A short list of stuff you might not know about psychedelic, scatological, avant-garde, Texan, punk rock reprobates and legends, Butthole Surfers….

1. Gibby Haynes graduated from Trinity University, San Antonio with an economics degree and having been named ‘Accountant of the Year’.
2. After graduating, Gibby and his friend Paul Leary published a fanzine called Strange V.D. which featured gruesome photographs of medical conditions captioned with fictitious diseases, like ‘taco leg’.
3. Gibby printed Strange V.D. at work in his graduate job at a prestigious accountancy firm. He left this job shortly after inadvertently leaving a photo of some infected genitalia to be found on a photocopier.
4. Haynes and Leary’s next move was to Venice, Southern California where they attempted to make a living producing and selling Lee Harvey Oswald T-shirts. When this venture, surprisingly, didn’t work out, they decided to start a band.
5. They originally changed the band’s name for every performance before Butthole Surfers stuck. Other names they used included Nine Inch Worm Makes Own Food, Vodka Family Winstons, Ahstray Babyheads and the Inalienable Right To Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole.
6. In their heyday, the band toured with their pet pit bull who was named after Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad. She was called Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad.
7. The backwards fiddle on Creep In The Cellar is an accident. When recording their second album, Rembrandt Pussyhorse, the studio used an old tape which had previously been used by a country band and hadn’t been wiped. When the Surfers heard it, they decided to keep it that way.
8. In The Simpsons episode Hurricane Neddy, Ned Flanders’s son Todd wears a Butthole Surfers T-shirt donated to the family when they lose all their possessions.
9. The band also featured on Beavis & Butthead twice, with the videos for Who Was In My Room Last Night and Dust Devil, both from the album Independent Worm Saloon. The boys are big fans.
10. The band’s stage shows were infamous, featuring, flaming cymbals, nudity, multiple strobes, fake blood, a ‘piss wand’ and video projections. The most famous film they used featured a man undergoing penile reconstruction surgery following a farm accident. They would sometimes play this backwards.
11. The sleeve for the album Locust Abortion Technician was designed by Arthur Sarnoff, the artist most famous for his paintings of dogs playing pool.
12. Drummer Teresa Nervosa appeared in the 1991 Richard Linklater film Slacker. She’s the character on the street trying to sell Madonna’s pap smear.

Magnificent Cover Version No.8 – Butthole Surfers covering ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ by Donovan

Magnificent Cover Version No.17, ‘The Model’ by Kraftwerk covered by Big Black