Over the course of the last couple of months, we’ve amused ourselves greatly at Flavorpill central with our “extremely silly photos of…” series — we’ve done writers, artists, and historical figures, and now we’re turning our attention to a corner of culture that arguably takes itself more seriously than anyone: the music industry! After the jump, we’ve put together a collection of extremely silly photos of extremely serious musicians, so if you’ve ever wanted to see Blixa Bargeld in the kitchen or Joy Division pretending to be Monty Python, then click through and get viewing. We hope you enjoy the photos as much as we did (even — especially — the one of Leonard Cohen in SHORTS.)
Leonard Cohen
Those shorts. THOSE SHORTS.
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John Cage
A very serious composer indeed, but Cage actually looks like a fun guy — he’s grinning good-naturedly in plenty of the photos you’ll find of him on the web, but we particularly like this image of him in a silly winter hat.
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Siouxsie Sioux
Aw.
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Elliott Smith
Awwwwwww.
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PJ Harvey
Mocking her own serious image for Melody Maker in the mid-’90s.
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Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson
At the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in 2010.
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Nick Cave
#splash
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Blixa Bargeld
From a segment on a German TV show called “Cooking with Blixa,” wherein the notoriously surly Einsturzende Neubaten founder and former Bad Seeds guitarist makes calamari risotto, and in doing so uses the phrase, “time for the alchemistic transformation.” We swear we are not making this up.
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Will Oldham
So is it just us or is this actually fucking terrifying?
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Swans
We do not envy the photographer for this one.
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Joy Division
Channeling Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch.
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Elvis Costello
Why yes, of course Elvis Costello appeared on Sesame Street to perform a duet with Elmo.
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Radiohead
(Polite) photo-shoot angst.
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Arnold Schönberg
The very, very serious avant-garde composer does a half smile. Hey, it’s something.
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Iron and Wine
You’re listening to KEXP!
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Lydia Lunch (and Lance Loud)
See? She can smile!
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Karlheinz Stockhausen
Crazy eyes!
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Frank Zappa
Um.
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Diddy
We’re not at all sure that Diddy meets the “serious musician” criterion, but still, this photo of him and girlfriend Cassie Ventura dressed up as Prince and Cleopatra for Halloween was too good to omit.
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John Darnielle
And severed head.
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Iannis Xenakis
Even era-defining avant garde composer/mathematicians get photobombed by little kids eating sandwiches sometimes.
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Hans-Joachim Roedelius
And KITTENS!
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David Bowie
We think this counts. (Also, there used to be a website that traced the slow migration of the contents of Bowie’s sock drawer into his leggings over the course of Labyrinth, but sadly it’s been taken offline.)
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Michael Stipe
Hey, this reminds us of…
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Morrissey
Wait, you didn’t think we were going to miss another opportunity to run this photo, did you?
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Bonus page:
Seal
Just because this makes us laugh EVERY TIME.
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