Yes, I’m still keeping my eye on the Butthole Surfers. Hey, when’s the last
time an Austin act had the number one Modern Rock track in the country for
three weeks running? Besides, I had to check out their San Antonio show
this weekend to make sure they were serious about that Austin Music Hall
debacle being a one-time-only deal. Sure enough, the Sunken Gardens show — or
at least what I remember of it — was a triumph, with both band and effects
performing at their peaks (Margaret Moser augments my memory with a “Live Shot”
in this issue).
The Buttholes’ Corpus Christi show, however, was another story altogether, I’m
told. A local in attendance said the crowd there “loved” Sincola, the Reverend
Horton Heat, and the Toadies, even though one miscreant managed to bop the
latter band’s singer in the head with a thrown object during their set. He was
unhurt and nonplused, but when someone later tried the same trick on Gibby
Haynes (with a wristwatch, says USA Today), Gib made clear his intention
to feed the perpetrator his/her own genitals — and things got worse from
there. Haynes then proceeded to turn the song “TV Star” — the one y’all know
as “Christina” — into an unpleasant paean to Selena. The Corpus crowd further
took issue with Haynes’ calling them “trailer trash” and his use of the phrase
“sister-fucking” and by the time the band split the stage, the crowd of
thousands was chanting “Fuck you!” with great abandon. The aforementioned
Austinite tells me that at this point he feared that a riot would erupt so he
tried to get backstage, only to receive an (unintentional) elbow in the head
from Haynes, who was rushing to punch out a particularly aggressive audience
member who had come to the gate to harangue Gibby personally. Oh, I should add
that the show — even if it was a trifle short — was terrific.
Want to see the Buttholes without risking personal injury? Well, besides the
upcoming (August 8) appearance on the David Letterman show, expect to see the
guys host MTV’s Alternative Nation soon. As always with MTV, the exact
date is elusive, but the boys should be shooting the thing at the MTV Beach
House as you read this. Oh, and here’s as good a place to run a correction as
any: The last full moon before Hallowe’en is of course October 26, not August,
as ran last week. That’s when the robotics, explosives, and reanimated
dead animals of the Survival Research Laboratories will be appearing in Austin.
Unconfirmed rumors have been going around that the Buttholes linked up with
Mark Pauline and SRL when they were in San Francisco recently and have at least
discussed the possibility of co-billing their “make-up” show with the SRL
performance. Now, just try to get out of that unharmed!
You Can Go Home Again!
Eddie Wilson can’t say too much about the new Threadgill’s that’s opening up(and returning him to his old stomping grounds on the site where the Armadillo
World Headquarters once stood). He’s still getting things together and doesn’t
have a solid schedule for the new restaurant. All he’s sure of is that he plans
to duplicate the workings of the current Threadgill’s in “almost every way we
can.” The exclusion represented by that “almost” is the Wednesday Threadgill’s
Troubadors show — at least until someone comes up with a way for Champ Hood to
be in two places at once. One thing’s for sure: If Wilson runs out of money on
the project, he can probably cover everything by selling that contract signed
by Elvis Presley in 1955 that he found while working on the building. And as
far as the word going around that the Hard Rock Cafe is interested in the old
Nighthawk building and that the two businesses could really liven up that area
together, Wilson quips, “I’d just as soon they wait a couple of years before
they pay me that compliment.”
An(tone’s)-niversary!
You won’t find a long list of things that Susan Antone will admit to beingmore of a chore than getting together the club’s anniversary shows, but I
suspect their efforts will be worth the trouble. Among the planned festivities,
which have already begun, you’ll find: Storyville prepping on Friday for the
July 16 release of their new album; a special tribute to Clifton Chenier with
C.J. Chenier and Buckwheat Zydeco, along with a host of players from Clifton’s
bands over the years on Monday; and what’s been the biggest scheduling hassle
so far on Wednesday. That night, look for Kim Wilson, Jimmy Rogers, and Hubert
Sumlin to get it together. Look too for Angela Strehli, Willie Smith, Pinetop
Perkins, Earl King, Snooky Pryor, and Lazy Lester (one of Jimmie Vaughan’s
faves). Among the unlisted special guests, I know that Doyle Bramhall II has
finished his recording duties in California and is aching to get back here, and
a certain celebrity associated with summer holidays may just get into the act
as well. Oh, getting back to this Friday, that’s the night KGSR will also be
giving away a guitar autographed by — well, a lot of people.
Antone’s isn’t the only venue celebrating an anniversary this week. For
another, there’s Charlie’s Attic, where this weekend (Friday 4pm-midnight,
Saturday noon-1am) they’ll be celebrating Charlie’s birthday with music from
Axe Murders, Bad Barney, and Safer Rhodes, along with barbecue, wet T-shirt
contests, and tons of hot boiled peanuts.
