NEON PARK

December 28, 1940 - September 1, 1993

NEON PARK (Martin Muller), the man and the artist, whose surrealistic sense of humor and cosmic giggle will continue to light up the darkness. His artwork, including album covers of LITTLE FEAT, gives warmth to this often cold world [Neon Park has been On The Web since September 1995]

NEON PARK ART BOOK “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”
Last Gasp Over 18 Website [Search on Neon Park]

NEON PARK POSTERS [Click on Gift Shop, then Click on menu item “Posters, Books” then Click on “Prints and Posters” and then select Neon Park]
La Luz De Jesus Gallery

Zen Voodoo: NEON PARK Online Art Show at La Luz de Jesus Gallery (Hollywood, California [Click on Year 2000 of Previous Shows; then Click on Zen Voodoo]) NEON PARK Art Show

I Have No Idea CHICK STRAND Online Art Show at La Luz de Jesus Gallery (Hollywood, California [Click on Year 2000 of Previous Shows; then Click on I Have No Idea]) CHICK STRAND Art Show

LITTLE FEAT 1996 Double CD Concert Album "LIVE FROM NEON PARK" on Zoo Entertainment/BMG

From "Rolling Stone Magazine" 100 BEST ALBUM COVERS Issue 11/14/91:

SAILIN' SHOES Little Feat Warner Bros., 1972

Artist: NEON PARK

MARTIN MULLER, the exceptional artist who is better known by the name Neon Park, broke onto the scene with his famous cover for Frank Zappa's 1970 album *Weasels Ripped My Flesh*. His cover for Little Feat's second LP, *Sailin' Shoes* is only slightly less provocative. The combination of a anthropomorphized cake with a slice missing between her legs and a phallically looming snail is the perfect visual counterpoint to the surrealistic imagery, funky sound and lazy sexuality of Little Feat.

"The *Sailin' Shoes* cover was inspired by Louis XIV," says Park, who has painted all of Little Feat's subsequent album covers. "I'd just seen Rossellini's film about Louis XIV. And it seemed to relate a lot to Hollywood. A situation ruled by someone who kept everybody under his thumb by keeping them in hock from buying fancy clothes seemed to relate to Hollywood somehow. Actually, the only thing that was missing was the Hollywood sign, which I was going to put in the background. I thought that would be gauche. But I had a chance to pick up on that later with *The Last Record Album*.

Look closely at the cover and you'll notice Mick Jagger dressed as Gainsborough's Blue Boy (Park was inspired by the film *Performance*); on the back, the artist Bruegel - wearing one of his trademark upside-down funnels - peeks from behind a pillar.

WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH The Mothers Of Invention Bizarre/Reprise, 1970

Artist: NEON PARK

NEON PARK was working as a poster artist with the Family Dog, a San Francisco design group, when he got a call from Frank Zappa asking him to come down to Los Angeles. Zappa had seen the drawings Park had done for a group called Dancing Food and wanted him to paint the jacket for the next Mothers of Invention record. At their meeting, Zappa showed Park a magazine cover. "It was one of those men's magazines like *Saga*," says Park.

"The cover story was *Weasels Ripped My Flesh* and it was the adventure of a guy, naked to the waist, who was in water. The water was swarming with weasals, and they were all kind of climbing on him and biting him. So Frank said, `This is it. What can you do that's worse than this?' And the rest is history."

Park's painting, for which he was paid $250, almost didn't see the light of day. Zappa butted heads with Warner Bros. over its suitability for release. "Evidently," says Park, "there was quite a confrontation that occurred over this cover. It wasn't up to their standards." Even after Warner Bros. finally consented to use it, there were problems. "The printer was greatly offended," says Park. "The girl who worked for him, his assistant, she wouldn't touch the painting. She wouldn't pick it up with her hands." Zappa and Park, meanwhile were tickled silly by the brouhaha: "I was greatly amused by the cover, and so was Frank," says Park. I mean, we giggled alot."

Park still can't see what all the fuss was about. "It was an infamous cover," he says, "although by today's standards, it's pretty tame. It's not like eating liver in Milwaukee."

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