It's pretty good. I look forward to the day he's reviewing some 50s One Hit Wonder and Nirvana appears, followed by him saying that he did it to see if we were paying attention.
@@caidema I agree. Let's set the improvised scenario up: "A band like The Garbage Trucks... they're *NEVER* going to make it in the industry. Absolutely nothing is gonna break these guys through--" [smash cut to "Smells Like Teen Spirit"] "OH WAIT A MINUTE! They were *launched* by Nirvana rather than ended by them!"
"What does your son do?" "He um, he has a band" "Oh really?! Are they well-known?" "I suppose... I mean they were just on Letterman." "Oh wow! What are they called?" "I... uh, forget"
I once played "Pepper" on a jukebox in a restaurant while I was eating dinner with my family, and I had to face that awkward moment where they asked "Who is this?"
I think Gibbie Haynes was kind of a mythological creature. Every time something weird but relevant to 90's underground music happened Gibbie was around somehow.
He was playing at the club where River Phoenix died (alongside Al Jourgensen, Flea, and Johnny freaking Depp), so yeah, your theory definitely has some weight to it.
@@andrewtennant1889 It was a butthole surfers show where Daniel Johnston dropped the acid that allegedly made him lose his shit. And his absolutely legendary take down of STP that got headbangers ball canceled. It's pretty freaky how often his name pops up.
Fun Fact: the second drummer of this band, Teresa Nervosa (AKA Teresa Taylor) is partly well-known as the person selling "Madonna's pap smear" in Richard Linklater's SLACKER. Also, she passed away in June of this year, so May She Rest In Peace.
It’s like giving a 👍🏼to a tik tok doctor looking distressed, filming herself outside the OR after losing a child during surgery. Fun Fact: “Fun Fact” are usually not fun and barely factual. ✌🏻
Everyone in the song is a real person and all the events described supposedly happened. They were all people Gibby knew growing up in Dallas, most of whom were friends of his from the music scene. The title, "Pepper" is a reference to a real person as well, his father, Jerry, who played a children's television character, Mr. Peppermint. Mr. Peppermint was the first one to break the news of the JFK assassination because it happened a few blocks from the studio and he collected eyewitness statements and ran over to the studio to do a breaking story. Also, fun fact: Gibby and Al Jourgensen from Ministry met while being test subjects for Timothy Leary.
i always felt like Pepper was pretty straightforward about what it is. It's a life song, about living in Texas. It's a bit of suburban psychedelia and the general unpleasantness of Texan social circles. Like, I guess you need the cultural coding? I was born and raised in that hellhole of a state, and when you don't fit in and are doing a bunch of psychedelics and marvelling at the social dysfunction you're fucking immersed in, this song IS the god damn mood. It's the jam my man. It's the fucking THING
My favourite band of all time. They got a bit normal by the 90s and I started to lose a bit of interest by that point. My housemates hated me playing Locust Abortion Technician and Hairway To Steven at full volume. However, when I moved into a new house and started doing it, this girl thought "That's an interesting sort of guy" and we are still happily married 28 years later. The Buttholes brought us together. Thanks guys!
Agreed. I was pretty well done by Electric Larryland; the insane magic of tunes like Cherub or Graveyard just wouldn't ever be eclipsed. Glad I got to experience it when I did.
I read an interview one time by I think their guitarist. He expressed gratitude to the producer of "Pepper" for taking them to the next level up. "But I'm just as interested in the next level down."
Jingle of a Dog's Collar was about heroin use. The dog was a reference to Paul Leary's sheepdog, and it's jingling collar was a touch of reality while in a state of oblivion
I heard the same thing about Pepper from a kid I knew who’d done heroin quite a few times. I was never sure if he was serious or right, but her certainly knew more about that drug than I ever did.
There wasn’t anything about the butthole surfers that wasn’t about heroin. Listen to Mexican caravan or Gary floyd or any other song by them. Gibby was said to have shot speedballs in his dick, around Austin, when I lived there, and they were the go-to shows for whip-its and walking around with your dick hanging out. I am still mad at my dad for not letting me go see “the butthole fuckers” on New Year’s Eve 1990. Fucking tragedy missing that show.
If it wasn't a "smart" song, I at least always thought of Pepper as a vastly more interesting than you let on... I can't help but love the simple turn of lyrics in "you never know just how to look through other people's eyes" / "you never know just how you look through other peoples' eyes" in a song that's simultaneously about crazy, nearly suicidally reckless youth, reveling in that Dionysian-style love of life
Yeah, I think it was a really honest poetic examination of the nihilism that the white middle/working class was only starting to get ready to tangle with. Like, the stories are about people dying...mostly, and they're all fragments, like even when talking about someone you admired (played piano like a kid out in the rain), none of their lives mattered enough to merit keeping your attention long enough to tell a whole story. After Vietnam and the economic changes under Reagan and Clinton, it was the first time white people were really grasping "oh damn, you mean OUR lives mean nothing to them either?!" and so we have this growing interest in existentialism which this captured damn near perfectly.
@@galenburghardt3272 I've got nothing to disagree with. As a hardcore Nietzschean, all I'm looking for are the existentialists finally getting their say in modern thought.
I think the relationship between verses and the chorus is a contrast. The verses are about mediocre people dying in unimportant ways, while the chorus is a sort of big picture meditation on death, and about the perceptions of people changing once they die. The verses were all stuff like "another Mikey took a knife while arguing in traffic". Like, this unimportant jackass talked shit and now he's dead, oh well. Then the chorus talks about "Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies" which is stuff you might hear at like a funeral or even just how someone gets talked about after they're gone, and "you never know just how you look through other people's eyes" also being about how people get reinvented upon reflection after they die. The meaningful, cinematic descriptions of life and death also fit into this vein. I guess I'm trying to say that it seemed like a really dark joke about how total dipshits or even just forgettable people get immortalized by death because we revere it so much. I have no clue if that's what they actually intended for it to mean, but that's how it always felt to me, and I kinda think that's more important.
bac I may just be over-interpreting. I thought the GBV song Teenage FBI was about the complicated relationship an artist can have with his fandom. Turns out it's about getting caught picking your nose. Finding out that was the meaning was seriously disappointing. But here, idk, It kind of just feels like the chorus and verses are talking about the same thing, only differently.
I actually had the same thought. "You never know just how you look through other people's eyes" seemed to connect pretty clearly to the rest of the song's deaths to me. Then again, I've been taking a music listening class, so I might just be in a semi-pretentious headspace and overthinking it.
Well, they certainly did enough drugs for this to be the case. If the stories about them are to be believed then it’s a wonder their brains can even function correctly now with the insanely copious amount of acid they took.
Ah yes, the Bar-B-Que Mitzvah tour. I met Gibby in the audience while the Flaming Lips were on stage. We chatted with him for a bit, and he said he was glad to encounter some folks who weren't fans of the "Stone Putrid Toilets".
I was in a band that opened the show in '85 - Butthole Surfers, Mighty Sphincter, and us. I took a hit of acid after we played. When the Surfers were up, i was up front. Gibby took one look at me and said "Haha - yer fryin'". In '90 I saw them, with films of insects eating each other projected behind them. Wonderful.
@@kylebentley7512 Eddie is likely the sole member that didn’t want fame. He kind of ended up in the band by mistake. But the rest of the band pushed for mainstream success undoubtedly. He joined the band while they were making Temple of the Dog the tribute to their previous singer Andrew Wood, Chris Cornell found Eddie, put him on Hunger Strike and then from there Peal Jam was born.
I love the Butthole Surfers. They definitely never sought mainstream commercial success, but getting a bit of it was worth it as a joke in itself. Just the fact of them getting radio play at all was like an epic Andy Kaufman bit.
Aside from it's musical qualities, the thing that elevated Pepper and made it a hit was the way it resonated with the feelings of deep alienation and dissatisfaction with life that Gen X was dealing with at the time. This hit the zeitgeist two years after 'Clerks' - Gen X was heading towards their 30s and saw nothing ahead except a long string of menial, empty jobs, and there was a feeling of desperate alienation with the very possibility of success and happiness. "Pepper" was one of many artistic attempts to connect to this feeling.
