Record Inserts of the GODZ!

Took last week off to go to my uncle's funeral, but now I'm back with something of dubious value to anyone! Hooray!

Recently I got some new space to move things to, which is good 'cuz I'm one of those hoarder people you see on TV. I am hoardcore! I am sporting a hoard-on! I live in a hoard-house! I make stupid jokes about what is supposedly a mild form of mental illness! Inappropriate glee for everybody! Anyway, after getting actual shelves to keep DVDs on instead of just having to pile them in mass amounts of boxes, I cleared up some space and actually can access my old LP's again. (Still can't play 'em... my turntable is either broken or unplugged - due to more hoarding pile-up I can't check the plug-in to see which it is. Besides, what good is life if all the mysteries are explained?).

Anyway, even though they've been making a slight comeback on the nostalgia market, "records" are still a foreign concept for a lot of people nowdays (hell, CD's are becoming foreign to a lot of 'em, since people are getting stupider and are willing to pay for "access" and trust electronic media to keep their libraries for 'em - I could do a whole huge rant on this but I'll hold off), I figured I'd go through my LP's and post some stuff from the inserts and cover art. I was a rabid metal/punk in the 80's, even before thrash emerged, so I've got original vinyl copies of a lot of stuff that's now considered classic... and a lot of other things that are now forgotten. There's a lot of stuff I could post, and I'll probably do more as I dig through the collection, but here are just a few things to start us off. Some bands filled the album sleeve with things. The Dead Kennedys would give you whole booklets of Winston Smith artwork, or posters (I have that Frankenchrist poster that got them sued), and SST would stick multi-page catalogs in their releases. Still got those.

So, let's go through my record collection and make fun o' stuff! I hope the 'net will resize these things so they're not crazy, or I may have to delete the post. I am tech-ignurnt). I'll avoid too many really obscure things, to make it more interesting for those who know the bands, but probably never saw 'em on vinyl.

This first lovely photo is from the sleeve of The Dayglo Abortions classic Here Today, Guano Tomorrow LP, which brought you such beautiful songs as "Hide The Hamster," "Drugged and Driving," and "Fuck My Shit Stinks" (that one always makes me cry!).



Spud there, on the far left, is not quite succeeding in doing the ol' tuck-yer-wiener-between-yer-legs-and-look-like-a-girl trick (made famous by Tommy Lee in the Pamela Anderson sex tape - she screamed "Stop it, I hate that!" when he did it). You can still see far more of his schween than you ever wanted to. The drummer, Jesus Bonehead, on the far right, seems far too amused (I always worried about that boy) and appears to be in the process of trying to attempt the feat himself. The other band members, Cretin, Mike Anus, and Nev The Impailer (sic), are caught in a faux-vagina crossfire. And I'm not sure it showed up in the scan, but down in the left corner there's a recipe for "Hamster In Cream Sauce Flambe." I haven't tried that. But I sure as hell played the fuck out of this silly album. "Drugged And Driving" is a helluva song, even if you're straightedge.

Next up, we have a picture from the back cover of The Great Kat's Worship Me Or Die LP. She appears to be torturing her bandmates, and they're reacting with appropriately cheesy expressions, because as dominatrixes go, they don't get goofier than Kat. Anyway, the reason I posted this is because I think it's as close as you will ever get to seeing a picture of The Great Kat with her mouth closed. Yep, she's still baring her teeth, but at least her jaw isn't hanging open like an attacking pelican, the way it is in every other picture of her you will ever see. Search the web if you doubt me. Apparently an unhinged jaw is crazy-genius-metal 'n' shit. If you can see her fillings, there's more metal, y'know.



Shall we do some Slayer? Aye, we shall. Didja know that when Slayer started out, they used corspepaint like a black metal band? It wasn't extreme, just some Hellhammer-style eye-darkening, but, yep, they did it and here's the proof, from the back of the Show No Mercy LP.



Kinda goofy, ain't it? Hanneman, with that inverted cross. And yes, Kerry King once had hair instead of a big goofy beard that he brandishes in fury.

