Butthole Surfers and Lilith Fair have more in common than you think

These two documentaries will save your life

This past week I watched two incredible, wildly different music documentaries.

I was lucky enough to attend the premiere of the new Butthole Surfers documentary, Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt, directed by Tom Stern, at the Egyptian theater here in LA. I did not attend with Anthony Kiedis but he was there too, wearing a studded Moschino Playboy bunny bomber jacket. It was so fucking good!!! (The doc, not Kiedis’ jacket). I’ve long posited that the Buttholes are one of the key bands who throughout the 80s set the stage for Alternative Rock™️ in the 90s (alongside acts like The Replacements, Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, and Dinosaur Jr, amongst others). This is is not a groundbreaking assertion and also I often say “triangulated” when I mean “hexagonned” or whatever and I’m sorry for that but I also likely won’t stop. Anyway the doc really drives home what a profoundly unique band the Buttholes were, how deeply weird and creative and insane they were, how devoted they were to pushing the envelope, both musically and in terms of the theater of their live performance (shout out their long-running nude dancer, Kathleen Lynch), and really just how pure this drive was (until it wasn’t, tale as old as time etc).

As of now I don’t think the doc is streaming anywhere but hopefully soon

It was especially interesting to take this all in after spending the last month or two studying the arc of Mötley Crüe, another 80s band devoted, at least at first, to doing something different and shocking, but still trying to fit it into the prevailing industry/showbiz rubric, something the Buttholes not only didn’t care about but weren’t even aware was available to them (which it really wasn’t, at least not until punk “broke” in 1991). I get so obsessed with these musical multiverses happening alongside each other, ostensibly rooted in at least one small tendril of sameness ultimately unfurling into completely different beasts. By the way, Bandsplain returns 10/2.

God the Buttholes were cool though. The combo of King Coffey and Theresa Nervosa (RIP queen). Paul Leary’s incredible guitar work. Gibby’s often imitated bullhorn. The album art. The album names! But perhaps my biggest takeaway from the Buttholes doc, which features appearances from Flea, Dean Ween, Ice T, Thurston Moore, John Paul Jones (!!!), Johnny Depp (jump scare), some cool puppets, and full-time professional talking head David Grohl, is that Paul Leary was extremely hot. I apologize I was not familiar with your game young Paul Leary. You may run me over with a truck.

Speaking of pushing boundaries and creating something beautiful and important, I also attended the premiere of Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery at the Ford theater (the most beautiful venue in Los Angeles) where I ate free chicken fingers and cried approximately twelve times (I’m very susceptible to music cues). The doc, which is based on the 2019 Vanity Fair article by Jessica Hopper, Sasha Geffen, and Jenn Pelly, and is streaming on Hulu now, absolutely summoned the feminism right back into my body. The footage of Sinead O’Connor! The footage of Missy Elliot! (Lilith was her first ever tour). Erykah Badu breast feeding on stage while Natalie Merchant twirls behind her! All the excellent haircuts! I read someone say that watching this doc is like taking a warm bath, which is how I feel when I watch almost anything about the 90s, but in particular I think there’s something really soothing and heartening about watching people truly believe in something (outside of the posting infographics on Instagram and calling it a day way) and believing in it so much they come together to create a phenomenon, as well as community and wealth, plus of course, problems, which is exactly what it is to make anything meaningful. This was the first touring festival to provide healthcare to its workers. THAT is the divine feminine babe. Sarah McLachlan really was that bitch.

Here’s some music:

Hayley Williams and I are in agreement here

• The new Geese album Getting Killed is out hallelujah amen. Is this band in the spiritual lineage of the Butthole Surfers? Absolutely. If you know what I’m talking about then you know but otherwise I don’t have time to explain it to you here. Here’s a great piece Grayson Haver Currin wrote about them for GQ this past week. This is what he said about the album which is better than anything I would be able to come up with: “Getting Killed rips open the carcasses of Radiohead, Pavement, and Swans and feasts there, looking up with a big, bloody grin.” Again, amen.

• Another band whose altar I worship at, crushed, put out their first full length album No Scope today. They definitely could have played the trip hop tent at Lilith Fair (not sure there was one but let’s pretend). This is the highest compliment!

• I’m late to Cardinals, the Irish band from Cork who is on So Young records, home of my beloved Most Things. They’re really fucking good! I love the singer’s voice. The dream of Sparklehorse is alive in Cork. This new track “Masquerade” is just gorge and I’m also very into this song and especially this one.

• I like this new Sharp Pins song it’s very cute.

• This man Robert Pollard is still at it babe (and it’s still good!!!).

• Not music per se but I needed you guys to know that I bought this Meat Puppets promo KITE on eBay for $20 yesterday because god is good.

See you next time xx

As always all the songs mentioned in this post live in the Fast & Loose playlist HERE