David Stubbs interviews The Butthole Surfers, 2nd April 1988

David Stubbs interviews The Butthole Surfers, 2nd April 1988. Photos by Andy Catlin.

You can either read this for the outrageous Stubbsianisms that pepper this interview, cf. “Plunging in at the anus and excavating, tunnelling a giant point of exit at the sockets, they are one part giant surge of flesh, one part holy revelation.” or for Gibby’s quotes, which ironically, sound a lot like Stubbs alter-ego to be – “Hue and what? Fuck me…Humourless and Cry [more like!]”

Either way it’s worth reading.  And if you’ve never heard of the Butthole Surfers then why not track down Locust Abortion Technician or Hairway to Steven

The Butthole Surfers on the cover of Melody Maker, 2nd April 1988

The Butthole Surfers on the cover of Melody Maker, 2nd April 1988. Photo by Andy Catlin.

This because I was in the office the other day and The Butthole Surfers came on the stereo.

“Wow! Who put the Butthole’s on?” I asked.

“Oh I dunno who it is…it’s the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack”

Gah!

Steven Wells R.I.P.

I’ll leave it to his contemporaries to write the perceptive, insightful, emotional stuff.

ET has collected a list of tributes here.

There’s also the ever brilliant WSC forum too.

In James Brown’s piece he says “Anything loud or unhip became his domain” which seems particularly astute in the context of the few measly scraps I can offer.

Carter USM, Jesus Jones and finally, perhaps fittingly, Snuff.

Snuff said.

Indeed.

Steven Wells interviews Carter USM, 19th November 1994. Photos Roger Sargent & Derek Ridgers

Steven Wells interviews Jesus Jones, 1st July 1989. Photo Lawrence Watson.

Steven Wells reviews Snuff Said by Snuff, 18th November 1989

Allan Jones reviews R.E.M.’s Green, 12th November 1988

Allan Jones reviews R.E.M.’s Green, 12th November 1988. Photo Tom Sheehan

David Stubbs interviews Mark E Smith, 12th November 1988

David Stubbs interviews Mark E. Smith, 12th November 1988. Photos by Joe Dilworth.

After the Loop interview something more conventional. David Stubbs is persuaded that Mark E. Smith is maligned only by idiots. Should probably also hilight the reference to the fanzine When Saturday Comes in the fourth paragraph, as I know some of you take an interest in such matters.

Jonh Wilde interviews Happy Mondays, 12th November 1988

Jonh Wilde interviews Happy Mondays, 12th November 1988. Photos by Mike Morton.

Look at baby faced Shaun in the photos! No time to read this tonight unfortunately. Is it any good?

Simon Reynolds interviews Loop, 12th November 1988

So while I listen to Suede B-sides and O2 try to flog me Jackson tickets via txt here’s Simon Reynolds interviewing Loop, 12th November 1988. Photo Tom Sheehan (bet those pimples would be zapped in Photoshop these days eh Tom?)

Cos I know a lot more people visit these pages than actually click through to read the interviews I’d like to urge you to read this, even if you’ve never heard of Loop – remembering all the while, that this is an interview about a rock group. Reynolds presents us with a delicate entrée of Pynchon and flowery adjectives before the main course begins.

Reynolds (in reference to Robert’s aims for musical repetition and a ‘trance-like effect’): It sounds like you ought to be in sympathy with the Acid House scene

Robert: Oh no, that stuff’s just nonsense. Sure it’s repetitive but in a bland way. We like to think we build on our repetitiveness. With Acid House, they just sit on a synthesizer for half an hour and make squiddley-diddley noises. [and then it gets really embarrassing]

All of which makes me wonder about the quality of drugs Loop were actually taking to be left so cold by acid house, kinda reinforced by Robert later when he says “The drugs thing has been totally overblown though: you don’t have to be out of your face to get into repetitive music”. No Robert but it helps doesn’t it? It really, really helps.

Then Reich, Cale and Satie get name checked in a rather academic discourse about the schizoid experience before the conversation seques into a mediation on death in its myriad, vividly romantic forms, before ending with some conventional stuff about what the next record might be like and an apology from Reynolds for being “unable to simulate in words what Loop do”! For thickies like me this stuff’s still as dense today as it ever was.