Butthole Surfers at Barrymore Theatre
Just like old, acid-addled times.
While The A.V. Club understands why clouds of pot smoke billowed throughout the Barrymore Theatre during Tuesday’s Butthole Surfers show, we don’t know why anyone thought it would be a good idea to take acid. One guy with with dilated pupils manically and obliviously told the Barrymore’s security guards that he was “totally on acid at a Butthole Surfers concert back in 1992” as they pushed him out of the theater (before stumbling across the lobby screaming “Butthooooole Surfers!” with his eyes rolled into the back of his head). Another in a leather jacket nudged us during the excellent opening set from Brooklyn drone-rockers Psychic Ills to say, “Dude, I just took a little acid.”
The A.V. Club has one question for you gentlemen: What in the fuck were you thinking? From the thunder-clap intensity of the Surfers’ sludgy noise-rock, to the demented vocal effects on Gibby Haynes' voice, to the three projection screens showing film collages of graphic violence, sex, and psychedelic textures, the performance was already a bad trip in the best possible way.
The Surfers began testing the audience before they even took the stage. As soon as Psychic Ills wrapped up their set, the theme song from The Price Is Right began blaring out of the house speakers, and stayed on a continuous loop for about 30 minutes until the band came out to massive applause and launched into “Something” from 1991’s Pioughd. “I saw the sun come over my daddy’s grave, and I ate some cheese and rice today,” screamed bespectacled guitarist-vocalist Paul Leary as he clawed at his screeching guitar. Meanwhile, Haynes blew noisy lines out of a saxophone, Jeff Pinkus beat the shit out of his bass guitar with his fist, King Coffey grimaced and bashed away at his drum set, and Teresa Taylor—in a white and pink KFC shirt—hammered away at her stand-up drum kit, looking a little drugged-up herself.
Haynes looked around at the audience between songs and asked “How fucking old are you people?” He continued, “I’m really fucking old. I have to wear these glasses because I am fucking old. We’re all old.” While the Buttholes may not be setting cymbals on fire anymore, they were hardly reserved. The audience went batshit for “BBQ Pope” as tasteful montages of decapitations and penis surgery flickered on the screens. Throughout the set—which mostly focused on the band's older material—Haynes used his self-labeled “Gibbytronix” (a bunch of pedals and effects that Haynes runs his mic through) to manipulate and tweak his vocals in creepy and sonically abrasive ways, particularly in the crawling “Graveyard.” “You lie in the graveyard / well, you’re rotting away / when I talk to you daily / you’ve got nothing to say,” Haynes growled as he tweaked his voice down what seemed like two octaves with a pitch-shifter. Most of the room spiraled into chaos as the Surfers punished the crowd with the explosive punk of set-closer “Who Was In My Room Last Night?”
The band of course returned to the stage for an encore, which opened with “22 Going On 23,” a dose of creepy sludge-rock set behind a disturbing phone call made from a sexually abused woman to a talk radio show. The grand finale came in the form of “The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey’s Grave,” during which massive piles of smoke rose out of several fog machines while the band built an impenetrable wall of sonic anarchy with squealing guitar, growling bass, and scattershot drumming that ripped and rumbled through the room. This effectively plugged up the crowd's ears and eyes with disorienting madness. The wall of noise lasted through set closer “Comb” and the band members—except for Taylor, who was escorted off by a stagehand—waved goodbye as they left the stage.
