1. Butthole SurfersBrown Reason To Live
This was the first punk music I ever heard. I was in fourth grade at hockey practice and a kid on my team brought it in and played it for us in the locker room. His older sister was a punk and had crazy jet-black hair that was super tall – she was the coolest person I’d ever seen at the time. He was like, ‘this is punk music,’ and he played what I later learned was ‘The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave’. We all laughed because there were tonnes of swear words, and the name of the band was hilarious to a little kid. But I was in fourth grade, so I never thought to ask him for a copy. Two years later, I met a girl in my class whose sister was a punk, and she was a punk too, with the side of her head shaved. She made me a tape that had tracks from that first Butthole Surfers record, all of Circle Jerks’ Group Sex, a couple of Misfits tracks, and a couple by Suicidal Tendencies. It was my first punk tape.
Before that, I had just seen what was ‘punk’ on MTV. So, I’d maybe seen a picture of Johnny Rotten or something, Devo, Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had this idea in my head of what punk was, but Butthole Surfers… that’s what punk was, creating this chaos. When I finally heard something like the Sex Pistols, I felt like, meh, it’s not as crazy as I thought. It wasn’t really until years later in high school that I found anything as crazy as the Butthole Surfers, when I first saw Couch play.