@@ezekielbrockmann114 it ended their band, nobody knew how to approach them, but with a gold selling record everybody was on their asses and that created tension that ultimately ended them.
You mentioned Meat Puppets and I just want to cry about how Meat Puppets didn't really stick, they still are and were amazing. Butthole Surfers are also really f-ing good, the noises they make are absolutely amazing, it just itches that spot, and they know their craft
The frontman's dad was an actor known as "Mr. Peppermint". Look him up; it's really interesting! Also, the folks 'in the know' say that most of the lyrics are about folks in their local punk rock scene dying or getting injured
Jerry Haynes was a kid show host in Dallas, known to us kids as "Mr. Peppermint". He dressed in a "peppermint" suit and hat, and WFAA Channel 8 originally carried his show. Later, it went to PBS. He knew all his son's lyrics. He told an interviewer he didn't care for his son's stage greeting "Welcome to Dallas Fucking Texas".
@@MisterMikeTexas Thats wild...I grew up with the PBS Mr. peppermint as an infant and I became later a BHS fan yet had no awareness of their relation. What a strange small world this is.
The elder Haynes also doubled as a journalist for WFAA, and was one of the first people to report on the JFK assassination. He also acted, mostly in movies shot in and around Dallas/Fort Worth. He pops up in Places in the Heart, RoboCop, and Boys Don't Cry, among others.
alexandra galici To be fair, it was one of their most kickass songs, “Who Was In My Room Last Night.” The Buttholes fuckin’ ROCK on that one! Paul Leary strikes the perfect balance between controlled and chaotic with his guitar soloing there.
I think I just feel this song differently. I’m from a small southern town and…yeah this is how shit has been turning out for us for about 30 years. People die of boredom. ODs, racing trains, backroads racing accidents. To me, Pepper just sounds like the hopelessness of people who know they’re going to die stupidly in the same place they never left.
I am blanking on the name, but it was another where the band or artist's success overall was completely independent of the band or song they had a single "hit" as. I recall Chamillionaire was like that, but I think it was one of the rock bands/artists.
The uh, Grateful Dead maybe? They had a kind-of hit with "Casey Jones" but they were kind of the Butthole Surfers of the '60s. in any case it's the only Grateful Dead song that gets significant play on like, klassik rokk radio.
Actually, the Grateful Dead get a lot of radio play in Upstate NY, like a lot. Sometimes there'll be a whole day of just their music on rock radio stations.
@@tyde4610 sure a decade ago when they were all over the place but even then none of them have a shred of competence of course the inevitable lolcows pedos and morons coming out helped lol
I agree. Their cover of that is what got me into them a couple years before Pepper blew up. I remember buying it on a 7” yellow vinyl single around ‘92.
To everyone in the comments, they are an One Hit Wonder trough a mainstream lense, only one of their songs got into the charts. But through an 80s indie/punk/underground/psychdelic lense they are legends, the only other band trying to reinvent Psychedelic with Punk in the 80s was the Flaming Lips and they didnt really get good until the 90s. Also this was uploaded on April 1st, so take it with a grain of salt
From what I've heard, a lot of people in the underground considered Reznor to be a poseur dork back then and they fucked with him a lot. But poseur dork or not, the guy makes great music.
Generation X was more about being nihilistic because they were over-educated and under employed. The key line isn't "stupid and contagious" , it's "here we are now, entertain us" - we're here, give us *something* because we've got nothing else. Pepper: the title refers to the spice, it's a reference to the spice of life. The verses refer to people who are living like their life will never end, because they're young and as is said, the young don't believe in death. They're living short term existences and dying by their own inability to believe in consequence. The chorus follows this up with with a reference to the fountain of youth (reinforcing themes of youth again) and the unstoppable nature of death (as everything dies, no matter what, and everything has to die for life to continue) before focusing on what the young do believe in - passing ephemeral experiences; sunny days, romantic moments, sweet tastes and "softly spoken lies", ie the romance from earlier turning sour and your partner saying they never meant those things they said to you. It concludes by saying "you never know just how you look through over people's eyes" basically inferring that all those experiences that people value are ultimately solitary and based on your own perception - perception that may be entirely flawed. It states that life is meaningless because the value of those experiences is subjective and ultimately they're all fleeting and ephemeral. Basically saying that those described in the verses who live their lives without thought to consequence may as well do so because ultimately everything is pointless and what means the world to you could mean nothing to everyone else. Pepper is about everything, including death, being ultimately pointless and the fact that everything is ultimately fleeting. It's a statement of intent for hedonistic nihilism.
Pepper is also a very pedestrian (or basic) spice and the song teases heavily on a particular brand of criminal life that is associated with Texas and the south. Something you'd see in an early Cohen Brothers movie. There really isn't a narrative to the song it's more stream of conscious. I remember hearing the song in the 90s and believing Pepper was the name of a character.
I agree with Adam ruins everything and generation naming needs to stop because generations depend solely on the area and parenting. No two people are the same.
@@CanadaWaxSolvent YES! I was reading your comment, got to "Cohen Brothers" and I thought: "No Country for Old Men". Albeit not an early Cohen brothers movie, but that's exactly what this video looks like. Hotel room, seventies motifs, inescapable creepiness. Obvs, Cormac McCarthy was responsible for a lot of that, but the Cohen brothers captured the same feel perfectly in the movie.
I only know them because they were on the 90s Leonardo Dicaprio "Romeo and Juliet" soundtrack... and it was a pretty great track... and it wasn't even this song. lol
Plus I always got the feeling that they never really wanted to be a mainstream multi-platinum selling supergroup. They just wanted to do the music they wanted to do.
Yes, I agree with that. The point is that by naming themselves as they did, the band made it clear that mainstream popularity wasn't their aim at all. To have even gotten fluke one-hit wonder status is itself surprising.
I think another reason this song got big was the chorus. All the sound drops out for a beat and then it hits you like, uh, some kind of group of rocks falling down a large hill.
I'm from SATX, and my uncle quizzed me a lot on local texas music growing up: The way some people tell it, "Butthole Surfers" is actually a reference to them enjoying going tubing down the local rivers (comal, guadalupe, san marcos etc etc), and they thought it was funny and made a band name out of it. Previously they were called '10 foot worm that eats it's own excrement" or something like that.
Before settling on Butthole Surfers, they changed their name every show. "Nine Foot Worm Makes Own Food" was just one of them; others include "The Dick Gas Five" and "Ashtray Babyheads."
They were called a lot of different things previously. They used to use a different name for every performance (one of which was “The Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole). “Butthole Surfer” was the name of one of their songs, and one night, the guy introducing them at a show messed up and introduced them as that instead of the name they gave him. Since it was their first paying gig, they decided to make that their permanent name.
I first heard that lyric as a little kid (like 7 or 8) and I took it literally. I wondered if people _actually_ saw me as like, an alien or monster or something. Messed with me for a good few weeks.
Jordan DeHart I love hearing about how people interpreted things as a kid. Honestly if I'd been that age when I first heard that, I may have thought the same thing!
I've never been big on lyrics but hearing that back in 96 as a 14 year old, it really stuck with me. I have never stopped thinking of that idea and is why I still love and listen to this song today.
I can testify to Electriclarryland's presence in used CD bins. Every time I went to Wherehouse as a kid, that gruesome cover would hypnotize me. I'd never heard Pepper, so I would just imagine what kinds of horrors might lay within. I later became a huge fan in high school. The video where they get interviewed in bed is one of the greatest things on RUclips. LSD is a hell of a drug.
Gibby Haynes was a radio DJ for Austin's first alt-rock radio station. Somehow he was able to get away with having bands like Sonic Youth in the studio but instead of interviewing them, he would make fun of them and hang up on all the people who called up to talk to them on the air.
When you said, "Every band Kurt Cobain liked, got popular," I was thinking of the Meat Puppets. BUT PLEASE DO A VIDEO ON THE MEAT PUPPETS, THEY DESERVE THE RECOGNITION.
That's a famous interview. If I remember correctly it was in early '92 right after 'Nevermind' knocked Micheal Jackson's 'Dangerous' off the top of the Billboard album chart. Kurt gave the reporter a list of about 20 bands he loved and immediately all of them saw their followings explode.
@@danieldaniels7571 They were big with college radio stations too. I first heard Up on the Sun through my cousin in Virginia who recorded it on a cassette and sent it to me.
