EVERYBODY LOVES OUR TOWN

Love Battery, Dayglo (1992) vinyl

suzisafari:

Artist TAZ

Multiple Venues

Year 1993

Philadelphia’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction gallery is putting on a show called Sub Pop Art Debt next month. Here’s the gallery’s description of the show:

For nearly twenty five years Sub Pop Records’ art department has created covers, posters, stickers, a few match books and one time even a glow in the dark key chain for some of the most celebrated acts in indie rock: Nirvana, The Shins, Mudhoney, Love Battery, Fleet Foxes,The Spinanes, Six Finger Satelitte, Band of Horses, Eric’s Trip, Jale, Jaill, the list goes on.

This collection represents the odds and ends. A stock pile of sketches and art work. Label ads and press sheets. Blue-lines and cutting room floor scraps culled from over two decades worth of releases from one of the most storied record labels in music.

Opening Reception August 3rd, 6-8PM
Art In the Age. 116 N. 3rd St. Philadelphia

Love Battery with the crowd in Osaka, Japan, December 1993. Back, middle: Alex Shumway of Green River and Scott McCaughey of Love Battery tourmates the Young Fresh Fellows. (Photo by Michael Nichols; used with permission)

Jason Finn, of Presidents of the USA/Love Battery/Skin Yard fame, explained the origin of this delightful cover image to me in 2009:

“I was in Japan a couple weeks ago, and I was taken to a record store… One of the Mudhoney bootlegs had a picture of Matt Lukin on the front. [Ed. note: He’s presumably talking about the Australian EP pictured above.] And he’s passed out in his underwear, and in thick Sharpie, shit is drawn all over his body. Big eyebrows drawn on him; his eyeballs are drawn to be open. Across his chest it says I FUCK ARSES.

“And I looked at the photo and I’m like, That was in my house and I remember that night. It was the first time that the Cosmic Psychos flew over from Australia to play American dates, right after they signed to Sub Pop for what turned out to be just the one record. But they flew over, and of course everything went nuts at the house, and Matt, to his credit, had stripped down to his underwear before he passed out—we didn’t do that to him. But once he was out, of course, all bets were off.”