Butthole Surfers with clown, San Antonio, July 1984 | Photo by Pat Blashill
Matador Records today announced that the tastemaking independent label will now oversee the early catalog of the Butthole Surfers, with the Texas maniacs’ first five albums and two compilations now on streaming — and plans for physical re-releases to follow.
The Matador digital reissues include the albums Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac (1984), Rembrandt Pussyhorse (1986), Locust Abortion Technician (1987), Hairway to Steven (1988), piouhgd + Windowmaker! (1991/1989), plus the 2002 rarities set Humpty Dumpty LSD and the 2003 compilation Butthole Surfers/Live PCPpep, which combined the band’s 1983 debut EP and a 1984 live album.
The label also says it will control “EPs and other material recorded during the band’s strange, grotesque, and ultimately unparalleled first decade.” It’s put together a sampler of the Butthole Surfers’ output from 1984 to 1991, which you can stream below via Spotify.
Singer Gibby Haynes and guitarist Paul Leary formed the Butthole Surfers in San Antonio, Texas, in 1981, with drummer King Coffey joining in 1983 and forming the three-person nucleus of the band that continues to this day. The band emerged from the ’80s hardcore scene but soon became so much more than that, combining noise rock, psychedelia and punk tendencies into darkly comic and chaotic music.
The Butthole Surfers’ profile peaked in the ’90s when the band played the inaugural Lollapalooza tour — comically billed as “B.H. Surfers” in some advertising — and scored a left-field alt-rock hit with “Pepper.”
Below, check out Matador’s new Butthole Surfers playlist:
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Butthole Surfers working on first new album since 2001’s ‘Weird Revolution’
- Publisher launches Kickstarter to get Butthole Surfers bio ‘Scatological Alchemy’ into print
- Butthole Surfers’ ‘Independent Worm Saloon’ to receive 180-gram vinyl reissue
- Butthole Surfers to reissue 4 out-of-print Touch and Go albums on vinyl this fall
- Butthole Surfers set 12-date tour of western U.S., Canada later this summer
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