One in a series of posts dedicated to pop-culture depictions of frogs — as symbolic representations of “too-muchness” — from 1904–2003.

In 1988, singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, who’d recently become a well-known figure in the outsider, lo-fi music scene in Austin, Texas, self-produced Hi, How Are You, a music cassette album he’d recorded several years earlier. Released on Homestead Records that year, the collection of clunky, amateurish, but emotional and engaging songs was the first of Johnston’s albums to be given a widely distributed release as a vinyl LP.

The LP’s cover was illustrated with Johnston’s drawing of Jeremiah the Innocent — a frog character he’d dreamed up whose name pays homage to the eponym of Three Dog Night’s hit song “Joy to the World.”

Jeremiah the Innocent is a free-spirited frog — but there’s a layer of irony, here, that we don’t find in the Sixties.

Johnston’s album received widespread attention thanks to a shirt sported by one of Johnston’s fans, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.