The Washington Post
September 25, 2025
The art of Mingering Mike (1969-1976)
Chosen by Mark Robinson, member of Unrest and founder of TeenBeat Records.
He’s a guy who created all these album covers of a fictional artist, which was him. There was no actual music, but he had made all these record covers of him and his band. He had already been discovered by the time I heard of him. There’s a book on him, and he’s been exhibited in art museums. It just reminded me mostly of what I would do when I was a kid. I actually did write songs, but I was making, like, these album covers and band names for bands that did not exist, very similar to what Mike was doing. … They do look like record covers, you know? But then the one on the [book’s] cover is a picture of him running, chasing like a bird. There’s definitely this kind of off-kilter thing going on, and then there’s fake catalogue numbers and fake record companies. I still have a bunch of tapes that I’ve done where I would just make up these record labels and make up logos for them...
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