The Outdoorsmen...

i played a show with this band The Outdoorsmen from the Bay Area last month, they had 4 different 7"s with them that all had really great cover art, so i picked up 2 of them for the blog. there are some seriously over the top illustrations happening on these jackets...

i think what i love about these illustrations is that they have the right balance of rawness to refinement. what they lack in detail they make up for big time in style. while they are rough and loose feeling as far as finished illustrations go, you can tell that this person took some time to draw these pieces to the best of their ability and this is what naturally came out. i think they are great for what they are, regardless of what you may think of the subject matter. that said, let's get started with this self titled ep first...

the cover art depicts a cop having his head chopped off while another dude is jerking off on his bare ass! like, wow, big time... i really like the style of the art, i'm always a sucker for a nicely crafted naive illustration. back cover also has a illustration that completes the theme started on the front cover. god, these illustrations are so dumb, i fucking love it! song titles are hand drawn, but they almost start to look a bit "comic book" to me with all the little stipple dots, so they lose points for that in my book....

A and B labels are nothing great in comparison to what you just saw, but here is a shot anyway. you can get this one from Wild American Records ( i also love that logo, by the way!)

next is the "Drunk Driving" ep, and this cover art is so epic! i mean, what else could you possibly draw as cover art for a record called "Drunk Driving" other than the bottle guy from the Minor Threat logo driving a car!?! all that white space surrounding the main illustration lets this thing breathe, and the hand drawn script type arching over the illustration was such a good call...

for the back cover, they continued the "Drunk Driving" theme from the front cover image, but were able to make it directly relate to the B-side song "Dead Meat". the middle finger salute in the distance is so sweet....

A and B labels are slightly better on this record.... slightly...

this one was release on Clown College Records.