@@AbbeyRoadkill1 I thought the Meat Puppets didn't take off in popularity nationally until after Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance, where the Meat Puppets joined them onstage and played their songs.
As a GenX survivor I can confirm we were all idiots. We had 8 students die my senior year in the first 2 weeks of school and the Principal as well with no guns involved.
No shit. I used to do insanely stupid stunts back then. Jumped on to moving car hoods, played with gasoline, and the way I drove, jesus...I'd bootleg 180 on city streets just for kicks, drift slide left turns. Did 120mph on the freeway a couple of times. I was convinced I wouldn't live past 25, so fuck it, I might as well go out big. Two of my close friends did die in their teens, one while in prison, the other to a bad drug interaction. Wild times. I'm glad shit has mellowed out now so my kids don't feel compelled to live like that. If anything, shit's too mellow nowadays.
@@satireknight Given the times, I'd guess OD. If a bad batch of something was going around you could get a wave of deaths like that. Funny thing is that people would seek out shit that was killing people because they'd assume it meant it was strong shit.
Yeah... the Flaming Lips and Stone Temple Pilots opened for them on the summer tour for Independent Worm Saloon. It was pretty funny because looking around the crowd you could totally tell who was there to see which band. Then a few years later "Pepper" dropped and again, at shows you could totally tell who'd been listening to them for years and who just heard of them last month on the radio.
Citation needed for that because I was listening to the radio back then and I'm pretty sure that song never made the Billboard top 40. Maybe it made the top 40 on the "Modern Rock Tracks" chart or something like that.
I never heard "Pepper", but _do_ know "Who Was In My Room Last Night?" On top of appearing in Guitar Hero II and Beavis & Butthead, it was used in - of all things - a 90's Nintendo commercial. Yes, Butthole Surfers was used to advertise Nintendo. (It's the "Play It Loud" commercial; look it up)
I remember this MTV2 commercial from early 2002 that used that weird "I'm flying" intro from "Who Was in My Room Last Night?" in it. I can't find the commercial, but I remember listening to the actual song about a year later and realizing "Oh, it's that song!"
Gibby Haynes sang for a project called "P". They only released one album, s/t, in 1993. The lead guitarist was Johnny Depp. It was a pastiche band - one song sounded like bowie, another like Lou reed, another like iggy pop, etc. without being outright parodies. It also included a Daniel Johnston cover and an ABBA cover. The lead single was called "Michael Stipe". Definitely one of the weirdest CDs I ever picked from a bargain bin.
Hey there bud I first found your content on That Guy with the Glasses, and you were a part of my angsty high school life, but when the site went downhill I lost you in the shuffle of everyone going back to RUclips. Now with the drama going on I thought of you again and wondered if you were here. I was pleasantly surprised, thanks for still keeping at it. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some binge watching to do......
Trivia: the lead singer’s father was a local children’s TV host who called himself “Mr. Peppermint”. I always assumed that the song’s title “Pepper” was a tongue in cheek nod to him.
Some songs get big on MTV and select radio stations, but less so in the mainstream and sales. I loved the song (minus the intro, which succeeded in its obvious goal of annoying the listener even before the music kicked in), but I never heard it on the radio, while "Pepper" was played to death.
I always understood “jingle of the dogs collar” was a comment on being in a relationship/love and when you have a home together or are wanting to grow, having a dog come around and the jingle of it’s collar is symbolic.
At the same time I'm fully willing to believe that what happened is that Hayes scribbled "the jingle of a dog's collar would be good right here" in the margins of a song he was working on then decided to make that the lyric.
I'll be honest, given their legendary status, I thought this was going to an April Fools video. But you made a decent case here. Who Was In My Room Last Night is amazing though.
I was in high school several years before this hit, and I can say The Butthole Surfers were pretty well-known, at least among kids in school. Probably because of the name, but I guess it's one of those bands that is famous but doesn't have a "hit" because it's not on commercial radio. Today they would have a zillion views on RUclips or whatever, but back then we just passed around cassettes.
@@randomlaughable That album turned out way better than it should've, thanks to Violent Femmes, Toadies, Helmet, and (another Texas legend) the Rev. Horton Heat. Might have the last listenable track Liz Phair recorded too.
I've watched a ton of these, and this one is my favorite. I was exactly the right demographic to get overexposed to "Pepper", and yet I NEVER knew about the Butthole Surfers' backstory.
Great video, rewatch it time to time. Though you missed they had a kind of spiritual follow up a few years later to pepper. Their song "Dracula from Houston" stylistically is an even more upbeat and pop version of pepper.
Isn't the song about Heroin? I remember someone mentioning the "cinnamon and sugary" line plus the title of pepper refering to the drug, plus "You never know just how you look through other peoples eyes" could be from a Junkie's perspective, doing "it" in texas refering to the Heroin crash in Texas the previous year. Everybody shooting up and dying in ridiculous ways?
That was said about almost every song in the 90s ...... if someone didnt know what a song was about they said it was about drugs in The 60s it was acid, 70s/80s was cocaine and 90s heroin
I am absolutely floored that he didn't mention by far their most radio-friendly song, Dracula From Houston. I swear I remember it being the theme to a sitcom at one point. It sounds like Smashmouth could of written and sung it.
You're half right, it was actually the theme of a little known machinima called, "Dude, Where's My Mount?" ....Ohh god why do I know that off the top of my head?
I was actually gonna ask some fans what their most tuneful stuff was; I find what they're doing really interesting and liked bits of the singles they released, but I'm really not a noise music fan (too much of a "don't bore us get to the chorus" kinda listener). I'll have to check this one out though!
Pepper is my favorite song. I grew up singing along with the riff on Biggie’s Hypnotize, memorizing Loser by Beck, and getting sad over RHCP. I remember listening to Lake of Fire performed by Nirvana on the way to an extended family members funeral with my mom. I was probably 11, lmao. Butthole Surfers and Primus mean so much to me. We’ll never get this type of awesome again.
Of all of the semi-hits of the 90's, this is one of the few that I can listen to today and genuinely enjoy. Great analysis - I really enjoyed the video. This was the first of your vids that I've seen, and you won me over. Sub'd! Looking forward to more!
Yeah. I would be on a college campus and see a bunch of copies of Electric Larryland in the CD bin. That's when I bought mine and never regretted it. Love that album.
Although I don't mind some of the Butthole's stuff, I was always more of a fan of other Touch and Go bands, like Big Black, Killdozer, Scratch Acid, etc. But none of them had big hits outside of the indie chart. Which probably meant they got to number 500 in the mainstream charts. 😂
Pepper is about my mom's group of friends shortly after she left that scene. Bobby the "racist" was Bobby Soxx from Stick Men With Ray Guns, but I knew him as Uncle Bobby.
Anyone who's into good music check out their first two albums: _Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac_ and _Rembrandt Pussyhorse._ Two of the most innovative, influential, and brilliant albums of all-time.
Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac... is such a great album. An excellent follow-up full-length to their EP, Brown Reason to Live (or, Pee-Pee the Sailor). That album has some of my favorite Butthole Surfers tunes, like "Butthole Surfer" and "Dum-Dum." Rembrandt Pussyhorse is excellent and it's so fun to say!
Seeing them live was like a living acid trip it was wild, they were the Lips before the Lips, it was rad, and then the Flaming Lips took it up another notch and a half
There's a GOLDMINE of artists from the 90s you could do videos on: Nada Surf, Superdrag, LEN, The Cardigans, Cornershop, Dishwalla, Harvey Danger, Fastball, Jimmy Ray, Eagle-Eye Cherry, 4 Non Blondes, Crash Test Dummies, Toadies, New Radicals, Spacehog, Blind Melon, The Verve, The Verve PIPE, Marcy Playground (!!!), Natalie Imbruglia, Baz Lurhman, White Town (!!!), Primitive Radio Gods, James, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Trio, Jesus Jones, even Mazzy Star.
LOVE this song, LOVE this band. I’m being absolutely serious when I say the Surfers’ output in the ‘80s is pretty solid. Locust Abortion Technician is very entertaining, and Rembrandt Pussyhorse (yes, I just typed that) is also killer. If you want a good time, check out “Jimi” from Hairway to Steven. It’s over 10 minutes and trippy as all get out.
