You couldn’t ask for a better group for reminiscing. Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Hynes, author Amy Yates Wuelfing, and John Stewart all met up for some unexpected City Gardens nostalgia. Good times, good memories, good unremembered times.
So what, you may be asking, is City Gardens?
City Gardens is, if you’re to believe John Stewart (and you should, he used to tend bar there) “by all accounts, a s**thole”. City Gardens also happens to be a club in Trenton, New Jersey, and has played host to rock n roll royalty. GWAR, The Ramones, and Bad Brains have all played there, as have the Butthole Surfers.
Which is why Gibby Haynes remembers nearly burning the place down. Check through the interview video and you’ll see an onstage photo of a Butthole Surfers concert, featuring a mostly-naked woman and a lot of fire. That was more or less par for the course at City Gardens. Stewart recalled there being “a good deal of punching”, and it’s hard to tell whether Haynes was joking or not when he recalled being stabbed onstage.
Haynes also flashed a new tattoo honoring Dave Brockie, the late frontman of GWAR at the start of the interview.