Butthole Surfers

A A A Comments (1) By Chris Gray Wednesday, Sep 23 2009

Hunter Barnes

Not usually known for their politics, the Butthole Surfers proved naturals on the stump.

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With Psychic Ills, 7 p.m. Thursday, September 24, at House of Blues, 1204 Caroline, 888-402-5837 or www.hob.com/houston.

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Any way you look at it, stoned or sober, sellouts or stalwarts, the Butthole Surfers appearing at House of Blues is a weird revolution all by itself. The 25-year-old sultans of strange are booked into plenty of other corporate-type venues on the tour that brings Gibson Haynes and friends home to Austin on Halloween because '90s bands — even ones as frequently unsettling as the Surfers — are the going thing on the retro circuit these days. But even at House of Blues, Houston is more a Locust Abortion Technician kind of town, and the band knows it. Besides, who wouldn't want to hear the electronic flatulence of Haynes's "Gibbytronix" console and Paul Leary's synapse-searing guitar on HOB's Best of Houston® award-winning sound system, or see if Kyle Ellison, Jeff Pinkus and King Coffey can't lay waste to the room's generous low end more than Clutch or the Cult? Smart money says they will, and just think of the atrocities the Surfers might unspool on the Angelika-worthy movie screen. You can almost smell the spilled beer and vomit, and see the busboys sweeping up broken glass and empty plastic cups, no matter the name on their work-issued Ed Hardy (or Ed Hardy knockoff) T-shirts. At the Unicorn, Vatican, Meridian or Houston Pavilions, no band will ever be a better musical avatar of what a twisted, terrifying, thrilling place Texas really is than the Butthole Surfers.