Monday, August 4, 2025

My highschool hardcore band (Entry new night) played with the Butthole Surfers (Main Room) at First Avenue

 https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/mar/25/butthole-surfers-psychedelic-art-rock-noise

I gotta confess - I was a bit scared by the Butthole Surfers -and still am!

 But they dumpster dived and so did I (for ten years)... so I guess I was more like them then I realized.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/116659851852 

Was this the show we played with them? Probably but I honestly can't remember if it was 1987 or 1988...

I remember the Twins played in the World Series in 1987 and I worked at Red Owl that summer. So we must have played in 1988 with the Butthole Surfers.

 

First Avenue Minneapolis, MN, USA
 
yep - that sounds right.
 
 They signed with Capitol for 1993’s Independent Worm Saloon, with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin as producer. They had a hit with the somewhat MTV-friendly track Pepper in 1996, the accompanying album Electriclarryland reached the US Top 40, and they found themselves on the multimillion-selling soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. But the remainder of the decade, as alt-rock waned in popularity and the band reached their 40s, was filled with management bust-ups, lawsuits with their old label, and an aborted album

 Yeah so the band just burned out after a decade of strangeness.

I quit my band when I realized it was too limiting - and too much of a control fest.

I was searching for the deeper meaning of music and the hardcore scene wasn't gonna do it.

 “I did too many drugs. I totally screwed up the deal. It’s my bad. It’s on me.” Leary adds: “We were some genuinely fucked up people. We’re good people, but we’re fucked up – we’re damaged.”

 The fact they survived is stunning!

Somebody once said our music was a front for us to manufacture and distribute LSD across the country. It’s like [adopts sarcastic voice]: ‘Sure, yeah, it was all a convoluted way to do that.’ But I’d rather encourage that than try to explain the influence of Yves Klein in our music.”

So will this group of sexagenarians ever reload the shotguns, stoke up the fires and hit the road again? “We’ve been getting six-figure offers to play live,” says Leary. “But I just don’t want to do it. We’re really lucky to not be in prison and I don’t want to push that any more.

 In Minneapolis - the one real "hardcore club" - Goofy's Upper Deck - is now a parking ramp!!

Tragic. I never went there - it shut down when I was in middle school - before my time.

 

 

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