King Coffee

This interview with King Coffee of The Butthole Surfers, Drain&Trance Syndicate (label) fame was held just after the release of The Buttholes latest album 'Electriclarryland.' Adam Connors takes up the name of 'Pig' to probe the 'King.'

Pig: Where are you at the moment?
King: I'm in grunge central, I'm at the epi centre of grunge in Seattle.
Pig: What are you doing there?
King: We're hoping to be discovered by Sub Pop. We're hoping to open for Mudhoney or something... Nah, I'm sorry man, we're on tour.
Pig: How do you say the title of your 1991 album Piouhgd?
King: It's zoop-boom-bing-ping-cuuuur... or something to that effect is what Gibby told Rough Trade. When they wanted an album title he said he just made a bunch of random sounds. They asked him to spell it so he picked some random letters, the whole point was to have a totally unpronounceable, unspellable LP, but Rough Trade didn't find that too marketable so they actually gave it a fixed spelling and even a fixed pronunciation, and I think they even gave it a definition as well.
Pig: You weren't part of defining it?
King: No. Those bastards, you know. Theoretically we have artistic control, and our artistic control was to have a totally absurdist title, but people don't like marketing absurdist things, because absurdity doesn't really sell.
Pig: It does to me.
King: You and I are part of the rare minority my friend.
Pig: A lot of Butthole songs and album names are totally fucked up, where does this influence come from?
King: We came from the entire kung foo scene in San Antonio with bands like The Ashtray Baby Heads and The Vodka Family Winston's. There was rivalry between the Againsters; who were against everything and the Againsters; who played everting again and again and again. There was some bad rivalry between those two bands.
Pig: Do you just come up with album titles and song titles randomly?
King: Sometimes, yes indeed a phrase can be the inspiration for a song. There's no rhyme nor reason. We're incredibly lazy; we couldn't think of 12 good titles for songs for our Hairway to Steven album, so we just gave Touch&Go a bunch of pictographs which represented each song. The songs aren't published because you can't publish songs which don't have titles to them.
Pig: Speaking of Hairway to Steven how was it working with John Paul Jones on the Independent Worm Saloon?
King: It was very freakish. That was our debut (so to speak) on a major label, and the first time we worked with a producer. It was really frustrating for us because everybody we were meeting for (the job of) our producer were either these total Hollywood cliche bad 70's types or these poor people who knew less about music than we did. Finding a producer was really tough. Then from out of the blue they said "well John Paul Jones is interested." At that point we were just laughing so hard that we said "sure, bring him on." He was cool, he didn't do that much apart from drink scotch and hit record, but that's all we needed in a way. If it sounded bad we could blame it on him, that's the role of the producer.
Pig: What did you say to John Paul Jones? "We just play this way, don't try and clean us up, just hit record."
King: To his credit, he's into some unusual stuff. The guy is so rich that he didn't do that gig for the money, I think he was intrigued by the idea of working with a bunch of surrealist Texan punk rockers for one album, just to see what happened. He wanted copies of our old stuff, so we gave him a copy of Hairway To Steven without thinking about the fact we were ripping of Led Zepplen - we'd forgotten about that joke years ago. It was kind of cheeky on our part that we named an album Hairway To Steven then asking him to produce us. Our only complaint about that album is it sounds a little too clean.
Pig: You think Independent Worm Saloon's too clean?
King: Yeah, I guess so. That's a bit of a gripe with the new album. When we first brought back the tapes of the new album from New York (again working with a producer) we thought it was pretty sterile and we thought that we had missed the point and the producer had missed the point of what the band was all about, and we were making some similar mistakes that we made on the past few records of losing all our spontaneity, and creativity in the recording process. What we did was chuck half the songs that we spent a lot of time and money on in New York and went to a relatively cheap studio in Austin and just recorded ourselves. I think the best songs from that session or that period came from that, and it goes back to what we were doing in the 80's back when we were recording ourselves in the kitchen.
Pig: Pepper's got a bit of hip hop in it; are you a bit of a hip hop bunny?
King: Oh, I'm so fly 'n' deff with my homies in the hood... Capital or EMI are going to be totally screwed to find another single off the album. They're already panicing, they're thinking of taking one of the rock songs off the album, and removing the drums and replacing it with a drum machine, with a hip hop beat to it. They think they're onto a winning combination, now that we'll pump out little hip hop beats forever and walla Capital has a successful band on their hands, when in fact it was our fluke novelty song.
Pig: 'Who was in my Room Last Night' has some chart action, that would have been a spinner for you guys. Do you have to make just one hit single to keep the record company on side, then do the other 19 tracks as you feel like?
King: Theoretically we can do whatever we want to. When we signed to Capital we were in really good shape. We were doing fine on the indies. Us and Fagazi were the biggest bands on the indi circuit. There's no really compelling reason for us to be on a major, unless they can make us a lot more money and be on terms we were used to which is the complete creative control thing. We fork over a collection of songs which we call an album to Capital and Capital hopes and prays there's something marketable on it which they can push off as a single and video. They've gotten lucky on the past two albums. We'll see how lucky they can get for the next one.
Pig: You've played around with the speed of your voices on 'The Annoying Song,' have you had anything to do with Ween?
King: We have actually. We dig Ween. Andrew Weis is one of the brothers of Ween, who plays bass and produces them as well. He also played bass on our new record. We are down with the Ween crew.
Pig: What can you tell me about Jingle Of A Dogs Collar?
