HIDDEN GEM
Butt Trumpet
Primitive Enema
1994 | Chrysalis Records

“Novelty music” is an umbrella term that covers more than Tiny Tim, “Weird Al,” and whoever else gets covered on Dr. Demento. Not that I’m turning my nose up at “Weird Al” or anything, but some “novelty” records – like Ken Nordine’s Colors, a series of audio vignettes about different shades of refracted light – get labeled as novelty or “exotica” due to their sheer intellectualism. Then there are those records, on the opposite end of the spectrum, that are so vulgar and stupid you can’t help but laugh at them.

Butt Trumpet, who claim to be the only punk band other than the Sex Pistols to sign to EMI, fit tightly – and proudly – into the latter category. Formed in 1991 by Thom Bone, the band has gone through many permutations, the most notorious in 1994, when a major-label deal with Chrysalis Records put the words “Butt Trumpet” into the mouths of adolescent idiots all across the nation. The album they produced, Primitive Enema, is a troglodytic punk/metal fusion stuffed with scatological humor and bellowing/whiny lyrics, rife with what Bone, may or may not consider his rhetoric. Primitive Enema was required listening for a fifteen year old kid weaned on Primus and Beavis & Butt-head.
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