A new album from the band named after a place the sun doesn’t shine will finally see the light of day next month, complete with a track co-written by an “American Bad Ass.”
Experimental rockers the Butthole Surfers will release their first album in five years, Weird Revolution, on August 28, even though the family of Malcolm X forced the band back to the drawing board at the 11th hour.
In the lyrics on the track “The Weird Revolution,” frontman Gibby Haynes copped a passage – save a few words – from one of the assassinated black activist’s most famous speeches, “The Black Revolution.” In the opinion of the band’s new label, Hollywood Records, Haynes’ take on the speech so closely resembled the original, the company’s legal department thought it best to check with Malcolm X’s family, who denied the band permission to reinterpret it, according to a label spokesperson.
“The Black Revolution,” originally given at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church in June 1963, called for African-Americans to separate from, not integrate with, the society that oppressed them for 400 years and urged the U.S. government to grant them their own country.
“The Weird Revolution,” on the other hand, calls for a similar separation, although this time the “freaks” are seeking independence from “normal society.”
Haynes has reworked the lyrics, and the song is still slated to appear on the band’s eighth studio album, the follow-up to 1996’s Electriclarryland.
The original successor to Electriclarryland, After the Astronaut, was prepared in 1998 for Capitol Records, but a falling out with the label kept the album from being released. Eight songs from those sessions have been reworked for Weird Revolution.
A group whose career spans nearly two decades, the twisted Texans might attract a new generation of fans with Weird Revolution’s first single, “The Shame of Life.” The track was co-written by Haynes and, according to the album’s liner notes, Robert J. Ritchie, better known as Kid Rock.
Weird Revolution’s Track Listing, According To Hollywood Records:
- “The Weird Revolution”
- “The Shame of Life”
- “Dracula From Houston”
- “Venus”
- “Sh- Like That”
- “Mexico”
- “Intelligent Guy”
- “Get Down”
- “Jet Fighter”
- “The Last Astronaut”
- “Yentel”
- “They Came In”
