Category: Pop Culture

(Adult Content) Crappy Album Covers #164 — How they do it

Album_Cover_Crap_300_guardian_co_uk This is a 2005 album by Coco Rosie called “Noah’s Ark”. We see unicorns having a threesome over here (a slight departure from Genesis). My impression was that this album was some kind of progressive/heavy metal/grunge/experimental album. However, this is far from the case. Coco Rosie plays folk. Freak folk, to cite Wikipedia.Coco Rosie is a French-based female duo Bianca “Coco” Leilani and Sierra Rose “Rosie” Casady.
Album_Cover_Crap_291_rateyourmusic_com_cooked I put the black bars there myself, and consider it an improvement. The band name and title say it all anyway, doesn’t it? Their oeuvre deals mainly with taboo and edgy subjects ranging from drug addiction to necrophilia. Their approach is rarely serious; mostly absurdist. “Jim Seed Collector” is the name of a seven-inch single, released some time back.Smell & Quim are a British experimental group, performing in England as late as 2007.

Visits: 86

Crappy Album Covers #163 — Lacking a Certain "Je ne sais quoi"

Album_Cover_Crap_200_musicforants_com In a failed attempt to “Out-4AD” the album designs of other groups signed to that label, The Mountain Goats approved this supposedly muted-but-proggy album design. 

You place a cartoony stock image of a boxer painting on top of a splattery concrete background that the Cocteau Twins probably rejected, then place the album and band name somewhere on the cover, and ya gotchyerself a 4AD album all your own. Easy as pie.

Their 2006 album “Get Lonely” was their 15th to be released, but their fifth album on 4AD. It reached #193 on Billboard’s Top 200 that year.
Album_Cover_Crap_202_uncoached_com There is little information on Rulli Rendo’s Orchestra and Chorus. But for those interested, he has a very current website. He has been over 40 years in the music business, and has lived most of his life in Mexico. He currently is residing in Peru, his native country.

Visits: 193

Crappy Album Covers #162 — Tribal Suckiness

Album_Cover_Crap_201_musicforants_com This 2007 album by M. I. A. called “Kala”. It may have hit Billboard’s Hot 200 at #13, but the album by London-born Mathangi Arulpragasam won some kind of informal tastelessness award from crappy album cover blogs across the ‘net. 

Could it have something to do with the color scheme? Or how ’bout the four — count ’em — four negative shots of Ms Arulpragasam with that whatchamacallit on her head? Or could it be the Inca-like design theme for a cover from someone whose ethnicity is actually Sri Lankan? All of the above, I think.
Album_Cover_Crap_317_inspiredology_com Tongues are wagging across the crappy album blogosphere, as to whether the band name is “Tool” or “Fool”? The choice of font for their 2006 #1-charting and Platinum-selling album makes this challenging. 

The name of this California-based band is actually “Tool”. Their Grammy-award winning CD also has this ambiguous triablesque design. The number “10,000” has a distinct name in Greek, which tranlates to “myriad”. I have no idea if it connects with the album in any way.

The contents may be great, but the cover is awful and if anything it ends up emphasising a lack of any connection to anything tribal. As with both albums, any attempt to connect with anything of a tribal nature using bad art simply defeats its own object.

Visits: 86

Crappy Album Covers #160 – Elvez Prezley

Album_Cover_Crap_212_-_kristianhoffman_com This would be the soundtrack to Elvis’s first comedy, GI Blues, released in 1960 by Paramount Pictures, where he acts as Tulsa alongside some token girl named Juliet Prowse, who plays Lili.
Album_Cover_Crap_211_-_kristianhoffman_com This is not Elvez, but “El Vez” (The Time), played by Hispanic smart aleck Robert Lopez. He is not strictly an Elvis impersonator, and has been known to do covers of other artists.Lopez was born when the original album was created, and this parody was released almost 40 years later, in 1996.

Visits: 146

(Adult Content) Crappy Album Covers #159 — Another rule: Male nudity doesn’t work as well

Album_Cover_Crap_319_Yes Men and women both buy records. With this idea in mind, I have no idea why it is that female nudity sells even the crappiest records, while male nudity doesn’t. I am not a marketing psychologist, so I have no idea why that is. Yes’s 1977 album “Going for the One”, which sold certified Gold, depicts a naked man in front of L. A.’s Century Plaza Towers. The towers are surreal and distorted, and it has all of these dotted and solid lines that make little sense. Chalk one up for the overly self-indulgent side of prog rock. Despite the album cover’s tastelessness, the album’s contents are considered among Yes’s finest work, and marks the first of many times Rick Wakeman had returned to the group.

