Friday, July 10, 2009
DUM DUM
Back in the early 80's, I had a Band called Mr. Bubble in the East Village. One of the bands we kept running into and sharing stages with was The Butthole Surfers from Austin, Texas. Insanely inventive, totally original and creatively and morally uninhibited, there was nothing contrived about them, they made a squalling mess of feedback with two drummers. It was high art. I hear they have been touring recently and still releasing great music. I found this great video on You Tube of one of their songs from the early 90's. I think it was on their Electric Larry Land Album.
Someone used some real footage of a fundamentalist christian snake handling ritual...
The footage alone is the price of admission, but on second thought, it looks more like a typical night at the 8BC Club on East 8th Street over by Avenue C about 1983....
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3 comments:
Interesting music. The video reminded me of that famous line, "the minister's daughter's in love with the snake." You recognize it?
That is the greatest music video ever!!!
I've always had a fascination with Appalachian religiosity. All my relatives on my moms side come from WVa and I can say this about them.. They truly LOVE Jesus..
There is something truly amazing about genuine spiritualism. We can laugh, but it takes genuine faith to grab a 'rattler' or drink strychnine.
Ive actually read a book on Appalachian snake handlers and one of the guys in the video figures prominently in the book.. It's the old guy with the white hair. He always reminds me of that wild eyed John Brown painting from the Bleeding Kansas erra:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Brown_Painting.JPG
Steve, when I went to UT, I took a few quarters of anthropology and I had to research and write about snake handlers in the Appalachians. It was truly fascinating. There were some great links between the level of intense interaction between man and snake and the snake handling cults in other parts of the world....
My wife spent some time in the Appalachian Mountains in the early 60's meeting bluegrass and folk musicians, such as Doc Watson and recording them in their homes.
She said that almost all of them had rattle snake rattles in their instument cases because they believed the music they played was the devils and the rattles were a powerful mojo to protect them from their own evil music.
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