The Devil's Jukebox...

Big Black - Kerosene (Live Ignition From A Hometown Gig From '86 Maaann!)

Butthole Surfers - Jimi (Massive Live Version Recorded @ The Mean Fiddler)

Kerosene... my god! what a track.
Forget about your Teen Spirits and the like... this is surely the most cutting and straight to the point track about small town isolation and the mentality that goes with it, and the incredible guitar harmonics of the intro were a rallying cry to get your arse to the dancefloor and shake your booty (well, actually just lurch around a lot crashing into each other with frightening velocity) round our way.

And what can I say about Jimi...
Not a lot really, apart from the fact that round this time the Butthole Surfers were possibly the scareiest live band around, but in a humourous way... if that makes sense, and this was the monster of a track that they used to really let go on....
Oh who am I kidding... they really let loose on everything they did back then, and scared the shit out of any unsuspecting punter at many a festival who just happened to pass within half a mile of the stage.

This was the kind of music that rocked my world for pretty much the whole of the 80's and early 90's...
And the majority of the music I was into was released on either Touch And Go or Blast First. (Blast First being the UK outlet and collaborator with Touch And Go)

The above couple of tracks are taken from the 'Nothing Short of Total War' compilation, which was a cropped version of the 'Devil's Jukebox' 10x7" boxset... both of which were released by Blast First in 1989.

Basically around the late 80's anything and everything released by these two mighty labels was snaffled up by me, and hardly a bad release amongst them...
Although listening back to a lot of them makes for a difficult and not too pleasurable experience now... maybe I'm mellowing with age, and I probably play records by The Monkees or something more than I play records by UT and Big Stick, mind you I used to listen to The Monkees a lot back then too.

But saying that, I do still drag out my Big Black and Butthole Surfers collections on quite a regular basis...
And I'm sure there will be a post or two on them going into more detail about the bands at some stage in the future (I can't believe it's taken me over a year to post a track by The Butties...?)
But for the time being, just download these tracks, crank up your stereo, and do a bit of lurching.
Careful of that dodgy hip though!


Buy - Big Black - The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape (Atomizer)
Buy - Butthole Surfers - Hairway to Steven
Visit - Big Black
Visit - Butthole Surfers
Visit - Butthole Surfer Fan, great site run by Butties fan... natch!

Simon
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