Discovery Records, founded in 1948 by jazz fan Albert Marx, recorded such jazz notables as Dizzy Gillespie, Georgie Auld, Red Norvo, Art Pepper and Charles Mingus. Marx’s estate sold the label in 1991 to Jac Holzman, the founder and head of Elektra and Nonesuch Records… and the person who originally signed The Doors, Love, the Stooges, MC5, and Bread.
For the next five years, until its absorption into Sire Records, Holzman and his brother Keith transformed Discovery into a contemporary label. During this time, we did work for some of the label’s premiere signings, including The Screaming Headless Torsos and Too Much Joy.
The Torsos, led by guitar god (and Guggenheim Fellow) David Fiuczynski, were darlings of the downtown New York club scene. Our highly-saturated color palette matched the band’s sonic assault. This association was confirmed when a reviewer described the album as “an early glimpse of one of the most powerful jazz-rock units to emerge in quite some time.”
Too Much Joy is/was a punk-pop band of some minor renown, but one with rabid fans. “…Finally,” their first album after a several-year hiatus, featured a Doug Allen illustration of a post-coital couple. The album package had an extra bottom panel which allowed the viewer to pull the blanket down and peek beneath the covers. Taking various sensibilities into consideration, certain retailers were given the option to sell a SFW version with the couple inexplicably clad in underwear — thus making the clean version the collector’s item.
