The Butthole Surfers, one of my favorite bands from the past couple of decades, finally came to play the Commodore last night. I never thought I’d get a chance to see them so I was bouncing around excitedly before the show.
Their performance started out kinda slow but soon picked up and I found myself rocking to my old favorites like The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave. I also discovered where the Flaming Lips got the ideas for their stage show from. The Buttholes show is as much visual as it is about the music. There’s a projector system wired up that plays 3 film loops on the stage backdrop so I spent most of the show entranced by footage of surgeries, gory scenes from old b-movies, and naked people.
I found the band’s sound to be more straight ahead rock than the usual frenetic starts, stops, and screaming that’s on their albums. These guys are in their 40s now and I don’t think their voices can screech the way they could back in the 1980s. Still, I had a good time hearing the songs I grew up with in a live setting.