Gibby Haynes used to be in the band The Butthole Surfers. Or maybe he still is. The billing for this gig promised that he would be playing the hits of The Butthole Surfers, a bold claim as I was unaware that they had any. I was in two minds about going, as I am not the world's biggest fan of his band, but a gap came up in my schedule and I found myself buying a ticket after remembering that it's better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done.
The concert was on in a venue called Opium, which used to called The Village and before that the Mean Fiddler. It's not enormous and has strange layout issues of a kind that are not uncommon in Dublin venues. As I made my way up to the auditorium I could hear the sounds of the B-52s' "Rock Lobster" and assumed it was a DJ playing the tune, but arrival revealed that it was actually a band onstage playing it. And the band were all teenagers. And there were loads of them. It turned out they were playing a set of punk and new wave covers, and that after each song half the players changed instruments and the other half left the stage to be replaced for the next song by another cohort of kids. And they were all hyper-talented and had amazing stage presence yet somehow lacked the annoying precociousness that usually leads to youth performers earning a clip round the ear and a snapped "Isn't it past your bed time?". Just to pick one girl to give a bit of flavour to the way all of them worked, she started off by singing the Patti Smith Group "Gloria", then she sang "Holiday to Cambodia" while playing bass (or was it guitar?), and then she played drums on various tunes. Other band members had similar trajectories.
I was sorry when they left the stage, kicking myself for not getting down earlier. Investigation revealed their identity, for these talented youngsters were from the Scott Thunes Institute of Musical Excellence, some class of rock school put together by a musician who had played with Frank Zappa.
The Scott Thunes Institute of Musical Excellence were followed by Evicshen. Now before I arrived I knew nothing about Evicshen bar the name, but because I had a vague recollection of having heard it before somewhere I thought that he/she/they must be some class of local act. I was wrong. Evicshen is actually a woman from the United States who makes electronic music, but more music of the weirdo experimental noise variety than the pulsating disco beats variety. Also there was a very performative aspect to her, ah, performance, with Ms Evicshen moving through the crowd at least twice, climbing up on her table of kit repeatedly, bringing the table down into the audience, and generally producing her tunes from physical actions that wouldn't normally be thought of as musical inputs (a highlight: when she brushed her hair with a miced-up comb). She remained me a bit of my vague memories of Eartheater at Le Guess Who, except without making me feel like I was attending some sleazy voyeuristic event.
For some audience members the most memorable bit of Evicshen's set would have come at the end, when she was working at her table in the audience and then produced a whip and told everyone to get back before she started cracking it without too much concern about health and safety. I overheard one guy saying that she got him on the head, but he didn't seem too bothered by the experience.
And then Gibby Haynes himself. And his backing band, who were… the Scott Thunes Institute of Musical Excellence! Hurrah. As expected, Haynes came across as a bit of an oddball character, albeit a bit less of a sad case than might be expected from someone who caned it through the 1980s and 1990s as much as he did. He adopted a somewhat adversarial relationship with the audience (favourite moment perhaps being when he called out to some guy, "You there! Baldy! What's your name? [pause] I love you guys.") and the venue (calling the lack of an obvious sound guy looking after onstage levels "retarded" and then being shocked at himself for using such a problematic term). In fairness the adversarial relationship with the audience might have been somewhat justified, as there were some odd characters among the punters. I'm thinking in particular of the red-haired beardy guy who kept trying to climb onstage, to kiss Haynes and to make him accept the CD he was proffering. Haynes did at one stage have a huddle with the kids and then announced: "We've had a band confab and concluded that the red haired guy is a dick". Later he said "I'm going to wake up tomorrow and go into the bathroom and when I look in the mirror I'm gonna see that guy's face looking back at me". Fortunately it never quite reached the point where the bouncers had to be called in to chuck out the redhead but it did come close.
I did also like when Haynes addressed the somewhat strange incongruity of someone with his debauched and bacchanalian reputation playing with a load of teenagers. "It's great playing with these kids, because I just love kids. [crowd noise] Jesus, I said I love kids, not that I want to fuck 'em. You sick bastards". Another odd thing about Gibby Haynes is that he looks a bit like popular comedian Ed Byrne would look if he was a bit older and had spent his youth devouring drøgs while setting fire to himself at gigs.
Oh yeah music. Well Haynes sang or did vocal stuff and the kids played the instruments. Sometimes he used some kind of device to distort his voice. He said that he had brought an electronic instrument over from the USA for the tour but discovered the hard way that European voltage is different. And my status as a Butthole Surfers dilettante was revealed by my only recognising one song ("Sweatloaf", performed by the kids with synchronised leg kicks), but it's possible that other tunes from Locust Abortion Technician were played. I particularly like the songs (which admittedly was most of them) that had two drummer action from the kids, as the one thing that would instantly make any band better is having two drummers (the two drummer thing was a feature of classic era Butthole Surfers). They didn't play "22 going on 23", my favourite Butthole Surfers song, but that might have been a bit much for the young musicians. And some of the songs also had bits of "Careless Whisper" or "Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In" mixed into them for no obvious reason.
And then the show was over. The band threw setlists into the crowd, some in the form of paper aeroplanes. They threw some t-shirts into the crowd also, perhaps because they couldn't be arsed selling them or bringing them home. I didn't see any sign of a merch stand.
It was all very strange, but not in the way I was expecting. And I did find myself wondering if the Butthole Surfers were a strange precursor of Ween.
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