The question of whether to play at a "frat punk party" presented some ethical dilemmas for the G'ville punk-rock community, but a lot of us decided to take the chance to play at a fraternity, maybe alter a few people's perceptions of "punk rock," and perhaps provoke the natives. Enter Butter The Heifer. The Heifer was a group I played guitar for in 1988-89, along with (at the time) Michael Murphy (bass), Robert Hanrahan (vox) and Brett Olsen (drums). We played obnoxious metal-punk not too dissimilar to early Black Flag and Dead Kennedys, with lyrics mostly ridiculing various social conventions and celebrating things we liked, such as beer.
We played in the afternoon on the first day of the festival. We hadn't checked the place out before the gig, so as we hauled in the amps we were not real surprised to see things like the frat "chapter room" covered with black plastic garbage bags with spray-painted graffiti on them, and various frat men wearing ripped T-shirts with anarchy symbols and sorority women with their hair moussed into ersatz mohawks. We played on a section of the roof jutting out from the first floor, an area maybe 40 feet wide and 20 feet deep, overlooking a wooden deck where the partiers watched. I had figured we could gain a bit of license to be obnoxious if we curried favor with the crowd, so we started off with a throwaway song called "Theta Chi," saluting the fraternity and saying how great they were. The first verse, as I recall, went "Theta Chi, Theta Chi, Theta Chi is Number One/Leadership/Scholarship/Athleticship/And havin' fun/Drinkin' beer/Smokin' pot/Always gettin' super grades/Gettin' laid/Gettin' laid/Gettin' laid/Gettin' laid." For all I know, they still use the song as a pledge chant or something -- we threw lyric sheets down at the crowd before we started.
We proceeded through our usual set, songs like "666 Pack," "Spring Break Sucks," "We Will Repossess You" (a song about repo'ing someone's soul after kicking Satan's ass), "I Killed God" (we were equal-opportunity blasphemers), "Cookies And Beer," and a Cuddlefish cover, "Frat Boy," which Robert sarcastically announced to the crowd as being "not about you, because today you're all PUNKS!"
Our set was average, playing-wise, but the real fireworks had to do with substances. First, we had brought along a box of Whippets (ie. nitrous oxide cartidges) and took breaks to use them onstage -- Robert got the lion's share since he had his hands free most of the time. At one point Brett got off his drum kit to do one, and was so overcome he was staggering around with his upper and lower body out of synch with each other, looking like a puppet with too much slack in its strings -- he said "Gimme Whippee Baby!" several times in a high-pitched, maniacal voice, which was pretty scary. I was afraid he was going to wander off the roof. Robert also pelted the crowd with Little Debbies and Pixie Stix, which we often threw out at gigs and just as often got hit with shortly afterward -- I don't think the frat people ate any of them.
And then there were the pickled pigs' feet. One night, at least a year before this gig, Cuddlefish vocalist Mark Underberger had been at Albertson's supermarket and had bought about 6 one-gallon jars of out-dated pickled pigs' feet for a dime apiece. Mark was rooming at Robert's house at the time, and the jars of pigs' feet sat in a cabinet over the refrigerator for a long time, waiting for the day they'd step into the spotlight. We brought about 4 of the jars to the Theta Chi gig, and sometime during our set, after we had acclimated the crowd to being pelted with less-foul snacks, Robert opened a jar and started throwing handfuls of the mushy, briny meat -- I mean, all you had to do was touch one of the pigs' feet and it would just crumble apart in your hand, they had no structural inegrity left. So the frat people caught on quickly that they were being hit with disgusting glop, and most of them took cover. We kept playing, and after awhile a few of them would venture back outside, and Robert would start up again with the artillery.
Close to the end of the set, Robert (who was, shall we say, inebriated), got down on his hands and knees at the edge of the roof, and saw that there was a hot tub directly below him. He got one of the jars, lined it up like a bombadier, and dropped it -- a direct hit! The jar didn't break, it just sat there at the bottom of the hot tub. So Robert got another jar, lined it up, let it go -- and both jars broke, filling the hot tub with shattered glass, brine, and pigs'-feet mush. At the time, I don't think anyone else in the band realized what Robert had done, but he told us soon enough. Once we finished playing I wanted to get our equipment and ourselves out of the frat ASAP, expecting that word about our little stunt was going to get around and we might be looking at a mass beat-down from the brothers. We packed up our stuff and got it out to the car as fast as we could, and sure enough, the frat guys were already talking about what we'd done.
To their credit, none of the Theta Chi people hit us or even hassled us, though we were told that we would not get paid our promised $75 appearance fee due to the cost of cleaning the hot tub. Fair enough. Robert actually hung out at Theta Chi most of the night with some friends from the band scene, and didn't have any problems -- he reported later that several of the brothers thought it was really cool the way he'd desecrated their hot tub. I went back the last night and watched a little of Scream, and traded my Raging Slab to their road manager for a Scream T-shirt (his idea, not mine). Theta Chi, believe it or not, did another "Decline" party the next year, but it was only one night. After that, the frat punk festival was no more. I would love to know what the fraternity members made of the whole spectacle. I recall talking a couple years later to Mercy Strange of The Youngies, who had played at the same gig -- he didn't bother with pretense and repeatedly cursed the crowd for being a bunch of hypocrites and poseurs, and met with a less tolerant reponse than the Heifer. See, kids, diplomacy counts!
Whenever people who have never been in a band ask me about my misspent youth, the "Theta Chi Pigs'-Feet-In-The-Hot-Tub Incident" is one of the first stories I tell them, that and the Turbo Satan gig at Mike Koretzky's apartment. But that's another tale for another time. Fondly, Tom Nordlie 9/25/99
Weasel was the one who kept loading and handing out the whippetizer for us, too. He was sitting against the back 'wall' of our stage (which was a huge window) behind Brett. He's the one who first noticed that that there was a big crack in the window that was slowly creeping all the way across the glass as we played. It seemed to be keyed mostly to the bass, so we figured it had something to do with the fact that i brought *TWO* Ampeg SVT stacks to that gig.
I don't know, but another funny related story: David Hornbuckle (you know, singer/acoustic guitar player in PopCanon) used to work for Insite Magazine, which is published by Mark Meisel. Mark was in Theta Chi, and apparently was there and remembers the whole 'Decline' debacle. He might even have been THE GUY responsible -- the one in your story who brought the idea from his previous chapter. He remembers the pigs-feet-hot-tub incident, but didn't remember which band did it. I think he said he caught some shit from his 'brothers' for it...
Weasel was the one who kept loading and handing out the whippetizer for us, too. He was sitting against the back 'wall' of our stage (which was a huge window) behind Brett. He's the one who first noticed that that there was a big crack in the window that was slowly creeping all the way across the glass as we played. It seemed to be keyed mostly to the bass, so we figured it had something to do with the fact that i brought *TWO* Ampeg SVT stacks to that gig.
I don't know, but another funny related story: David Hornbuckle (you know, singer/acoustic guitar player in PopCanon) used to work for Insite Magazine, which is published by Mark Meisel. Mark was in Theta Chi, and apparently was there and remembers the whole 'Decline' debacle. He might even have been THE GUY responsible -- the one in your story who brought the idea from his previous chapter. He remembers the pigs-feet-hot-tub incident, but didn't remember which band did it. I think he said he caught some shit from his 'brothers' for it...