Mom’s Apple Pie

If you are of a certain age, you might remember Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” video.  The miniskirted lap, the said cherry pie.  And yes, the firehose.  Today it is cringe but if you were of the right age in the late 1980s/early 1990s, it definitely produced the tingles.  If Tawny Kitaen was A-List hair metal goddess material.  Bobbie Brown was on the B-List.  That is fitting since Whitesnake was a top tier band and Warrant was a level or twobeneath them.  Many remember the “Cherry Pie” video butforget the Cherry Pie album cover.  The derivative, tired elements of Warrant’s Cherry Pie album (see below for why it was so blatantly derivative in its imagery) was a big reason Nirvana broke so big.  The interviews with Jani Lane, lead singer of Warrant, talking about how Warrant was swept aside in the tidal wave of grunge is heartbreaking stuff.  If Nirvana’s grunge success killed Kurt Cobain, Warrant’s downfall due to grunge killed Jani Lane.  Lane interview on “Cherry Pie” is even more haunting.

I was thinking of “Cherry Pie”, Warrant and Bobbie Brown as I was browsing through the bins at Vinyl Vogue.  In the new arrivals, there was a copy of Mom’s Apple Pie’s self-titled album.  Mom’s Apple Pie is a largely forgotten band from the early 1970s.  They were a tenpiece band from Ohio managed by Grand Funk’s manager and signed to his label, Brown Bag.  Their self-titled was their debut album and there was a follow-up a couple of years later and a third in 2011.  I would have passed the LP by if it wasn’t for the album cover, which is one of the most infamous covers of all time.  All the books on album art have a picture of it and rightly so.  It is awesome.  Like Warrant’s Cherry Pie it is cringe, but there were lots of layers to this pie that Warrant could not quite cook up.

I have always felt there was something sexual about Grant Wood’s world-famous American Gothic.  Seemingly simple and naïve, it is also darkly sinister and secretly sexual.  It is something out of David Lynch.  The cover of Mom’s Apple Piereferences American Gothic and makes blatantly obvious the sexuality lurking underneath Grant Wood’s placid surface, even if it makes it decidedly a schoolboy’s dirty joke.  Mom’s Apple Pie is finger-licking good and there is not scent rising but secretions oozing.  The slice out of the pie is something out of Georgia O’Keeffe.  Or Hustler or a gynecologist’s office.  Never has Americana been so obscene.  The album cover is rightly famous.  Maybe one of the greatest and most art referential of the 1970s.  

At a time when music is streamed and listened to on phones, the album cover for Mom’s Apple Pie makes a compelling argumentfor why you should still buy vinyl and why it is so pleasurable.  A small picture on your phone is nothing like having the LP in your hands.  And Mom’s Apple Pie is piping hot.  It is kitsch art-porn at its best.

I put the wax down for a spin and wouldn’t you know it the sounds are as good as the tastes.  Sure, the music is warmed over, reheated deep dish.  Think Chicago in the early 1970s before they went full ballad and brie.  The first track “I Just Wanna Make Love to You” and the final track “Mr. Skin” tell you all you need to know.  The members of Mom’s Apple Pie are not just hungry, they are horny.

Come down to Vinyl Vogue and give Mom’s Apple Pie a look and while you’re at it, take it home and give it a listen.  It is a forgotten record that has a sound that is familiar and cover art you will never forget.

Recommended sites and sounds:

Cherry Pie Video:  Warrant - Cherry Pie

Jani Lane on Cherry Pie:  Why Hair Metal Got Pounded (and deserved it).

American Gothic:  The wonderfully queer world of ‘American Gothic’s’ Grant Wood - The Washington Post

America Gothic II:  Grant Wood Left Tipoffs All Over - The Gay & Lesbian Review

1001 Album Covers:  1000 Record Covers. Bibliotecha Universalis. TASCHEN Books

 —Lou Waxman