Put your ear to the ground and you can hear the stampede. Tomorrow a corner of 610 and 59, normally quiet and devoid of life, will explode with activity. Either it is Houston's way of celebrating our country's "independence" through large-scale accommodation and mainstreaming of countercultural outdoor sports for a Tom Bunch Street Buzz ... or the Butthole Surfers are playing. I'll take both for $500, Mr. Trebeck.

Yup. They're back, sans Longhead, Jeff Pinkus. Enter Owen Sausage on bass action. Remember the Cherubs. Aw yeah. The existing chassis beefed up with an additional guitar sautéed by newest member, Kyle Ellison. Still on hand: Paul Leary, cherry bomb guitarzan; Gibby Haynes, delay riot; crown roast King Coffey behind the Texas flag. It's been so long, darling.

This is a band that is dyed in the wool of our fine Lone Star State like the Luling Watermelon Thump, the little creamery in Brenham and the dreadlocks of salsa fresca in Billy Gibbons' beard. Plucking and cracking every pecan between El Paso to Butte would be easier than writing the book on these psychedelic Austin Rangers.

* * *

What does it take to be a Butthole Surfer? You can play percentage baseball, paint with numbers, even raise your children according to the teachings of Dr. Spock, but there are no guidelines one can follow when joining a pioneering aeroplane such as this.

The new guys weren't around for comment, but anyone who has followed this band over the past 15 years and 13 albums should know: It's about comin' of age. It's about learnin' how to do it. It's about lickin' the shit off the floor. It's about doin' promotional work.

"I think I'm an astronaut," Paul tells me matter-of-factly. "Everyone has dreams that they can fly. Mine usually involve not being able to come back. Sometimes I'm so far up, I turn around and I can't find Earth. That's a really scary dream. Last night I dreamt that Patrick Swayze was trying to kill me and my entire family. I'd wake up, a toilet somewhere in the hotel would flush, I'd go back to sleep and it would pick right up where I left off. Patrick was trying to cause me great bodily harm. Now that was a bad dream."

Paul needs to lay off the sauce. He really has a problem. He loves Stubbs Brand(TM). He loves to slap it on the pork real thick and sacrifice the ribs to the dark lord and the open heat. Stubbs, everything a Butthole could love ... and more.

Gibby Haynes, well, he puts Dr. Pepper on everything. Shredded duck and scallion pancakes? Dr. Pepper. Smoked tenderloin and green chili grits? Dr. Pepper. Roadkill and dog hockey? Just what the doctor ordered. Why? To appropriate the words of the shotgun-wielding frontman, artist, thespian, radio god, hiccup, tissue, cold sore and old friend: "Some people are sexy, and some have charisma ... I definitely have no charisma." So why did Montel Williams fix him with that patented look of pained concern when the Texas Choir Boy announced he was running for the GOP ticket this year? I dunno. Gibby's a good ol' boy. I'd let him babysit my kids.

Will the Surfers be around in ten years?

"Yes," King assures. "I honestly think that. I sincerely believe it. I believe God lives on a planet called Kolob. When we die, we get our own section of the Universe to rule according to how we want to rule it. I believe all these things."

* * *

In the old Oakwood Cemetery in Waco, there is a garden of sculpture which contains life-sized statues of two tall, long-bearded men in frock coats. The stone statues face each other. These are the sculptured likenesses of Richard Coke, Texas governor and senator, and David Robert Wallace, M.D.

Coke and Wallace were good friends in life, and they swore "friendship through eternity." They each left a substantial dime for the statues that stand over their bones, one facing the rising sun and the other the setting sun.

This is the lifelong friendship of an accountant and a stockbroker attending Trinity University in San Antonio in 1981. Gibby was an economics and accounting all-star and Paul was a student of art and finance. They were well on their way to a starched and pressed future. However, living as hosed and shod models of rectitude and unsullied ethic proved to be too boring and predictable.

Life on top of the academic ecosystem sucked. They wanted to dive down with the bottom-feeders, sleep on floors, get trashed and play "horrible music." So they did. Fuck it. Sold everything, bought a van, started the Butthole Surfers and drove out to California to find good drugs.

They slid onto a Dead Kennedys bill in San Francisco. It was this gig that impressed DK yodeler Jello Biafra and got the band a record deal with his label, Alternative Tentacles.

However, they lost their first rhythm section to feathered bangs and fluorescent clothes before they made it back to Texas to record. This was 1983. Ollies and backspins were catching on and John Cougar's "Uh-huh" was Billboard's #1. King Coffey, Fort Worth native and drummer for the Hugh Beaumont Experience at the time, told me about the first time he saw the Surfers play.

