If you need reminding how bizarre the post- frenzy among major record labels to sign 'The Next ' was, you could do worse that considering the case of the , a band whose records sounded like Hieronymus Bosch paintings look, and whose lives shows featured nudity, suicide footage, LSD, 'piss wands' and interpretative dance courtesy of a former Times Square stripper who rejoiced in the name Ta-Da The Shit Lady, being snapped up by Capitol Records, and given the chance to work with legend, and former choirmaster, John Paul Jones. The inspiration behind the first major label single released by the Texan band to cash in on the the alt. rock boom? “This crack whore I went out with for a month and a half,” said frontman Gibby Haynes.
Lovely stuff. Full credit though to everyone involved for throwing themselves into the project, 1993's album, with such gusto and such open minds, not least John Paul Jones. “I hadn’t heard them before,” Jones admitted to magazine in March 1993.
“People send me an awful lot of tapes, and I’ve heard an awful lot of uninteresting bands. When my manager sent me the Buttholes’ demo tape, I was just immediately interested. It was alive and exciting and subversive.
“Then Paul [Leary, BS guitarist] sent me their album ” Jones recalled. “He didn’t quite realize what he’d done when I thanked him for it [bearing in mind the title is a piss-take nod to Led Zeppelin's most famous song]. He said, ‘I sent ?' They probably thought I had a mor.