Reading Alex Deller's Guardian interview with David Yow and Duane Denison, I was reminded of the fact that The Jesus Lizard and forebears Scratch Acid are a grievous omission from Our Band Could Be Your Life (though they do get a mention). But perhaps Michael Azerrad decided that there was only room to devote one chapter to a bunch of Texas-raised fuckheads in his otherwise impeccable tome, and Butthole Surfers understandably got the nod.
Yow and Denison's mob may never have quite scaled the heights/plumbed the depths of their fellow Lone Star State natives, but they certainly got into their fair share of scrapes, particularly on stage, and Yow's penchant for nudity and (in Deller's words) "parlour tricks involving his scrotum" earned him a certain level of notoriety.
Unsurprisingly, Yow is quoted as declaring "I love it when things get out of hand" - and he's not alone. Denison too claims: "We want mindless mayhem along with an element of sophistication - that was always our thing."
The guitarist expands on that with a description that brilliantly captures the tensions in The Jesus Lizard's music: "To me, David's voice was almost like a free jazz saxophone. There was always the dichotomy between being this very organised working unit and the more free-range kind of thing." (This, it occurs to me, is very much also true of Les Savy Fav and Tim Harrington.)
What's great about new album Rack is that age doesn't seem to have dulled those edges - but touring it brings its own challenges for a band whose members are all now in their 60s. Fair play to Yow for acknowledging that if he wants to come close to performing in the way he used to, he needs the help of a personal trainer to get into shape.
I'll leave the final word to him, on getting back together and playing shows: "[I]t seemed like fucking an old girlfriend." Charming.
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