This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

It's hard to overstate just how important record album art was to music before we downloaded

everything. Our experience with a record or CD used to be visual. The design of the record cover

was your first impression of what was to come. I would stare at the fonts on the cover and

pour over the liner notes the first time I put an album on. It was original. I'm not saying that

era music was better. It wasn't. It was just different. The art on the records tried to encapsulate

the essence of a band and then that essence was transferred to you because you were a fan

and it became part of your identity too. At least that's what it felt like.

Album art was certainly important to my friend and reporter Sean Cole. One certain album

in one certain band in particular. Roman were you ever a Divo fan?

I was a more of a Divo appreciator. I don't think I was really a fan. I listened to

unlike the songs I heard. I remember Whip it when I was a kid. I remember they were not a Divo T.

No, it was not a Divo T. I remember the red hats and I have a particular memory of them

doing a cover of I can't get no satisfaction by the rolling stones on

starting at live where these yellow hazmat suits. They were really weird. Yes, weird.

Yes. This story is about that Divo album, the one that they were promoting on that

Sarnight Live performance you saw. More specifically, it's about the album art of that record

because the story of the image that ultimately ended up on the cover of that record

is this crazy rabbit hole that I fell down. Before we get there, I just need to cover some

things about Divo that you might not know. Do you know where the name comes from?

I do not. A lot of people think of Divo as this really silly nutty band and jumping around,

but they were actually very serious and had a very considered philosophy. That was that the

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