Frigarui! Or, why you should never leave your first grader alone with Janis Joplin.

A sure fire way to keep me quiet when I was a kid was to plop me down in front of my Dad's record collection. Not that I was a loud or really rambunctious kid, my parents just had little patience for my blabbering. And now I have a blog. Go figure.

Anyway, I would pour over every cover for hours. If there was something interesting on the other side or, bonus!, if the album had a gatefold, I could be there all day.Sometimes my parents would put on whatever album interested me and then they put a pair of those stupidly large headphones on my head - you know, the ones as big as the cinnamon buns on Princess Leia's head? - and left me there, entranced, listening to Big Brother and the Holding Company or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In hindsight, this was probably not a prudent move seeing as I was only about 6 years old. But it sure does explain a lot about the person I am today. Which is to say really fecked up.

Anyone else really craving a Marshmallow Pie? Just me? Huh.

My favorite then and will always be is Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company. Janis Joplin is my idol, man, and how freaking cool was that cover? I own the album now, along with a bunch of others, and to me it's like owning a piece of fine art. I really hope Chicky will get as big of a kick out of them as I did. At the very least I hope she doesn't use them as frisbees.

Album covers, sadly, are a thing of the past. No one gives a damn about a piece of paper in a CD box that will probably be chucked after the songs are downloaded to an iPod anyway. So what's the point in taking any time to design some decent artwork?

Well...

You love it, don't you? You love it so much you want to marry it. And have little album cover babies with it.
(Picture by socialendproduct)

There's this album cover meme going around and that pain in the ass buddy of mine, MotherBumper, tagged me for it. You have to put together your own album cover for a fictitious band.

Duuude.

I may have spent way too much time on this cover.

I may even have a back story for Frigarui and the complete list of album tracks from "If We're Always Doing". In 1967 they might have hit #5 on Billboard with their song "The Murder of Gonzago". Then their bassist might have died in a tragic wheat threshing machine accident while on break from their tour at home in Bulgaria. Then the bassist's 17 year old girlfriend might have tried to sue the band for royalties accumulated after his death and the subsequent trial might have driven them to bankruptcy and forced the band to break up.

But that's for me to know and my therapist to fix.

You want to play, don't ya? Yeah, you do. Here's the rules (copied from MB who copied them from SBB. I know, BFD.):

1. The first title on this page is the name of your band.

2. The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album. Click the "New Random Quotations" button for more.

3. The third picture on this page will be your album cover. You then take the photo and add your band name and the album title to it, then post your picture. Please don't forget to give credit.

** This is rock and roll. Rules are made to be broken!

I suck at tagging people - I suck at tag in general because I run like a wounded chicken - so play along if you'd like. But leave me a comment if you do because this meme rocks.