Songoftheday 5/28/20 -Marky got with Sharon and Sharon got Cherese, she was sharing Sharon's outlook on the topic of disease...
from the album Electriclarryland (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #26 (one week)
Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 12
Today's song of the day comes from the alternative punk rock band Butthole Surfers, who came together in college in San Antonio, Texas in the latter half of the 1970s. With lead singer Gibby Haynes and guitarist Paul Leary, the band was discovered by Dead Kennedys leader Jello Biafra and got them to record their first self-titled EP in 1983 with King Coffey on drums and Bill Jolly on bass. The short set made the British indie chart at #21, and started their evolution upwards. The band hired on a second drummer in Coffey's friend Teresa Nervosa, which gave the act a whole stronger sound for their full-length debut record Psychic...Powerless...Another Man's Sac in 1985, which also made the British indie chart at #12. Jolly left shortly after, with the band going through bass players as they continued to release EP's and albums that were making a mark in the UK, and regionally in America, but not yet on a national scale. In 1987, with their longest-lasting bassist Jeff Pincus, the band incorporated heavier grunge/metal tones to their punk and psychedelic music on the album Locust Abortion Technician, which was their highest-charting UK "indie" set at #3. The end of the 1980s saw Nervosa leaving the band just as they signed to British rock label Rough Trade, local home of the Smiths. Their first record on that imprint, piouhgd, leaned in electronica, for better or worse, though the album was their first on the British main sales chart at #68, while in it a cover of flower-child Donovan's 60's nugget "Hurdy Gurdy Man" snuck on to the singles chart at #98 while becoming a top-40 success in New Zealand at #36. However the timing was not good, with Rough Trade sinking into bankruptcy and leaving the band searching for a new label. In a strange set of events, it was stalwart Capitol Records that picked up the Surfers, and pairing them up with Led Zeppelin's bassist John Paul Jones to produce them, utterly changed their sound despite the name. Their first release there, Independent Worm Saloon, scored the band their first "hit" on American rock radio with "Who Was In My Room Last Night?", which went to #24 on Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock chart in 1993, while the album placed on the Billboard 200 sales chart at #154, and in the UK at #73.
Pinkus finally left in 1994, before what would be the Surfers' biggest commercial success. Their seventh album, Electriclarryland, came out in 1996, with Haynes, Leary, Coffey, and a myriad of studio help with Leary producing the set with Steve Thompson. The "single" promoted to radio was "Pepper", written by the trio and sporting a rather MTV-friendly music video with a cameo from CHiPS star Erik Estrada himself. And rock radio followed suit, with the song a natural successor to Beck's "Loser", since Beck had since gone on to bigger things...
Since "Pepper" wasn't released as a commercial single in the U.S., it was unable to place on Billboard's official Hot 100 pop chart. However, the song got enough radio love that it spent three months in the airplay component of the list in July of 1996. "Pepper" was huge on rock radio, with the magazine awarding it the top Alternative Rock single of the year, as it topped the chart for three weeks and spent half a year (26 weeks) on the tally. The song even crossed over to the Mainstream Rock format chart at #19. Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit both in Australia (#15) and New Zealand (#32), while being the second and final minor hit in the UK at #59. The Electriclarryland album even made the sales top-40 at #31, but second single "Jingle Of A Dog's Collar" went unnoticed.
Although they finally found success, the band ended up leaving Capitol Records after fighting over what was supposed to be their next album. Portions of that set were redone for Hollywood Records for their 2001 release (and most recent), Weird Revolution. The record produced their last radio hit, "The Shame Of Life", which peaked at #24 on Alternative Rock radio. They have continued on sporadically touring, with Pinkus (and for a brief moment Teresa Nervosa) rejoining the band. A rumored album though has yet to emerge.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the band appearing live on MTV's 120 Minutes....
and playing on a gleeful Letterman....
And lastly, in concert at Lollapalooza in 1991....
Up tomorrow: The merger of Latin freestyle and Eurodance was complete with this handsome trio that are on the search.
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