Up at the crack of dawn to talk to a butthole – I like that. I like the word butt. My butt. My butt in your face. Buttface. Butthead. Buttbrain. A bug/pole/stick up your butt. Buttwipe. Butthole. Butthole Surfer.

    The next word for the day is Piouhgd, the title of the Butthole Surfers’ eighth release, and Navajo for "I told you," so we are told: Pi-oughd (Pe-O’d), P.O.’d.

    "It’s a series of clicking noises," says Butt guitarist and lexicographer Paul Leary. "Our record label made up that Indian thing to make it sound more accessible."

    That would be Rough Trade, and the series of clicking noises would be the Butthole Surfers’ first full-length release for them.

    "Yeah, first and last," Leary says.

    Boy, do I like directness in a man. So the switch from Touch and Go, the Buttholes’ label of eight years (during which surfer sales saw the label through hard times) wasn’t smooth surfing?

    "The people at Touch and Go are impeccable," says Leary. "They put out what they like, and they’re not rip-offs. And they pay on time."

    "It’s a long, detailed story. Basically we just woke up one morning and found out we had signed a deal. It was scary.

    But the Butthole Surfers can stand up to scary if anyone can. "Ha," you’d expect them to say. "Ha! A laugh to the face scary." Their music does – anal activity where disgust and horror emerge from the same passage and go whirling down some pipe in demented psychedelia. If both the horror and humor don’t hit, oh, you could have a mess, because a warped sensibility in intrinsically part of their music, just as in their techno-power. Some might say the Butthole Surfers were aborted from fellow Texan Roky Erickson. Things do grow in Texas, they’re just sort of mutant species.

    Then what’s up with Piouhgd? Folks are calling it "more accessible," the dumb word, not a smudge as good as butt. Generally that can mean softer, safer or both – even the family dog can hack it. Accessibility is generally not seen in this sentence: "Gee, the extra feedback and distortion sure is more accessible."

    The question, then, always turns to, is this a ploy, or is it what the band wanted to do, or is it Memorex (sorry)? Right, this whole music making business tends to make people suspicious.

    "I don’t remember sitting down and trying to do that," Leary says. "We pretty much recorded sitting around in our kitchen. We record what we like and pretty much don’t give a shit. We’ll probably have a really big studio production on our next one."

    How indignant they must feel. Not only are they suddenly accessible, but a bunch of bands a la Happy Mondays are running around evoking the flower power mythos, just as they release a cover of Donovan’s "Hurdy Gurdy Man," making them right in step with the times. They’ve never been in step with the times; case in point, they’ve been playing "Hurdy Gurdy Man" since 1983.

    "We don’t get any of the royalties for it," says Leary. "It’s pretty cool for Donovan, though."

    Maybe there’s not money in it, but they get Donovan dancing. Two versions of the song appear on the single, one pretty polite, albeit with wobbly vocals, but with the meat pretty much intact. The other, a dance version, was remixed by Jim Melly (My Jealous God).

    "Basically we sent a multi-track to some British guy, I can’t remember his name, and he threw away everything but guitar and bass and added drums," Leary explains.

    Still, Piouhgd can be strange and annoying for folks to ask, "Is it supposed to do that?" It currently stand as the best-selling indie with the most radio play, even if or maybe because it tends to be chock full of snickers rather than bizarre belly-busters. What a grab bag, directly quoting Donovan and indirectly quoting the Jesus and Mary Chain ("No I’m Iron Man") and fellow Texans ZZ Top ("Golden Showers"). A track called "Lonesome Bulldog" appears in four parts, beginning with horsey clips clops in the background and transcending to higher planes of distorted weirdness while giving country & western a kick in the seat.

    "Sounds accused ‘Lonesome Bulldog’ as being a bullshit country & western tune, of all things to accuse the Butthole Surfers of. I thought that was pretty cool."

    And it is the best-selling indie with the most radio play, and Lord knows they deserve the sales. The Butthole Surfers are some of the most relentless tourers, self-promoters and self-producers to stick their necks out of the hardcore era, and let’s just say that personally and professionally they’ve seen a lot. If they don’t watch their butts, they’re going to get a reputation.

    I suppose it is hard to see your own butt.

    "There was the Danceteria show in New York, where Gibby (vocals/guitar) and Kathleen (nude dancing) were all naked and fornicating on stage, Cabbage (bassist Jeff Pinkus) was bashing a piss want at people, and I took an ice pick and poked out all the speakers. They told us we’d never play New York again.

    Of course, they’ve played there 20 times since and the Danceteria is no longer in business. Poor guys can be so gosh-darned misunderstood.

