Me and my boo Michael decided to take a trip down memory lane last night to check out the Butthole Surfers reunion show at Webster Hall. The audience was full of “mature” punk rockers, mostly over 40, former East Village degenerates, now sober.
Everything was going smoothly, us olds were rocking out to the band, (who were supported by some of the School of Rock teenagers), they had the vintage weird and twisted films projected on stage that BHS fans eat up, like crazy tribal guys actually burning their own penises off (!), surgery footage and Charlie Brown superimposed over car crashes. Lead singer Gibby Haynes seemed pretty chill, but Michael and I kept noticing that it was not loud enough, I mean, I’d only seen them once before in the early 90’s when they were already legendary, but Michael had seen them at least 20 times in the 80’s including one time when Gibby had sex on stage with Kathleen, the naked dancer that toured with them for awhile. So anyway, we could tell that Gibby wanted the sound turned up, he was getting agitated, and he kept motioning to the sound guy to do it. This douchebag ignored him, and the next thing we knew Gibby was punching him in the face! So that was that, the security guard hauled Gibby out of the club and the crowd was pretty pissed. I wouldn’t say a geriatric riot ensued, but it almost did. A lot of beer cups were thrown at the Webster Hall folks and Paul had to finish the psychedelic set sans lead singer. Not sure if this was set up beforehand and staged by Mr. Haynes, as I’ve heard that he used to do this in the old days, just to fuck with ya, but in any case it was exciting! All in all it was an chaotic end to a pretty great punk show, and not a bad way to sign off for one of the most influential bands of the past 25 years.
