The sky was the ocean that day
In the Butthole Surfer's concert/documentary "Blind Eye Sees All" video, there is a scene where a band member takes a bit too gnarly of a bonghit and vomits all over himself. Another bandmember, thinking quickly, grabs a turkey baster, sucks up the juice, and squeezes it into his own mouth. Ick! Not exactly the kind of thing I am into. However, we can find beauty in some very unlikely places.
Much of the work of the Butthole Surfers seems designed specifically to create horrible feelings in reasonable people, and yet behind this are some of the most stunning examples of modern songcraft and truly beautiful sounds. The ring modulator drone in Whirling Hall of Knives rhymes with my neurotransmitter functions in a way that almost no other song I've ever heard does. The rain-smeared chords of "Hey" pull me from side to side in a throbbing rhapsodic stupor that seems more fitting for an old woman being moved by the organ at church than any kind of a punk moment. For whatever reason, from the first time I heard the Butthole Surfers, all of their shock-schlock was lost on me, invisible really, and I was able to penetrate to the core and concentrate solely on the beautiful melodies and evocative lyrics.
I get chills from some songs, especially those on Hairway to Steven. In music appreciation (as a radio major) class in college, we had to write a paper explaining the perception of music and the effects it can have on the listener. I hated this class; the instructor was a very strict old-school opera fiend and almost all of the examples of beautiful music he chose were to me almost unlistenable. He was open in his disdain of all things rock. Almost as a confrontational action, I wrote a detailed dissection of the Butthole Surfers and how I had near spiritual experiences listening to them, even without the (admittedly often added) help of drugs. I was the only student to get a perfect score and the professor embarrassingly made copies of it for the whole class as an example of how to think about music.
Human Cannonball is just another of their songs that has stuck with me*. Its a fairly straight-forward rock song, in fact I've heard it described as a hard rock parody. Perhaps I like hard rock enough that the parody isn't needed and I enjoy it at face value. Anyway its the kind of song I hum in the shower. And recently I had been doing just that. It got to the point that I was singing it in the car, singing it around the house. I had to get it out:
It's usually hard for me to share stuff like this since I don't want to insult my favorite works with my amateurish bumbling. However, I am not really ashamed of loving music so hard that I become a virus-like pawn, forced to replicate and spread it. Its pretty cool actually.
* Embarrassing Bonus Anecdote: In high school I was accusing someone of selling bogus LSD. To demonstrate my conviction that he was selling blank blotter, I ate two pieces at lunch. It was not blank. That afternoon in creative writing class, it was my turn to give an oral presentation on a song with moving lyrics that could be considered creative writing. I had meant to think about it over the afternoon and improvise (as was often my way with schoolwork) but concentrating on not freaking-the-fuck-out pretty much took all my spare cycles and I arrived at class wholly unprepared. Luckily(?) I had Locust Abortion Technician in my backpack, and I recalled that Human Cannonball was fairly listenable as that album goes. So after some struggling I got the tape cued up, stood before the class, watching the reflections and gridlines of the linoleum floor tiles intersect and fold in on themselves as space and time often do. I did not remember the intro to the song being so long. Its about a minute and a half I guess, which really is quite long for a pop song, but really it seemed like about 15 minutes. I kept saying "it starts soon, I'm sure". Finally the teacher stopped the tape and said I should bring my real presentation the following Monday. Woohoo!
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