Wretched Records and Crappy Covers: Let's Get Physical

Hmm … judging by the illustrations, this doesn’t look like any ordinary exercise album. Backdoor pantomiming, pelvic thrusting, and checking a counter’s sturdiness are generally associated with exercises of a different sort. Not to mention, the whole shebang is narrated by a “physical fitness expert” named Vic Boff. Vic fricking BOFF, ladies and gentleman.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers Redux: Wicker Up Front

We may never know what begot the wicker chair trend of the 1970s, but it hardly matters. The fact of the matter is that these specimens of dreadful design exist and continue to haunt the bargain bins and thrift stores near and far. Besides, who in their right, sober mind would claim credit for conceiving these Sears-studio-quality jackets? Because let's be honest: they're all likely the product of the same art director, who, along with his or her one idea, bounced from label to label, starting with the wonderful Al Green (whose album is pretty stunning despite the jacket; have you listened to "Look What You Done to Me" lately? The Late Teenie Hodges' gorgeous and sublime guitar work is just the beginning.) and ending with the miserable Ron Hudson. The only thing missing from these album covers besides tasteful graphic design is a lap dog ... or cat. 

When My Burning Airlines Concert Preview Crashed and Burned

I've been digging around in my archives lately in a futile attempt to locate a nice little write-up I did several months ago about the veteran L.A. band the Radar Bros. Their day-dreamy psychedelic music has long been a summer companion, and so I thought the short piece deserved a home here while summer is still upon us. Thus far, the archaeological dig into my archives, which has encompassed thousands of files and folders across two computers, a server and a portable drive, has uncovered no trace of the piece. But I'm not giving up yet. It's a decent chunk words, and I seldom say that about my own writing. All this searching hasn't been for nothing, though, because I managed to unearth an unpublished story from 2001, which I thought was lost forever in a cyber landfill of another dimension. And yet here it is, all 500 words of it. It's not a remarkable story -- it's just a short concert preview/interview featuring a long-defunct indie rock band called Burning Airlines. What makes it somewhat significant to me is the reason why the piece was never published: 9/11. 

The Burning Airlines story was originally written as the centerpiece of my weekly club concert column for the Friday edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I filed the column on September 10. The next day, four hijacked passenger planes ... you know the rest. Cut to September 12 and my editor calls me to say that, for obvious reasons, he couldn't possibly publish a concert preview of a band called Burning Airlines. I didn't argue; I would have killed the story myself; but in those days I was so burned out on writing that I didn't think I could muster the energy it would take to draft a new column in just a few hours. I don't remember who replaced Burning Airlines in my revised column ... it's not important. 

So now that you know the story, I give you my Burning Airlines piece, almost 13 years later. If you don't recall Burning Airlines, you may remember the band emerged from the wreckage of Jawbox with guitarists/vocalists J. Robbins and Bill Barbot. Here's the story:

Burning Airlines Give You So Much More

By Joe Ehrbar
Special to the P-I

When Burning Airlines first rolled off the assembly line in 1998, guitarist/vocalist J. Robbins, along with bassist/vocalist Bill Barbot and drummer/vocalist Pete Moffett had no intention of ever departing the basement. Burning Airlines would not be a full-blown punk rock carrier.

            That’s because Robbins and Barbot had just come off an exhausting seven-year run with Jawbox, the beloved Washington, D.C. post-hardcore band they co-founded in 1990. Having made a number of solid recordings, toured the world several times over, and punched the clock for three years and two albums with Atlantic Records, earning themselves a small, but loyal following in the process, Jawbox simply ran out of steam. Its members were eager to unplug and get on with their lives.

            So when Robbins, Moffett and Barbot convened in the Jawbox’s old practice space, their idea was to simply make music. They had no intentions of sharing their results with an audience.

            It didn’t quite work out that way.

            The low-key arrangement allowed the band greater freedom to explore new sonic destinations they were otherwise unable to in Jawbox—largely because commercial pressures stifled that band creative pursuits. Yet the project had become something bigger than mere basement noodling; it was a viable endeavor.

           Taking their name from the Brian Eno song “Burning Airlines Give You So Much More,” Burning Airlines, who play Graceland with Rival School and Actionslacks on Wednesday (7 p.m.;$10), started slowly, cautiously, initially making short hops around D.C. and other East Coast cities, before venturing farther. In early 1999, the band’s first full-length manifest “Mission: Control!” was released, detailing Burning Airlines’ rapid artistic ascent and revealing the band to be a sturdier, sleeker, more versatile version of Jawbox.

            “I think Burning Airlines is a lot different than Jawbox, but in my mind a lot of my concerns are obviously the same,” Robbins said in a phone interview last week. “So it’s sort of an ongoing project in that way.”

            Now, three years, two albums and one personnel change (bassist Mike Harbin replaced a departing Barbot) later, it would seem Robbins and company are giving audiences a hell of ride. The proof is in their newest CD travel log “Identikit” (DeSoto), a highly stylized display of intensity, precision and sophistication, one characterized by seismic rhythms, white-knuckle time changes, angular riffs, robust vocal melodies and guitar crescendos, and lots of thorny dissonance.

            “I feel like the two Burning Airlines records have carried on very much in the (Jawbox) spirit of wanting to reach,” said Robbins. “Maybe we’ve gotten better at being adventuresome and at integrating it into a kind of live feeling.

