be my favorite if remastered. Which is probably a weird thing to say, but it's so tinny and cruddy that I feel like I haven't really heard the record completely/properly, you have to dig through the muck to really hear it, and a lot of the songs sound the same unless you pay close attention, cuz of all the fuzz. But I have spent many fucked-up nights combing through it with a, uh, comb.. as well as putting it under a microscope. Nay, a telescope. It was like a paramecium. It was worth it. Fucking badass album!

LOCUST is their most popular one, but it just flat-out doesn't move me like a lot of their stuff. HAIRWAY is the one. They went out of their way to write real songs on this one. Like, really really real real songs. Unholy guitar noise, genius vocals, and the band had melodies.

I think this band followed a similiar career trajectory, and sound, as Boredoms at times. I have often heard, and called them myself, the "Japanese Butthole Surfers". yOU GOT your guitar god (Seeichi Yamamoto and Paul Leary are up there with Andy Gill and John Fahey and Robert Fripp and zoot Horn Rollo, definitely. You got the multiple drummers. you got the insane, often improvised, noisey as fuck noise rock on their early shit, their conceptual party records (POP TATARI isn't too far removed from most of Buttholes stuff), but then they slowly became a bit more... I wouldn't say "normal" (CHOCOLATE SYNTH!).. but.. "listenable to people who don't necessarily want to listen to a bunch of noise"... SUPER AE is kinda like Buttholes' INDEPENDNAT WORM SALLON, epic as hell and it sounds GREAT, though obviously they kinda followed a more DRUM-my path, as opposed to a more GUITAR-y path.

You know what separates the bands though?

MELODIES.

Christ almighty do the Surfers have surprisingly compelx, intelligent songwriting AND melodies.What a smart band. For a bunch of supposed drugged-out burn-outs (okay, not supposed, they definitely have smoked some toenails), they sure knew how to write melodies and vocal hooks that were catchy and fun without being cheesy and dumb.

So yeah, a band that rocks, is weird, is smart, is inspiring (Paul Leary invented that style -- which you never hear anyone ripping off. Why? It's inimitable! Lots of people ripped off, oh, Andy Gill -- when you have bass/drums holding down the rhythmic fort, you can kinda play around the beat all day; Andy Gill, to me, was kinda just doing a similiar thing to PiL, and it wasn't DIFFICULT, but you had to be a smart guitarist to accomplish it. On the other hand, smart or not, PAUL LEARY's guitar playing .. well, if someone were to hold down the whammy bar and play those single string things, those unorthodox "sounds-like-he's-gonna-f-cuk-up-but-DOESN'T!" lines, those weird ass made-up chords, and -- my favorite -- the surprisingly delicate but still bent effects-heavy whammy-ed lines. Listen to JIMI! Listen to JINGLE OF A DOG'S COLLAR. This guy wasn't disonnant -- well, not always; he was downright delicate and -- here's that word again -- MELODIC.

For a "noise rock" band they sure knew how to write some pretty pretty songs.