Category: Pop Culture

Why I’ve Avoided Discussing Certain CACs

Crappy Album Covers have been a staple of this blog for over a year now.  I think I may have posted over 400 album covers in that time, and I have particularly, but not always, targeted the unintentionally bad ones.

There have been certain themes/artists/genres I have avoided:

Metal: I’ve said it before that many metal/punk/hard rock bands release sucky/disturbing covers on purpose, because they know their audience will buy the record/cd. Picking on metal or punk bands would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I have made exceptions (Pantera and Stryken, notably) when the album crosses the line of bad taste to unintentional bad taste.

Bob Dylan: I’ve noticed on some blogs, many commenters pick on Dylan’s albums as a source of bad album art. Face it, folks. Nobody buys Dylan for the album cover, so no one cares. However, in a future post, I make a point that there is a Dylan album art concept that is getting a bit repetitive: the blurry-photo-of-Dylan-in-concert idea. Oh, and yeah, there was also that Starbucks promo CD I discussed earlier.

Nobody buys Leonard Cohen for his album art, either. Or Joni Mitchell for hers, even when she draws the covers herself in crayon (Ladies of the Canyon, and Court and Spark, I believe are two examples) .

Most “lounge lizard” acts and Gospel acts are the same way. For the most part, you tend to get a picture of the artist, the album title, and at least a partial track listing. The whole intent is predictability, and a total avoidance of any artistic risk-taking. Lounge acts start crossing the line, however, when they become too grandiose, or too “nerdy”, or show a total lack of thought in the photo/artwork.

This is at least a partial rendition of my thought processes when making these CAC entries.

Visits: 154

Crappy Album Covers #140 — Bad Hair III

Album_Cover_Crap_207_bad_hair_-_wikipedia_org Enough with bad hair on women, Guys are equally capable of falling out of the wrong side of the bed and combing their hair with a mixmaster. 

Many may like the music inside this 1998 double CD by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, but clearly, their hair is wearing them, not the other way around.

The album was recorded over two separate years, all but 5 tracks were done in 1967 and the rest in 1969.
Album_Cover_Crap_230_-_chris_lee-cool-rock_pitchfork_com Chris Lee clearly has a case of bed-head. Photo was likely cut off at the top to hide the “cow-lick”. 

This 2003 album “Cool Rock” has been mildly recieved by reviewers, and has not charted, that I am aware of.

Visits: 97

Crappy Album Covers #139 — Out of their depth

Album_Cover_Crap_208_-_dio_netAllmusic.com sums Pat Boone up best. Having started his hit-making career before the “British Invasion”, Boone was the only worthy rival to Elvis Presley. Boone was the “nice guy” of the set, seeming to symbolise wholesome values at a time when Rock and Roll was considered by many to be a sign of the apocalypse. Many can say what they want about him, but nobody can deny that he’s had 38 top-40 hits, all of them in a seven-year span between 1957 and 1963.

Boone, like Presley, were experts at picking music from R&B and so-called “race music” and delivering it to white audiences at a time that many radio stations would not play music by Black artists.

Descendant of frontiersman Daniel Boone (if Allmusic says it, therefore it must be true), Boone broke away from his recent Gospel singing efforts to blaze a new path for himself in 1997 with “In A Metal Mood: No More Mr Nice Guy”, the subtitle named after the Alice Cooper hit, which he covers.

Hear Boone sing Van Halen’s “Panama”, or Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water”; Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Paradise City”; Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”. Some of this stuff I can imagine being more believable, though it is still a stretch: Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” or Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary” could remotely be imagined to be sung by Boone. There are no satisfying audio clips that I could find, so you can just preview this stuff at sites like Amazon, where they will have 30-second clips. This link is to CD Universe.

While it should be clear that this album is an abomination on many levels, I think it was intended that way. And Boone knows that big band treatments of this kind of music is best served dedpan. Few had the stomach for this album, which peaked at #125 on Billboard in 1997.

It should be added that this album was recorded when Boone was at age 60. Much of his Christian following didn’t get the joke, and the Trinity Broadcasting Network dropped him from their program “Gospel America” after he appeared at the American Music Awards dressed in black leather and covered in wash-off tattoos.

Album_Cover_Crap_216_-_vinylrecords_chCompleted in 1978, long after they had the wind taken out of their sails by punk and disco, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, and Carl Palmer released this light album, intended to complete their contractual obligations before their first breakup. Various re-releases have been issued, as late as 2008.

Light as it is, “Love Beach” still sports a 20-minute track called “Memoirs of An Officer and a Gentleman”.

