Butthole Surfers are a crazed, drug-addled experimental rock band formed in San Antonio, Texas in 1981.

Founding members Gibby Haynes [singer/guitar/saxophone] and Paul Leary [guitar/vocals] met at Trinity University in the late 70s. Haynes was the school’s “Accountant of the Year” and Leary was working on his MBA. By 1981, Haynes had been fired from his job for using work photocopiers to print an amusing zine of medical photos called Strange V.D. and Leary had dropped out of college so he and Haynes could sell Lee Harvey Oswald t-shirts and start a band.

At first, they played under a different name for each performance (highlights include “Abe Lincoln’s Bush”, “The Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire’s Asshole” and “Nine Foot Worm Makes Own Food”). At their first paid gig, the announcer forgot their name and announced them by the title of one of their songs: Butthole Surfers. They liked it.

They were discovered by Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra in 1982 and began recording for him shortly thereafter. Soon, the band grew a fervent cult following due to their ridiculous, insane live shows.
A typical concert included:

…nudity, tearing stuffed animals apart, strobe lights, Gibby lighting his own hand on fire with lighter fluid (he’d stare at his flaming hand like a drooling moron before putting the fire out by sticking his hand down his pants) and then [lighting] the drumkits… Gibby screamed into a bullhorn, the dual drummers hit flaming cymbals and they projected 16mm films of bloody operations, people with Down’s syndrome dancing in top hats and tails and a man with a gigantic sombrero that was revealed to be much larger than a house. If Beelzebub himself would have come out to jam with the band for the encore, no one would have been the least bit surprised.

The Surfers somehow signed to Capitol Records in 1991 and in 1996, released their most popular single: “Pepper” (which peaked at #1 on the Modern Rock chart). Two years later, Capitol dropped them, scrapping an entire completed album (1998’s After the Astronaut, which was only released promotionally).

The band hasn’t recorded anything since 2001’s Weird Revolution (a partial re-recording of After the Astronaut), but constantly tease the possibility of new material. They last toured in 2011.