replogle (1962)

Record head

Mr Executive

One way to have a full human figure on a record label is to have the person doing jumping jacks. I think it was that initial idea that got the brains at Mr. Executive to do a fitness album.

Bert Tenzer Productions (1963)

Interesting word choice here. I guess having the secret to immortality would be kinda dope, but "perpetual" life? That just doesn't have quite the right ring to it. Visually there's nothing mind-blowing with the stark black and white look. What I dig is the concept embedded here. The record is actually an extended advertisement for cameras and the technology of capturing images on film, which gets to be an interesting sort of cultural and/or marketing idea, i.e. trying to convince people that they can live on perpetually through celluloid. On that note, here's my secret advertisement, go see Bill Morrison's Decasia.

A quick story about digging this one up: I chanced on it in a stack of 10-inchers at an Orlando thrift store and couldn't help but get interested what with the title. I pulled the vinyl out to check the condition and came to find there was a second record in the sleeve. No, it wasn't a double, instead it was another Tenzer production entitled: "THE INVASION OF THE MECHANICAL MEN" (see below). Robots. They're always after that elusive secret for perpetual life.