Visits: 79

(Images may be disturbing) Crappy Album Covers #138 — Food on Vinyl VII

Album_Cover_Crap_222_-_amright_com This is the last (I promise) of the Herb Alpert parody covers I have. 

Jabberwocky is an audio montage troupe in the tradition of Negativland and Plunderphonics. All these folks use spliced audio sequences and multi-track audio in order to make social commentary on media, popular culture, sexuality, war, and religion.

You can download the whole album (In the tradition of Plunderphonics and Negativland, audio and artwork are open-sourced) and cover art here.
Album_Cover_Crap_203_vinylhaven_com It is said that donkeys like carrots, so one can hold a carrot on the end of a stick in front of the donkey, and this makes them move forward, thus overcoming stubbornness. 

That’s the cliche I think the album depicts. The idea is that the donkey never gets the carrot, but hopes that it does. Kind of like the deal that Badfinger made with Warner at the time this album came out, 1972. This album was the last one made for Apple Records, essentially ending their close association with The Beatles.

Other bloggers have noted confusion about the name Badfinger and Ass being on the same cover. It is a pet peeve that I have had of most bands since the early 70s, in that the metaphors are so mixed up that the message is completely lost. Usually a sign of what is inside the cover.

This LP peaked at #122 with its single “The Apple of My Eye” peaking at #102 on Billboard.

Visits: 70

Crappy Album Covers #137 — Food on Vinyl VI

Bob Ralston
Bob Ralston, 20 All-Time Organ Favourites
 Here is the Lawrence Welk organist Bob Ralston, who while trying to be Alpert-esque with the album lettering, has still managed to do this album cover without being covered in food, to his credit.

Judging by Ralston’s youthful appearance, this album probably dates to about the same time as “Whipped Cream”.
Album_Cover_Crap_225_-_amright_com “Sweet Cream and Other Delights” is a 1978 album by the all-girl funk/soul trio from Detroit called Sweet Cream.

When working as backup singers, they would be featured on many albums as “The Ridgeway Sisters” or “The Ridgeways”.

The three Ridgeway sisters (Gloria, Esther, and Gracie) have been singing as a group since age 4, 6 and 8 respectively. At most recent report, only Gloria has survived the three, the others having passed on in this decade, while still in their forties.

Visits: 119

Crappy Album Covers #136 — Food on Vinyl V

Album_Cover_Crap_224_-_amright_com While I can’t say whether the alternative group Soul Asylum qualifies as Aplert “wannabees” exactly, having bassist Karl Mueller sit half-naked in a mountain of clam dip and other unintelligible seafood was actually something that made Alpert very un-amused. And since he is the owner of A&M Records, who in turn own Twin Tone (where Soul Asylum was signed under), this 1989 album was something that almost marked the beginning of the end of the group. 

This album is still in print (according to Wikipedia) under Rykodisk.
Album_Cover_Crap_226_-_amright_com Is it a parody of Alpert’s record? *Is* it? 

Take a good look at the woman’s “dress”: yes, kiddies, it is made of bubblegum. This is “Right to Chews: Bubblegum Classics Revisited”. Features groups with quasi-familiar names (at least to me) like “The Mitch Easter Sound!”, “Jim Laspesia With Michael Quercio”, “The Rubinoos”. This website has verified that this 2002 album does not suck. It’s currently selling on many websites for around $15.

Visits: 103

Crappy Album Covers #135 — Food on Vinyl IV

Album_Cover_Crap_221_-_ebay_com Yes, Herb Alpert was at it again, back in 2006, when this CD got released. Re-Whipped appears to have some of the same standards on there, with some new stuff thrown in.

In this age of “Hoochie Mamas” and Paris Hilton getting laid in front of the whole Internet, the whipped cream idea doesn’t have the same impact it used to have.

Having discovered many of these covers, I now have a plethora of Herb Alpert wannabees which have now engendered an extension to my “Food On Vinyl” subseries over the next few days.
Album_Cover_Crap_223_-_amright_com At least Peter Nero isn’t flogging food but he certainly is a Herb Alpert wannabe, having stolen his typeface design for his own album. This was released in 1967, about the same year as Alpert’s “Whipped Cream and Other Delights”.

Having won two Grammies, and having many honorary degrees, you would think that he wouldn’t need to play a “salute” to anyone.

Nero has been playing Jazz and Pop music since 1958. He still conducts and plays piano for the Philly Pops.

Visits: 112

Crappy Album Covers #134 — Still more frickin' sunshine

Frickin’? Friggin’? I wish they had a dictionary for the correct spelling of expletives.