King: That's a beautiful pop song which is really goofy. We break out into the most weakest white boy funk towards the end. We'd like to think it's kind of like early Talking Heads weak style, white boy funk. It's actually a bitter sweet song about death and dying. All I've wanted to do is hear the jingle of a dog collar, that would be a good sound to hear right now. It's kind of like the Smiths, where they have happy jingly songs and the most depressing lyrics. It's our tribute to Morrisey.
Pig: You've all got different projects going, what's planned?
King: We all get one month off to do our own thing; Paul's going to produce. I've got the record label to look after (Trance Syndicate.) Gibby I'm sure will find another Jim Jarmush film (that will eventually be banned somewhere) to act in.
Pig: Are you doing much work with Drain?
King: Yeah. We just put out a new album, it's a disco record. I really like it. To use a bad phrase: It's trip hop man! I'm embarrassed to say it, it's trip hop. I dig that stuff.
Pig: So you do have green lycra bike shorts somewhere.
King: I'm on the dance floor at all the raves with my flash light&whistle.
Pig: Sometimes I try to visualise what the other persons doing. I see you sitting down in a concrete bunker hotel room with a chilli-cheese sausage. Describe yourself for the readers.
King: Your kind of close. I do have a spaghetti stain on my hands because I was eating spaghetti as of 30 minutes ago. A friend told me that one of my endearing qualities is that I always have food somewhere on my clothes. You can always tell what I had for lunch or dinner, there's seasoned spaghetti stains on my jeans and t-shirt.
Pig: You could always boil up you clothes with the food stains on it for a nice stock for soup.
King: A nice little broth, that's right.
Pig: The Hugh Bomont Experience. Who is Hugh Bomont?
King: There's an American TV show from the 50's called 'Leave it to Beaver,' it's a kind of quintessential American TV show. As terrifying as the 50's must have been, fathers always wearing a suit, everyone's so nauseatingly white and mothers always in the kitchen, always in a nice dress with pearls and stuff. It ostensively a comedy but looking upon it, it's terrifying, but yet, it's one of the most beloved American shows of all time. Anyway the father on the show was played by the actor Hugh Bomont, so the 'Hugh Bomont Experience.' I don't know it's just our little retarded high school punk rock band name.
Pig: Are there lots of trappings being a Butthole Surfer? Are you collecting cars on the Butthole Surfer pay cheque?
King: Collecting cards?
Pig: Cars.
King: I wish we were collecting cars. That'd be a nice thing. I think I'm collecting used scabs, I've got a nice bottle of other peoples scabs. It's a proven fact that it's OK to eat a scab, but only half of one, you can't eat a whole scab.
Pig: You played in Australia a few years ago; what did you think of it?
King: It reminded us of Texas.
Pig: Not because of the red necks?
King: Yeah, that's part of it, we share a real similar culture of a society that comes from an outlaw background. Both Texas and Australia share that commonality of a real cowboy ethic and the intense heat and the huge sense of vastness and also isolation from the rest of the world. When you grow up in the middle of Texas you feel that, and I can sense that as well in Australia. I got along really well with Australians, they have a really great sense of humour; they don't take themselves seriously.
Pig: I've noticed you've occasionally stood aside for a drum machine, do you hate electrical instruments or do you hug them as much as we all do?
King: I love technology. I love programming computers and drum machines to get it to do retarded stuff. To my knowledge we're one of the first punk rock bands to be into sampling. We're all midi freaks and we all enjoyed doing the programming on Pepper. All that technology should be taken advantage of and exploited and used in the best possible, or most retarded possible way at times. All the Drain record is, is non stop programs and drum machines and samples. I play on it here and there, but mostly it's computer driven and I love that stuff.
Pig: Someone who shuns technology is Donevan, and you did Hurdy Gurdy Man, did you get any hassle from doing that song?
King: He didn't care for it, but I have a feeling he took the royalty cheques. To my knowledge they were never sent back to us.
Pig: Do you want to be associated with all the very basic chord punk rock bands that are in at the moment?
King: I don't want to be associated with them, hell no. The fact of the matter is that I was seeing punk shows back in the early eighties when these young whipper snappers like Rancid and Greenday were in diapers. When the Butthole Surfers formed back in '83 we were a hard core band that was intentionally not playing hard core because at that point in time hard core had gotten so boring, so one dimensional, so fast, so monotonous, so many rules that we would go on stage playing slow, playing Donevan covers wearing the most goofy clothes possible, having saxophones, doing everything wrong, just to alienate punk rockers. We were punk rockers out to alienate punk rockers. Because of that we refused to succumb to the rules of punk rock we refused to play punk rock. After 15 years we've gotten over it and now it's a blast to play. I loved hard core; I loved Black Flag, the Germs, Minor Threat and all that stuff. We never really began to play it until recently, it's so easy, it's so fun. We've tried our hand at everything else, but we've never really played punk rock until very recently.
Pig: What can you tell me about Trance Syndicate?
King: It's a Texas record label that puts out Texas music. We put out bands that I like, respect and admire for whatever reason. I feel a lot of similarities between bands that are on Trance and the Butthole Surfers when we were starting off. When we were starting off we had to go to California and later Detroit to find people to put out our records because there were no Texan record labels back then. Trance is trying to help fix that by having a solid label, that can distribute nationally, and hopefully internationally.
Pig: Do you spend much time in Texas?
King: For the next year we'll be touring. I'm sick of Texas and right now it's so incredibly hot in Texas that I'm grateful to be in the rain in Seattle. Get me the hell out of Texas.
Pig: If you come to Australia make sure you come to Perth.
King: Yeah, I wish we went to Perth. I don't know if we'll be going to Perth or not.