"I kept looking at Paul, and I thought he was psycho because he kept looking up and off into space. I couldn't figure out what it was he was looking at," laughs Coffey. "I'm not a voyeur or any kind of twisted guy, heh, but I couldn't help but look at Gibby's dick. He was wearing this underwear, I'm sorry, but his penis was wide open for public display. My first memory. `What's Paul looking at?' And there's Gibby, he's playing a saxophone and there's his dick." King managed to fit in.

What is Paul looking at?

"I'm trying to find that 90 percent of matter which cannot be detected. There are ways to calculate the mass of galaxies, but there is no way to calculate how they are moving. We are only aware of 10 percent of the universe. I want to know where the other 90 percent is."

Okey dokey.

The Surfers lived on the road for years, joined by Paul's apple-cheeked damsel, Mark Farner, a female pit bull that went everywhere the band went. The words Latino Buggerveil slipped from the lips of fearful men. While Mr. Whipple and "adonde es beef?" flashed in the pan, the Surfers, along with the help of Alternative Tentacles and Touch and Go Records, gave the world a Rembrandt Pussyhorse, a Locust Abortion Technician, Cream Corn..., Hairway to Steven, just to name a few. Notable locally produced compilations like Cottage Cheese from the Lips of Death and Metal Moo Cow were also signs of an oasis in the Vale of Nena and Quarter Pounders.

Visions of smoke, lights, film clips of penis reconstruction, painted nude female dancers and Haynes performing onstage pyromania became a growing tradition that sold more and more tickets; and more and more kids found it difficult to find their way home after a Butthole Surfer show.

"I've got a tattoo on my ankle," Gibby informs. "It's a 77. I was gonna get a 69, but this way I can get eight more."

* * *

Settling down in the Austin area in the late `80s, they released Pioughdon Rough Trade Records before inking a deal with Capitol. Some critics wondered if Capitol had slipped its trolley, but they were quickly corralled, stuffed into trunks and tossed into vats of boiling pitch.

The Buttholes were given complete artistic freedom, and the new bank gave them the ability to really "stretch their wings." Item: Independent Worm Saloon was produced by John Paul Jones, a tired old stump that used to be in some nerd band like Rush or something.

On Electric Larryland, their second release on Capo-di-tutti-capi, producer Steve Thompson was asked to co-produce. His credits include Metallica, Soundgarden, Anthrax -- yechh! Leary did most of the work back at Arlyn Studio in Austin.

The first single, "Pepper," seems to be better-than-ezra-and-everclearly-blowing past-Hootie-and-Jewel. It's all good.

A word of advice from the helm of my `72 Meg-Ryan-ram-running Fleetwood Mac: go out and buy it, scene shaker! (Maria at Capitol told me if I wrote that, she would cuff me a pair of tickets to Hollywood and buy me one of those bloody Douglas Sirk steaks like the once Vincent Vega gets in Pulp Fiction. A1, baby.)

Never idle, even between albums, the Surfers always manage to keep their mugs close to Random Notes. Haynes recorded with Johnny Dope, P, and got a blow job in Dead Man. Leary is an extremely successful producer of bands like the Meat Puppets, Supersuckers (he's about to work on the follow up to Sacrilicious), Daniel Johnston, Whiskey Biscuit, Toadies and Bad Livers.

Trance Syndicate, formed by King, has become the label of Roky Erickson, Pain Teens, Ed Hall, Bedhead, Starfish, Sixteen Deluxe and the Cherubs. He is also releasing records for Drain, his disco side project. Owen? He's a gangsta gourmand that'll pop a portobello cap in yo' ass if you give him any lip.

Butthole Surfers tend to be a private lot. At baby showers, they are inclined to hide themselves away in dark corners lest some officious press dork sneak up on them and demand they say something weird, "Right now, man!" The jingle of a dog's collar would be fine. A Les Nessman in a straw boater strokin' them for a station ID. Some big-hair bimbo wanting to get a polaroid with her and "Gooby." Sometimes, however, they can suddenly grow candid, up close and personal.

"We used to pride ourselves," King whispers, "by the fact that none of us had seen the movie E.T." The drummer shakes his head slowly. "Well, one day Paul hangs out with his nephew and watches it. Then, in a very intimate moment, Gibby steps forward, with his head in his hands, and spills the beans that he had seen it as well. It was a sad day."

Well, I'm sure the band will survive well after the last reel of E.T runs over its spool. Until then, we'll see you at the movies.

Who: Butthole Surfers, Reverend Horton Heat, Toadies and Sincola

What: Seasoned Texas raunch rock

When: July 4

Where: Westpark Entertainment Center, 5000 Westpark. Sold out. (We're still in the middle of a drought, so you kids better crotch those fireworks and those fancy 8-gallon steins.)