The Imperial Butt Wizards

It was always with great anticipation and excitement that we looked forward to an evening watching The Imperial Butt Wizards perform. Elements of surprise and danger were always present, and you were never quite sure if you would end up injured or covered in something that never came out in the wash. A visual delicacy filled with flying debris, costumes constructed out of fun fur, plastic grapes and duct tape, their shows had a penchant for eliciting hysterical laughter from the crowd partly due to the sheer entertainment they provided and partly due to the thrill of potentially being harmed. The Imperial Butt Wizards were a band filled with some of the most creative minds hell-bent on having fun at all costs!

Along with a recent interview with Paul K, Michael Quercio and Steve Housden on the origins and stories surrounding this infamous LA band, I dug into my collection of photographs I had shot at several venues throughout San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1989 and 1990, and present them here together with two oil paintings I had created from these photographs.

Bon Appetit!

Julie Pavlowski Green

March 30, 2013

Paul K

JULIE PAVLOWSKI GREEN: When did the band form?

PAUL K: Oh geez, I should know that, since I am the one who started it. I suppose it sounds odd to say I'm not entirely sure, but time was kind of a blur. I guess... late 80's for sure, maybe 1988?

 MICHAEL QUERCIO: I think they formed in 1988.

STEVE HOUSDEN: It was a Tuesday...

Al Hansford, Ingrid Long and Michael Quercio

JPG: Tell us about the origin of the band name?

PK: None of the early members (the earliest being myself, Adam Sidell, and Steve Brown, along with some other people who would be involved in the shows in various capacities -- Ingrid Long, Dawn Hoes, Father Larry) actually named the band. It really didn't even start as a band--our first "show" was when I got all the aforementioned people together to provide entertainment at a record release party at the Probe in Hollywood, and the "entertainment" turned out to be Father Larry smashing the food table, smearing his body with guacamole, and then chasing people at the party around. So I guess it started basically as small scale, domestic terrorism. 

Adam Sidell

Within a month or so, music had gotten involved, because I had written a bunch of songs and got these people to agree to play them. We had no name, we would just make up different names and get shows playing at places like the Troubadour, which at that time was heavy metal heaven, and mostly we thought it was funny to play these idiotic songs I had written and throw things at the crowd. At the time, I had a pair of antique Chinese fingernail covers--they were very nice, and they were also razor sharp, and so sometimes I would just jab strangers in the ass with them. Anyway, at a party at Dave Travis' house, I had jabbed someone in the ass with the fingernail covers, and I believe it was Jason Shapiro from Celebrity Skin said, "you're just a butt wizard, you jab people in the ass, you're a butt wizard." Because of that comment, people just started calling us the Butt Wizards as the name for our band. Steve Brown added "Imperial" to it, simply because the Imperial Wizard is an office in the KKK and it made it all the more confusing. Ironically, I never like that name at all.

SH: The name "Butt Wizard" actually harkens back to the Late Cretaceous. It was an insult of particular rudeness among h. purgatoriu, an early N. American primate. Somehow in the Late 20th century, the term was spontaneously re-discovered by Jason Shapiro, who used it (quite effectively if I remember) against an early I.B.W. guitarist (s. brown) who had apparently been running around pinching the buttocks various humans in the area. The Imperial status of the order came sometime later...

Paul K making an entrance

JPG: What bands had you been in before you joined The Imperial Butt Wizards?

PK:  I had a project with some of the same people called "The Urine Samplers." We started out by creating fictitious urine samples of a fantastic nature for famous dead people, and these would be set about, and people could look at them while we played. That was for the first couple shows. Then it turned into something else with a girl wearing a unicorn mask tied to a cart  shrieking. It then got really bad and evolved into something more like a band.

MQ: The Salvation Army and The Three O'Clock

SH: Bad Karma (circa 1981 with Al Hansford, Robert Hecker, my sister Janet, and this friend of oursnamed Dave Hutch, who seems to have fallen through a hole in the Earth's crust); 1982-1983 Ella & the Blacks (a mishmash of honky weirdoes playing funk); 1984-1988 Lawndale (instrumental acid surf prog rock... for want of a better description. We were on SST)

JPG: What was your favorite song The Wizards performed?

