Who Sleeps Where? What Did You Say?

Butthole Surfers - Live at First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN (4/20/87) Part 1
Butthole Surfers - Live at First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN (4/20/87) Part 1

I went from an ear-smashingly loud early evening of basement jamming to my favorite club, O'Cayz Corral, one spring night many years ago. It was just me and the new bartender that early. Even the band hadn't shown up for their soundcheck. Don't ask me what band because I don't remember and that's not the point of the story.

I got my pitcher (yes, in Wisconsin it is perfectly acceptable for one person to both order and to drink, by one's lonesome, a whole pitcher of beer...or several) and tried to sooth my aching ears. But a noise kept intruding, kept insinuating itself into my head.

"What are you listening to?" I asked the bartender. "It's the new Butthole Surfers! Isn't it great!" she yelled back at me. That's when I knew I'd really damaged my ears. She was yelling over the music but it wasn't that loud, or so my ears thought.

"Yeah, it's awesome" I said or something like that and the conversation went on for a while about how much she liked the Buttholes and which album I should buy first and so on. We've all had this conversation. About a thousand times. It's a good one.

Next day I went to my favorite record store, B-Side, on State Street. And I bought Live PCP-PEP. That was the only one I could remember her telling me about. Cool lime-green cover, I thought. I like lime-green.

And when I put it on the turntable - holy shit. This wasn't like anything I'd heard or imagined I was hearing the night before. How could a human being make noises like that with his throat? What kind of guitars from what other dimension made those sounds? I'd stepped into the Twilight Zone the instant that needle dropped!

Side one over, I flipped it. SHAZAM! It hit me like a lightning bolt - I'd been playing it at the wrong speed! The damn thing looks like it should be 33 1/3 but it's really a 45. (Insert Charlie Brown-style scream of anguish here).

I played side one again. Still good. Very good. And so was side two. And the other albums I rushed out to buy. (I think they only had two others out at the time). But nothing ever sounded as good as side one of PCP-PEP at 33 1/3. Scariest music ever unintentionally made. I ripped my LP a few years ago for easier listening. At both speeds.

Goeth! Buyeth! Shitteth!

I Am a Scientist

Okay, I'm not a scientist. But Vic Chesnutt once called my wife a "Library Scientist," which is what we really should call librarians. And then he laid his hands on her 9-month pregnant belly and blessed our unborn son. It was a good night.

Anyway, what the hell is this about? Science! I subscribe to several techy and science magazines and spend too much time on science websites and blogs because I'm a frustrated Man of Science. Today Scientific American has an incredible slide show you all should check out: Fade to Black: The Night Sky of the Future. I've posted here what the night sky will look like when we are way too much closer to the Andromeda Galaxy than we are now. This takes me back to childhood daydreaming over the gorgeous planetscapes of Chesley Bonestell, the father of modern space art. Ches did it way better than, well, everyone, but the spirit is there and I appreciate it. Here's Ches' most famous painting, for your eyeballing pleasure.


Anyway, I'm sitting in our cozy little 1920s bungalow, having a beer, a nice Schlafly ESB (my second if you must know), and pondering the sky of our planet billions of years in the future. Got some music on, too, checking out the sound quality on a future post, loving this very early Green On Red show (you will too!) and I'm thinking - "Why the hell does life have to be any harder than this for anyone on the planet? Don't we have the resources to make sure that every man, woman and child on the planet could be doing exactly what they want to be doing right now, rather than scrabbling for food, fighting for their lives, running from people that want to hurt and kill them, etc etc etc."

It's not just a couple of beers talking. Think about the resources available to the industrialized nations of Earth - natural and man-made - and think about what they are used for, what they are wasted upon, and how the lives of billions of people could be improved if we started to shift those resources away from their current uses. We'd have a new world, kids, a better world, in our lifetimes. This is where we could go, this is the possible future, but we have to change the now to do it.