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.
Well, have you HEARD this album? Anderson is blessed with a rusty croak of a voice that would drive any self-respecting musician to arson.
This cover is news to me – the version my dad bought some fifty years ago had an image of a shattered lp. Virgil Partch, one of my favorite cartoonists, does the album justice!
When I finally heard this I thought it was BAD, but not as godawful as I had HOPED it might be….I was expecting someone completely tone-deaf, as opposed to merely “gifted” with an unappealing voice. I guess you can’t have EVERYTHING, for that I need to buy a Shaggs album…