This recording has been reissued in 2003 by Rhino Records with a large number of added tracks.
Album_Cover_Crap_276_rateyourmusic_com This 1994 EP, released by Unrest on Teenbeat Records before the time they were signed to the 4AD label, also shows why male nudity is just, well, … limp.

Unrest has had dozens of releases of original work as well as compilations. They started in 1982 in Washington, DC.

 

Visits: 174

Crappy Album Covers #158 — Ladies of the low-rent district

Album_Cover_Crap_206_bad_hair_-_worstalbumcovers_org Harris Glenn Milstead (1945-1988) was a transvestite entertainer, whose live CD “Born to be Cheap” was issued posthumously in 1994. 

He died a week after the release of the movie Hairspray, which he acted in. He was going to audition for Fox’s Married with Children, but died of an enlarged heart before arriving. The people at Fox sent flowers, with a note wryly joking “If you didn’t want the job, all you had to say was ‘no'”. He counted Elton John and Whoopi Goldberg among his friends. They each sent a bouquet to the funeral.

There is a currently-released documentary called “I am Divine”, directed by Jeffery Scwhartz for Automat Pictures, which was released on July 30 of this year.
Album_Cover_Crap_209_-_wikipedia_org Intending to look loud and attention-getting, but ending up looking like a picked-through remaindered album at Wal-Mart, the reality is that this album never even made it to North America, except as an Import, since back in 1999, they no longer had a North American distributor. 

The Swedish duo Roxette, consisting of Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson, enjoyed worldwide success in the decade from the mid 80s to the mid-90s, releasing about 8 albums during that period. “It Must Have Been Love” gave me one of my nicer memories of 80s music, and was re-used in the soundtrack to the film “Pretty Woman”.

Visits: 101

Crappy Album Covers #157 — Full-cover faces

Album_Cover_Crap_305_minnesta_public_radio_org Paul Simon’s 2006 album “Surprise” has a baby’s face with the requisite surprised expression. Probably surprise at having the top of its head cut off by the upper photo, which is a depiction of some kind of bluey-watery-reflection thingy. Who knows what that’s supposed to convey? Hydrocephalism? 

The album boasts participation from big talents such as Brian Eno and Herbie Hancock.
Album_Cover_Crap_277_rateyourmusic_com This 1981 album from former Genesis member Phil Collins was the first of a line of albums which alienated prog rock audiences and attracted more general audiences to his music. Thing is, these facial close-ups, at least for me, usually make everything about the album seem too melodramatic. 

In this album, we get the much-overplayed “In the Air Tonight”. In later years we would be inundated with a string of equally overplayed hits, including the irritatingly successful “Sussudio”.

All I can say about Sussudio is what I remember reading, I think in a National Lampoon comic (of the single-frame variety) back in the 80’s. It depicted an angry guy knocking on an apartment door with a loaded rifle in his hand. He yells: “Sussudio all day long! Sussudio all night long! You want Sussudio? I give you some goddamn Sussudio!”

That comic writer knows my pain.

Visits: 80

Crappy Album Covers #156 — Sounding Off

Album_Cover_Crap_252_blogspot_com Post-grunge group Caramel’s only album sports an angry cactus with bad teeth. There is a fable in this one, consisting of a “good” witch who cast some evildoer into the body of a cactus where the town lives happily ever after, but I am not sure that is what was intended.Allmusic.com places this self-titled album by Caramel at about 1998. That same year, a single called Lucy (not listed on the album) reached #35 on Billboard. The latter is more”rock” than “grunge”.
Album_Cover_Crap_241_-_bizarrerecords_com The way you are supposed to listen to “Sound Off…Softly” is to buy Gold Bond Ceiling Tile, cover your ceiling with it, and put this record on your turntable. While it is true that the composition of your ceilings and walls affect the acoustics and hence the sound of your stereo, I know of few tile manufacturers that would offer you a recording to play to prove their point.I am sure that Gold Bond won’t mind if you also covered your walls with ceiling tile. And your floors. Hell, make a whole goddamn soundproof studio out of nothing but Gold Bond Ceiling Tile. I’m sure the chicks will dig your pad.

Visits: 94

Crappy Album Covers #155 — Dylan in Concert

Album_Cover_Crap_290_thomstonemusic_com In May of 2007, Rolling Stone’s web-based tentacle asked readers what the 10 worst albums of all time were, which were recorded by the great artists. You are looking at the #1 album.

