Butthole Surfers
After their return to Austin from Athens, GA, where they allegedly stalked R.E.M., the Butthole Surfers bid me welcome into their house sometime in 1986. In their kitchen, I found a wind-powered turntable and in the living room, several yards of parachute silk. Singer Gibson Haynes was wearing a Mr. Bubble t-shirt, and he or someone else handed me a beer, but nothing stronger, because the band preferred me to be coherent enough to make a picture. To get into that special mood, they turned on their smoke machine and a strobe light. Then they began to lurch and loom at me. I escaped with this image, but it’s not easy to print: to the naked eye, the negative is black as coal.