Feb 24
Bibliomancer Comments:
♫ He’s Lonesome Cowboy Burt
Don’tcha get his feelings hurt
Come on in this place,
And I’ll buy you a taste,
You can sit on my face
Where’s my waitress? ♫
(with apologies to Frank Zappa)
Published 1980
February 24th, 2021 at 10:19 am
Where’s John Belushi when we need him?
February 24th, 2021 at 12:38 pm
After studying this cover for the appropriate length of time (approximately five seconds) I’m convinced that apart from the cowboy/troubadour fusion aesthetic there is absolutely nothing visually interesting about it.
February 24th, 2021 at 12:58 pm
I think I have discovered how the pyramids were built. A levitating lute.
February 24th, 2021 at 12:59 pm
So which Eagles record is it with a lute on it, then?
February 24th, 2021 at 2:29 pm
Wuss in Boots
February 24th, 2021 at 3:56 pm
Hey, can you play ‘Far, Far Away Over the Hill’?
By the way, pretty good book. This is the cover on my copy:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1095542.Born_to_Exile
February 24th, 2021 at 4:04 pm
Nonsensical shadows, maybe?
February 24th, 2021 at 4:51 pm
Thirteen strings? And is he taking his velvet jacket off or putting it on? I’d vote for off, so he can sit on it and avoid getting piles from that cold plinth. (It must be cold, if he’s above the clouds. Will that affect his tuning?)
February 24th, 2021 at 6:23 pm
Not one E=MC2 pun yet? Entertainment = Music x Clothing squared. This cover is probably equivalent to a wet firecracker.
February 24th, 2021 at 7:53 pm
The only thing missing is the “k” in “magic.”
February 24th, 2021 at 10:22 pm
@Fred: we’ve also skipped the ‘Phyllis Stein’ joke and any comment on ‘Battleship Potempkin’.
February 25th, 2021 at 12:18 am
“Yee-Haw Minstrel” was my immediate thought.
@FB: And if someone hadn’t come along and made the hat green (at the last minute), it would have been even duller.
@Max: I was thinking “dude doesn’t look anything like Sting”. Could be Bernie Leadon trying out a look/sound the rest of the Eagles nixed.
@JP: A much better cover.
@Tat: I guess the “exile” is out of the castle and spending forever on a levitating plinth? I only count 9 tuning pegs, so it’s even worse.
February 25th, 2021 at 7:49 am
Just a Texan leprechaun trying to find his way home.
February 26th, 2021 at 1:11 am
I think the gargoyle is one of those deals that’s hollowed out with a hole in the eye for someone inside to peep out of. But there’s not much room, and it’s a lousy view to boot.
February 26th, 2021 at 1:39 am
@Tor: I agree with your idea about the eyes.
Maybe the whole plinth is hollow (it would be easier to levitate then), and if you displease whoever rules Castle Frosted Gingerbread, you get Exile out there. Where you’re squished up, all you see is clouds, and you’re sometimes forced to listen to cowboy lute music.
(Castle Frosted Gingerbread scoffs at the Geneva Conventions on cruel and unusual punishment.)
February 26th, 2021 at 2:32 am
‘His magic took him everywhere in search of the land whence he came’. Judging by the hat and beard, that’d be Discworld, then.
March 4th, 2021 at 12:13 am
I read the book, and the cover doesn’t fit it at all. The main character is in his late teens and early 20s, and beardless, while the dude on the block is 35 at least.
March 4th, 2021 at 1:20 am
@Tracy: were there floating gargoyle plinths?
Guess the artist must have had a friend pose.
March 6th, 2021 at 9:34 pm
So… logically, if “His magic took him everywhere,” it automatically also took him to “the land whence he came.”
Not much of a search then, is it?
March 6th, 2021 at 11:50 pm
@ARY: It was the local magic (with repeated transfers), not the intercity express magic. He had to go to a bunch of other places first. “Everywhere” is a lot of places.