Former Elysian Field drummer Marvin Maxwell created Jammin’ Johns, a Kentucky company dedicated to making “finely crafted” custom toilet seat covers fashioned to look like guitars and pianos.
I don't think enough about my toilet seat. What about you?
Apparently, it's a big trend for celebrities to spend lots of dough on custom toilet seats. And it's the people who dig music who are most into their toilets. Like pop stars Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. When the two were a couple, they spent $21,000 on two custom toilet seats for their $4.2-million Beverly Hills love nest. The seats featured pictures of the two as they were as performers on the The Mickey Mouse Club.
Is that cute, or totally weird?
If you believe the rumor mill, movie star Ben Affleck just dropped $105,000 on a custom toilet seat for his honey, actor-singer Jennifer Lopez, also known as J.Lo, also known as Jenny From the Block. The down-home girl from the Bronx who hasn't changed a whit since she became super-mega-famous. The seat, according to various reports, is said to be jewel-encrusted, studded with rubies, sapphires, pearls and a diamond.
Wait! Don't worry, the reports say the seat has a thick transparent coating over the gems to protect J.Lo's famous derriere.
Affleck's spokesman denies the story, but J.Loo, er, J.Lo skirted the question in May on a Boston radio program, saying only that the media makes a big deal about every little thing the couple does, and that she and Affleck were just regular people.
We may never know if Benny got Jenny that fab gem-studded potty seat. But it sure seems that skipping to the loo for pop stars is a lot more exciting than it is for us. Rock 'n' roll and its royalty have always been about opulence. If you think about it, spending a fortune on a toilet seat is an homage to the King of rock 'n' roll, Elvis Presley, who died on the throne, or at least near it. (By the way, Graceland has a measly four bathrooms. So much for lavish.)
Music folks don't only buy fancy toilet seats, they also create them.
Drummer Rikki Rockett has turned a bad boy habit into a lucrative side project. Rockett, who pounds the skins for Poison, the 1980s hair metal band that gave us the megahits Talk Dirty To Me and Every Rose Has Its Thorn, began painting and airbrushing snakes, flames and other devilish images onto the toilet seats in the band's hotel rooms while Poison was touring.
"I remember this Picasso quote that said painting was like keeping a diary," he told an interviewer. Rockett began painting the seats, snapping pictures of them and posting them on his personal Web site, www.rikkirockett.com
Eventually, Rockett began painting seats to sell at swanky galleries in Los Angeles. It wasn't long before he was making thousands of dollars and garnering a famous clientele.
Creating cool toilet seat covers isn't just a hobby for musician Marvin Maxwell. The former drummer for Elysian Field, Maxwell, 58, created Jammin' Johns, a Kentucky company dedicated to making "finely crafted" custom toilet seat covers fashioned to look like guitars and pianos. Its famous clientele includes singer Willie Nelson and film director Steven Spielberg. Want to add yourself to the list? Go to www.jamminjohns.com and order away.
MORE COOL TOILET SEAT INFO:
* The late John A. Kostopoulus was crowned the "King of the Toilet Seat Arts." After Kostopoulus, 77, died in 1996, his collection of custom toilet seats featuring the images of everyone from Tony the Tiger to Joey Buttafuoco was destroyed. Luckily, a memorial remains on the roadsideamerica.com Web site, featuring pictures of some of his lids. Go to www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/CABOR2.html
* Our friends in Great Britain enjoy a good novelty toilet seat. Log onto www.toilet-humour.co.uk/ and choose from a bevy of fun toilet seats made for rock 'n' rollers, featuring covers encased with razor blades, barbed wire and one with "fish not real."
* John Lennon performed at an early Beatles gig in Hamburg, Germany, with a toilet seat around his neck.
* Rowdy country singer Tanya Tucker quit high school at 14 in Nevada after a gang of mean girls backed her into a school bathroom and made her sing her hit Delta Dawn while standing on the toilet.
LITERARY DISCS: Songs Inspired By Literature, Chapters One and Chapter Two (United Musicians, $14.98) are two compact discs benefitting the Artists for Literacy foundation. Each contains tunes by well-known musicians inspired by literary works. Chapter One features Bruce Springsteen doing The Ghost Of Tom Joad, inspired by John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath; Aimee Mann's interpretation of Dan Clowe's Ghostworld; Deb Talan's take on Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn; and a truly quizzical - that's putting it politely - He Can't Come Today, inspired by Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, by Ray Manzarek of the Doors.
Chapter Two features 1984 by David Bowie, after George Orwell's novel, Tom Waits' A Good Man Is Hard To Find, a nod to Flannery O Connor's short story, and The Summer I Read Colette by Roseanne Cash.
BOOK: The Sound And The Fury: 40 Years of Classic Rock Journalism (Bloomsbury, $14.95) is a collection of rock 'n' roll criticism and essays covering the Beatles, Abba, Nirvana, Ice Cube and things in between by pioneering rock writers including Greil Marcus, Jon Savage, Mary Harron, musician Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group) and novelists Will Self and Nick Hornby.
