Last year, guitar music god Kurt Vile released the excellent record Wakin’ On A Pretty Daze accompanied by a beautiful mural in his hometown of Philadelphia. The mural served as the album’s artwork, but since people are generally terrible, a man began painting over the commissioned piece this weekend claiming it “attracted graffiti.”
Philadelphia resident Najeeb Sheikh caught the man defacing the mural and angrily posted about it on his Instagram. “So this is the ignorant piece of sh-t that took it upon himself to buff the @steveespopowers [sic] Kurt Ville [sic] mural. When I asked if he knew it was a commissioned piece by a world renown artist he said he did and he didn’t give a sh-t. He claimed it attracted graffiti to the neighborhood!”
The Metro Philadelphia paper picked up the story, given that the mural was painted by world-renown artist Steve Powers. Jane Golden, the executive director of the city’s Mural Arts Program called the loss tragic. “I think the big point here is that it’s really sad to lose a work of art,” she said.
Najeeb wasn’t the only one who was horrified by the defacing—Kurt Vile himself took to Facebook to express his sadness and disappointment. “Bummer of a day yesterday,” Kurt wrote. “The mural that was painted for the cover of Wakin’ was defaced. We’re all working on plans to have it redone and updated.”
Here’s the original mural and cover art for Vile’s album:
Matador Records
And now:
Cheer up though, we can remember the good times by watching the mural’s progress in the video for his song “Wakin’ On A Pretty Day.”
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