How To Flush Your Music Career Down The Toilet Dept. - Mike Corbett And Jay Hirsh

Mr. Flood's Party

"Why hire a design department?" Jay Hirsh might have gushed back in '69. "I can do linocuts!" Linocuts are to art directors what Scotch tape is to surgeons. But they snuck the cover past Cotillion - part of Atlantic Records - and the album flopped into the racks like a wet fish and hung there until it stank.

The band - named after a poem about a drunk dude going up a hill - had recorded a fine piece of work that deserved to nudge into the national charts, and it looked like shit [left - Ed.]. You don't think it matters? Of course it matters. Quit being argumentative. It went up against Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Clear, Volunteers, Let It Bleed ... and a ton of other well-dressed albums that looked like a little time and money had been spent on the packaging. Albums you'd be happy to spend a little time and money on yourself.

The album's a bit of a monster. The singing is terrific, harmonies bang in the middle of the note. Acid-edged and funky acoustic guitars. Two smooth sidelong suites, nifty solos, proper thought-out arrangements and orchestration, varied instrumentation, changes of pace, intriguing lyrics - it checked all the boxes for a rock album in 1969. Except for a cover you didn't want to throw darts at.

Here's a great shot of their audience totally losing their shit at Steve Paul's The Scene. Note wild hippie ambience enhanced by album poster on wall. Note glamorous plumbing accents hanging from ceiling. Note cute chick giving her boss [center - Ed.] a handjob. 

Ahmet Ertegun, the Ahmet Ertegun, him, heard the album (they probably didn't show him the cover) and liked it well enough to give the two main players, Mike Corbett and Jay Hirsh, a follow-up album on his prestigious Atlantic label. He anted up for a stellar bunch of studio talent including Hugh McCracken (who got a title billing), Eric Weisberg, Russel George on fiddle. You'd of thunk that our guys would have wised up, but guess what happened. Take a hinge at the cover [left - Ed.]. Yup. They went for a linocut and paste-up type cut from a newspaper ad, like before. It's a fucking disgrace, maybe even worse than Mr. Flood's Party. It probably shows a dying peacock, or maybe an indigenous Amazonian ceremonial toupée. Or a chewed-up floor mop. We don't care. We just want it to go away, and it did, taking the album with it.

Tragically, the album's another keeper. They made the required transition from rock to country rock with talent, taste, dizzying chops, and above all, swell songs. This was 1971, when the album should have been, if not quite as big as American Beauty or Déjà Vu, then certainly a second-string hit they could have toured behind James Taylor or the New Riders or any act that knew when to hang up the linocutter.

Music to look away from.