The Three “S”s
Spoon has returned from a three-week, six-country European jaunt with Guidedby Voices where they found, among other things, that the German Rolling
Stone gave them a better review than the U.S. version. What they haven’t
found, however, is a permanent bass player — and I can think of at least three
people with whom I’ve spoken in the last two days who’ll be delighted to hear
that. The band has also just made another video, this one for their second
single, “Not Turning Off.” A third single is already in the works with the band
recording new material for the B-side, which will likely make it an EP. The
B-side for their current UK single, oddly enough, is a cover of Prince’s “Party
Up,” which will not be on the local Prince covers comp mentioned in both
music features this week. The band is off to tour the midwest August 6 with
Archers of Loaf.
Sincola can do without hearing the word “video” any time soon. Following their
shooting of “One Hit Wonder,” they rate their injuries as follows: #1: Chepo
Pe�a fell backwards over a boulder and required staples in the back of
his head “to keep his two hemispheres in communication.” #2: Kris Patterson
“played her guitar until her hand was bleeding all over the place.” #3: Tie
between Terri Lord, for getting a split lip during the “rumble” scene, and Greg
Wilson for “believing he could defy the laws of nature” and refusing to wear
sunscreen during the long shooting in a 110deg. quarry. (Lord could still pull
ahead if it turns out she did any damage to her notoriously troublesome back.)
Far off in the distance at #5 is Rebecca Cannon, who received a “teeny-weeny
scratch on her elbow.”
Sixteen Deluxe has officially chosen their new drummer, and it isn’t Lyman
Hardy. As hinted in our “Recommended” column last week, Steve Hall, ex-of
Andromeda Strain, is taking that spot. The 16D-ers stand firm that the Strain
broke up before, not because of, this fact (see “Live Shots” for an account of
that band’s last gig). And you probably won’t be seeing much of Hall or the
rest of his new band this summer, as 16D will be in the studio recording an EP
for a label other than Trance Syndicate. All this leaves Hardy free for more Ed
Hall gigs, but as you know, their last Austin gig is on August 3. I say last
Austin gig because there’s a possibility that an interested party might
pay to fly Larry Strub out of Thailand later for some non-local shows.
Big in Japan
Yeesh! When you converse with people in other countries, make sure you knowwhat you’re saying! The members of Cotton Mather, who, along with Javelin Boot,
have been building a following in the Land of the Rising Sun, recently replied
to correspondence from the Japanese ‘zine Your Genuine Fan Club akaThe Attack of the Mars with what they thought was a rhetorical “drop by
sometime” only to find three lovely young Japanese ladies appear on their
doorstep this week. After recovering from his surprise and doing his best to
find the girls decent accommodations, Robert Harrison says he proceeded to show
them around the Austin area, including taking them on a “disastrous” tubing
expedition in San Marcos. After misunderstanding the concept and leaving the
bulk of their clothing behind on the shore, one of the trio then ended up
getting stung by a wasp, a situation made all the worse because, as Harrison
soon found, “they had never encountered a stinging insect before.” The
zinesters were seen at Monday’s “secret” Diamond Smugglers show, where they
didn’t seem to understand what was so funny and were noticeably disturbed
whenever Black Flag commercials came on the Hole in the Wall’s TV set.
Mixed Notes
Bob Mould will be playing his first gig in support of his solo album (unlessyou count those shows with his doppelganger Pete Townshend) on July 16
at the MacFest in New York City. More importantly to you, he has announced that
a fall tour is in the works… Good night for Austin acts on the networks
Tuesday as Willie Nelson guested on Letterman and Alejandro Escovedo appeared
on Conan O’Brien shortly thereafter… Don’t Look Back, the HBO movie in
which the Derailers can be seen lip-synching a tune as the bar band, makes its
debut on Saturday. Tony Villanueva says they “had a hard time not making any
sound — we thought we’d be replaced at any given time with a `real’ movie band
who didn’t make any sound.” Look for more TV appearances from the band, among
them TNN’s Prime Time Country… In-stores: At Waterloo Records, Podunk
will be playing this Friday, Storyville will play Tuesday, both shows are at
5pm. Spindrift are at Tower this Friday at 5pm, and since 2,000 people swamped
Ricky Trevino last time he tried to sign autographs here, this time he’ll be
all the way out at the Wal-Mart in Round Rock for an in-store from 6-8pm on
Monday. (Now that I think about it, though, he probably has more fans in
Round Rock than here. Uh-oh!)…
— Contributors: Christopher Gray, Raoul Hernandez, Andy Langer, Margaret
Moser
This article appears in July 12 • 1996 and July 12 • 1996 (Cover).