Album_Cover_Crap_156_showandtelmusic_com_Greatest_Picks Lillian Southard Robinson looks like a kindly enough elderly woman in the picture. The kind that would give an extra quarter to the paperboy, and who would visit shut-ins twice every week. In the middle ground of the photo is a quote from the Gospel of St. John 4:35, which she quotes as: “Look on the fields/They are white to harvest”.Funny. My copy of the Bible (NAV), says the fields are “ripe to harvest”. Finding the word “white” required me to dust off my wife’s King James Bible.

I was almost willing to forgive her for this almost white supremacist-sounding reference, until I discovered that the very next verse talks about the Grim Reaper receiveing his “payment”…

Hoooo—kay… Next album …
Album_Cover_Crap_174_Flickr The Summons Team (?) is here to proclaim their belief in “The Man of Reality”.Now if only the record cover reflected some reality: where do they plan to plug in their electric guitars and keyboard? Also looks like the dude in the foreground lost his drum kit. It happens, you know. Some thief sneaks into the studio, stuffs the drum kit, seat, and bass drum in his shirt pocket, and escapes through the door un-detected by security cameras. Happens all the time. So the drummer had to force himself to smile in this photo.So, I guess that means this is the first ever record album to come without batteries. (A strained pun, I know).

Visits: 62

Crappy Album Covers #133 — Hicks from the sticks

Album_Cover_Crap_164_showandtelmusic_com Felix Lorentz will sing your requests whether you want him or not. He comes out of his shack near the lagoon to the bar in the nearby village and rips the mike out of the hand of the entertainer that was scheduled to arrive, and yells out “I take requests!”After a few moments of stunned silence, someone says in a timid voice: “Can you sing ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips?'” 

Someone else pipes up: “Happy Birthday To You!” “Row, Row, Row your boat!” It was then Lorentz realised that he had barged into an old folks home, an the bar was next door.
Album_Cover_Crap_162_showandtelmusic_com_Greatest_Picks Ahh, the games you can play with a title like “Wild Country”. A hootenanny gone wild…wild music by wild musicians….Your wildest guesses won’t know who is on the playlist. Wild musicians: “Your Cheatin’ Heart” played by Jimi Hendrix. “Achey Breakey Heart” played by AC-DC. “Till I Gain Control Again” by Pink Floyd. 

None of them made it to the sessions for this album, but thank you for your purchase of this fine vinyl record album, and thanks for coming out.

Visits: 75

Crappy Album Covers #132 — More happiness

cover6 Another album cover which has been fodder for the CAC blogs, “Return to Oz”, from a Leo Sayer wannabe named Dardy. I can’t for the life of me find any info on him. If anyone can tell me something biographical about Dardy, drop me a comment.
Album_Cover_Crap_161_showandtelmusic_com_Greatest_Picks This dynamic fun machine also produces happiness. Every home should have one. This one has a flat tire, so it can only produce mild sanguinity. It’s all you can do until the Dynamic Duo purchases a tire tube at Wal-Mart’s next clearance sale.

Visits: 121

Crappy Album Covers #131 — Are you happy?

Album_Cover_Crap_157_showandtelmusic_com Get ready for a feeling of bliss that is beyond belief … The Young Believers are going to impose cheer and goodwill whether you like it or not. Rise and shine! Up with the crows! The happiness you have demanded all your life is now mandatory.
Album_Cover_Crap_158_showandtelmusic_com And after you have complied with the minimum requirements for happiness, you get to consume special pills and fly into a perfect utopia where the food is great, the sex is better, and the best thing about this epic voyage is that you don’t even have to leave the room.

Visits: 68

Crappy album Covers #130 — More Do-It-Yourself Covers

Album_Cover_Crap_166_showandtelmusic_com_Greatest_Picks A recurring rule of CACs is that if you don’t want to make your album cover crappy is occasionally in the attempt to overvalue the art of their children and make their art. The motorhome (bus?) looks like a hot dog on wheels.No information on “Sounds of VIctory” (or is the band name “Jesus Freak?) that I could find.
Album_Cover_Crap_165_showandtelmusic_com_Greatest_Picks You certainly can’t possibly get more late ’60s than this design. These ladies were from The Vassar College Glee Club in Rhode Island.They sing “America”, “White Rabbit”, and other 60s contemporary (at the time) hits from folk and acid rock genres.

The G-Stringers have been in existence since at least 1965, and various incarnations of them have performed at Carnegie Hall.

