Old Rope

"Say! I gots a swell idea! Let's string th' guys up for the album cover! A real necktie party!" Well, someone must have said it. And someone else must have said yes. Crazy guys, crazy times, crazy marketing stragedy. Crazy Horse Roads. What can they all have been thinking? Rhetorical question. This was San Jose, '68.

This deeply disturbing (or hilarious, depending on how stoned you are) cover hides an entertaining pop-rock album by Stained Glass that shoulda-orta but didn't. I wonder why? Allmusic sniffily notes that the "material is ordinary", but what can they mean by that? Rhetorical question. This is the extry tracks version - yay!

Our other rope trick today is the kneetremblingly exquisite Tones by The Gordian Knot. The swell idea behind this cover shoot was, uh, "let's tie dese pussies up and drag'em behind my ride-on lawnmower." Or something. Visually, it kinda works - it's a simple, memorable image. But meaningless (we hope).

Again from '68, this is a kind of grail album for sunshine pop enthusiasts. Japanese fans have been known to wind their bowels out on a stick rather than face life without an original vinyl copy. It really is that good. The Gordian Knot make Harpers Bizarre sound like Slayer. They make Vashti Bunyan sound like Etta James. They make - oh, you get the point. Hey - this is worth copy-pasting:

"The group caught their biggest break after they appeared at a party thrown by Nancy Sinatra, who apparently liked them so much that she asked them to accompany her on a USO trip to Vietnam." 

Their biggest break? Let's hope their bone spurs kicked in.