friend Jimmy Burns wrote this, If you like the Butthole Surfers you'll love it I was very excited for this book but it could really use some editing, Somehow it is both over and under detailed at the same time and is full of typos and redundancies, Its also adollar book! This book was clearly written as a labor of love, Other reviewers complain of the editing, Its really not as bad as they make it seem, Its a small press book, Its gonna have warts. Im cool with it. If youre not, thats fine, Im just glad that James Burns spent all that time and effort to compile what is surely to be THE definitive history text of The Butthole Surfers, a band that is criminally neglected as it pertains to their place in the history of music.
Burns does a good job of presenting the Surfers as accurately as possible, warts and all, without letting his obvious fandom bleed through TOO much, Exhaustively researched, I cant imagine there is too much more information one could expect out of this tome, A text book for all Butthole Surfer fans! The history of the band was reasonable, The political garbage in it was distracting and pointless, Discography included is priceless if you want to start collecting Butthole Surfers cdsrecords/tapes/posters, . . etc. So glad this book was written, Not the best prose or anything but essential for fans of this wonderful, lifechanging band who seemingly became just another corporate disaster in thes, My only complaint is that this book is in bad need of an editor, When read a book with so many sentences that are worded are like this, its tough to want to keeping going, However my love for the band helped me persevere, and Im glad I stuck with it to learn their crazy origin story, most of which I was only partially aware of.
An exhaustive history of the Butthole Surfers, including a discography, list of shows, and all sorts of esoteric details about their career, I enjoyed this, and it certainly wellresearched and complete, however I do feel like the author obviously has a penchant for the early years, and a lot of the book is weighted toward the band before their earlys success, legal trouble, etc.
Some of the anecdotes get a little repetitive, and some of the writing gets bogged down in details relatively unimportant to the casual reader, however, this is definitely the definitive history of BS.
As much as I would have loved to have been there myself, it was
great reading stories of the madness and chaos they spread in their heyday, forthcoming in the Wire magazine UK, Awesome. The Butthole Surfers remain one of the most enigmatic bands in the history of rock music, Most of their records have no information of any kind, and often with the suggestion that you play them atrpm, They lived like nomads through much of thes, and built their reputation upon tours that never ended, and shows that resembled hedonistic acid tests, They left a heap of former band members in their wake, and have often alienated as many fans as they've attracted, Here for the first time is the complete story of one of the most controversial and dangerous bands to have emerged from the ashes of the punk rock movement.
'Let's Go to Hell' compiles the scattered memories into the first comprehensive overview of the band, Featuring exclusive interviews, tons of rare and unpublished photographs, and analysis of the band's vast recorded and unrecorded efforts, 'Let's Go to Hell' finally tells the story that was thought and often hoped would never be told.