PARTY TIPS OF YORE: THE TWO GREAT ALBUM COVERS FOR CLEANING YOUR WEED

During the now bygone days of me living in an apartment large enough for me to throw a debauched get-together, I quickly discovered that when friends and guests arrived with smokeable “party favors,” one had better have a surface ready for cleaning the stems and seeds out of the merry-joo-wanna soon to grace the bowls of pipes and bongs or be turned into huge joints. In the days before they more or less died out there was nothing better for this purpose than a good old twelve-inch vinyl LP cover, the act of weed cleaning on an album cover helped to reinforce the ancient covenant between stonage and music.

Many people favored the Beatles' “White Album” as their surface of choice, but I always frowned upon that one since weed tended to render that stark bit of cover design dingy over time, and the Beatles catalog had also become a bit of a cliché when associated with music for getting high, so why go there?

My own favorite cover for this purpose is without question the eponymous B-52's album from 1979; while the musical content is admittedly not for all tastes - an uneven pastiche of throwback surf/dance music, wildly screechy/effeminate vocals and some of the most ludicrous lyrics ever scribed - the cover is a bright canary yellow, absolutely perfect for keeping your righteous buds visible in most party-lit situations, even including the often misused black light.


The other great choice is “Trout Mask Replica” by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, an album that even fans like myself find nigh unlistenable without Herculean effort.


This item is a double album, so when unfolded it provides enough space for three to four expert stoners to work their art in a most expedient fashion. The visuals are undeniably strange, and that helps keep the rabid hop-heads occupied while awaiting the illicit lungfulls to come. And when finished, make sure to treat your guests to the head-scratching tracks “Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish, "The Blimp,"” and my personal favorite, “Old Fart At Play.” TRUST YER BUNCHE!