The first time I heard "Sex And Candy" on the radio, I thought it was a joke.
When the song made it to #8 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart, the joke was certainly on somebody.
Of course, the joke only gets funnier when you learn that the band's label, Capitol Records (home to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Frank Sinatra...and Marcy Playground) cared so little about them ever putting out another album that, when the band did just that two years after "Sex And Candy", the label couldn't be bothered to create new artwork for the album.
Instead, Capitol's art department dug into their filing cabinet, changed the text on some old artwork by Mark Ryden for a Butthole Surfers album that never came out, and conveniently opted to not tell the band.
Upon seeing the retooled artwork, Butthole Surfer Paul Leary contacted Marcy Playground's John Wozniak via the band's online forum (!), informed Wozniak that he had conceptualized the painting for a Butthole Surfers album, and that Capitol refused to hand over the art when the Surfers took their album elsewhere.
The label's art director later admitted to using the old Butthole Surfers artwork in an article for MTV.com, claiming, and we quote, "Nobody's the bad guy here."
Marcy Playground's John Wozniak probably thought otherwise when Capitol's promotion of the band's new album, bearing the edited Butthole Surfers' artwork, came to a screeching halt after they were made to explain how or why artwork for a Butthole Surfers album found its way to Marcy Playground.
Tags:
oh no they didn't