Josh's Top 50 Album Covers #42 - Soul Asylum "Clam Dip & Other Delights"

Soul Asylum had managed to overcome the label of "B grade Replacements" that had dogged them since their earliest days by the time they released their final recording for the independent Twin Tone label, While You Were Out. Dave Pirner had come into his own as a songwriter, and the band had established themselves as a unique voice in the Minneapolis rock scene of the 1980's. It was only natural, then, that a major label would come knocking eventually. The mainstream music industry was beginning to take notice of the underground music scene, and starting to scoop up the most promising artists to promote them to potential stardom.

When A&M Records (owned in part by Herb Alpert of "and the Tijuana Brass" fame) brought them a favorable offer, Pirner and company signed on. As a "celebration" of this move to the big leagues, their first release was an E.P. that took it's name and artwork from Mr. Alpert's most famous (infamous?) album cover, Whipped Cream and Other Delights.



This was not the only album ever released to parodize that artwork (not by a long stretch), but it certainly was one of the funniest (and grossest), and also the fact that it was released on the record label owned by the original artist, the humor was particularly biting.

Herb Alpert apparently didn't find the cover nearly as funny as Soul Asylum did, and this E.P. quickly went out of print, and the tracks on it weren't included in A&M Records' retrospective of Soul Asylum's tenure under the imprint. (It has since been reissued by Twin Tone Records.)