Pretentious art fag band formed at a former Pillowtex pillow factory in downtown Atlanta from 1981 until 1986. Stephen Eighmey (aka Steve Beach, Miami Beach) and David Dean collaborated on multi-layered, four-track recordings of improvised music (listen, download, enjoy) and performed for art parties and events at Pillowtex, their home, in the early eighties occasionally from behind closed doors or wearing white to blend with screen projections handled by upstairs neighbor and friend Phil Elie, current local arts and entertainment impresario Dennis Coburn, and/or local underground cultural icon Tom Zarilli.
Pillowtexans gained some notoriety with the noise/improv circles of the time and hosted three Destroy All Music Festivals at Pillowtex featuring artists like Limbo District, Fab Area, The Now Explosion, Eastern Stars, Opal Fox Quartet, Etron Fou Le LouBlan(fr), Eugene Chadbourne (featuring his electric rake), Voice Crack(swiss) Chris Cochran, J Pippen Barnett, and Fred Frith.
Contacted in 1986 after a particularly pretentious show at Nexus, Dean and Beach were cajoled by Brian Lilje to add himself and David Watkins (aka ZOD) on bass and drums, respectively. "The Pillowtexans" became a "rock" band that also sometimes included Derek Randall Presley who replaced Zod when he bailed to wallow in drunken disgust and Brian when Dean freaked out and kicked him out of the band for bonking him in the head with an inflatable shamu at the 40 Watt club. Presley contributed material that was the only music that sounded the least bit Texan...
This impossibly self indulgent and often silly band was repeatedly featured on Live at WREK, on WRFG and opened for bands such as Fetchin Bones, Pylon, Snakefinger, and The Swans. In 1989 they began recording their only CD release,"Displacement"; the effort killed this band, best known in some circles for their whiney stage fights which were usually about Beach not wanting to bother to play, Brian not wanting to improvise or Dean not remembering his part.
