Butthole Surfers – Pepper
1996 · Directed by Gavin Bowden
166K Likes
Best comments
1.“Fun fact: 'butthole surfing' is an old Texas pastime where you ride an inner tube down an irrigation ditch while being towed by a pickup truck.”
More comments
- 2.“Butthole Surfers in the mid-'90s: 'Hey, we've been making crazy experimental music and having fun. Let's do one mainstream album – it'll be nice to have some money, haha.' *Creates mega-hit, makes money, goes right back to crazy experimental music.* Absolute legends.”
- 3.“This was my dad's favorite song. Naturally, he abandoned me as a child.”
The story
Pepper took a band called the Butthole Surfers to number one on the US Modern Rock chart in 1996, which is its own kind of miracle. It came off their seventh album, Electriclarryland, went top 15 in Australia and finished fourth in Triple J's Hottest 100 that year.
Director Gavin Bowden shot the video like 1960s TV news. In grainy black-and-white 16mm, the band gets arrested in a Texas hotel for kidnapping, with reporters and cameramen crowding in. Erik Estrada plays the victim, police rescue him, and singer Gibby Haynes, the ringleader, gives interviews while the cops bag evidence. Then it cuts to color: the band playing on an American Bandstand-style show, plus retro cooking and variety-show bits, and the police eventually turn up as backup dancers.
Watch for the canned corn. The cops and Estrada eat it straight from the can, and Bowden said it was a dig at how directors spoon-feed images to viewers. Subtle it is not.
