But the most inscrutable one is Garcia's first solo record. I've been trying to figure that one out for 45 years, and even having earned a Doctorate in Semiotics, I'm confounded. Sometimes I think the artist is just having me on. Jesting with me, to no purpose. What. What? Somebody tell me what it means.
It's possible that you're reading too much into it. "* ****** ** ******** **** *** ** **** ** **** * ***." Umberto Eco Nah, scratch that one. Here's another quote by Eco: "A secret is powerful when it is empty."
Always liked the Garcia debut cover. Not sure why. Boob 'n bush sneak? It's just strange in a familiar way.
With an arm section more or less growing out of the midriff, seemingly related to a disembodied hand with missing digits on the middle finger, floating in the air above it? The gears, with the numbered teeth? And what is that red machine- an automobile diagnostic computer prototype ? A tube tester for a Univac? It hurts my brain. I've never looked at it while I'm electric. Unlike the impossibly boss 3-D Skull & Roses cover, with that fantastic color photo of the band on the inside of the gatefold. Hooteroll, I also get that one. There. Can't we have some more nice record covers?
The cover art is a painting by Abdul Mati Klarwein titled Saint John. Other paintings by Klarwein were used for the cover and gatefold art of the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew.
Garcia's solo debut cover art features the Ten of Diamonds Jer is holding the same card on the cover of Built to Last, the final studio album by the Grateful Dead Ain't it crazy?
Good lord. The same artist who did Hooteroll also did the back cover of Miles' Live Evil? smh...I make sure the back side of the cover faces the wall when I play that record.
& the caption is a quote of the girl talking on that Zappa record- I think it's from Joe's Garage: “Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST.”
That's the caption that goes with the Hooteroll cover, the one that Jam & Spoon copped. If you turn out all the lights and place that LP cover in the center of a wood-framed bay window with a tea candle beside it at 3 am, backlit by a full moon, you can see the lady's lips move. Listen close, and you can hear what she's saying.
I did it some years ago and the only thing she uttered was "Is not hypnocracy no other than the quest to discover the meaning of hypnocracy? ". Was she pulling my leg?
"A symbol is anything that can be used to tell a lie." That's what makes an empty secret so powerful- you can fill it up with anything. So you may be right about the card. Maybe. That hardly explains the rest of the picture, though. There are some things, sure enough, that man was never meant to know...say, have you heard the one about the yellow duck?
Umm... Playing card = Deal, Loser Sky = Bird Song Wheel = The Wheel Woman's body = Sugaree, To Lay Me Down
