Today’s Vinyl: Butthole Surfers

Forget about death metal, Norwegian black metal or any of the faux-horror-movie acts that entertain the Juggalo nation; the only band that ever really scared me – that made me fear not only for my physical safety but also my mental stability and grip on reality – were the Butthole Surfers. For a while during the late Eighties in Austin, a Butthole Surfers live show was an ugly, surreal trip into a visual and auditory hell worthy of Guillermo del Toro or Terry Gilliam. Cut-up film projections of penis surgery and car crashes, alcohol-filled cymbals shooting flames into the rafters, mutants dancing on stage, Gibby Haynes screaming through a megaphone, and Paul Leary’s tortured guitar wailing like a conscious animal being dissected on a table - it all amounted to a Grand Guignol-style horror, especially for those who attended in an, um, slightly altered state.

Live PCP PEP, a 45rpm 12-inch EP, was their first album on Alternative Tentacles (they’d shortly move to Touch and Go) and their first released live recording, and it’s heavier on the punk than the bizarre psychedelia that the Surfers would soon embrace. Bar-B-Q Pope, The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave and Something are classic Paul Leary, not so much sung or even screamed, they seem to be torn directly from Leary’s gut, or flayed off the skin of his neck with a straight razor or a melon baller. Hey, sung by Haynes, is probably the closest thing to an actual song here, and would be a live staple for many years. If you latched on to the radio-friendly (or blatant Beck ripoff, depending on whom you ask) sound of late period Butthole Surfers, this may be an artifact to avoid. But if you want something rough, scarier than metal, louder than punk and weirder than, well,  just about anything, pump this out of your boombox as you approach airport security.