Butthole Surfers: Hurdy Gurdy Man Remixes

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Rough Trade 1991.  RTT240R

Discogs

This 12″ came free with the first few (UK) copies of the Piouhgd album.  It comes with no information at all, nor can I find anything on the net about it, so all I can tell you is that it contains three remixes of Hurdy Gurdy Man, originally on the album and also a single.  I have no idea what the remixes are called or who did them.  I suspect that it was intended as a separate release, but only a handful of test pressings were made which were given away when the project was abandoned.

The song is a Donovan composition from 1968, and the Butties are surprisingly faithful to the original, especially the extreme vibrato Donovan used.  Donovan used John-Paul Jones (of Led Zep) for the noisy guitars on his version – there are more noisy guitars here.  The result I think is excellent and it suits their style very well.  These remixes mostly obsess over detail – picking a small element of the original which they emphasise and repeat it to make something which is both instantly recognisable as a remix, but also totally new.  The idea of a Butthole Surfers remix 12″ is bizarre, but the quality of these mixes means they pull it off I think.

Piouhgd has been re-issued and you should buy it.  It’s not their best work, but it’s a fine album and includes the Widdowermaker EP, but not these tracks.

4 comments
  1. wow, never even heard of these! thanks! man, I wish these guys would actually put out a new album of mind-numbing psychedelia again…

    1. It’s weird how forgotten these remixes are – I can’t find out anything at all about them. It’s also weird that they only had a UK release when they’re a US band. Maybe the band didn’t authorise them and they insisted they disappear. They seem to be creatively a spent force now – I’m not expecting anything worthwhile in the future. Great while they lasted though.

  2. Thanks man, I love the original Buttholes version of this… and I didn’t even know they’d remixed it. Thanks again 🙂

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