    "New Musical Express called us ‘militantly homosexual.’ I thing Gibby told the guy interviewing us he wanted to suck his dick over and over again."

    Whether that means he told the guy over and over or wanted to suck over and over again, I’m not sure, but one truism in life is don’t try too hard to understand the Butthole Surfers. If you do you must be pretty messed up, and may find yourself saying things like, "I believe they are great social critics." ("Social buffoons," Leary says.)

    Piouhgd came with great lyrics, like "Garry Shandling…Gary Shandling…Garry…Garry Shandling" ("Revolution Pt. II"), though, why, I don’t know. That’s nothing compared to former stuff, like, "If you see you mother this weekend, be sure and tell her SATAN SATAN SATAN" and "There’s a time to shit and a time for God/The last shit I took was pretty fucking odd."

    And the slide shows accompanying the sick psychedelia hold even more perverse southern charm. They have given audiences the famous penis reconstruction surgery on screen, and scenes such as torture victims or maybe a little tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King.

    "This tour there’ll be plenty of movies, with some old-timey light-weight stag movies – Gibby collects films. And there will be more strobe lights that an airport, an entirely different light show. Provided it all works out, it might be something to behold."

    The Show did lose Kathleen and the other drummer somewhere along the line, though.

    "The drummer, I guess she got fed up being around a bunch of sweaty guys. Kathleen, she’s a multi-talented girl. She’s with her own band now, Beme Seed, who are on Rough Trade."

    The Buttholes themselves each have their own little side-projects going. Drummer King Koffy runs his own label, Transcribe (Pain Teens, etc.). Gibby and Pinkus have their own Tex-house/bong-house band the Jack Officers, who recently released Digital Dump on Rough Trade. It’s no joke, either.

    "That was a one-off with Rough Trade. I engineered the album, but I’m no longer a part of it," Leary says. "Jeff might leave, too, so that’ll leave Gibby."

    Leary released his own LP, The History of Dogs, and both he and his dog look quite luscious on the cover in their blond wigs. "It might crack you up – make them send you a copy. It’s not your typical guitarist solo project. It’s a highly computerized version of T-Rex, with xylophones, strings, horns…I needed a way to try to pay for my computers."

    The Surfers have amassed quite the equipment collection through the years, and it’s growing ever larger. "Mine’s now about 14 or 15 feet high and about 20 feet wide. That’s why we charge such high ticket prices."

    Well, it pays off in their techno-wizardry, one supposes. Anyway, it’s a livelihood; the style of life the Butthole Surfers are accustomed to does not mix any sort of real world.

    "That’s our health secret, what keeps us going: the desire not to have a normal job. I’ve totally burned my bridges to being in the mainstream job market. I’m one semester away from a degree in finance, but I don’t think IBM would take me now."

    "Those fuckers! What’s the matter with a lifestyle of tacos for breakfast, $700 cars with $900 stereos, communal living with dogs a-go-go, mass stimulants, bad hearing…though actually, sphincters seem to be tightening up a bit.

    "We sold the country house (a ranch in Driftwood, TX, about 25 miles outside of Austin, where the gang all communally lived and loved), or are in the process of selling. I got married recently and live in Austin. All the other guys have girlfriends. We’re all settling down; it’s a done deal."

    The deal they’re looking at now is one with a major label. Their reputation(s) have a hand in holding them back, but, really, stupid as it is (you’re used to it, right?), it’s the name more than anything else keeping the big markets at bay.

    "But a lot of people are softening up," Leary says. "Hell yeah, before you could never get away with a blatant drug reference with a name like Jane’s Addiction."

    But could it work?

    "Well, we’re not the easiest people to deal with. We have very specific demands. I’d say it worked well for Sonic Youth and not for Hüsker Dü."

    No, no, I mean the style of music – is it the stuff of majors? Are there bands comparable to the Butthole Surfers on majors?

    "Ooooh, now that you mention it, no. Except maybe Willie Nelson."

    But, y’know, they’ve been talking, no names can be mentioned, but it doesn’t seem as though it will be much longer before they sign with a major label.

    Hopefully that won’t bum out the "buttheads" – a Grateful Dead-type cult following who trail after the Butthole Surfers. Then again, anyone who’d go to such odd extremes is too weird to worry about.

    And when they hit the Northwest…

    "We’d like to be known as the band that appreciates the indoor growing of Seattle – the high pressure sodium and metal halide sort of appreciation."

    Shoot, and I always though the Space Needle was the major attraction. §
 

(The Butthole Surfers are at the Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, B.C., 5/10, at the Moore, Seattle 5/11, and at the Fox Theatre, Portland 5/12.)