THE ALBUM OF THE DAY IS…
BUTT TRUMPET, PRIMITIVE ENEMA
My dog died yesterday. He was almost 15 years old, which is like 105 in dog years, so he had a good, long, life. Still, it’s sad and it sucks.
So I’m in the mood to laugh. And I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever laughed harder at an album than this forgotten 1994 classic which (at least as far as I’m aware) is the only album ever made by this punk-metal outfit, whose most well-known member may be the late Bianca Butthole of Betty Blowtorch fame (although a message from Butt Trumpet frontman Thom Bone posted on Amazon.com says he’s putting together “a new, evolved line-up” and working to reissue the record).
The music here is generally built around catchy, simple three chord riffage in the vein of classic punk outfits like The Sex Pistols and The Cramps, and the lyrics are never anything less than totally crude- and completely hysterical. Whether it’s album opener “Clusterfuck” (in which Bone professes to a girlfriend “I love you but I fuck your friends”), Butthole’s “I’ve Been So Mad Lately” (the lyrics are just a series of swear words: “SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK SHIT FUCK SHIT, FUCK, SHIT, HELL DAMN SHIT FUCK”), the playground-anthem “Ode to Dickhead” (“Dickhead, my name is dickehead/ I ain’t no inbred/ DICKHEAD!”) or the quiet, contemplative “Yesterday” (“Yesterday I went down on you/ Many chunks I blew”), you really can’t go wrong here. My friends and I were pretty fond of the grunge satire “I Left My Flannel in Seattle” back in the day, although my personal favorite will always be the garage-rawk power ballad “I’m Ugly and I Don’t Know Why,” in which Ms. Butthole, over what’s actually a pretty rad solo by guitarist Blare N. Bitch, recounts the kids on the playground taunting her (“You’re ugly/ What the fuck gave birth to you?/ You’re ugly/ And I bet your mom is, too!”) and the subsequent beat-down she gave to the girl who, she discovered, had her third-grade boyfriend’s pumpkin seeds (“Where’d you get those fucking pumpkin seeds, bitch?!”).
But for my purposes, the most appropriate song here may actually be “Dead Dogs.” Butt Trumpet felt my pain, and knew that laughter really is the best medicine. Here’s hoping Bone and company come back to give me another primitive enema real soon.
-AR
Buy Primitive Enema