I dunno... I think *Whatever (I Had a Dream)* off the *Romeo + Juliet* soundtrack had a small bit of success, not mentioned here. It was a couple years ago I found a stripper dancing to that song, and I emptied my pocket on the stage, because I loved it. Not my *worst* decision, ever... But ranks.
you probably made her day, so maybe it wasn't that bad. Not something I would recomend on the daily but not exactly a terrible, terrible thing. And if she chose that song she probably felt vindicated
They also had The Shame of Life, Who was in my room last night.The Wooden Song is pretty well known. Dracula From Huston was the theme song for Scrubs.
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![Woo-hoo!: How Blur Mocked Grunge & Destroyed Britpop ["Song 2"] | New British Canon](/img/1.gif)
First time I saw the Butthole surfers a little-known band named Nirvana was opening for them. Next time I saw them they were opening for Nirvana.
Dang.
You saw nirvana live twice
@@johnindigo5477 More importantly, OP saw the Butthole Surfers twice!
Back in the 80s the same thing happened with Bon Jovi and Ratt.
Crazy how that happens
I really think that "Smash cut to Smells Like Teen Spirit" is probably one of the best, if not *the* best running gags in Todd's reviews.
lol, it's amazing
It's pretty good. I look forward to the day he's reviewing some 50s One Hit Wonder and Nirvana appears, followed by him saying that he did it to see if we were paying attention.
@@caidema I agree. Let's set the improvised scenario up:
"A band like The Garbage Trucks... they're *NEVER* going to make it in the industry. Absolutely nothing is gonna break these guys through--"
[smash cut to "Smells Like Teen Spirit"]
"OH WAIT A MINUTE! They were *launched* by Nirvana rather than ended by them!"
@@stephenemmett9753 lol I dig it
What are all the videos to have that? Anyone know?
"What does your son do?"
"He um, he has a band"
"Oh really?! Are they well-known?"
"I suppose... I mean they were just on Letterman."
"Oh wow! What are they called?"
"I... uh, forget"
I once played "Pepper" on a jukebox in a restaurant while I was eating dinner with my family, and I had to face that awkward moment where they asked "Who is this?"
fun fact the lead of the butthole surfers dad was a childrens tv show character named mr. peppermint who was that character for over 30 years
Bee Hole Srufers
@@ForestGreenSharpie and Gibby used the clippings of a newspaper to write this, from a single edition.
@@elihyland4781 Bubble Servers
I think Gibbie Haynes was kind of a mythological creature. Every time something weird but relevant to 90's underground music happened Gibbie was around somehow.
He was playing at the club where River Phoenix died (alongside Al Jourgensen, Flea, and Johnny freaking Depp), so yeah, your theory definitely has some weight to it.
@@andrewtennant1889 It was a butthole surfers show where Daniel Johnston dropped the acid that allegedly made him lose his shit. And his absolutely legendary take down of STP that got headbangers ball canceled. It's pretty freaky how often his name pops up.
@@gregbryant3826 And in rehab with Kurt Cobain the week he killed himself.
He was also in the Gregg araki movie “nowhere”
This was the early 80s, but him and Al Jourgensen from Ministry both volunteered to be guinea pigs for Timothy Leary's experiments.
“SATAN. SATAN. SATAN.”
*Guitar plays*
Oooooooooooooooh
Funnily enough Orbital sampled it and another 90's techno monster was born! The circle of life is endless.
Fun Fact: the second drummer of this band, Teresa Nervosa (AKA Teresa Taylor) is partly well-known as the person selling "Madonna's pap smear" in Richard Linklater's SLACKER. Also, she passed away in June of this year, so May She Rest In Peace.
un fact eh... yes rest in peace.
It’s like giving a 👍🏼to a tik tok doctor looking distressed, filming herself outside the OR after losing a child during surgery.
Fun Fact: “Fun Fact” are usually not fun and barely factual.
✌🏻
Lmao 😂 I didn't know that that's awesome! It definitely appears that she has had plenty of other black market
@@Unhappy_us_citizentake your meds
Everyone in the song is a real person and all the events described supposedly happened. They were all people Gibby knew growing up in Dallas, most of whom were friends of his from the music scene.
The title, "Pepper" is a reference to a real person as well, his father, Jerry, who played a children's television character, Mr. Peppermint. Mr. Peppermint was the first one to break the news of the JFK assassination because it happened a few blocks from the studio and he collected eyewitness statements and ran over to the studio to do a breaking story.
Also, fun fact: Gibby and Al Jourgensen from Ministry met while being test subjects for Timothy Leary.
Rather than "Take the Money and Run", I always got a Jim Caroll Band - People Who Died, vibe from Pepper.
i always felt like Pepper was pretty straightforward about what it is.
It's a life song, about living in Texas. It's a bit of suburban psychedelia and the general unpleasantness of Texan social circles. Like, I guess you need the cultural coding? I was born and raised in that hellhole of a state, and when you don't fit in and are doing a bunch of psychedelics and marvelling at the social dysfunction you're fucking immersed in, this song IS the god damn mood. It's the jam my man. It's the fucking THING
My favourite band of all time. They got a bit normal by the 90s and I started to lose a bit of interest by that point. My housemates hated me playing Locust Abortion Technician and Hairway To Steven at full volume. However, when I moved into a new house and started doing it, this girl thought "That's an interesting sort of guy" and we are still happily married 28 years later. The Buttholes brought us together. Thanks guys!
Paul Lee that’s really cool man! Congrats on your awesome marriage!
Agreed. I was pretty well done by Electric Larryland; the insane magic of tunes like Cherub or Graveyard just wouldn't ever be eclipsed. Glad I got to experience it when I did.
SaschaPeppercorn Good for you
Paul Lee r/thathappened
holy shit you found a girl that likes them
I read an interview one time by I think their guitarist. He expressed gratitude to the producer of "Pepper" for taking them to the next level up. "But I'm just as interested in the next level down."
Jingle of a Dog's Collar was about heroin use. The dog was a reference to Paul Leary's sheepdog, and it's jingling collar was a touch of reality while in a state of oblivion
I heard the same thing about Pepper from a kid I knew who’d done heroin quite a few times. I was never sure if he was serious or right, but her certainly knew more about that drug than I ever did.
That's... really damn specific.
There wasn’t anything about the butthole surfers that wasn’t about heroin. Listen to Mexican caravan or Gary floyd or any other song by them. Gibby was said to have shot speedballs in his dick, around Austin, when I lived there, and they were the go-to shows for whip-its and walking around with your dick hanging out. I am still mad at my dad for not letting me go see “the butthole fuckers” on New Year’s Eve 1990. Fucking tragedy missing that show.
No no man.The BSurfers.never give drugs a bad name..2024..the nxt sappy meal +check please.great vid..im a truppin in sth nz.😢
If it wasn't a "smart" song, I at least always thought of Pepper as a vastly more interesting than you let on...
I can't help but love the simple turn of lyrics in "you never know just how to look through other people's eyes" / "you never know just how you look through other peoples' eyes"
in a song that's simultaneously about crazy, nearly suicidally reckless youth, reveling in that Dionysian-style love of life
Yeah, I think it was a really honest poetic examination of the nihilism that the white middle/working class was only starting to get ready to tangle with. Like, the stories are about people dying...mostly, and they're all fragments, like even when talking about someone you admired (played piano like a kid out in the rain), none of their lives mattered enough to merit keeping your attention long enough to tell a whole story. After Vietnam and the economic changes under Reagan and Clinton, it was the first time white people were really grasping "oh damn, you mean OUR lives mean nothing to them either?!" and so we have this growing interest in existentialism which this captured damn near perfectly.
@@galenburghardt3272 I've got nothing to disagree with. As a hardcore Nietzschean, all I'm looking for are the existentialists finally getting their say in modern thought.
I think the relationship between verses and the chorus is a contrast. The verses are about mediocre people dying in unimportant ways, while the chorus is a sort of big picture meditation on death, and about the perceptions of people changing once they die.
