Butthole Surfers - The Last Astronaut mp3 album

It was thought to be a lie. An 'After the Astronaut' promo CD. And yet here it is...with a photographic proof, no less. A couple of cassette variants exist, but the CD is a rare bird indeed. It appears they changed the name of the project to 'The Last Astronaut' by the time the CDs were pressed, most likely at Capitol's insistence, but even having a title track couldn't save the project from its fate...I don't think CDs were destroyed, but knowing how many were sent out as promotional items is impossible. A scant handful at best before the album was scrapped, and lawsuits started to fly between all parties involved...One of the cassette variants has a release date listed of February 2, 1998...that never happened, and my educated guess is that the CDs were released sometime in April or May...who exactly they were sent to is anybody's guess...it couldn't have been very many, because the first lawsuit against their manager was initiated right around that time as well...shortly thereafter, they were dropped by Capitol altogether...The band doesn't even know who initiated sending promotional materials out to press for 'After the Astronaut', since nothing had really been settled as to when it would get released. Rumors that Marcy Playground, another Capitol band, stole the artwork commissioned by Mark Ryden for their 'Shapeshifter', therefore delaying the record, are not true...Paul gave artist Mark Ryden the idea for the front cover of the album...Mr Ryden then painted a back cover based on the theme Paul gave him (aliens and indians). Long 'After the Astronaut' was scrapped, the Marcy Playground found that back cover image in the Capitol art archive and it became the front cover of 'Shapeshifter...They had no idea on the artowrk's previous intent, nor was it the art orginally commissioned by Paul...In any event, or rather because of a lot of events, these CDs didn't get mailed to many folks before things turned to shit. This makes finding one these days quite a challenge, to put it mildly. I'd say it's scarcity rivals the band's first demo cassette from 1981; 'I FUCK YOUR WIFE'...anyone got one of those??...

I actually got lucky and had this in an illegal download...all the track sound like demos for what later would end up on Weird Revolution. But the tracks that didn't make the cut are pretty sweet. Turkey & Dressing is wicked but sounds a lot like one of the tracks of Electriclarryland. I spent a long time trying to find a picture of the cover but what I got turns out to be a bootleg cover that someone made to sell some fake copies but is kinda cool in its own way.