While “Down in the Groove”, Bob Dylan’s 28th album has been nearly universally reviled, the problems I have with it are in the artwork.

The accusation levelled at this album is that it contains, apart from a large number of collaborations, a number of cover songs. I could have told those reviewers that by looking at the album cover, a problem was iminent. Not only is this 1988 album the umpteenth album with a cover photo of Dylan in concert, it is at least the third one which sports a blurry photograph.
Album_Cover_Crap_318_Bob-Dylan This, by all accounts was the second, which was his second greatest hits album. His first greatest hits album originally had exactly the same photo. Now when the first album came out in 1967, the cover photo was considered good enough to be awarded a grammy. But then he uses exactly the same photo for volume 2, released in 1971 (the photo was later changed, to a different concert photo).

This second volume had a paucity of actual “hits”, and instead had many originals which garnered hits through other artists covering him. This album can be regarded as a compilation of older material in LP form, to make up for the early 70s, which were doldrum years for Dylan.

Visits: 168

Crappy Album Covers #154 — The good things in life

Album_Cover_Crap_240_-_bizarrerecords_com New Orleans Cajun comedian Justin Wilson has this apparently rare LP full of his cajun brand of comedy. 

It is difficult to know if this is the same Justin Wilson who is both a chef and a comedian. Although it is likely that he is not Justin Wilson the stock car driver.
Album_Cover_Crap_248_bizarrerecords_com Native of St. Louis, Missouri John Roland Redd (1921-1988), a Latino known by many monacres including Korla Pandit, was not attempting to be convincing when he wanted himself photographed in a turban for an album called “Latin Holiday”. 

Beginning his career in 1938, he is said to pre-date Liberace in that Redd played keyboard in a similar musical repertoire and has been around since the invention of television.

Publicists at the time had fabricated a story about him being born in New Delhi to a father who was a Brahman priest and mother who was a French opera singer.

Visits: 111

Crappy Album Covers #153 — The International Language of Bad Taste IV

Album_Cover_Crap_237_-_bizarrerecords_com The name of this album by Norwegians Arnold Børud and his three kids does not survive translation into English very well. The English cliche “On The Go” is what we are supposed to be reading. 

The three kids are Thomas, Linda, and Ole Børud, forming the “Børud Gang” or Børud-gjengen. The group was later called “Arnold B. Family”.

Arnold was a former member of the Christian supergroup Frisk Luft (Fresh Air), releasing two LPs in the 1970s.
Album_Cover_Crap_249_bizarrerecords_com This is Poogy’s 1974 album “In A Pita”; another of Israel’s offering in the Crappy Album genre. Clearly, when they were invited to dinner, it was not to eat, but to be eaten. 

Other than mere translation, no information appears to exist on this seven-membered group.

Visits: 91

Crappy Album Covers #152 — The Death of Death

Album_Cover_Crap_255_blogspot_com So, we have a pastel of a bloke on a motorcycle and the town burning around him. I am impressed at his battle axe; but it doesn’t look like it could be used to burn a town. Just observing. 

The foursome from Sunderland, England (or Newcastle, depending on whose bio you’re reading) were also not impressed with the album cover, thinking it was amateurish and wondering if it would sell.

This cover was re-designed in 1984, and the album re-released on CD in 2005.

To my knowledge, they have released three albums and one EP.
Album_Cover_Crap_247_GustaBooker Reverend Gusta Brooker
Sick and tired of saving hookers
Raising people from the dead
was the thing he tried instead. 

Overnight he scored a jackpot
Filled his church up to the rooftop
If he saw a dying guy,
it’s the day his death will die!

 

Visits: 116

Crappy Album Covers #150 — When being cool is a bad thing

Album_Cover_Crap_262_gigwise_com Sebastien Tellier’s 2008 album “Sexuality” has got to be the most un-sexual of the nude albums I’ve seen. The colors are straight out of a Monty Python animation, which probably also explains the horse and rider. 

This is his third album. Tellier is a multi-instrumentalist from France who sings in English, French and Italian.
Album_Cover_Crap_236_-_bizarrerecords_com The Dutch group Bonnie St. Claire and Unit Gloria features lead singer Bonje Cornelia Swart, who goes by the stage name Bonnie St. Claire, singing mostly in English. They have had several top-40 hits in Europe. 

But sometimes, you get albums with titles like “The Rock Goes On”, which makes little sense.

This “Best-of” compilation could not have been released prior to 1972.