            “The thing I keep going back to whenever we’re putting songs together are the melodies and changes,” the frontman continued. “And usually if those are in place then we do things around the changes. Things can get pretty rich around the changes and take on a life of their own and still keep the essence of what those changes are. In my mind it’s pretty fun to see how far afield you can go from just carrying on underneath the vocal and instead do something more interesting with the instruments.”

           As Robbins says, Burning Airlines may deviate from course, but for passengers it makes for a thrilling adventure.

Marcy the Malevolent

After this photo, Marcy's duet partner never wore another smile.

On this album cover, Marcy's new partner failed to smile enough. She never got a second chance.

Tiny terror: Little Marcy swings!

There’s something you should know about a Marcy. She’s not the lovable proselytizing puppet she appears to be both in her songs and on the covers of her many records. No, there’s something quite sinister about her. Have you seen a more hateful smile? Unless it came from the face of the Twilight Zone’s “Talking Tina,” you most certainly have not. Unlike Talking Tina, Marcy actually exists. And not just in your nightmares. But because this adorable little devil is fronting with that whole “I’m in the Lord’s Army” bullshit while outfitted in the most precious jumpers, Marcy’s adoring fans are content to look past the figurative and literal skeletons decomposing in her closet. And the evidence is right there on her album covers. As the LP jackets posted above attest, Marcy changes singing partners more often than Catholic priests find themselves in a bit of … well, you get the point. See the women pictured alongside perky little Marcy? That’s right, they have neither been seen nor heard from after smiling for the camera alongside the tiny terror. I’m sure both singers were beguiled by Marcy’s sweet, innocent charm, whimsical voice, and seemingly genuine love for her lord and savior. They probably thought they were doing the lord’s work by helping Marcy connect with her peers (which include headless child-size mannequins from Sears, ventriloquist dummies, ineptly crafted sock puppets, and various Pinocchios) before she likely sent them packing for heaven when she strangled them to death with the razor wire of her “puppet strings.” Marcy shares the spotlight with no one, which is underscored by the LP cover depicting the pint-sized monster swinging solo. Next to Marcy, the blackest metal from the darkest corner of Norway is just child’s play. Speaking of child’s play, wasn’t that also the title of the first “Chucky” movie? Coincidence? Maybe Marcy is the true bride of Chucky.

Young Hungry Bastard

Christian folk's Captain & Tennille take on the great orphan crisis of 1974.

This 1974 album details one child’s harrowing and heartbreaking journey through the foster care and orphanage system. Ron and Haven's opus garnered 47 Grammy nominations in 1975, including “Best Mustache Depicted on an Album Cover,” “Best Use of a Prop on an Album Cover” (for Ron and Haven's use of a real orphan as their fictional adopted son), and “Concept Album of the Year.” I’m Adopted is still in print today, available for sale on Ron and Haven’s website (which I'll let you search for); however, the song titles have all been changed. Should you be interested in adopting this landmark LP for your collection, seek out the original, with its hard-hitting, unvarnished songs, such as: “Orphanage Head Lice Blues,” “If God Is My Father, Who Is This Guy?”, "Wallpaper Paste Tastes Like Oatmeal," “Bedbugs and Dried Boogers,” “Adoption Day Blues (No Home for Me),” “Ballad of a Young Bastard,” “They Found Me in a Dumpster,” and “I Come with a Warranty.”

Free to Fly

Put a Bird on It: Merv & Merla break wind.

If Merv and Merla hadn't been so bent on festooning their album cover with cliché Christian symbolism, they never would have released this innocent, young dove into the waiting embrace of a cruel, godless world. Weeks after the cover’s photo shoot, the bird was spotted foraging for food in a depressed part of town. Sporting a tattered “Jesus Saves” T-shirt to conceal the filth sullying its formerly snow-white plumage, the dirty dove, now just a common city pigeon, dodged stumbling footfalls of addled zombies as it pecked the crust of dried vomit fused to the sidewalk in front of an abandoned convenience store with busted-out windows. Shame on you, Merv and Merla.

Blinded by the Light

Ronnie Milsap's unfortunate 1976 album, 20-20 Vision 

One advantage of being a blind singer is never having to look this album cover in the face. So far a reissue of this album, entitled 20-20 Hindsight, featuring a revised cover has yet to surface.

Acid Casualty

In conceiving this terrible LP in the early 1970s, well-meaning Christians had tried their darnedest to re-brand the initialism of LSD into “Leadership, Service, Dedication.” Big mistake. No one bothered reading the fine print on the cover. And when some talking head on national TV declared that the cover of The New LSD alone had the power to transform minds, hordes of pimple-faced teens took heed of his innuendo and stormed the nation’s record stores for a taste, ripping the cellophane from the records and ravenously ingesting their covers, expecting them to be laced with acid. The only trip they experienced was a ride to juvie, though. As punishment for the destruction of merchandise, the aspiring acid casualties were ordered to suffer through the LP's sermon, “The Price of Leadership and Discipleship” as told by one Charles “Tremendous” Jones. But that was of no consolation to “Tremendous” Jones and his record label. While the contents of The New LSD may have been wholesome enough, its image was forever tainted thanks to those no-good kids. Record stores wanted nothing more to do with the record and refused to restock it. And just like that, The New LSD had evaporated from the market.