The Butthole Surfers wipe out

REVINYLIZATION - Music's lunatic fringe drifts further out every hour. As it should. In this century, with computers playing an ever-larger role, music continues to fragment and become infinitely more varied. This splintering is either the essence of what keeps it relevant as an art form or something profoundly disturbing, to be hated and feared.

- ROBERT BAIRD

In the mid-1980s, few bands were as loved, despised, and misunderstood as the Butthole Surfers. The impulse to tread in unexplored borderlands of noise, studio blathery, live excess, indulgent nonsensicalness, and the urge to reconnoiter unheard sonics were all taken to heart by a nutty duo of Texans whose dulcet appellation was originally one of their song titles. Paul Leary (guitar) had ambitions of getting an MBA at San Antonio's Trinity University, which is where he met accounting student Gibson "Gibby" Haynes (singer/guitar). They jointly published a zine, Strange VD, that combined humor with explicit photos showing the effects of strange diseases. Naturally, they decided to form a band. From there, the Surfers' history is convoluted, colorful, and way too long to tell outside an encyclopedia of the morbidly bizarre or a psychedelic docudrama on alien sexuality.