Back in August we ran a post about Kingsley Flood new album, Another Other, and in particular, the album art. The new record, out October 14, signifies the first time the Boston/DC folk-punk band has used photograph instead of an illustration or drawing, and the image is near and dear to frontman Naseem Khuri.
The photo was pulled from the Khuri family collection. It dates back to the 1960s, and shows Naseem’s father Shukri with a group of school children in the mountains of Lebanon. The pic has been in the family for ages, and it’s been a bit of a Khuri legend that the child with his hands on his knees in the photo is actually a young Stewart Copeland. The eventual drummer for the Police and Rock And Roll Hall of Famer studied as a child at the American Community School in Beirut before his family moved to England — so the legend had some possibility of truth.
“It really has been a mystery for decades now,” Khuri writes to Vanyaland, “and using the photo as an album cover finally got my ass in motion to reach out to Stewart Copeland to see if that kid with his hands on his knees really was him.”
Turns out, it’s actually him. So imagine the surprise when Copeland confirmed their long-standing suspicion.
“[T]he family mystery is solved: it is him,” Khuri adds. “We reached out to him via his publicist, and he himself got back to us. He said he was excited to see that photo, and even named a few of those guys in it (who my mom actually knew). And he thanked us for the memory.”
Khuri says the message Copeland wrote was very touching, the he gave the band his blessing to carry on with the album art. “Such an awesome feeling,” says Khuri. “Although now I don’t know what the hell my family is going to talk about at thanksgiving.
Kingsley Flood’s record release party for Another Other goes down November 18 at the Sinclair in Cambridge. Check out the cover art below.