Visits: 99

Crappy Album Covers #149 — Women perpendicular and parallel

Album_Cover_Crap_261_gigwise_com Bob Geldof to deals with the three dominant sources of insecurity, satisfaction and anxiety for the human species in his 2002 album, “Sex, Age, and Death”. 

While this photo had to be part of the best photo shoot ever for the photographer, it reduces the theme of the album to a cliche. Many others probably thought the same, since there is no record of the album or its hit single, an anthem to “Pale White Girls”, charting.

Since then, he had met a fork in his career path, and has seemed to have chosen activism. Geldof was the former frontman for The Boomtown Rats, and has received many awards and honorary degrees. I don’t think this record cover influenced anyone’s decision to give him accolades, though.
Album_Cover_Crap_260_gigwise_com And you see, the band Louis XIV charted this album at #24 in 2005. Any elements from the album design made it possible? Both have nude/semi-nude women on the cover. That’s old-school. This woman is parallel to her photographer. Is that it? Naw… 

Hmm… Oh, yes! This one has a “Parental Advisory/Explicit Lyrics” sticker on it. That has to be the reason. Just having naked women on the album cover doesn’t cut it anymore, folks. Those warning stickers have made many a mediocre act skyrocket to fame and glory. Geldof ought to get with the program.

This album, called “The Best Little Secrets are Kept” has an otherwise un-original concept with the playlist once again written on the skin of the model posing nude for the album.

To be fair, there was the Hoover, Alabama Board of Education in the Southern US who stopped them from playing in Hoover, because the lyrics were too explicit. Leave it to school boards such as the Hoover, Alabama school board to provide the kind of publicity that could never have been bought at any price.

Visits: 104

Crappy Album Covers #148 — Seeing things from a different perspective

Album_Cover_Crap_242_-_bizarrerecords_com This album, I suppose, teaches us men that if women were allowed to paint the center lines on a highway, they would do it in pastels. Such is the fantasy foisted by Tee Vee International in this various artist compilation of 18 disco and not-so-disco hits from 1978.You get the greater works of that Bee Gee hanger-on Samantha Sang; Gloria Gaynor; The Emotions; David Soul, and the list goes on. Most of the rest of the record could be classified as “rock”.

It isn’t so much the Daisy Duke lookalike on the cover; the bigger problem is the surroundings. It was done so hastily and childishly that it would have been better to leave it blank.

I have seen it on various sites, sold for $20.00 or more.
Album_Cover_Crap_233_-_brain-magazine_com This 1972 record by Soul Generation has given many soul fans a case of vertigo by looking at it.You look up at a building; you see the sky. And you see these four dudes looking back at you as if the side of the building was level ground. Well, physics will tell you that their bodies and souls should go in opposite directions, in that case.

It appears as though that while their hit single “That’s the way it’s got to be (Body and Soul)” peaked at #27 on theR&B  singles chart, their album never charted at all.  

The album has been re-released as a CD with bonus tracks.

Visits: 122

Crappy Album Covers #147 — Blunders by Major Acts

Album_Cover_Crap_263_gigwise_com People old enough to remember Abbey Road when it came out engaged in speculation as to why Paul crossed the road barefoot for the album cover.So, I would like to continue the pointless speculation, and begin the discussion as to why Hillel Slovak (1962-1988) refuses to wear a hat. 

However, it’s nice to know that the two guys in the middle like to share their socks among all four members and go barefoot for the good of the band.
Album_Cover_Crap_257_deskgratis_blogspot_com I think they mean “Scandanavian”. Either that or they were playing in “Sockholm”.A CD was released in 1988, but the subtitle “Live In Stockholm” was not added until a 2005 re-release, upon finding the master tapes.In fact, I would speculate that this cover was from 2005, since there is clear evidence of Photoshop at work. The light is coming from the wrong side, and is black and white (seepia, actually), while the light above the mike seems to have arisen from a lens flare effect in Photoshop. Photoshop wasn’t around in 1988. 

The originating concert was broadcast in 1970 for Swedish National Radio.

Visits: 118

Crappy Album Covers #146 — MS Paint Massacre

Album_Cover_Crap_253_blogspot_com Well, no, this wasn’t MS Paint. You can tell that a toddler was set loose on a piece of blank ruled paper with markers.Wikipedia makes no mention of whose toddler it was that did this, but does say that this 2004 album was critically well-received, and debuted at #7 in the US.The Cure’s 12th album has been inflicted on over 2 million fans worldwide.
Album_Cover_Crap_251_blogspot_com Frank Black’s “The Cult of Ray”, was recorded in 1996, three years after The Pixies broke up. But this record is not mentioned on the Frank Black website. It is mentioned on the Black Francis website. Why there are two websites referring to the same person, I’ll never know.Frank Black, who also goes by a third monacre, “Black Francis Black” — frig it, let’s keep it simple and call him Charles Thompson. Chuck, you see, released this third album to negative reviews, and had gone on releasing many more albums garnering only but a shadow of his former glory under The Pixies.