Also, Slayer's gotten a lot of crap for being psuedo-Nazis. I don't think they are (Tom Araya's Chilean, fer christsakes... but then again, he's also supposedly a Catholic, so he's apparently able to reconcile himself to a lot), and most of the blame goes to the song "Angel of Death," just because it's about a Nazi. Hardly an endorsement for Nazism, that one. But, I gotta admit, they asked for a lot of that trouble themselves by calling their fan club the "Slaytanic Wehrmacht." Here's a merchandise order form that came in the Hell Awaits LP:



I still think they were just being ill-advised kids goofing around with fearsome imagery, but that fan-club logo's more right-wing lookin' than the GOP elephant. Anyway, somewhere I've still got an original Hell Awaits tee shirt, ordered from that very form. Or the remains of it, anyway.

Metal bands were big on covering their record sleeves with montages of photos. This was the one in Slayer's Hell Awaits (or part of it, anyway - my scanner's not big enough to capture the whole thing). Look closely and you can spot Slayer clowning around with King Diamond (he's wearing sunglasses - he always did in those days when he didn't have his Kiss makeup on), and Tom and a friend (Kerry?) pretending to snort lines of what I believe is margarita salt. If it didn't get cut off by the scan, you can also see them with Michael Jackson... or, at least a poster of him.



The following message was hand-written on a sheet of typing paper slipped inside my Plasmatics Coup D'Etat LP. Not sure who wrote it. Could be Wendy O.'s handwriting, for all I know. In any case, it was weird/interesting.



Metallica's Ride The Lightning came with a merchandise insert. I ordered every shirt available. Anyway, here's a copy of that artifact, which has probably never been seen by 98% of their current got-into-the-crappy-Black-album-first fanbase.



And from Sacred Reich's Ignorance album, we have a much more interesting merch sheet. This was from the days when Sacred Reich was still a crossover thrash/hardcore band, and before they got on MTV with horrible songs like "31 Flavors" and tried to be "accessible." I love the way Miss AquaNet 1987 is holding the shirt up so it won't restrict the view of the boo-tay (which I don't see listed on the merch sheet). It was kind of out of character for Sacred Reich to be doing this stuff, but, hey, whatever sells obscure band shirts, I guess.





We were recently talking about Peter Steele, since he died a few months ago. Most of his fans nowdays only know about him from Type O Negative, but here are a couple of shots of him with Carnivore, from the back and sleeve of their second album, Retaliation. Later I might try scanning some of the sleeve of their debut LP, which had a cartoon of a bunch of bestial skinheads and such covered with three-armed swastikas... which, at the time, supposedly didn't mean anything, but later got picked up by some idiot-supremacist group.

Pete was still holding down a day job with the NYC sanitation department, and you can see he's wearing a tee-shirt from work in the second photo.







Here's Death, from the back cover of their first LP, Scream Bloody Gore. Mere children, inventing death metal! You can practically see their bicycles parked outside the garage where they practiced. They look more like refugees from the film Over The Edge than death metal pioneers, but, there they are. I have that Kreator shirt. Igor gave it to me. Thanks again! I still wear it.



From Anthrax's Spreading the Disease LP we have a sleeve cartoon drawn by the multi-talented Charlie Benante. Play "Where's Waldo" with Freddy Krueger (unless the scan cut him off).



And, finally, because I wanted to make sure I put in at least one thing that nobody'd likely be familiar with, here is the back LP art of the Comely album by the obscure band, Bar-B-Q Killers. I never got into them all that much, because they've been described as a combo of Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard, two bands I never much cared for, either. So, this stuff was noisy and (to my taste) boring... but, you still have to notice a band who puts an adult hydrocephalic on the back of their album (unless that's just a distorted picture), and has song titles like "Her Shit On His Dick," "Dookie Tingue," "Jose O. Dingleberry," and "Fistula."




Some day, if I get the energy, I need to go through those LPs and look for hidden messages scratched in the "gutter" and make a list of those. Y'know the blank section of record in the middle, around the label? Sometimes bands would scratch messages there. I can't remember 'em offhand, other than Carnivore's first album had "Spread Your Legs, I'll Seed Your Eggs" scratched there. Part of the fun of vinyl.

The main fun of vinyl, though? The smell. Kids today will never know what a record smells like, and that's tragic, because that's one of life's greatest scents. Yeah... try to download a smell, ya disposable-society-supportin' fuckers.