The verses were all stuff like "another Mikey took a knife while arguing in traffic". Like, this unimportant jackass talked shit and now he's dead, oh well. Then the chorus talks about "Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies" which is stuff you might hear at like a funeral or even just how someone gets talked about after they're gone, and "you never know just how you look through other people's eyes" also being about how people get reinvented upon reflection after they die. The meaningful, cinematic descriptions of life and death also fit into this vein.
I guess I'm trying to say that it seemed like a really dark joke about how total dipshits or even just forgettable people get immortalized by death because we revere it so much. I have no clue if that's what they actually intended for it to mean, but that's how it always felt to me, and I kinda think that's more important.
Luke Kastel damn man. Kudos on the sober interpretation of a very not sober song.
bac I may just be over-interpreting. I thought the GBV song Teenage FBI was about the complicated relationship an artist can have with his fandom. Turns out it's about getting caught picking your nose. Finding out that was the meaning was seriously disappointing. But here, idk, It kind of just feels like the chorus and verses are talking about the same thing, only differently.
Luke Kastel You may be over-interpreting but it was a good interpretation.
I actually had the same thought. "You never know just how you look through other people's eyes" seemed to connect pretty clearly to the rest of the song's deaths to me. Then again, I've been taking a music listening class, so I might just be in a semi-pretentious headspace and overthinking it.
Luke Kastel - It's also IMO a mistake to take what artists say about their work at face value. Lots of them are pranksters.
If fear and loathing in Las Vegas was a band
And there's a band called that too lol
A 90s version of death grips. Or vice versa
Well, they certainly did enough drugs for this to be the case. If the stories about them are to be believed then it’s a wonder their brains can even function correctly now with the insanely copious amount of acid they took.
death grips is kiddie songs compared to butthole surfers lmao
Not wrong lol
Saw them on tour with S.T.P who they referred to as the
Stone Pimple Toilets. They also brought Norm from Cheers out on stage.
Norm!
Ah yes, the Bar-B-Que Mitzvah tour. I met Gibby in the audience while the Flaming Lips were on stage. We chatted with him for a bit, and he said he was glad to encounter some folks who weren't fans of the "Stone Putrid Toilets".
Norm!
I was in a band that opened the show in '85 - Butthole Surfers, Mighty Sphincter, and us. I took a hit of acid after we played. When the Surfers were up, i was up front. Gibby took one look at me and said "Haha - yer fryin'". In '90 I saw them, with films of insects eating each other projected behind them. Wonderful.
The Buttholes dropped so much acid in the 80's they could probably _smell_ when someone was tripping.
@@noesunyoutuber7680 Ahhhh 80's acid!!! The stupidity was excellent.
(rose tinted spectacles seem to be a genetic phenomena after the age of 40)
They had a film of a sex change or some other bit of mutilation of a dick when I saw them showing film
Todd's answer to "Did They Deserve Better?" was oddly moving.
75% of the 90s alt-rock bands didn't want better, or at least didn't want mainstream success; especially not the drab-four.
@@afterdinnercreations936 Pearl Jam absolutely wanted it.
@ MikeyXSkyline - They say they didn’t but, from Green River to Mother Love Bone to Pearl Jam?
They wanted it.
@@Thor-OrionThe rest of the band did, but Eddie Vedder seemed to bemoan success perhaps the most vocally out of all of them.
@@kylebentley7512 Eddie is likely the sole member that didn’t want fame. He kind of ended up in the band by mistake. But the rest of the band pushed for mainstream success undoubtedly. He joined the band while they were making Temple of the Dog the tribute to their previous singer Andrew Wood, Chris Cornell found Eddie, put him on Hunger Strike and then from there Peal Jam was born.
I love the Butthole Surfers. They definitely never sought mainstream commercial success, but getting a bit of it was worth it as a joke in itself. Just the fact of them getting radio play at all was like an epic Andy Kaufman bit.
Aside from it's musical qualities, the thing that elevated Pepper and made it a hit was the way it resonated with the feelings of deep alienation and dissatisfaction with life that Gen X was dealing with at the time. This hit the zeitgeist two years after 'Clerks' - Gen X was heading towards their 30s and saw nothing ahead except a long string of menial, empty jobs, and there was a feeling of desperate alienation with the very possibility of success and happiness. "Pepper" was one of many artistic attempts to connect to this feeling.
Ohhh so this was the Machine Gun Kelly of its time
@@thomastakesatollforthedark2231how dare
"Look Dad, I'm a Surfer... and look Dad, Todds' Stupid, and I'm with him!"
"Lookin' Good Rod, Lookin' Good Todd"
Someone gets it ;)
And now mommy’s stupid!
Heheh they got David Letterman to say "butthole"
😂😂😂😂😂
Man I still have that album somewhere.
That reminds my of my fave Gibbie Haynes quote: "I'm sorry we made a pop song"
I feel like that's not an apology.
I feel like he genuinely regrets it.
@@ezekielbrockmann114 it ended their band, nobody knew how to approach them, but with a gold selling record everybody was on their asses and that created tension that ultimately ended them.
You mentioned Meat Puppets and I just want to cry about how Meat Puppets didn't really stick, they still are and were amazing. Butthole Surfers are also really f-ing good, the noises they make are absolutely amazing, it just itches that spot, and they know their craft
The frontman's dad was an actor known as "Mr. Peppermint". Look him up; it's really interesting! Also, the folks 'in the know' say that most of the lyrics are about folks in their local punk rock scene dying or getting injured
Jerry Haynes was a kid show host in Dallas, known to us kids as "Mr. Peppermint". He dressed in a "peppermint" suit and hat, and WFAA Channel 8 originally carried his show. Later, it went to PBS. He knew all his son's lyrics. He told an interviewer he didn't care for his son's stage greeting "Welcome to Dallas Fucking Texas".
@@MisterMikeTexas Thats wild...I grew up with the PBS Mr. peppermint as an infant and I became later a BHS fan yet had no awareness of their relation. What a strange small world this is.
So which friend is the elusive raper of football players
Gibby Haynes was also briefly the replacement Mr Peppermint for his father
The elder Haynes also doubled as a journalist for WFAA, and was one of the first people to report on the JFK assassination. He also acted, mostly in movies shot in and around Dallas/Fort Worth. He pops up in Places in the Heart, RoboCop, and Boys Don't Cry, among others.
“Their third album Locusts Abortion Technician...”
Well, now I know what I’m going to name my Stand, at least.
It’s powers include causing every woman in range’s teeth to turn into bugs.
Oh my god dude, is that a fuckin jojo reference?
Stand Name: Locusts Abortion Technician
Stand User: That Random Encounter Guy
Stand Ability: i don wanna say
arnt stands supposed to be named after bands?
@@megamike15 nah, song names, albums, and bands are fair game for Stands.
I can hear Beavis and Butthead snickering already.
alexandra galici Of course they would say that.
alexandra galici that's how I first heard of them. Beavis and Butthead introduced me to a lot of bands back in the day.
"We owe much to B&B for bringing buttholes out of the bathroom and on to the kitchen table." - Gibby
alexandra galici To be fair, it was one of their most kickass songs, “Who Was In My Room Last Night.” The Buttholes fuckin’ ROCK on that one! Paul Leary strikes the perfect balance between controlled and chaotic with his guitar soloing there.
And they also think it’s cool that Flea’s in the video.
I think I just feel this song differently. I’m from a small southern town and…yeah this is how shit has been turning out for us for about 30 years. People die of boredom. ODs, racing trains, backroads racing accidents. To me, Pepper just sounds like the hopelessness of people who know they’re going to die stupidly in the same place they never left.
Hairway to Steven is one of the best guitar albums ever
"Did they deserve better? Fuck you!!"
You asked the question, Todd...
I think it is now my favorite "Did they deserve better?" segment in all of One Hit Wonderland.
What was your original favorite?
I am blanking on the name, but it was another where the band or artist's success overall was completely independent of the band or song they had a single "hit" as. I recall Chamillionaire was like that, but I think it was one of the rock bands/artists.
The uh, Grateful Dead maybe?
They had a kind-of hit with "Casey Jones" but they were kind of the Butthole Surfers of the '60s.
in any case it's the only Grateful Dead song that gets significant play on like, klassik rokk radio.
Actually, the Grateful Dead get a lot of radio play in Upstate NY, like a lot. Sometimes there'll be a whole day of just their music on rock radio stations.
