Butthole Surfers - After The Astronaut (1998)

The genesis of Butthole Surfers happened at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas during the late 1970's, when students Gibson 'Gibby' Haynes and Paul Leary Walthall (later just Paul Leary) met for the first time, through their overall strangeness and shared taste in non-mainstream music. In 1981, Haynes and Leary published the magazine Strange V.D., which featured photos of abnormal medical ailments, coupled with fictitious, humorous explanations for the diseases. After being caught with one of these pictures at work, Haynes had to leave the accounting firm he was working for and he moved to Southern California. At the time, with only one semester left to obtaining his degree, Leary dropped out of college and followed Haynes. After a brief period spent selling homemade clothes and linens emblazoned with Lee Harvey Oswald's image, the pair returned to San Antonio, and launched the band that would eventually become Butthole Surfers. During a brief concert at the Tool and Die club in San Francisco, Dead Kennedys frontman and Alternative Tentacles overseer Jello Biafra witnessed their performance and became a fervent fan. Biafra invited the group to open for Dead Kennedys at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles, and soon made an offer that would launch their recording career, telling them that if they could get someone to lend them studio time, Alternative Tentacles would reimburse the studio when the album was complete. The band then returned to San Antonio to record at BOSS Studios, although they'd lost their rhythm section after a disagreement, so the bass was taken over by Bill Jolly, who would play on Butthole Surfers' next two releases, and a number of drummers participated, the last of which, King Coffey, is still with the band to this day. Released on Alternative Tentacles in July 1983, the 'Butthole Surfers' EP (also known as 'Brown Reason To Live And Pee Pee The Sailor'), offered songs with provocatively absurd titles like 'The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave' and 'Bar-B-Q Pope', alternately sung by Haynes and Leary. 
Soon after the release of 'Butthole Surfers', the band recruited a second drummer, Teresa Nervosa, who had played with Coffey in a number of high school marching bands in the Texas' Fort Worth and Austin areas. In 1984, the band returned to BOSS Studios to record enough material for two full-length albums. Both were originally offered to Alternative Tentacles, with the first being 'Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac', but before either album could be released, Alternative Tentacles had to acquire the master tapes from BOSS Studios' owner Bob O'Neill, who refused to release them until he'd been reimbursed for the sessions. Alternative Tentacles couldn't immediately afford to pay, and so after months of waiting, and out of financial desperation, the band issued the concert recording 'Live PCPPEP' on Alternative Tentacles in 1984. Meanwhile, Bob O'Neill was preparing to release 'Psychic...' on his own Ward 9 label to recoup his expenses, but the group was unhappy about this, and so their East Coast booking agent Terry Tolkin signed the band to Corey Rusk's then-nascent Touch And Go Records in Detroit, and 'Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac' was released by them in 1984. Meanwhile, the second LP which had been submitted to Alternative Tentacles as 'Rembrandt Pussy Horse' was still in limbo, although the reasons for Alternative Tentacles' actions are still unclear. While waiting, the band released the four-song 'Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis' EP on Touch And Go in late 1985, and after Alternative Tentacles finally declined to release their album, the group went back into the studio to record two new tracks to replace 'Two Part' and 'Tornadoes', which were to appear on 'Rembrandt Pussy Horse', but which were used as b-sides for the 'Cream Corn...' EP. 
Their second LP was finally issued as 'Rembrandt Pussyhorse' on Touch And Go in April 1986, featuring a different mix and song selection from the Alternative Tentacles' unreleased version. 'Locust Abortion Technician' came out in 1987, and was the first time that I became aware of the band, with the opening 'Sweat Loaf' still being one of my very favourite pieces of music. The album is often considered their finest work, harnessing aspects of punk, heavy metal, and psychedelia, and I would tend to agree with that. 'Hairway To Steven' followed in April 1988, and marked a midway point between the band's experimental roots, and the more accessible recordings that would follow, although they still played with convention by having no song titles, and instead each track was represented with an absurdist, often scatological, cartoon. In 1992 the band shocked many fans and critics by signing with the major label Capitol Records, who immediately released 'Piouhgd', and then paired the band with their first big-name producer, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. 1993's 'Independent Worm Saloon' featured a more straightforward rock approach, probably due to Jones' involvement, and in 1996, Capitol released 'Electriclarryland', which climbed to number 31 on the Billboard 200. Their songs started appearing on the soundtracks of major Hollywood movies, and so while this should have been the high point in the band's career, their relationship with Capitol was increasingly troubled, and a planned 1998 project, 'After The Astronaut', was scrapped, following which the band acrimoniously split with their manager, Tom Bunch. 'Weird Revolution' was released in 2001, using original takes and re-recordings of some of the songs from 'After The Astronaut', so here is the abandoned album for fans to see if it would have been a better follow-up to 'Electriclarryland' than 'Weird Revolution' was three years later. 

Track listing

01 The Weird Revolution
02 Intelligent Guy
03 Jet Fighter
04 Imbuya
05 Mexico
06 Venus
07 The Last Astronaut
08 Yentel
09 Junkie Jenny In Gaytown
10 They Came In
11 I Don't Have A Problem
12 Turkey & Dressing