#41 - Doolittle: The Pixies (1988)

The Pixies were an interesting mixture of punk and something that sounded a lot like – honestly – surf rock. The Ramones meet the Beach Boys, if you will. Indeed, though they sang about things like incest and mutilation, their tunes were extremely catchy.

The band was primarily front man – and vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter – Black Francis (nee Charles Thompson IV and AKA Francis Black). Quite an interesting fellow:

• Despite the swank IV, Charles Thompson III owned a bar.
• Charles IV was brought up as a born-again Christian.
• He once received a Teenager of the Year award.

Same person, no kidding 

As for the album, it’s great! Honestly, it’s like a great hits album – “Here Comes Your Man,” “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” “Debaser,” “Gouge Away,” “Wave of Mutilation,”and ”Hey!” One of my favorite albums of all time.

The cover was a team effort between photographer Simon Larbalestier and graphic artist Vaughan Oliver. 

It’s based on the song “Monkey Gone to Heaven.” Here’s what the original looked like:

As you can see, it gives a good feel for Larbalestier’s rather surreal style, as do these (all in the album's insert): 

Larbalestier and Oliver combined on a number of albums, including these other faves of mine:

I really don’t like any of the band's other covers.

The Pixies weren't all just Black, by the way. Joey Santiago (first below) was a pretty talented guitarist, and Kim Deal would later form The Breeders.

Can’t believe there’s a parody out there:

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#42 - Oh My Gawd!!!: The Flaming Lips (1987)

Just to show I do like newer music. In fact, I like a lot of really cool bands from, oh, 20 or so years ago.

Honestly, it was a great time for alt/indy stuff: Guided by Voices, The New Pornographers, Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, The Shins … Hey, some of these bands might even be still around today.

The Flaming Lips were – as you can probably tell from this album cover – um … interesting. First, they were from Oklahoma. Second, well just check out some of their titles:

• "In a Priest Driven Ambulance (with Silver Sunshine Stares)"
• "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"
• "Hit to Death in the Future Head"
• "The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon"
• "Oh My Pregnant Head (Labia in the Sunlight)"
• "March of the Rotten Vegetables"
• "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion (The Inner Life as Blazing Shield of Defiance and Optimism as Celestial Spear of Action)"

It’s kind of like Frank Zappa meets the Grateful Dead. It’s also some of the coolest stuff around. Some other great Flaming Lips facts:

• Their song “Do You Realize?” is the official rock song of Oklahoma
• They did a cover of the Dark Side of the Moon (track for track)
• At midnight October 31, 2011, a 24-hour song was released titled "7 Skies H3." The song plays live on a never-ending audio stream on a special website set up by the band and was made available for purchase as a hard drive encased in an actual human skull, limited to 13 copies. (Wikipedia)

I rest my case.

Oh, the album? It was their second. Paste calls it “eclectic,” which I’m sure it is (I’ve never actually listened to it).

As for the cover, I’m afraid I couldn’t find who designed it. And that’s kind of the trouble with bands this new and albums this obscure.

I do know that front man Wayne Coyne is something of an artist (and pretty psychedelic), so maybe this is his. I also know there’s a hanger-on named George Salisbury, who gets credit for some of the covers. Just can’t say for sure

I did, though, find several others covers I liked, whether George’s, Wayne’s, or someone else’s:

And here’s some pix of the band:

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#43 - Aoxomoxoa: Grateful Dead (1969)

I went to a couple of concerts, had a number of their albums, but was never the Deadhead that some of my friends were. That said, American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead are two of my favorite albums of all time.

The Dead were the leaders in that trippy, psychedelic, paisley-and-patchouli Northern California style of graphic design. The artist for this one was Rick Griffin. 

Quite an interesting guy, he would go from surfing, to underground comics, to being a born-again Christian, to dying at the age of 47 in a motorcycle accident.

He has some 70 album credits, not all in that inimitable psychedelic style.

That last one was for his own Christian rock band

Aoxomoxoa (did I spell that right?), apart from being a meaningless palindrome, was also the Dead’s third album. No real hits on this one, though “St. Stephen” is good, and “China Cat Sunflower” would be on their playlist for years to come. Probably most importantly, this is the album where the band would first team up with lyricist Robert Hunter.

Bob and friend

Supposedly, if you hold the album the right way, the title “Grateful Dead” will look like “We ate the acid.” While that’s certainly true of the band, you might have to be on acid yourself to actually see it.

There’s an interesting story about the back cover:

Courtney Love claimed that the little girl in the lower left corner was her. Though her dad was a hanger-on with the band, it’s actually Stacy Kreutzmann, daughter of drummer Bill Kreutzmann.

Here's probably my fave pic of the band:

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#44 - Breakfast in America: Supertramp (1979)

Supertramp was a British band that started out as prog rockers but then made a switch to pure pop.

In fact, that switch pretty much came with this album. Breakfast in America would go to #1, win 2 Grammys, and feature hits like the "The Logical Song." The theme of the album – and title and cover – was a pretty mild satire of the U.S.

The art director here was Mike Doud, who actually won one of those Grammys that this album garnered. I could find next to nothing on him, even though he got that Grammy, did 138 covers, and was the art director for Physical Graffiti. I really like this guy’s stuff. Very creative. Here are some of his covers, from some well-known and some not-so-well-known acts:

And here’s two more I like that Doud did for Supertramp:

The model, by the way, is Kate Murtaugh, an actress with 50-some credits of her own on IMDb, mostly TV. She died just a couple of years ago at age 98. Here she is with Don Knotts on Three's Company:

Hard to believe but the band, which was actually formed in 1969, is still around today.

I honestly don’t know any of these guys. I always thought the guy in the middle looked that dude on Trailer Park Boys:

Kinda surprised there aren’t more good parodies of this one out there:

This conspiracy theory about the cover (supposedly, it predicted 9/11) is pretty darn good though.

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#45 - Strange Days: The Doors (1967)

Our second – and last – Doors cover. And like our first, this one was done by Joel Brodsky. 

Unlike our first (and most Doors covers), however, this baby does not feature a picture of the band or of Jim Morrison. In fact, Morrison refused to pose for this one.

Brodsky’s inspiration – along with the title – was the Fellini film La Strada.

The location was Sniffen Court, an alley off East 36th Street between Lexington and Third Avenue. The “cast” were some real street performers, along with a few passersby to fill things out.

Brodsky was known as much for his photography as his album covers. Here are a couple of some of his more well-known photos (that’s Tom Paxton and Tom Waits in the first two, by the way):

And here’s a couple of other Doors albums I rather like (though not Brodskys):

In addition to not featuring the band, Strange Days is also unique in having no identifying information – no title, no band name, no nothing (well, unless you consider the poster on the back). Some record distributors put stickers on it to eliminate any possible confusion.

The big hits here are “People Are Strange” and “Love Me Two Times.”

Up for a little Jim Morrison trivia? Well, did you know:

• His father was an admiral in the US Navy
• He grew up in CA, VA, TX, and NM
• He had an IQ of 149
• He attended 3 colleges, including Florida State and UCLA
• He may have died from asthma

Huh! Another movie with the same name (like last week's!):

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