I thought their “Hurdy Gurdy Man” was done respectfully and is a classic.
Derrick Espino Todd’s just salty
@@gickygackers its a channel awesome creator they are usually inept fuckwits as a rule. some exceptions (well four...)
ThoraSTARR Do you even watch todd lmao
@@tyde4610 sure a decade ago when they were all over the place but even then none of them have a shred of competence of course the inevitable lolcows pedos and morons coming out helped lol
I agree. Their cover of that is what got me into them a couple years before Pepper blew up. I remember buying it on a 7” yellow vinyl single around ‘92.
To everyone in the comments, they are an One Hit Wonder trough a mainstream lense, only one of their songs got into the charts.
But through an 80s indie/punk/underground/psychdelic lense they are legends, the only other band trying to reinvent Psychedelic with Punk in the 80s was the Flaming Lips and they didnt really get good until the 90s.
Also this was uploaded on April 1st, so take it with a grain of salt
They had a Top 40 hit "Who was in my room last night" that came out a few years before "pepper".
Todd did call them underground legends. :) Pepper is a good excuse to cover the band in this format. I take that excuse to see some butthole surfers.
Also totally not the only band trying to reinvent psychedelic in the 80s
@@teddyrieck1758 Yeah true, but Butthole Surfers and Flaming Lips were the most famous ones
@Ferd Dorst To Gramar Nazi: Nobodi ceres
i can't help picturing Trent Reznor's expression when he came back to his trashed trailer XD
It's rumored that River and Joaquin Phoenix helped the Butthole Surfers destroy it.
From what I've heard, a lot of people in the underground considered Reznor to be a poseur dork back then and they fucked with him a lot. But poseur dork or not, the guy makes great music.
@@LividImp and i really like his music and how it evolved since the beginning :)
@@Ysckemia Here's an unpopular opinion for ya: Pretty Hate Machine is his best album.
@@LividImp what am i supposed to do with this? an opinion is just an opinion, i know what i like, that's all :D
Generation X was more about being nihilistic because they were over-educated and under employed. The key line isn't "stupid and contagious" , it's "here we are now, entertain us" - we're here, give us *something* because we've got nothing else.
Pepper: the title refers to the spice, it's a reference to the spice of life. The verses refer to people who are living like their life will never end, because they're young and as is said, the young don't believe in death. They're living short term existences and dying by their own inability to believe in consequence. The chorus follows this up with with a reference to the fountain of youth (reinforcing themes of youth again) and the unstoppable nature of death (as everything dies, no matter what, and everything has to die for life to continue) before focusing on what the young do believe in - passing ephemeral experiences; sunny days, romantic moments, sweet tastes and "softly spoken lies", ie the romance from earlier turning sour and your partner saying they never meant those things they said to you. It concludes by saying "you never know just how you look through over people's eyes" basically inferring that all those experiences that people value are ultimately solitary and based on your own perception - perception that may be entirely flawed. It states that life is meaningless because the value of those experiences is subjective and ultimately they're all fleeting and ephemeral. Basically saying that those described in the verses who live their lives without thought to consequence may as well do so because ultimately everything is pointless and what means the world to you could mean nothing to everyone else. Pepper is about everything, including death, being ultimately pointless and the fact that everything is ultimately fleeting. It's a statement of intent for hedonistic nihilism.
Dude, that was deep and spot on.
Pepper is also a very pedestrian (or basic) spice and the song teases heavily on a particular brand of criminal life that is associated with Texas and the south. Something you'd see in an early Cohen Brothers movie. There really isn't a narrative to the song it's more stream of conscious. I remember hearing the song in the 90s and believing Pepper was the name of a character.
I agree with Adam ruins everything and generation naming needs to stop because generations depend solely on the area and parenting. No two people are the same.
Terry Beardmore wow.... pretty insightful for a band who also wrote a song about drunk sex.
@@CanadaWaxSolvent YES! I was reading your comment, got to "Cohen Brothers" and I thought: "No Country for Old Men". Albeit not an early Cohen brothers movie, but that's exactly what this video looks like. Hotel room, seventies motifs, inescapable creepiness. Obvs, Cormac McCarthy was responsible for a lot of that, but the Cohen brothers captured the same feel perfectly in the movie.
With a name like Butthole Surfers, even one hit is probably more than can properly be expected.
Nathan Albright they're a really good band.
I only know them because they were on the 90s Leonardo Dicaprio "Romeo and Juliet" soundtrack... and it was a pretty great track... and it wasn't even this song. lol
Plus I always got the feeling that they never really wanted to be a mainstream multi-platinum selling supergroup. They just wanted to do the music they wanted to do.
I agree; I happen to have used the song lyrics from precisely this song for blog titles before.
Yes, I agree with that. The point is that by naming themselves as they did, the band made it clear that mainstream popularity wasn't their aim at all. To have even gotten fluke one-hit wonder status is itself surprising.
I think another reason this song got big was the chorus. All the sound drops out for a beat and then it hits you like, uh, some kind of group of rocks falling down a large hill.
I'm from SATX, and my uncle quizzed me a lot on local texas music growing up: The way some people tell it, "Butthole Surfers" is actually a reference to them enjoying going tubing down the local rivers (comal, guadalupe, san marcos etc etc), and they thought it was funny and made a band name out of it. Previously they were called '10 foot worm that eats it's own excrement" or something like that.
Before settling on Butthole Surfers, they changed their name every show. "Nine Foot Worm Makes Own Food" was just one of them; others include "The Dick Gas Five" and "Ashtray Babyheads."
They were called a lot of different things previously. They used to use a different name for every performance (one of which was “The Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole). “Butthole Surfer” was the name of one of their songs, and one night, the guy introducing them at a show messed up and introduced them as that instead of the name they gave him. Since it was their first paying gig, they decided to make that their permanent name.
there's a special kind of angst and disillusionment that comes from growing up in texas. trust me i know.
@@crescentfreshbret correct
"You never know just how you look through other people's eyes" is one of my all-time favorite lyrics.
And we get an AmyDog cameo! Yayyyyy!!!!!
I first heard that lyric as a little kid (like 7 or 8) and I took it literally. I wondered if people _actually_ saw me as like, an alien or monster or something. Messed with me for a good few weeks.
Jordan DeHart I love hearing about how people interpreted things as a kid. Honestly if I'd been that age when I first heard that, I may have thought the same thing!
Well stated
feels a little 'fake deep' for my taste
I've never been big on lyrics but hearing that back in 96 as a 14 year old, it really stuck with me. I have never stopped thinking of that idea and is why I still love and listen to this song today.
His April fools prank is that hell actually upload
this joke no longer works because he actually has a reliable upload schedule now
This video introduced me to locust abortion technician. What a awesome album. You gotta listen to believe how unique and Incredible it is
They had a fantastic song called “whatever” on the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack
Was looking for this comment. amazing soundtrack
That’s probably one of my favorite songs of all time. She was on fire last night, and I was breathing gasoline.
@@sprthrwwychnnl73 yeah. Rock out. Whatever.
Love that song!
@@lindseycassella3015 it really was an amazing soundtrack! This song. Radiohead, everclear, cardigans...
@@sprthrwwychnnl73 also”I was more fucked up than your sisters tackle box, at 3 am, and 5 o’clock”. Haha
I can testify to Electriclarryland's presence in used CD bins. Every time I went to Wherehouse as a kid, that gruesome cover would hypnotize me. I'd never heard Pepper, so I would just imagine what kinds of horrors might lay within. I later became a huge fan in high school. The video where they get interviewed in bed is one of the greatest things on RUclips. LSD is a hell of a drug.
Yes! Love that interview
Got Independent Worm Saloon and Electriclarryland for $5 each within a couple weeks of each other. Awesome albums. Thank God for used CD stores/bins
I never realized until now just how much Gibby looks like a bloated Dave Grohl.
I hate you for that but somehow I respect you for that.
It checks out but don't ever say that again
Or you can just say ''present day Grohl'', it's alright.
I always got him confused with Andrew WK
I always thought he looked pretty Grohl Ish
Pepper actually hit number 1 on the modern rock charts and was the number 1 modern rock song of 1996 according to billboard
"Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse" - James Dean.
