Hairway to Steven [Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered]

Butthole Surfers | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 3, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Label: Latino Bugger Veil
• ASIN: B00000IL1Y
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,423 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

As you descend into Hairway to Steven, Butthole Surfers' last studio recording before their ascent to major-label... status, there are few handles to orient you. You get dropped, headlong, into Paul Leary's moaning, shrieking guitar, Gibby Haynes's megaphone-grown growl, and the thundering two-drummer rhythms that throb and contort this classic 1988 mind-bender. There are no song titles, and as for the songs themselves, they're layered so thick that teasing even a thick strand from any of them is a task. In the late 1980s, when they recorded Hairway (and Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac, Rembrandt Pussyhorse, and Locust Abortion Technician), the Buttholes were in the midst of an endless road show full of freakish displays--Gibby with clothespins on his nipples, Gibby shredding feather pillows on stage amidst pounding strobes, the ever-present mix of sex-change films and naked women dancers gyrating as the band screamed through their set. Hairway catches the sensory overload of it, the fire walk over structure and total chaos, the incipient humor of what was a fantastic, outrageous, vitally important stage in the career of one of punk's most whacked bands. And dig the fifth cut, the single the Buttholes could never have gotten any credit for in the S&L drenched 1980s, with Gibby doing some bouncy "Nah nah nah's" and "Hey, hey, hey's" and believably opining, "Well all of our friends, baby / They're going insane, now." --Andrew Bartlett

Product Description

The final album for the Surfers' legendary run on Touch and Go got a reception probably not even the band figured on -- lead reviews in major music magazines, increasingly higher profiles, and more. As it is, though, Hairway is actually a touch lazy in comparison to the previous releases, sometimes sounding almost all too normal. When it connects, though, Steven works wonders, whether continuing in the punk/psychedelic fusion vein of the past or exploring a gentler, tuneful side. The lengthy opener "Jimi" is the album's high note, and as one might guess from the title it's something of a tribute to Hendrix -- at least, if "Third Stone From the Sun" sounded like it was recorded in a sewer tunnel and was even more gone than it already was. Haynes' alternately deep and hyper-high-pitched vocals work perfectly against Leary's searing, crazed guitar noises, while the Pinkus/Coffey rhythm section lays down a massive beat. Everything concludes with deceptive peacefulness: acoustic guitar, tweeting birds, sounds of bowling, and the like. Other highlights include "I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas," a relatively straightforward, mostly acoustic-plus-rhythm section number sung clearly (!) by Haynes, and the mock live recording "John E. Smokes," with Haynes often sounding like a rural preacher gone mad. The humming guitar buzz of "Backass" and the quick blast of "Fart Song" concludes Steven with vim. As a final note, the song titles themselves can't be found anywhere on the release -- instead, and quite notoriously, a series of cartoon drawings stand in for them. Some are fairly calm, but most show things like nude women displaying their butts and rabbits taking dumps on deer. Juvenile? Of course, but the Butthole Surfers never pretended to be nice and sweet. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ten feet tall, with a KNIFE!, January 11, 2002

By 

High Y (Charleston, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hairway to Steven (Audio CD)

This is my favorite Buttholes album by far, and I'll tellsya why. You've got pieces of the sick brilliance of the oldest stuff, mixed in with hella-solid "real songs" like what would take over subsequently... and, of course, none of that electronic Beck-ripoff crap that came way later. Track 1 is great, especially once the pitch-shift sodomy gives way to the heavenly acoustic part with bowling pens and sheep. "X-ray of a Girl Passing Gas" is terrific, and the story of Johnny, the little crippled midget lesbian boy who stood 10 feet tall with a KNIFE, may make you wet your pants. And WHAT was Julio Iglesias doing in outer space? Take the Hairway and find out. It's the deepest Butthole there is.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An all time great......, July 8, 1999

By 

"hilzabub" (Staten Island, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hairway to Steven (Audio CD)

Having not heard the remaster of Hairway to Steven yet, I can only tell you that in its orignal version on Touch and Go (1988), this was where I felt the Buttholes were most together and its a creative high point of their career. Capturing their full 5 person lineup, this is a tight, demented and rocking album, featuring little of their previous albums sound colleges and more straight up, blistering rock. This album alternates between humorous and terrifying, with terrific lyrics and great interplay between guitar, bass and drums. The packaging was confounding and inspired, from the cover photo of the "band", to the fact that no song titles are listed, just little pictures that represent the songs. I always felt that Janes Addiction's entire sound was stolen from this record, but with out any of the Buttholes demented humor. A classic that you should not be without! Ron Hill

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Twinkie with a Halo Storm In It, May 16, 2000

By 

Kirk (Paris, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hairway to Steven (Audio CD)

An exhilirating, merciless, death defying leap of rock'n'roll derring-do which, for all of the album's shrieks and groans, somehow refines that slab of crude, turgid gold that was Locust Abortion Technician. On Hairway to Steven, the Buttholes have revealed their whole bag of dirty tricks - tortured guitarwork, lyrical acrobatics, psychobilly call-and-response, mangled sound compressors - in all their stupendous glory. This delicious, undigested smorgasboard of musical mayhem features many spooky and majestic bits, but for me the part that puts the spice in the chicken is the gently winding melody of the second half to 'Jimi,' where the dwarves whisper to chanting birds, a cock crows languidly, and bowling pins crash to the meter of a gently ebbing tide. HTS is an album well worth a Cadillac drive through the desert southwest on a bellyful of mescal, volume cranked to the big swirling sky, as you hallucinate ten-foot tall Johnny on the dashboard.