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.

Music to Be Murdered By

Long before they instigated the Good Friday massacre, during which they torched dozens of churches and committed innumerable heinous acts of violence and in so doing transformed a normally tranquil if hopelessly clumsy Norway into an unimaginable dystopian nightmare. Long before they slaughtered their pet goats and drank the blood, donned corpse paint, rechristened themselves as Demonic Infestation, and unleashed a towering inferno of black metal chaos so menacing and intense that it induced legions of young evil-doers to take up guitars, embrace the southern Lord and wreak unrelenting havoc across Northern Europe. Long before all this, they were Norway’s most delightful export since lutefisk, a husband-and-wife folk duo known as Mike and Else.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers II

Since when is pinning down and forcing one’s self upon an incapacitated and presumably disinclined partner a “Serenade for Love”? A year after this controversial record hit stores (only to be withdrawn and deleted by the label), Dick Hayman found himself donning a new set of stripes. This time it was he who was the unwilling recipient of another man’s “Serenade for Love.”

A forgotten Bourbon Street fixture, Rev. Bob Harrington achieved a bit of infamy in the 1970s for changing booze back into water, and tacky wallpaper into blazers.

What could be more terrifying on Halloween than a “Christian perspective” on the holiday? Fear not. Come October 31, this record won’t be knocking at your door for a trick or treat. All known surviving copies—four to be precise—have been consigned to haunting the basement of a small, dilapidated chapel in Beaver Dam, Kentucky.

Barbra Streisand: Unmasked, Unplugged, Ungodly!

Goodwill: The Final Resting Place of '90s Rock

Not pictured: An almost complete discography from alt-rock poster boys Everclear. Remarkably, nary a copy of R.E.M.'s Monster -- a thrift store mainstay -- was unearthed in this week's rummage through the stacks.

Songs of Drugs and Devotion 2: The Addicts Choir

With the Addicts Sing (see entry below) shooting up the record charts and intoxicating fans with the invigorating power of a speedball chased with angel dust, Word Records was eager to get the coveted teen market hooked on the nascent addiction craze, birthing a crack baby of an album called Teen Challenge, the debut from the all-teen Addicts Choir. Unlike the original Addicts Sing record, Teen Challenge doesn’t conceal the money shot—an illustration of a dude mainlining—on the back cover. This time, the label puts it right there on the front, right next to co-ed Addicts Choir, in all its graphic glory for all to enjoy: a darkened full-color action shot of a young man, presumably a teen, shooting up in the shadows. The album cover and record contained within became the hit of 1965, outselling all Beatles and Rolling Stones albums combined. After a long stint in rehab, the Addicts Choir took their show on the road and earned a coveted spot opening for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the Joseph Smith Coliseum presented by Alpo in Provo, Utah. Sadly, the sold-out crowd never got to experience the Addicts Choir. En route to the show, on a perilous stretch of highway near Moab, the group’s bus driver nodded off at the wheel (he had more heroin in him than an Afghani poppy field), and the bus careened off the highway, plunging some 2,000 feet to the canyon floor below, so ending the Addicts Choir and the whole addiction fad. In 1997, more than three decades after this leading light was forever snuffed out, a feisty punk rock band from Spokane, Washington, called the Flies emerged with an EP called Teen Challenge (Empty Records)—a worthy tribute to the Addicts Choir and their great album.