In fact, that was the state of affairs by the time this album came out. They were punishing him for overuse of the cut-and-paste tool on MS-Paint.

Allmusic.com has it that The Pixies have reunited as of 2003 and have started touring again. I don’t know of any new albums by them except for “best of” compilations released by 4AD. Chuck’s “Frank Black” website, however, has a list of tour dates.

Visits: 70

Crappy Album Covers #145 — Cartoony Covers

Album_Cover_Crap_259_badalbumart_blogspot_com Milton Babbitt looks like he is trying to out-do Stephen Hawking for the tackiest cover. At least Hawking might have an excuse; but Babbitt here is trying to make this poster look avant-garde. 

So here he is, like your most imposing physics teacher, making music about ends being a new beginning, and manifolds. As if there were not enough ended beginnings, he also plays “Swan Song #1” (as if there will be a #2…?).

Allmusic says that he is a leading avant-garde classical performer who taught both music and mathematics at Princeton, and taught music at Julliard. He was a leading music theorist, but you look at this and think that this 2001 CD just contains self-indulgent tomfoolery.

The 50-minute CD appears to be selling for $48 on Amazon.
Album_Cover_Crap_235_-_bizarrerecords_com Uhh, … Hi, yourself….This 1979 album appears to have been Barraclough’s last LP, and she had disappeared amid rumors of connections to Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan. Some fans revere her as quite a talent, but you wouldn’t know it with that cartoony “Hi” on this album cover.This link to You Tube shows her potential talent.

Visits: 67

Crappy Album Covers #142 — Diving for Crabs

Album_Cover_Crap_246_sebadohBy the time this record came out, Nirvana already took the idea of totally immersing the kid in water, so I guess they had to settle for this. Neverhteless, I hear that the Children’s Aid Society is looking for the guy who took this photo and allowed the infant depicted in this photo to play with the toilet water.

I have it on some authority that Sebadoh’s album doesn’t suck as much as the cover suggests. In fact, this 1996 album is considered their finest, and it put them at the forefront of the indie rock scene back then, helping to pioneer the so-called “lo-fi” music genre.

Album_Cover_Crap_204_amright_comWat Tyler’s (circa) 1999 recording “The Fat of The Band” is actually a parody of Prodigy’s “The Fat of the Land”.

Tyler has a few humorous songs on this LP, but they have not garnered good reviews. A New Music Express reviewer said of this recording “If this is punk rock, my name is Rick Wakeman”. I could only guess that his name already wasn’t Rick Wakeman, since the article is uncredited.

And just to show you the difference, here is Prodigy’s 1997 million-seller (2 million, actually)  “Fat of the Land”, released on Warner and peaking at #1 on Billboard for 1 week.:

Album_Cover_Crap_273_amright_com

Visits: 95

Crappy Album Covers #141 — Food On Vinyl VIII

Album_Cover_Crap_264_gigwise_comOK… I said that Jabberwocky was going to be the last Herb Alpert parody, didn’t I? Well, it seems as though poor Alpert must have a red-and-white target painted on his back, since even the Washington Symphonic Brass is now into it for this 2007 rendition of Carmina Burana.

Many famous musicians such as  Bizet, Puccini, Berlioz and Karl Orff have composed pieces for this collection of medieval Bavarian poems, written in Latin. It is thought by some to be the most famous operatic work after Handel’s Messiah.

This monk seems to have the easy job of drinking beer and dipping his pastry into himself before he eats it. That’s probably why he’s smiling.

Album_Cover_Crap_243_-_bizarrerecords_comI keep saying that I am a newbie with respect to all things classical. So, thus, the use of pan-fried bacon and eggs as the choice of a cover photograph for the “Best of Brahms” is a mystery to me.

Was there ever a “Brahm’s Breakfast Concerto”? Or a “Brahm’s Bacon Bolero”? Or, “Eggs over Easy in E-Flat?”

Whatever it is, I found out through my trusty reasearch that Johannes Brahms has been hawking breakfast cereal. I’ve seen it on You Tube, so therefore it must be true! Just look:

Visits: 219