Trivia: Apparently the Butthole Surfers song “The O-Men” was an homage to these guys – why they changed the letter I couldn’t say, but I’d hazard a guess it had something to do with copious amounts of drugs. Besides, there were hundreds – if not thousands – of underground guitar bands in the ’80s mining a similar vein: discordant, riffy, unintelligible, rockin’ – it’s a perfect example of American indie rock in the ’80s, and pretty much exactly what you’d expect a song called “Cow Rock” by a group called The U-Men to sound like. Since they were from Seattle and played guitar rock, they get listed as a precursor to the grunge acts of the ’90s, but that’s just the old correlation/causation problem – the Pacific Northwest has a history of noisy garage bands going back to The Kingsmen and The Sonics. But as teenagers have known since the dawn of recorded music, anything your parents (and conservative peers) would describe as “just noise” was guaranteed to be exciting, and that was just as true of these songs as “Rocket 88” or “Twist And Shout”. Just for comparison, I’ll include some of the top hits of the years these were released so you can get a sense of how far outside the mainstream this actually was. Despite this, they still continue to exist and have remained active in various ways by continuing to play live and releasing compilations.Like all musical revolutions – from jazz to Chuck Berry to The Beatles to James Brown to the Sex Pistols – none of this sounds especially uncommercial all these decades later, but I can attest that at the time there were people who would get pissed if you put this kind of stuff on in their presence, and though many of these acts are now considered Important Artists, back then you had to be lucky enough to live near an independent record store to even be able to find their albums, and if you had an opportunity to see them live it was often in some dank basement or tiny club that didn’t subscribe to such antiquated notions as “maximum capacity” or adherence to fire codes. The next album after this was Weird Revolution in 2001.
The next album after this was Electriclarryland in 1996 which saw them have their most successful single “Pepper.” The next album released in 1993 titled Independent Worm Saloon which was produced by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The following decade would see the Butthole Surfers enjoy their biggest period of commercial success. This was followed by piouhgd which was not very well received and the band later expressed disappointment with it. Over the next couple of years the band would make their sound slightly more accessible with the next album Hairway to Steven being the first to make this move. This was followed a year later by Locust Abortion Technician which was a very experimental album and is widely believed to be a precursor to the grunge genre. The band released their second album in 1986 titled Rembrandt Pussyhorse. The band’s existence would go on to be very chaotic with several band members leaving due to not being able to cope with the band’s rather controversial antics which apparently at one time included stalking members of R.E.M.
#BUTTHOLE SURFERS SONGS FULL#
A year later their first full length record Psychic…Powerless…Another Man’s Sac was released. In 1983 their self-titled debut was released on Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label. During one of their early shows they were witnessed by Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra who instantly became a fan and offered them a support slot.
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