WEIRDO
(from The Urban Dictionary - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=weirdo)

1. A person who is considered strange to other people. This person may do strange things, so this person can be considered a "weirdo".

2. A non-conformist who does not follow trends or a subculture. A true 'weirdo' will just do what they feel, and can get along with most people. This person does not actually conform to a stereotype and shouldn't be labeled.

Bad Boy Butch Batson is a Weirdo! He’s also a marvelously odd outsider artist. The fact that he doesn’t know how to play a guitar never stops him from doing so - sometimes while wearing leather gloves on both hands. He composes lyrics to instrumental songs he's heard playing on Star Trek and H.R. Pufnstuf. He considers Lenny and The Squigtones among his primary musical influences.

Making noise comes naturally to him. He, like most of us, has been doing it since childhood. But BBBB, unlike most of us, is blessed with an incredible vocal instrument with uncanny range and variation. It was upon finding out that his vocal gymnastics could really annoy his older sister, though, that he really took off with it. Over time he discovered that he could turn a whole lot of heads with the odd sounds produced using this unbelievable ability.

Sometime during his early teens, he began banging on an old, out of tune guitar that his mother had given him. It didn't matter to him that it was out of tune or only had four strings because he didn't know how to play it to begin with. He did, though, use it to make the strangest sounds he could get out of it. The combination of his vocal caterwauling along with the sounds produced by his stretching, scraping and pulling the strings of this poor instrument turned out to be quite amazing.

BBBB began to make recordings of himself performing original compositions, and pop songs to which he had written new lyrics, on a $29 monophonic cassette tape recorder with a built-in microphone. He also started recording a collection of incidental sounds and noises as he noticed any new ones that he liked and began to, sometimes, incorporate those sounds and noises into his tunes. He never thought of his recordings as anything anyone would care to hear and set his musical ambitions aside, at one point, in order to pursue a career in Professional Wrestling as "Bad Boy Butch Batson". Upon reviving his interest in making oddball recordings a few years later, he continued to use the character of the "Bad Boy" (complete with Wrestling Tights and Boots) in which he would later perform.

Some of his recordings began to circulate around his hometown of Greenville, SC in the mid-1980s. Most who have heard these recordings were struck by their true genius and honest originality and a group of local musicians familiar with this material were overwhelmingly enthusiastic at the prospect of accompanying him in any future recording or performance projects.

The first official release of one of his recordings was on a compilation in 1988. He followed, the same year, with his first full length collection, entitled "Twisted and Bent". "Twisted and Bent" was assembled from recordings solely produced by BBBB using low-tech equipment and found instruments.

Butch performed his first live gig, on July 4, 1990, with The Homo Factory Workers. The regional touring that followed, as well as a well recorded demo tape and a few other recordings that he made with other local musicians, began to attract the attention of other creative types and oddballs across the country and overseas, leading to long-distance collaborative efforts and limited distribution of "Twisted and Bent" in Europe.

Butch began work in 1989 on a recording that would take him nine years to complete. Including recordings from as far back as 1986, the sprawling, squalling "Spare Parts" includes performances by over thirty musicians, the use of ten recording facilities and the work of ten different engineers. It is magnificent in its complexity, layering sound and noise over thirteen tracks of snarling, growling, moaning and crooning on topics including lust, rage, depression and malice. Finally released in 2008, on vinyl, by Beniffer Editions, it has received favorable reviews on several websites and in Arthur Magazine #31.

Butch has been compared to Captain Beefheart by people that don’t really understand the differences between the two of them. Both Captain Beefheart and Bad Boy Butch Batson posess supernatural vocal range. Beefheart and Batson also share an ability to look at the world through a unique perspective but BBBB is the real deal. He was not influenced by Beefheart... He didn't even know of Beefheart... BBBB is an Island of Original Weirdness.

As with any other "outsider" artist, Butch gets lumped into a category that includes no one else who is like him or that he is like. His voice sounds a bit like Jandek's at times. It sounds nothing like it more often. On some songs he seems to share some of the angst and cynicism that drive Daniel Johnson, but on others he exhibits an unkind confidence that is his own. His choices of subject matter can be as bizarre as those of The Shaggs, but that doesn't mean he's anything like them. His performances with The Homo Factory Workers, The Garbage Band and other outfits (during which he has been known to eat light bulbs and to set fire to his own head) have, at times, put observers to mind of Wesley Willis, but again, there is only a fleeting resemblance. As is often the case with Outsiders, the only similarity they share is that they are Outside.

Come Out and Play with Bad Boy Butch Batson!