Taking Sides: Early Butthole Surfers vs. Early Flaming Lips vs. Early Dead Milkmen

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Better to fry rock, rock fried, serve fries? dq to thread.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

this is a key question.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

This one is too easy: Buttholes all the way. Early Flaming Lips was just raw and not particularly compelling enough to make that raw inexperience a virtue. Dead Milkmen very rarely, if at all, floated my boat...just juvenile whining over punkity-ass juvenile guitar. (Notable exception being "Instant Club Hit", which was FAB.) Early Buttholes, by contrast, was wild over-the-top kind of stuff, both musically (maybe they hadn't polished their technique yet but they wrung sounds out that were terrifying) and lyrically (what from the other two even starts to compare with "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave"?). Flaming Lips got better as they went, Buttholes got worse, and Dead Milkmen pretty much stayed the course.

― Sean Carruthers, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Flaming Lips got better as they went, Buttholes got worse, and Dead Milkmen pretty much stayed the course.
2/3 of this I can aggree with though I always thought The Flaming Lips are bad psyche lite.

― brg30, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Come on! Dead Milkmen kicked ass all the way up to Beelzebubba (Eat Your Paisley is an exception- it was kinda weak).

― Manny Parsons, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Yeah, Surfers in a landslide. Nobody fucks with Gibby!

― Yancey, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

alt: grotesque humor vs. humorously grotesque vs. gross-out humor.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I have to go with those Butthole Surfers too. pioughd sucked big time though.

― Lek Dukagjin, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I'm not familiar with Flaming Lips. Dead Milkmen aren't even in the running. (I'm from Philadelphia.) So I'd have to provisionally say Butthole Surfers. I'm pretty confident they can beat most of their contemporaries in those early years.

― DeRayMi, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

New creative answers pls. (i.e. gross out name vs. freak out name vs. drop dead funny name; rejection of society vs. rejection of coherency vs. rejection of rejection).

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Er...

Degernerative illness, v. Distinguished Grey, v. Arrested Devlopment?

― JM, Saturday, 3 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

now you're getting the idea.

― Sterling Clover, Saturday, 3 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Early Butthole Surfers were ok. Flaming Lips are boring. The Dead Milkmen were juvenile.

― Steve Morrissey, Saturday, 3 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Texas BBQ vs. Grapes of Wrath vs. Philly Cheese???

― bryan, Sunday, 4 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

too drunk to fuck vs too tired to fuck vs too jeuvenille to fuck.

― Mr Noodles, Sunday, 4 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

its strange how 'early' begins to mean different things as time goes on. eg, butthole surfers early for me would mean pre-85, but as time has gone on i could see that people might use early to mean anything up to pioughd. anyway, i'm taking this to mean buttholes -85, flaming lips up pre-priest driven ambulance, and, uh, i've never heard the dead milkmen

which makes this q easy. butthole surfers! the early stuff is nearly all fantastic, flmaing lips were pretty run of the mill until priest driven ambulance (altho that last track on ohmy gawd is pretty great)

― gareth, Monday, 5 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

oh, you fucks!! The Dead Milkmen, all the way! if only because early butthole surfers has already been overrated enough, and early flaming lips isnt so great compared to Big Lizard in My Backyard, Bucky Fellini, shit even Metapsychical Grafitti...

― matt, Monday, 5 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

seven years pass...

Me in Spin in the '80s on:

Dead Milkmen (vs Thelonious Monster)

http://books.google.com/books?id=-eDfuEXUHp8C&pg=PA23&dq='dead+milkmen'+'thelonius+monster'&rview=1&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Butthole Surfers

http://books.google.com/books?id=sc9ijqDIbEgC&pg=PA25&dq='chuck+eddy'+butthole+surfers&rview=1&cd=3#v=onepage&q='chuck%20eddy'%20butthole%20surfers&f=false

Flaming Lips

http://books.google.com/books?id=FL-rqqrDxb8C&pg=PA16&dq='chuck+eddy'+flaming+lips&rview=1&cd=2#v=onepage&q='chuck%20eddy'%20flaming%20lips&f=false

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 14:59 (fourteen years ago) link

Btw the answer is early Buttholes > early Lips > early Milkmen.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 15:01 (fourteen years ago) link

It's interesting that you speculated on DM's possible musical influences. I've never heard the Dickies and they don't sound like what Boingo I know. Back when I used to listen to them all the day long I didn't know what to think, but a month or so ago, I picked up albums by Wire and the Buzzcocks for the first time and heard their influence on DM in each of them.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 15:08 (fourteen years ago) link

Buttholes > Milkmen > Lips

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 15:09 (fourteen years ago) link

(Fwiw, "early Buttholes" for me means through Pyschic Powerless Another Man's Sac; "early Lips" means their debut EP and maybe their first album or two -- after which I've never cared about them -- and "early Milkmen" means Big Lizard In My Backyard, I guess. And for all of them, "early" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "late".)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 15:13 (fourteen years ago) link

...Though okay, in retrospect, I might care as much about "Punk Rock Girl" and "Instant Club Hit" as much as anything on their debut this side of "Bitchin' Camaro" to be honest. So maybe the Milkmen didn't go as downhill as the other two, but then again they didn't have as far to fall in the first place. I'm happy with my CD copy of Death Rides A Pale Cow (The Ultimate Collection (only Milkmen I own) either way.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 15:18 (fourteen years ago) link

But I would easily take either A Collection Of Songs Representing An Enthusiasm For Recording...By Amateurs: 1984-1990 or The Shambolic Birth And Early Life Of The Flaming Lips (Catalog Sampler): 1983-1991 over that Milkmen CD. (Probably just contradicted myself, but I swear on both of those I never pay much attention to the post-'87 stuff. Do have a "She Don't Use Jelly" 45 around here somewhere though.)

― xhuxk, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 15:23 (fourteen years ago) link

I'd probably take early Alice Donut over all of this...

― dlp9001, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 15:44 (fourteen years ago) link

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