RECORDS / Rock: Butthole Surfers - Independent Worm Saloon (Capitol, LP/CD/ tape)

Did the last of the great American underground groups of the Eighties to bite the big-label bullet leave it too late? In an amusingly bare-faced attempt to find a mass audience for their unique brand of acid-fried, sludge-rocking Texan depravity, they have Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones producing. But the Surfers' strength was always their fractured, stop-start craziness, best heard on early classics such as 'The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave'. Smooth them out and there's nothing left.