Not gonna lie. While I do like the song, I mostly watched this to hear Todd say "Butthole Surfers".
Gibby Haynes was a radio DJ for Austin's first alt-rock radio station. Somehow he was able to get away with having bands like Sonic Youth in the studio but instead of interviewing them, he would make fun of them and hang up on all the people who called up to talk to them on the air.
LOL I remember that. I don't think he was ever on the air a single time where he wasn't either drunk or high.
when my dad was a radio dj in conservative nebraska he was forced to call the "the surfers"
i don't know why but i find that extremely funny
Other early 90s band's with multiple hits have faded into obscurity. This song is still being played nearly 30 years later.
When you said, "Every band Kurt Cobain liked, got popular," I was thinking of the Meat Puppets. BUT PLEASE DO A VIDEO ON THE MEAT PUPPETS, THEY DESERVE THE RECOGNITION.
That's a famous interview. If I remember correctly it was in early '92 right after 'Nevermind' knocked Micheal Jackson's 'Dangerous' off the top of the Billboard album chart. Kurt gave the reporter a list of about 20 bands he loved and immediately all of them saw their followings explode.
The Meat Puppets has been hugely popular in Arizona for years at that time.
@@danieldaniels7571 They were big with college radio stations too. I first heard Up on the Sun through my cousin in Virginia who recorded it on a cassette and sent it to me.
@@AbbeyRoadkill1 I thought the Meat Puppets didn't take off in popularity nationally until after Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance, where the Meat Puppets joined them onstage and played their songs.
@@michaelmurray8538 I got a copy of No Joke! on CD that came from a college radio station
As a GenX survivor I can confirm we were all idiots. We had 8 students die my senior year in the first 2 weeks of school and the Principal as well with no guns involved.
You didn't survive GenX. We're still here. You're still one of us. One of us. One of us.
I hope none of them died by their own hand...
You can't drop a bomb like that and not provide any details. I have so many questions that need answers.
No shit. I used to do insanely stupid stunts back then. Jumped on to moving car hoods, played with gasoline, and the way I drove, jesus...I'd bootleg 180 on city streets just for kicks, drift slide left turns. Did 120mph on the freeway a couple of times. I was convinced I wouldn't live past 25, so fuck it, I might as well go out big. Two of my close friends did die in their teens, one while in prison, the other to a bad drug interaction. Wild times. I'm glad shit has mellowed out now so my kids don't feel compelled to live like that. If anything, shit's too mellow nowadays.
@@satireknight Given the times, I'd guess OD. If a bad batch of something was going around you could get a wave of deaths like that. Funny thing is that people would seek out shit that was killing people because they'd assume it meant it was strong shit.
Not one hit wonders, "Who Was in My Room Last Night?" was also top 40 like 4 years earlier than Pepper.
Yeah... the Flaming Lips and Stone Temple Pilots opened for them on the summer tour for Independent Worm Saloon. It was pretty funny because looking around the crowd you could totally tell who was there to see which band. Then a few years later "Pepper" dropped and again, at shows you could totally tell who'd been listening to them for years and who just heard of them last month on the radio.
WHO THE HELL WAS IN MY BED
Citation needed for that because I was listening to the radio back then and I'm pretty sure that song never made the Billboard top 40. Maybe it made the top 40 on the "Modern Rock Tracks" chart or something like that.
@@AbbeyRoadkill1 Topped out at 24 in Modern Rock in the US: guitarhero.fandom.com/wiki/Who_Was_in_My_Room_Last_Night
@@AbbeyRoadkill1 Also, don't blame us if you only follow and consider top 40 pop.
“Pepper is a song about young people with a death wish”
well I’m only 15 & that kind of explained everything
Ministry getting mentioned in a Todd video. What a time to be alive.
I FORGOT THERE WAS A PUPPY IN THE SHADOWS
Pepper was their biggest hit but "Who was in my room" was also a hit.
Fun fact: Paul Leary, the Butthole Surfers’ guitarist, produced Sublime’s self-titled album. That alone makes him a 90s legend
he produced the Meat Puppets on Too High to Die- possibly the best they ever sounded
@@TheLarryburns84 and he also contributed a guitar solo to the song “Lounge Fly” on Stone Temple Pilots’ second album
I never heard "Pepper", but _do_ know "Who Was In My Room Last Night?" On top of appearing in Guitar Hero II and Beavis & Butthead, it was used in - of all things - a 90's Nintendo commercial.
Yes, Butthole Surfers was used to advertise Nintendo. (It's the "Play It Loud" commercial; look it up)
yes, thank you. Also featured some awesome animation.
I also knew "Who was in my room last night" but I knew it from a Nickelodeon ad, I'll put the link/title here if I can be fucked to find it
I remember seeing that on tv and being shocked that they'd use a Butthole Surfers song, considering how family friendly they were.
I remember this MTV2 commercial from early 2002 that used that weird "I'm flying" intro from "Who Was in My Room Last Night?" in it. I can't find the commercial, but I remember listening to the actual song about a year later and realizing "Oh, it's that song!"
老人圣诞 I think it was a Cartoon Network ad actually, plus the Play It Loud campaign ad featured it as well
Gibby Haynes sang for a project called "P". They only released one album, s/t, in 1993. The lead guitarist was Johnny Depp. It was a pastiche band - one song sounded like bowie, another like Lou reed, another like iggy pop, etc. without being outright parodies. It also included a Daniel Johnston cover and an ABBA cover. The lead single was called "Michael Stipe".
Definitely one of the weirdest CDs I ever picked from a bargain bin.
I'll have to look for that, it sounds interesting
The verses of “ Pepper” reminds me of the song by The Nails” 88 Lines”.😀
...about 44 women. I always thought that too and probably more of a direct influence than Loser
OMG!!!! I love that song.
"Whatcha doing boy?"
"Chewin chocolate."
"Where did you get it."
"Doggy dropped it."
Carry on
" what you doin? ' chewin chocolate' " where'd you get it?" ' doggy dropped it' " carry on"
i dont give a fuck about the FBI
I don't give a fuck about the CIA
"Chocolate? This is doo-doo, baby!
Hey there bud
I first found your content on That Guy with the Glasses, and you were a part of my angsty high school life, but when the site went downhill I lost you in the shuffle of everyone going back to RUclips. Now with the drama going on I thought of you again and wondered if you were here. I was pleasantly surprised, thanks for still keeping at it. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some binge watching to do......
I saw them so many times in the 80s. They were a blast live.
Trivia: the lead singer’s father was a local children’s TV host who called himself “Mr. Peppermint”. I always assumed that the song’s title “Pepper” was a tongue in cheek nod to him.
i remember "who was in my room last night' was a big song before pepper
Yup tru that video was played on MTV
Independent Worm Saloon was a much better album than Electric Larryland, too.
"There must have been a body there. I swear I smelt some flesh."
One of the first songs announced for guitar hero 2!
Some songs get big on MTV and select radio stations, but less so in the mainstream and sales. I loved the song (minus the intro, which succeeded in its obvious goal of annoying the listener even before the music kicked in), but I never heard it on the radio, while "Pepper" was played to death.
This is exactly what I need at 2 AM on April 1st.
I always understood “jingle of the dogs collar” was a comment on being in a relationship/love and when you have a home together or are wanting to grow, having a dog come around and the jingle of it’s collar is symbolic.
At the same time I'm fully willing to believe that what happened is that Hayes scribbled "the jingle of a dog's collar would be good right here" in the margins of a song he was working on then decided to make that the lyric.
....I just thought it was a simple BDSM ballad 😅
I'll be honest, given their legendary status, I thought this was going to an April Fools video. But you made a decent case here.
Who Was In My Room Last Night is amazing though.
I was in high school several years before this hit, and I can say The Butthole Surfers were pretty well-known, at least among kids in school. Probably because of the name, but I guess it's one of those bands that is famous but doesn't have a "hit" because it's not on commercial radio. Today they would have a zillion views on RUclips or whatever, but back then we just passed around cassettes.
Dead Milkmen, Violent Fems
Oh man, the mixtapes we had...
