Butthole Surfers
Learn more about Butthole Surfers
| Butthole Surfers | ||
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| Background information
<tr><td>Also known as</td><td colspan="2">Dick Clark Five, Dick Gas Five, Ashtray Babyheads, Nine Foot Worm Makes Own Food, Vodka Family Winstons, Abe Lincoln's Bush, Ed Asner's Gay, The Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire's Asshole</td></tr><tr><td>Origin</td><td colspan="2">San Antonio, Texas, USA</td></tr><tr><td>Genre(s)</td><td colspan="2">Alternative rock, Experimental music, Neo-Psychedelia, Noise rock, Punk rock</td></tr><tr><td>Years active</td><td colspan="2">1981–present</td></tr><tr><td style="padding-right: 1em;">Label(s)</td><td colspan="2">Alternative Tentacles, Touch and Go, Latino Buggerveil, Rough Trade, Capitol, Surfdog</td></tr><tr><td textalign="top" style="padding-right: 1em;">Associated |
Butthole Surfers are an American rock band, founded by Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary in San Antonio, Texas in 1981; the pair met while students at Trinity University. Incorporating elements of hardcore, psychedelia, and performance art, their live shows also made heavy use of strobe lights, background films (of note, footage of penis reconstruction and dental surgery) and naked dancers.
While their line-up has changed frequently over the years, they have maintained a core membership of Haynes (vocals), Leary (guitar), and King Coffey (drums). For much of their career the band also included Teresa Taylor as a second drummer. The band has been through numerous bass players, including Jeff Pinkus (more recently with Honky) and Mark Kramer (of Bongwater and Shimmy Disc).
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[edit] History
[edit] Early years
The Butthole Surfers released their debut EP Brown Reason to Live in 1983 on Alternative Tentacles with provocative titles like "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave" and "The Revenge of Anus Presley". This was soon followed by the PCPPEP, a live EP released in 1984, also on Alternative Tentacles.
The Surfers then moved to Touch & Go to release their debut album Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac. Along with The Teardrop Explodes in the UK this album might be said to have begun the psychedelic revival (psychedelia having been extremely unfashionable in the five years since punk). It also showed the influence of heavy metal (especially Black Sabbath), and in marrying punk and heavy metal might be seen as one of the first precursors of grunge.
Their second album Rembrandt Pussyhorse was as much a nod to artists like Throbbing Gristle, Einsturzende Neubauten, Frank Zappa and The Residents, as it was a revival of musique concrète founders', Karlheinz Stockhausen and Edgard Varèse original tenets.
It was their third album Locust Abortion Technician (Touch & Go - US/ Blast First - UK), that really brought the Butthole Surfers to the attention of the music press and public, and some critics still argue this is their best album. It is certainly their most extreme, making full use of tape loops, backward instrumentation, and other features. (The story of the creation of this album is told in Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad (Little, Brown) amidst other tales from the American underground in the 1980s). Their increasingly outrageous live shows were also starting to attract attention.
The band's next album Hairway to Steven was split between material as extreme as their previous work, and a few pieces that might be considered conventional songs. (Pioughd) for Rough Trade Records continued their move toward the mainstream, and featured an increasing use of electronic instrumentation. In 1991 they were part of the first Lollapalooza tour. Soon afterwards they were signed by William Howell of Capitol Records and their increasingly straightforward modern rock songs began to be played on radio and Beavis and Butt-head.
Independent Worm Saloon, their 1993 debut for Capitol Records, was produced by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and featured the minor radio hit "Who Was In My Room Last Night?". Their songs also began to turn up on the soundtracks of major Hollywood movies, such as Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and Mission Impossible around this time.
In 1995, Gibby worked on the side project called P with Johnny Depp, Bill Carter, Sal Jenco, Flea, and others.
[edit] Later success
The band finally found mainstream success with its breakthrough radio hit "Pepper" from the album Electriclarryland in 1996. That year the band also brought a legal action to recover rights from Touch and Go to their back catalogue, a case they eventually won in 1999. Those records are now in print on their own Latino Buggerveil record label. At the same time a huge legal battle with Capitol records began which ended up with the band being kicked off the label and signing to Hollywood Records (a subsidiary of Disney).
In the early nineties Gibby Haynes and Jeff Pinkus released a side project (The Jackofficers) which produced a highly psychedelic take on House music. As the nineties went on, the band became increasingly influenced by electronica, with Gibby namechecking Massive Attack, Tricky, and The Chemical Brothers as influences. This culminated in The Weird Revolution (a reworking of an aborted album recorded for Capitol called After the Astronaut) their most electronic album to date. This produced the hit Dracula From Houston which is featured on the soundtrack of the TV series Scrubs. On August 18 2006, Gibby announced a new Butthole Surfers record is in the making.