PK: That is tough question to answer. Maybe I am being to hard on my songwriting (or maybe not), but I am not sure how much merit any of them had. You have to understand that my reason for being in a band was not necessarily to create music. As a musician, my greatest influence is maybe Marcel Duchamp, and if you are to point out that he was not in fact a musician, then you understand in an nutshell the problem. My favorite I guess was the introduction we would do (it never had a name, it was just the introduction, which would then lead into a song called "Oh Copernicus")--the introduction was when the parade would come marching out, and the parade was in many ways the highpoint of the show for me.

MQ: House

SH: I loved them all. There was variety, and everything was very original. Paul K's melodies were bizarrely simplistic which made them all the more awesome. Unfortunately the chaos of the onstage shenanigans often made the music get lost in the smoke and noise. "House" was always a particular favorite as was "Dweller in the Region".

JPG: What is the discography of the band?

PK: We released a single. Sometimes even I forget that. It was called "Songs for Gentlemen." It featured the songs "Donkey Party" and "Stinkin' Lincoln."

MQ: There is a 45 "Donkey Party"

SH: There was one 7" that Rush Riddle recorded...it was "Donkey Party" and "Stinkin' Lincoln". I think (it was) released as a double with Rosemarie's Billiegoat. It went to number one in a small public housing block in Lithuania for 3 1/2 years before all copies were smashed as "idolatry" and for being "against God" in a rather brief and inexplicable religious uprising, instigated by residents of the third floor. 

JPG: Please describe an unusual night for The Wizards.

PK: An "unusual" night??? Well, an unusual night would be: we show up at the club, everyone is on time and no one is on drugs, play our set, no one gets mad, no one gets injured, we get paid without the club owner threatening to sue us. That would have been a highly unusual night.

MQ: That was every night we played... One night I remember Paul threw rancid taco sauce at the audience.I really thought I was going to die from the fumes.

SH: There was no such thing as a "unusual night". It was all very ordinary and uneventful. Above-board; moral; ethical; and in strict compliance with all state and federal laws as well as with the Laws of Nature. Nothing odd to report here...no sir....not us.

JPG: When you played in Rutheford, for Sofia Coppola's birthday, who brought the martini glass that was two stories high?

Steve Housden and Paul K

PK: The martini glass was not two stories high. Maybe ten foot, so one story equivalent I guess. That was not ours. It was on the property when we arrived, it was either the Coppolas' own or they had rented it. That was a horrible trip. I felt sorry for the Coppolas having to deal with all these people. We had come up from LA with a very large and sordid entourage, and then another large group arrived from 

San Francisco. The family had given us a guesthouse to stay in, but it was far too small for all of the people we had with us, and many of them were on heavy drugs--I myself was always completely sober (yes, it shocked people to find that out, they usually thought I was lying when I would tell them that), and I just couldn't take it, so I went out and slept in the back of someone's car. Allan, who was playing guitar for us at that time, was exceptional on that trip. He had no shirt and a wrench attached to his nipple, and he came in and introduced himself to the family as Allan Wrench, pointing at the wrench lest they somehow not get the pun, and when he turned around to walk out, his pants were split entirely up 

Penetration Camp - San Francisco 1990

the back to reveal his ass. I could tell that the family was concerned at that time about exactly the nature of the people coming into their home. Allan also started punching one of the large Doric columns outside of their house--I don't remember why, but he severely injured his had. Someone who had come from SF wound up naked in the giant martini glass, and was spinning around. Also, someone else found a storage shed full of latex bodies that apparently were leftover props from Apocalypse Now, and tried to steal them. Someone else was trying to steal their authentic suit of samurai armor. And the people who ran the household were glaring at me, expecting me to somehow contain these people and restore dignity. On the positive side, I remember that the pizzas were very good.

Steve Brown

MQ: The giant martini glasses were filled with very expensive Champagne. I walked around the party with one bottle in each hand, drinking out of both of them. It was an incredible party!


