Fear Of Smell

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One from the ‘Bay. Guess the cover artiste was a little less than inspired today. There wasn’t much of a description of this one either – which frankly isn’t that surprising. Oh well, how much can you polish?

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Pseudo Star Wars strikes again (considering the previous R2-D2 cover)… anyways this was sent in back in July 2013, but in the abyss that is my e-mail, I missed it entirely. Here’s the belated story from Tim Leanse (with my profuse apologies):

just packing my LPs up for a bit, and suddenly remembered to submit! forget where the exact purchase happened, but i’m guessing a Boston or Cambridge, Mass. record store (Pipeline?) in the late 90s.

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Gold backed (like Variation #11), with an oopsie painting over the Featuring sticker… weird. I suspect both this one and #11 were done by the same talent, both have some skill with drawing things (if not spray painting things gold). This one comes from Daniel Malin – his third submission (although I swear he’s got more submissions than that) so a big thanks for that. I’ve never seen a cover as intricate as this one and being drawn – it’s very graffiti influenced (or vice versa, seeing as a lot of the circa 1990’s punks in NYC were also throwing up pieces at the time). It also breaks Daniel’s streak of “boring” covers.

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A statement, this one is. This is the fifth of five from Matt’s basement courtesy of Alex.

Yes, triangle A’s. As seen here:  Variation #42, Variation #102, Variation #101 and  Variation #128. AND Variation #129. Maybe it’s time for a category for these triangle A’s.Upside down Featuring Rich Oliver sticker is an interesting choice – maybe a batch were stickered then drawn on? Either way, there’s not much to ruminate about this one.

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This is the fourth of five from Matt’s basement collection – courtesy of Alex, again, thanks!

The outline text of the comp title reminds me of the Misfits text cover (aka Variation #38 – note not 138, frankly that would’ve been brilliant, and had I thought about it, I should’ve held out that one for just such a clever ploy.

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The third of five submissions via Alex from Matt’s basement. Hey Matt, please let Alex out. It looks nice enough, but sheesh, he’s  a good dude eh? As I said not so long ago, the triangle A’s would probably strike again… and they did:  Variation #42, Variation #102, and Variation #101. Oh yeah, add Variation #128 to that list as well. This one may be more closely tied to #102 and #101 as they all have that red and black combo with the triangle A’s. Kinda diggin’ on the Safeway/Yin Yang logo in the middle.

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Again, another find from Matt’s basement, via Alex the blog’s second in command. We’ve seen vertical lines elsewhere: Variation #118. And the triangle A’s: Variation #42, Variation #102, and Variation #101 (with 102 and 101 clearly coming from the same batch). I’m sure we’ll see these geometric hipster prognosticators defecate, I mean decorate some covers in the future. Again, plain back with the side a and side b stickers.

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OK we’ve been scanning and snooping in peoples flickrs and photobuckets and coming up dry (although we did see what you did on the weekend and we have to report that it wasn’t that interesting). Coming up dry on Fear of Smell covers, then the second in command Alex found these. I hate to get all name-droppy, but they belong to Matt, who plays in a fairly important band on this comp. So these will probably never come out of the storage they’re in, and if they do, well, bid hard. So thanks to Alex and Matt for unearthing these, and helping out the cause. In fact the next five copies will all be from the same spot, and they all have a blank back with the standard two sticker sets.

Onto the cover, well this one has handwriting like the scribbles on Variation #59  and Variation #107 – I would’ve included links to a couple other scribble type covers, but they were done in green marker, which makes me honestly think they could’ve been someone else – unless someone fills in the story, no one will really know.

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Here’s an e-mail submission via  Andrew.

Just saw your blog. Great idea. Here’s some pics of my copy of the record. Sorry they’re sideways!

What are the chances that the drawing is an action shot of a fart? Or… ?

Actually it looks a bit like a tiger lily to me… but maybe it’s a rorschach-test type question – it reveals much more about the viewer than it does the actual artiste. The back cover resembles the spray can work of Variation #75 and Variation #45. Maybe even Variation #11?

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“Actually this record isn’t as stupid as it looks! I heard Garth Brooks thinks it’s quite groovy! If you’re in that dancing mood… buy it. FEAR OF SMELL! Yes, siree, that’s the title of it”

This one’s off of the bay, and sold for what looks like $19.99. Most excellent. Hand writing looks a lot like Variation #29 and possibly Variation #6 (look at the capital F, and the loopy lowercase L’s).