Some newspapers refuse to print the band's full name, opting instead for altered forms such as BH Surfers or B-Hole Surfers.
[edit] Performance
Butthole Surfers' legendary performances would draw fans of punk rock, performance art, and curiosity seekers as well as fans of more typical rock concerts.
Often without speaking to or even acknowledging the audience, sometimes playing in darkness, the band would assault the attendees aurally with four channels of sound placed throughout the venue. This allowed the band the opportunity to "swim" the sound in a circular pattern which, when combined with the visual stimuli would occasionally evoke nausea from those in attendance. With racks of equipment at their disposal on stage, the sound could be sped up, slowed down, distorted or otherwise affected.
Combined with this aural onslaught, a screen (or sometimes a natural surface) would light up with various projected movies composed of stock footage of penis surgery, automobile-accident carnage, pastoral Jacques Cousteau footage, slaughterhouse scenes, and the band's beloved color negative print of a Charlie's Angels episode. Any of this footage might be played backwards or upside-down if the mood struck. Rider-view footage of a roller coaster ride would also be inserted and the combined effect with the swirling sound and the sudden, lengthy strobe-light barrage is said to have caused panic and even seizure in some participants.
Other common elements of the stage show included Gibby's fascination with singing through a bullhorn or smashing a cymbal mounted upside-down and filled with flaming rubbing alcohol, causing flames to shoot up with each rhythmic beat. Gibby had a predilection for taking the stage with a dozen or more clothespins attached to his hair, face and/or body, apparently presenting a dadaist/absurdist depiction of the rock star. For daylight shows, Gibby instead would occupy instrumental passages with shotgun blasts over the audience's heads.
While on tour in Times Square, the band met a woman whose control over reversal of her digestive tract had given her the stage name 'Ta-Da the Shit Lady'. She was brought along and became a fixture of several tours in which, unannounced, she would leap onto the stage and perform a frantic, gyrating dance in the strobe lights after disrobing (it was not a libidinous presentation). Combined with smoke machines, the dual tribal beat of drummers Teresa Taylor and King Coffey, a clear sound system and the off-kilter style of their music, the total effect of the live presentation was unique in popular music. Entertainer Sandra Bernhard was also occasionally part of the touring stage show, which also saw the support of Johnny Depp who, with Gibby, formed the musical project 'P'. Sandra Bernhard also recorded a cover song with the Butthole Surfers which she refuses to allow the band to release. [citation needed] It was a cover of Heart's "Barracuda" in English and Spanish with the Butthole Surfers as backing.
[edit] Band members
- Gibby Haynes - vocals, guitar, saxophone (1981–present)
- Paul Leary - guitar, vocals (1981–present)
- King Coffey - drums (1983–present)
- Nathan Calhoun - bass (2000–present)
- Jeff Pinkus - bass (1985–1994)
- Theresa Taylor - drums (1983–1985, 1986–1989)
- Trevor Malcolm - bass (1985)
- Terence Smart - bass (1984–1985)
- Bill Jolly - bass (1982–1984)
- Scott Matthews - drums (1981–1982)
- Quinn Matthews - bass (1982)
- Andrew Mullins - bass (1981–1982)
- Scott Stevens - bass (1981)
[edit] Touring members
- Jason Morales - guitar (2002)
- Josh Klinghoffer - guitar, drums (2001)
- Kyle Ellison - guitar (1996)
- Owen McMahon - bass (1996)
- Cabbage - drums (1985–1986)
- Mark Kramer - bass (1985)
- Juan Molina - bass (1985)
[edit] Discography
[edit] Trivia
- On the Sublime album 40 Oz. to Freedom, the Butthole Surfers are listed on the hidden track "Thanx".
[edit] Samples
- Sample of "Pepper" from Electriclarryland.
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[edit] External links
- Official Butthole Surfers website
- Butthole Surfers at MySpace
- Butthole Surfers at Alternative Tentacles
- ButtholeSurferFan.Com - Fan website with complete discography and lots of pictures.
- The Anal Obsession - Concert chronology detailing all known band performances and existing audio/video recordings.
- Butthole Surfers collection on the Internet Archive's live music archive.
- 22 Going On 23 - Paul Leary interview by Stephen Dohnbergde:Butthole Surfers
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