SH: All that I remember was that it was a gas, and that I stupidly wore no shoes. This had the effect of allowing the broken glass on the porch to be ground into my feet while one of Sofia's cute friends was riding on my back for a song or two. I remember a great deal of pain from the next morning and for a couple of weeks hence. No idea about the martini glass; I think perhaps it was already there... 

 

JPG: Where any animals harmed in the making of your costumes?

PK: Not harmed, but perhaps insulted.

MQ: Just stuffed animals. Not real ones.

SH: Again, statute of limitations applies... I'm sure you'll understand. I can admit that my German Sheppard did eat some explosives that I was preparing for a show...(she was fine). 

JPG: The Wizards were such a visual band. Was it an unsaid understanding that dressing up in theatrical costumes was going to be the signature of the band?

Steve sans tache

PK:  I don't think costumes were the signature -I think the stuffed animals with the fireworks in their noses were. "Theatrical costumes"--well, some of those costumes weren't always that much different than the way some of us normally dressed in those days.

MQ:: Everyone did it. It made it more fun.

SH: What do you mean "theatrical"? "Costumes??!!" ARE YOU F***ING CALLING US POSEURS OR SOMETHING???? Those were the sacred vestments of our faith! ARE YOU QUESTIONING OUR FAITH??

JPG: What was the song "Donkey Party" all about?

PK: I got asked that question a lot--people were looking for some meaning, usually insidious. The truth is that it was the name of a children's game, a kind of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey variant that I found in a thrift store. The initial version of that song was written for an electronic music class I was taking in college. I didn't much care for the actual Donkey Party game, but I loved the box it came in, so I named my final project for that class Donkey Party and included with the tape a small book I wrote about terrible things that donkeys do at parties, and turned it in to the instructor inside the box. I then later turned the song into something for guitars.

Al playing in the crowd

JPG: I remember my band Cameltoe opening up for The Imperial Butt Wizards and Hole at Al's Bar in 1990. 

Tell us a story about Courtney Love.

PK: I don't have any desire to say anything rude or scandalous about her. There is enough of that around for people to find. She was a very smart girl, very canny. I remember, about the time I first met her (this is probably around the time Hole put out their first single with Sympathy for the Record Industry), she, myself,and a roommate I had at the time named Doran went thrift store shopping together in Long Beach. 

Michael at Al's Bar

Anyway, we were talking to her about her band. She said her goal was for them to have a gold record within two years. We just burst out laughing, I was in hysterics, it was like a sloth had told me its goal was to run as fast as a cheetah--there was just no way she could be serious. Well--she was right on. She really knew what she was doing.

MQ: She used to work in a vintage dress shop off of        La Brea. Paul and I would visit her sometimes. She was very nice.

SH: That was a fun show, I am still coughing from the smoke. I really have nothing bad to say about Courtney.

JPG: What band did you play in after The Wizards?

PK: Again, I must point out that I didn't really care much about music or bands, so it's not like I was going to go out and form another one. For awhile I was doing some shows with a transvestite glam rock band called Sex with Lurch. They would just let me do whatever I wanted on stage. Those were fun shows.

Hole at Al's Bar

SH: After being a recovering guitar player and not touching finger-to-string for 15 years, I have fallen off the wagon and started playing in Lawndale again under an assumed name.

JPG: What are you working on now?

PK: I have a PhD in Art History and I publish on the visual culture and cultural reception of death. I spent five years documenting existing charnel houses and decoration in human bone, published in 2011 as The Empire of Death by Thames and Hudson. I have a book coming out this fall called Heavenly Bodies, about skeletons taken from the Roman Catacombs under the false assumption that they were those of early Christian martyrs, and then articulated and decorated with jewels by German nuns--these skeletons are fantastic creations, the finest works of art I have ever seen in bone.

Cameltoe at Al's Bar

MQ: The Jupiter Affect.

SH: See (previous answer). Executed under penalty of perjury; The Rt. Dishonorable Captain Stinky, Supresiv Persoană, Order of the I.B.W. (deceased)

JPG: I must note that I was unable to reach Adam Sidell for this interview, as he was in the middle of sailing to Mexico to explore the Sea of Cortez.

 

"An Imperial Butt Wizard"

Oil on Canvas

20 x 16"