Martini Ranch: "How Can The Labouring Man Find Time For Self-Culture?" US 12", 1986 (Sire Records Company 9 20453-0 A). Design/Art Direction: Steve Gerdes and Bill Paxton. Illustration: Steve Gerdes.
Martini Ranch, or as someone scrawled on my copy of the "Reach" promo, "Bill Paxton's '80s Band" (which isn't quite fair to Andrew Todd, who I suspect did most of the heavy lifting). The presence of Mark, Bob II and "Oh That" Alan on the record explain why "Labouring Man" resembles a lost DEVO single, and one of the better ones given that this came out in the gaping void between Shout and Total DEVO. And while I love the sleeve and the single, the video is what really sells the package. Its nifty riffs on Man Ray and Metropolis and such help explain why most of us saw it on Cinemax's The Max Talking Headroom Show and not MTV (as I recall, MTV was ass-deep in hair metal by this time -- no space for synthpop anymore).
The album Holy Cow didn't come out until a couple of years later, and turned out to be a little too much of a good thing. (Cindy Wilson vocals! James Cameron video! Nowhere near as cool or well-designed cover!) Yes, "Labouring Man" is the highlight of the Martini Ranch era, I think. Now go watch that video. Just don't expect an answer to the question in the title -- it's rhetorical, dammit!