I love the album covers of New Order and the work of Peter Saville in general. But one of my favorite covers has always been the one for Factus 8 1981-1982. I had a giant poster of it on my wall in college, I loved to look at the record sleeve (of which I have several slightly different versions), and, incidentally, it contains a couple of my favorite songs.
At some point I noticed that the sleeve credits "Painting by MJ Ladly". At the time, I figured he or she was an obscure early modern painter or something, obviously following in the footsteps of some better-known modernists. But I couldn't really find out anything more about her. This being pre-internet. More recently, I remember googling "MJ Ladly" and not finding much, except that the "M" stood for Martha and that she seemed to have worked with Peter Saville.
However, when Kent asked today what "MJ Ladly" in my interests referred to, I decided to try and track her down again. First, I found that there was a Martha Ladly in Martha and the Muffins. They're from Toronto though, not the UK. But the time period is about right (late 70s), and they had a record deal with Virgin UK and toured around Britain. Wondering if it was the same Martha Ladly, I googled for Ladly and Saville and found out that he did an album cover for Martha and the Muffins. Not one of his more memorable album covers, if you ask me, but there's the connection. Actually she seems to have done paintings for several Muffins albums. A quick review says "Great 80's new wave with the pair of Martha's driving the vocals, clever lyrics (Cheesies and Gum excepted) and a screaming sax. You cna dance if you want to, but with this LP it's not necessary as it is on some of their later output." So now I'm curious to hear some of their music.
But so anyway, it's still a little curious how a singer, keyboardist, and trombonist for a Canadian new wave band ended up painting an album cover for New Order. Until I found out that Ladly and Saville lived together in the early 80s (when Factus 8 came out). In that (relatively recent) interview, he said, "The last time I lived with anyone was with Martha Ladly [of Martha And The Muffins fame] in the early 1980s." How did Martha go from Canada to Britain? According to the band history at the Muffins' official site, "During the recording of our second album, "Trance and Dance", and afterwards as the opening band for Roxy Music's U.K. tour, we started to self-destruct. By August 1980, Martha Ladly was out of the band and Carl Finkle quit in December."
Next, she seems to have put out a couple of 7" singles and joined The Associates as a backup singer, and was with them until 1985. She also played keyboards for Robert Palmer, though I don't know if she appeared in the infamous video for "Addicted to Love", and supposedly worked with Roxy Music. More recently, she seems to have run the design department for (Peter Gabriel's) Real World Records and has been involved in art direction and artwork for various musical projects. After two decades in Britain, she moved back to Canada, where she's on the faculty at Ontario College of Art & Design, as well as doing various other educational and artistic stuff.
And if you've actually read this far, you might be surprised to know that I'm not the only person wondering Who is Martha Ladly?
December 9, 2004 02:36 PMCategories: art - design - music
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