Category Archives: WTF?

WTF Album Covers: The Oak Ridge Boys Murder Christmas

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This album cover tells a story. It’s the story of how the Oak Ridge Boys broke into your apartment, made love to your pets, ate all the barbecue, and then sat patiently waiting for you to come home from work so they could re-enact scenes from Bergman’s The Virgin Spring.

This is how they sat while they waited for you to come home from a long holiday shift you didn’t want to take, but had to at the last minute. Cue the scary music, because now, you’re putting the key into the lock of your apartment door and you’ll soon be face to face with The Men With The Sentient Facial Hair.

–Joe Wallace

Sun Ra Plays the Batman Theme?

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Of all the vinyl finds I’ve had lately, one of the most surreal has to be this French repressing of this Batman and Robin album, complete with the Batman theme.

Re-issued by Klimt Records years ago in France, this record brought in some serious firepower as session musicians, namely members of the Al Kooper Blues Project and the Sun Ra Arkestra including Sun Ra himself on the Hammond B3. The original album gives no clue to the super-session nature of the album, but Klimt sets the record straight with a complete roster of players on the back cover.

That roster included Sun Ra, Al Kooper, Steve Katz, Pat Patrick, Marshall Allan, Danny Kalb and others.

According to blogger Ryan Masteller at Critical Masses, at least one of those players truly hated doing the sessions. Maybe they were underpaid, or had an angry martinet type running the show, or perhaps they were forced to do the music wearing tights and cowls? We may never know.

I’d never heard of this until I spotted it in the bins a few weeks ago. I was so amazed that I had to grab one. The album is a cash-in, made during the Adam West Batman period.

What’s really funny about that to me, at least where the actual Batman theme song is concerned, is that when you watch the end credits of any Batman episode, when they get to the music portion, there is a LYRICS credit.

Yes, somebody actually got paid to come up with “Batmaaaan. Da-da da-da- da-da-da….(repeat until your face falls off)…BAT MAAAAAAANNNNNNN”

But back to the record. The musicians are credited on the cover as “Dan and Dale”. On the flip side, the French pressing reveals that it’s actually Sun Ra and various other names (something not found on the original, heh).

All things considered, this is one super-oddball find and while some uber-collectors are no doubt tapping their foot and clucking at me finding this only years after the fact, collectors be damned. You take the weirdness where you can find it. I was quite pleased to score this and nominate it for “most mind-bending vinyl find of the month”. Sun Ra and Batman. It doesn’t come any further out of left field than that.

(Side note–I do have a copy of the Sun Ra Plays Batman & Robin on auction at eBay. When it’s gone, it’s gone!)

–Joe Wallace

WTF Album Covers Tsjuder Demonic Possession

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by Joe Wallace

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not at all a fan of black metal, so maybe it’s completely unfair to poke fun at the Tsjuder album cover for Demonic Possession. After all, if you’re not a fan of this kind of music, it just seems a bit silly. The “ooh scary” makeup, the spiky leather armbands, the growling…if you aren’t caught up in any of this your first reaction is likely something to do with the notion that it might be time to leave Mom’s basement and try using some hair conditioner.

But is that really fair? Whatever…I’m a first impression sorta guy when it comes to WTF album covers.

So with that said, I could NOT STOP LAUGHING at the expression on this guy’s face when I spotted this album cover. Sorry, black metal fans, but the face paint doesn’t say anything to me except Circ du Soleil, and the scowling makes me think about eating more fiber. Coupled with yet another indecipherable scrawl for a band logo and we have a winner for this week’s “Album Cover Most Likely To Make You Laugh While Looking Over Your Shoulder For Angry Metal Dudes With Baseball Bats” contest.

Making fun of black metal band album covers is probably almost as dangerous as making fun of gangsta rap records like Mister Stinky’s Everything Dead. THAT clown actually made a sort-of halfhearted threat to shoot my little harmless ass after I wrote, “Fame, fortune, and all the summer sausage you can eat have all passed Mr. Stinky by…”

The reply I got to THAT post read, “Who ever wasted there time and life…. let me know where you are so I can put a bullet in your face!” Nice going, Stinky. Now the lawyers know where to find you.

Poking fun at the metal album covers hasn’t earned me any similar missives so far, but I did get a peeved message from an offended Yanni fan. Boy, oh boy, I just don’t know when to quit, do I?

I do wonder what day of the week it will wind up being when some face-painted angry King Diamond sorta guy shows up looking for some fisticuffs because I said something slightly negative about the idea that all these black metal face-paintey guys make me giggle like a Swedish schoolgirl.

So it’s getting shot by Mister Stinky or curb-stomped by some Scandinavian goat worshipper…hmmm. Which do I choose? Never mind, I’m gonna start making fun of Micronesian zither polka album covers next. Those dudes might come after me with a potato peeler or a pencil sharpener, but it won’t do any lasting injury.

WTF Album Covers: Leona Anderson Music To Suffer By

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by Joe Wallace

I stumbled on this image of the album cover for Leona Anderson’s Music To Suffer By on The Magic Whistle. WTF is going on in this picture? This one’s suitable for framing–at least in MY house where bad album art has a special place of love and reverence.

There’s nothing quite like the joys of an especially wretched piece of album art. The ones so wrong-headed you can’t even begin to describe them are my favorites. Music To Suffer By from Leona Anderson is definitely one of those. Can you hear the discussion between Anderson and the artist? “Well, miz Anderson, the guy with the violin is, you know, gonna KILL you here with that lighter as you’re trying to sing with cobwebs coming out of your mouth. GET IT?”

If YOU get it, please by all means, let ME know what this is trying to say. I think maybe I’m still drunk from a week last Thursday and that’s why I can’t wrap my head around it.