Jingle of a Dog’s Collar

Gibson Haynes was the basketball team captain and “Accountant of the Year” at Trinity University in San Antonio. Paul Leary was one semester from his MBA. They formed Butthole Surfers in 1981. Their van broke down at the top of the Bay Bridge in 1982. They coasted to the bottom, took the first exit, and stopped in front of a building full of punk rockers loading gear. The Dead Kennedys were inside. Jello Biafra offered them a record deal that night. They had made it as far as San Francisco without trying.

Leary said they built the live show by asking what no other rock band was doing and then doing it. Walls of strobe lights so intense that audience members had seizures. Surgery films and driver’s education footage projected behind the band. A cymbal filled with rubbing alcohol that Haynes would strike to produce fireballs. A dancer who performed in nothing but gold body paint and antique wooden snowshoes. A shotgun fired from the stage. The fire department started appearing at sound checks. They would arrest the dancer for nudity but had no problem with the flames.

Capitol Records signed them in 1992 and brought in John Paul Jones to produce. Leary and Jones bonded over a bottle of sixteen-year-old Lagavulin Scotch on the first day. The number of bottles doubled each morning. Leary believed Jones quit drinking altogether after that. Electriclarryland arrived in 1996. “Pepper” reached number one on the Modern Rock chart. Capitol certified it gold by August. MTV had commissioned the band to record the network’s station ID jingle. It ran on the hour for over a year. Leary said they were on television more than Van Halen. Nobody knew it was them. The band ended up on the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack alongside Radiohead and Garbage. Leary said having a hit single was “not a whole lot of fun.” They terminated their deal with Touch and Go in 1995 and sued when the label kept selling the catalog. The Seventh Circuit ruled in their favor. “Jingle of a Dog’s Collar” is one of the quieter pieces on the album. From a band that spent fifteen years proving quiet was not their instinct.