DIY

“Reddy Teddy’s Rowdy Roundup” TFM-100. Crazy titles here like “When the Iron in Your Blood Turns to Lead in Your Pencil”! Cool illustration with that leopard skin bikini bottom on tail! Unlikely you’ll ever see this record again and I’m guessing there never was a TFM-101.

“Music for Morticians” “Les Pallbearer and His All-Ghoul Orchestra” This has to be one of my rarest records. I believe it was made as a goof by guys working in the design department at Capitol records Who knows how many were made.  It’s dated on the label 1951.  I’m assuming it’s them in the cover photo. I wonder who they got to be the corpse?! I’d love to hear from anyone who might know anything about it, though I imagine that’s unlikely. Still, a great cover and right in the spirit of our obsession.

The Men From Mars for “Music Out of this World”  A crazy homemade cover by guys on the ultimate road trip (far away from Venus).

“I’ll Never Be Afraid” by the Gospel Rythm-Aires.  A superior example of outsider, DIY cover art.  Beautiful in its simplicity and naivete.  Mixed media here all comes together for a doomsday message of hope, faith and salvation.  See the ghostly figure of Jesus in nature craddling the band as Armeggedon hits the big city.

He’s the prostletizing lap puppet Clyde Hyde by day, at night he answers God’s call as Superdummy.

“Gospel Ship” Howard…Lovett

“Into Outer Space” with Lucia Pamela Gulfstream Records (1969). Read the liner notes here. Read Lucia’s NY Times Obit for more.

Lucia insists Into Outer Space was recorded on the moon. Not only that, she’s not entirely happy with lunar acoustics. “The air is so thin everything sounds different up there”, she once noted in an annoyed tone.

How to explain the sound of Into Outer Space? For starters, one critic called Lucia the “missing link between Sun Ra and the Shaggs”. That’s a start, but it’s nowhere near the complete story. Lucia isn’t nearly derivative enough to be neatly pigeonholed between other artists, no matter how out-there they may be.

Approximate the following and come to your own conclusions. Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela is the sound of a ragtime band lost in another galaxy, hopelessly whacked out on alien hallucinogens, desperately trying to pull together history’s strangest concept album.

Which is exactly what Into Outer Space is — a startlingly weird concept album.

Edgar Allan Poe keeps you up at night.

Larry Corner & Sis.  A brother-sister act out of Pennsylvania.  He plays the accordian.

Why superimpose your head coming out of a woman’s nostril?!

Outsider musical hero Ron Schmeck. “Easy Living The American Way” featuring my personal favorite “I’m Proud to Own a Mobile Home”. Maybe some day I really will.

From Show and Tell Records.  Check out Will’s many rad DIY covers here!

Garry Hunter and Rusty.

“When I found your website I thought I’d died and gone to my own personal heaven, which is an endless street of charity shops full of the most amazing record covers.  I have to share one of my own collection with you which I purchased in Swansea Town, South Wales and is an equally good record as the cover suggests.  All the best, Major Lloyd (retired)”

Oh the irony.  I’m fascinated by this kind of faith-inspiring story put to vinyl and wonder if people found comfort in knowing that a crippled little girl found “an” answer (not however “the” answer) through prayer. I don’t know what the question was (but I’d guess “why me?”).

Esther Lee “Where Glory Began” Private press label (1974) Produced by The Ministering Carpenter, recorded at Ye old Garage Studio.