The design of “Maximum Misery Tour”
Where does one start, when being asked to do an album-cover for such a diverse and pretty insane band, as Picnic?

First of all, we had to make sure, we were on the same wavelength, according to humour and style. Picnic’s previous covers have been both fun and a base for thought to the fans - including myself. The grotesqueness of “Gladiator a-gogo” and bravery of the furcoated “Lemming Nation” is quite unique and well-executed, and showing the surreal humour with a twist, Picnic also express through their lyrics and music.

At this early point in 2004, Picnic had’nt settled for a title for the new album - it had’nt been recorded yet. So I made a few suggestions, just so they could see my visions of their humour.

One of the funniest things, I’v ever experienced, is the infamous quote by Nixon, “I’m not a crook!”. I thought at the time it went well with Picnic’s playing around with words (I remeber a concert Picnic did in Aalborg, where JP Krogh on stage said, that “Gladiator (a-gogo)”, like... Glad-I-ate-ya... Pretty funny.

The first one with the crocodile, was also a hint to Rene Magritte’s famous painting, “C’est non un pipe”. The second one was a bit worrying though. Ofcourse we could never get Jack Nicklaus with his toothpaste smile to agree on this, and it also had a political undertone, which I rejected myself.

I also came up with idea’s for other self-made titles. My own favourite album by Picnic, is by far “Lemming Nation”. In one piece, they do some indian sounds. Knowing JP Krogh as a great storyteller (if you can figure out what he says at all!), “Tales from the Tee Pee” came instantly. It would be a pretty boring sleeve, though.

Finally I did “The perfect TV-game”. Not anything, really, but trying to keep pace of these techno-times. A bit funny, though, that the pixelated idea is widely used by Ekstrabladet today, in TV-commercials. It could’ve been a great concept, with special Picnic-games and such, but the concept would stand before the band, and I rejected this also, myself.

I send the 4 drafts to Picnic, who discussed my idea’s, and we began the work for what would become “Maximum Misery Tour”...

Godfathers of Rock
The very first title, Picnic came with for the album, was “Godfathers of Rock”. A pretty funny title, I think, very graphic indeed.

I went deep into a brainstorm, with my partners in crime. There was no doubt - we wanted to transform Picnic into a mafia-family. We disregarded all timeperiods, implementing all the true gangster-clichees. Tommy-guns, cotton-coats, beautiful blondes, just about everything.

Me, and my photographer, Kristian Kristiansen, invited Picnic to Aalborg for a whole day of photoshooting. We had all the idea’s, lined up, and took all images, for the CD-cover, the website and promotion-use. Some really great ones, actually.

We also used Sophie Amager, who dyed her hair for the occasion, which caused her a lot of distress afterwards (and me blue bruises), as a sidecharacter, to understate the authenticity of the shots.

During this photoshoot, Picnic expressed some fear, that it would not be funny enough, but I tried to assure them, that it would all come in time. The diea was to do the entire sleeve in a silent-movie tone of voice, and do some story-telling as well. It would also be very cheap, not that this was an issue.

Disaster struck us hard! Several of the films was destroyed in the developing proces. All was handmade (this insures the over-all quality). The films were hung to dry, but fell and landed on the floor in the developing fluids, ruining several key-shots.

With a red face, I had to inform Picnic of this, who were cool about it. We could just do another photo-session later.

Some of the shots did work, and I used them for the ongoing-proces of creating the sleeve.

I think it is most important to get this done first, as it gives the main feel, which continue throughout the rest of the media.

To authenticate the images in post, we added some yellow and red toning to the image, giving it that old feel. These also became the primary colors for the concept at this stage. I was crazy about doing something in yellow, as I was very influenced by “Kill Bill vol. 1” at this time. Later I realized it, and went a different way, as you will see.

I also created a logo for “Godfathers of Rock”. I like it a lot! Still do. It just seems so damn right.

The photo’s was also cartoonerized. As I did some of the inner-sleeve-pages, I realized it would become to boring, authentic or not. Then I though about doing a cartoon with Picnic. I tried to incoorporate it in the sleeve, but it just did’nt feel right, until I came up with the Marvel-gimmick.

That issued a lot of other problems. First of all, the title of the comic had to be “Godfathers of Rock”. If it were named Picnic, there would be no parallel to the whole gangsterimage. I just hoped and prayed, the audience would’nt think that the BANDS name was “Godfathers of Rock”, and the album “Picnic”.

I presented the idea for Picnic. The had an entirely different angle at it.

Specifically, they had a Slade-cover in mind, where they show their fist, with a letter on each finger, spelling “Slade”. Just that Picnic would have six fingers. I had already done this, but did’nt think the gimmick was strong enough... to subtle.

Their intention with the records title was not to hint about the mafia, gangsters or anything. It was in their minds to give a salute to their own heroes in the business, like Slade and Sweet. The Godfathers of their musical style.

I argued, that using a word like “Godfather” would be VERY incriminating to thoughts of Al Capone, Al Pacino and the movies.

Second, they would not in any way go for guns on their sleeve. I used them for understating the concepts atmosphere. But as they argued, I could see, there would be no way out... they had to go. Picnic is definitely not about violence, and would not associated with anything remotely close to this. Embarrasing for me, I should’ve known. Sometimes, when you’re caught up in a creative proces, details like this become minor to the entire concept, but ofcourse not for a band, who presents themselves with my stuff.

Maximum Misery Tour
 did one more version of “Godfathers of Rock” - this time withour the guns, and having Picnic in big letters all over. I had also colored it a lot more, leaving the yellowish concept.

In the meantime, Picnic had discussed the title-thing again. Perhaps “Godfather of Rock” was the wrong title. They feared they would have to explain it all the time.

Instead they went back to basics, and going through the lyrics on the album. Some of them was inspired of a tour they did in 1993, “Maximum Misery Tour”.

I was a bit startled by this. It really did’nt fit with the gangster-concept, and I was also afraid, that people would think it is a live-album. I wrote it on front, that it was NOT a livealbum, just to clear any confusions.

But they felt the cartoon idea was still strong, and we continued in that direction, to where it is today...

JJ