300(ish) Words on Butthole Surfers’ ‘Pepper’
Marky got with Sharon, and Sharon got Cherise
The first time I heard “Pepper” by Butthole Surfers, I was in the rocketry elective at a day camp I only attended that one summer. I was nine years old. The rocketry room was small and confined and wooden, the air heavy with the smells of wood glue and spray paint. I was the youngest camper in the elective, the only girl. I was invisible, silently attaching fins to cylinder. Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies
The rocketry counselor was all flannel and long hair. He had a battery-operated AM/FM radio that sat on an exposed wooden beam of the wall at his back. The song starts with a slowed-down guitar like a grimy saw. Then the beat. When Gibby Haynes’ rhythmic vocals start in, he sounds far away. It was murky but exciting. And then the chorus, deep and flat and psychedelic. I couldn’t understand all the lyrics, but I didn’t need to.
Pouring like an avalanche coming down the mountain It was like hearing music for the very first time. I think that even as it was happening, I knew that this was a turning point in the character of my musical taste.
Later that year, I bought my first CD: The Spice Girls’ Spice.
I didn’t know the artist or the name of the song that had planted an alternative bug in my ear. I didn’t know how to find it again. (The beginning of Beck’s “Loser” got my hopes up every time, only to let me down and leave me with a scent memory of aerosol fumes.) I don’t think I reunited with “Pepper” until years later, when Kazaa exploded the radio’s tyranny and expanded my ability to discover and rediscover music.
But it was “Pepper” that had opened my mind to prepare me for the years to come, for my older sister’s mixtapes: Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Bush, music that resonated in my gut, somewhere behind my solar plexus. I can taste you on my lips and smell you in my clothes.
Rachel Hock (@RachelCraves) is a writer and theater producer in Boston.
