I saw these folks around 12 years ago at the Lounge Ax in Chicago. They were the strangest band I have ever seen. You could barely tell there were people on stage, as they were completely covered in colored boxes (even their instruments were incased in box-type things) but still, they were amazing. I also want to know if anyone else has seen or heard of these guys.

I saw them last spring and they were good. The whole "home made costume" trend in noise is starting to get on my nerves (which for this discussion is neither here nor there, I just wanted to throw it out there).

But so, I like Caroliner and some of there records are nice to listen to

You know what made the Butthole Surfers, at their very best, so great? Caroliner is 10x better than that.

Eclipse Records (eclipse-records.com) has copies available of their incredible looking, incredible sounding records, going back to the 80s.

I have been playing music recently w/a guy who was Caroliner's drummer for about a year. At one show they were doing, he got really claustrophobic and had to remove his mask, which got him kicked out. He has many the great story.

SO N/C IT IS RIDICULOUS

I saw them in Brooklyn last year. It was delightful. I had the always-pleasant sense that the singer was going to actually lash out and hurt somebody in the crowd. I like being scared of the band.

I had not heard any recordings prior to the show and I hadn't expected them to sound so much like the Butthole Surfers / Beefheart. I thought it would be more pastoral...not sure why. Anyway, not crap.

Also not crap is Angel Blood, who opened the show. Angel Blood features a couple people from Gang Gang Dance who are equally not crap.

I like Angel Blood.

Which Caroliner album to start with?

There isn't a huge discernible difference between their many records. It's not like you could say "here's where they went disco" or something. I guess my personal favorites are "Cooking Stove Beast," "Strike Them Hard, Drag Them To Church," the first one "Rear End Hernia Puppet Show..." I would say you could get one at random and if you are able to really "hear" it, you'll want the others. It's sort of comparable to Jandek in that way (though musically it isn't).

It's deeply weird music.

i heard them once years and years ago on the local community radio station...i thought they were pretty great but i've yet to run across any of their stuff since...for a while i was actively searching for their stuff, but then after a while they slipped from the field of my consciousness...

mooliachi wrote:I saw these folks around 12 years ago at the Lounge Ax in Chicago. They were the strangest band I have ever seen. You could barely tell there were people on stage, as they were completely covered in colored boxes (even their instruments were incased in box-type things) but still, they were amazing. I also want to know if anyone else has seen or heard of these guys.

I was at that show too. They opened for Come. It was incredible. With their cardboard outfits and odd covered instruments and lighting, it was hard to tell where one member ended and another began. I went straight out and got a bunch of the LPs, all very good and odd. I like how it seems they have literally hand-made everything, from the music and instruments on down to each single unique record cover. I love that.

I like the little I've heard. Kinda simultaneously reminded me of the first Residents album, TG, and Beefheart mashed together. Sorta.

Here are some more Caroliner fun facts, just for you:

-Technically their name is Caroliner Rainbow xxxx xxxx. That is, they change the last 2 words in their name for every diffferent record, tour, etc. Caroliner Rainbow Hernia Milkqueen was one I can remember off hand.

-Caroliner's founder and leader is a legendary San Francisco art loon named Grux. You can see him sometimes in the Mission stomping around in his handmade clothes with various bits of detritus sewn to them. Grux has a noise project called Rubber O Cement. He just got done with a big U.S. tour- anyway, look for that name.

-Deerhoof singer Satomi went to see Caroliner when they toured Japan in the 80s. She was so inspired by the show that she ended following them around, helping sew their costumes. They were the reason she left Japan and came to the U.S. It was Caroliner that introduced Satomi to Greg, which resulted in Deerhoof (S and G also got married).

Caroliner are (almost) the last vestige of the tremendously fertile, insane Bay Area scene of the 80s/90s out of which came stuff like Thinking Fellers, Faxed Head/Three Doctors/Zip Code Rapists, Bananafish magazine, Survival Research Laboratories, Mono Pause, Fibulator, Heavenly Ten Stems, and so on and so forth. I think their last record came out on the Freedom-From label, which I hope means that the new generation of noise idiots is holding them to their mouth-breathing souls.