Kind of equivalent to soundcloud rappers now. Lots of people know them, but they aren't very popular, now and then they get a break
I found these guys off a compilation soundtrack for covers of old Saturday morning cartoons
They did the Underdog Theme
“Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits”
@@randomlaughable That album turned out way better than it should've, thanks to Violent Femmes, Toadies, Helmet, and (another Texas legend) the Rev. Horton Heat. Might have the last listenable track Liz Phair recorded too.
I'm a couple years late, but the "Electric Larry" in Electric Larryland also refers to the alien drug dealer in the cult film, "Get Crazy."
I'm a couple of years and a couple of months late, but you are correct, sir.
Wrong
COUGH SYRUP SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE SECOND SINGLE OFF ELECTRICLARRYLAND, ONE OF THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE 90S
I was trying to remember if it was a single. It's definitely the song I know best after Pepper
Agreed
I know that your Mother is a martyr
I heard she's got connections with the mob.
Completely agree. Best song off Electric Larryland imo.
I hate cough syrup don't you?
It’s great that Todd released a video before I go to bed.SCREW SLEEP!
I've watched a ton of these, and this one is my favorite. I was exactly the right demographic to get overexposed to "Pepper", and yet I NEVER knew about the Butthole Surfers' backstory.
Great video, rewatch it time to time. Though you missed they had a kind of spiritual follow up a few years later to pepper. Their song "Dracula from Houston" stylistically is an even more upbeat and pop version of pepper.
Isn't the song about Heroin? I remember someone mentioning the "cinnamon and sugary" line plus the title of pepper refering to the drug, plus "You never know just how you look through other peoples eyes" could be from a Junkie's perspective, doing "it" in texas refering to the Heroin crash in Texas the previous year. Everybody shooting up and dying in ridiculous ways?
Finally someone who makes sense.
Thats R.E.M - Imitation of Life
I heard that from a guy that heard it from another guy. So , yes it is fact.
That was said about almost every song in the 90s ...... if someone didnt know what a song was about they said it was about drugs in The 60s it was acid, 70s/80s was cocaine and 90s heroin
also LSD "diane"
I am absolutely floored that he didn't mention by far their most radio-friendly song, Dracula From Houston.
I swear I remember it being the theme to a sitcom at one point. It sounds like Smashmouth could of written and sung it.
I know Scrubs used it at one point, that's where I first heard it. Still love the song: just the right balance of weird and listenable.
My favorite of theirs for sure.
"Dracula from houston" lmao
You're half right, it was actually the theme of a little known machinima called, "Dude, Where's My Mount?" ....Ohh god why do I know that off the top of my head?
I was actually gonna ask some fans what their most tuneful stuff was; I find what they're doing really interesting and liked bits of the singles they released, but I'm really not a noise music fan (too much of a "don't bore us get to the chorus" kinda listener). I'll have to check this one out though!
Just stopped by to tell you that I’m really enjoying your one hit wonder videos! Thanks so much for the research and hard work!!!
Todd just goes so much harder on his videos than he'd legitimately have to. I'm a huge fan.
Pepper is my favorite song. I grew up singing along with the riff on Biggie’s Hypnotize, memorizing Loser by Beck, and getting sad over RHCP. I remember listening to Lake of Fire performed by Nirvana on the way to an extended family members funeral with my mom. I was probably 11, lmao.
Butthole Surfers and Primus mean so much to me. We’ll never get this type of awesome again.
The one time I'll willingly click on an April Fools video
oh my god it's you.
Wait, what is the joke?
I don't think this is an April Fools joke..
Marcosatsu the joke was that this must be a joke because"butthole surfers"
But, uh... It's not an April Fools video. It wasn't even uploaded on April 1st...
Their severely deconstructed version of American Woman will break your mind forever.
Of all of the semi-hits of the 90's, this is one of the few that I can listen to today and genuinely enjoy. Great analysis - I really enjoyed the video. This was the first of your vids that I've seen, and you won me over. Sub'd! Looking forward to more!
"Electric Larryland."
I wonder if this Larry is also a Cancer. #FloatOn
That was the Butthole Surfers AND Filter's Richard Patrick (who was with NIN at the time) trashing NIN's trailer XD
Does Filter count as a One Hitter?
Hey man! Nice shot!
@@MandrakeFernflower Nope. "Take A Picture" gave them a second hit.
@@autofire372 Why did he have to keep repeating the lyrics in that one like Jimmy Two-Times from Goodfellas?
@@josephtelegen8754 Let me think about it, in the meantime I'm gonna go get the papers get the papers
Funny how one of my favourite band's "one hit wonder" is what I would consider their "trainrecord"
Yeah. I would be on a college campus and see a bunch of copies of Electric Larryland in the CD bin. That's when I bought mine and never regretted it. Love that album.
13:45 She might be in shadows like her owner, but it's nice to see Amy in a episode.
"Who was in my room last night" was & still is a favorite.
Look it up, you'll find flea in it...
Although I don't mind some of the Butthole's stuff, I was always more of a fan of other Touch and Go bands, like Big Black, Killdozer, Scratch Acid, etc. But none of them had big hits outside of the indie chart. Which probably meant they got to number 500 in the mainstream charts. 😂
Pepper is about my mom's group of friends shortly after she left that scene. Bobby the "racist" was Bobby Soxx from Stick Men With Ray Guns, but I knew him as Uncle Bobby.
Did your mom know the "Ever present Football player R*pist"
Jane Child's "Don't wanna Fall in Love" TOTALLY deserves a review. She should have been MUCH bigger than she was.
Co-sign on that!
I forgot about her, I think people were not ready for her nose ring and chain attached to it
That song is the bee's teets
Anyone who's into good music check out their first two albums: _Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac_ and _Rembrandt Pussyhorse._ Two of the most innovative, influential, and brilliant albums of all-time.
Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac... is such a great album. An excellent follow-up full-length to their EP, Brown Reason to Live (or, Pee-Pee the Sailor). That album has some of my favorite Butthole Surfers tunes, like "Butthole Surfer" and "Dum-Dum."
Rembrandt Pussyhorse is excellent and it's so fun to say!
Seeing them live was like a living acid trip it was wild, they were the Lips before the Lips, it was rad, and then the Flaming Lips took it up another notch and a half
Oh, God. I remember this song playing at the end of an episode of Daria.
There's a GOLDMINE of artists from the 90s you could do videos on: Nada Surf, Superdrag, LEN, The Cardigans, Cornershop, Dishwalla, Harvey Danger, Fastball, Jimmy Ray, Eagle-Eye Cherry, 4 Non Blondes, Crash Test Dummies, Toadies, New Radicals, Spacehog, Blind Melon, The Verve, The Verve PIPE, Marcy Playground (!!!), Natalie Imbruglia, Baz Lurhman, White Town (!!!), Primitive Radio Gods, James, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Trio, Jesus Jones, even Mazzy Star.
ella elise Local H!!!
Neither of those are one-hits, especially not Travis. They had two big albums in a row.
Well, Todd has covered The Cardigans.
@Cory Thompson For the series 'One Hit Wonderland' it kind of does matter how many hits.
Brimful of ashur on the 45
LOVE this song, LOVE this band. I’m being absolutely serious when I say the Surfers’ output in the ‘80s is pretty solid. Locust Abortion Technician is very entertaining, and Rembrandt Pussyhorse (yes, I just typed that) is also killer. If you want a good time, check out “Jimi” from Hairway to Steven. It’s over 10 minutes and trippy as all get out.
this is one of my favorite bands they’ve always resonated with me in a spiritual way
Pretty sure I read somewhere that he’s singing about real people he went to high school with.
I dunno... I think *Whatever (I Had a Dream)* off the *Romeo + Juliet* soundtrack had a small bit of success, not mentioned here.
It was a couple years ago I found a stripper dancing to that song, and I emptied my pocket on the stage, because I loved it.
Not my *worst* decision, ever... But ranks.
you probably made her day, so maybe it wasn't that bad. Not something I would recomend on the daily but not exactly a terrible, terrible thing.
And if she chose that song she probably felt vindicated
They also had The Shame of Life, Who was in my room last night.The Wooden Song is pretty well known. Dracula From Huston was the theme song for Scrubs.
Who the Hell Was in my Bed Last Night. Their first hit.
I love that song... great, now I have to go back to stripping just so I can play that song. Never thought to but what a perfect song to dance to!