Visits: 69

Brothers In Arms: A belated review of the versions

Not really having heard the original Dire Straits version of “Brothers in Arms” when it came out (it was one of these things I was planning on “getting around to”), my first experience with the song was through protest singer Joan Baez in 1988, with a radio-only compilation back when I was a university DJ. I feel that it was at least her best since “Love Song To a Stranger”, another song that grabs my emotions in a similar way.

Brothers in Arms is about a quintessential Baez theme: anti-war. It is hard to listen to lyrics like “There’s  a million different worlds/and a million different suns/we have just one world/and live in different ones” and not get choked up.

I have heard some remarks in recent blogs regarding the appropriateness of a woman singing this song. Well, I think that war is not just a “man’s issue”. It is an issue for all mankind. I feel no conflict with Baez singing this song. Women have sons, brothers, and husbands that are lost in war, too.  And when you hear Baez sing, believe me, any questions of appropriateness quickly fly out the window. She definitely makes this song her own.

She does a better job of the vocals than anyone I have heard, including Mark Knopfler, the writer of the tune. But there is an element missing.The music in the background serves as a vehicle for her voice. It is maudlin, and its mediocrity doesn’t become obvious until the song’s ending where the musicians no longer have the power of Baez’s voice to carry the ending.

Finally, after all these years, I sat down and had an un-interrupted, quiet, sustained listen to Dire Straits doing the original song.

Its strength is its weakness: Knopfler’s Gibson guitar. When most people talk to me about Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms being a “good song”, they are referring to the guitar work. The words of the song, which Knopfler nearly mumbles his way through, takes a back seat to the the guitar playing. In a real sense, the problem is the reverse of the Baez problem: while the voice is just “kind of there”, it is just a vehicle for the guitar. And as Baez shows us in no uncertain terms, the lyrics of the song have their own power in the hands of the right vocalist, making the most of what are powerful, poetic lyrics.

If only we had Knopfler’s guitar, and Baez’s voice doing that tune … we can only dream.

Visits: 110

Crappy Album Covers #128 — Channelling the Great Rock Legends

Album_Cover_Crap_168_MinstrelOTMorning_John_Bayley The design element (there is only one) that John Bayley uses combines all of the most incoherent elements of late-60s album design, hoping it will amount to something, for this 1976 album, “Minstrel of the Morning”.Lessee … what do they throw in? A clay tiger, a kid in a lotus position (who will surely become warped when he gets older), a nearly comatose woman in a flowing dress (the feeding tube was temporarily disconnected for the photo shoot), a sitar, a mandolin, John Bayley channeling Mr. T, and a Wal-Mart circular rug, curtains, a painted over Roman blind, and some artificial plants.

A copy of this was sold on E-Bay last year for $75.00
Album_Cover_Crap_171_Flickr The closest explanation for this disaster of an album cover is … okay, some guy goes to the Harlem branch of the Salvation Army store in New York City, buys a random mixture of men’s, boy’s and lady’s clothing, then goes to the neighbouring soup kitchen at the Habour Light, and tells four jobless hoboes that he is willing to pay them two cases of beer each if they will dress up in these clothes for an album cover. At this point the hoboes still hadn’t bargained for mascara being part of the deal. But hey, there’s two cases of beer on the line. Each! That wasn’t so bad, but then the photographer told them they had to bathe first.One of the hoboes angrily responded “What’s wrong with our personal hygeine? We take a bath every February 29th whether we need it or not!” That was almost the last straw, and after nearly an hour of thinking about it, they realised that they won’t be able to afford that much beer for a very long time, so they grudgingly obeyed.

This is why “They have got to rock and roll.”

Visits: 131

(May be disturbing) Crappy Album Covers #127 — Plastic Surgery Disasters II

Album_Cover_Crap_186_Flickr This is the kind of thing that gives the LGBT community a bad name. Don’t know the artist, album or anything else about this disaster of an album design. 

This is worse than an album cover, because it is a picture disc. Notice the hole punched in the center, near the price tag? Yeah, you take this, put it on your turntable, and watch this guy/girl/whtever rotate as he/she/it sings you some tunes.

Don’t picture this as a rotating CD, because CDs rotate too fast. You need to imagine this rotating at 33 1/3 rpm, where you could still make out some of the details as it spins.

I am usually a curious hound for finding out about most CAC’s but the blog I got this from also didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Album_Cover_Crap_159_showandtelmusic_com_Greatest_Picks This appears to be by a member of the profession that is responsible for disasters like the one above. 

With this album design, I would say that John Butterworth should stick to medicine.

Visits: 110

Crappy Album Covers #124 — Classical Music for People who Hate Classical Music

Album_Cover_Crap_181_Flickr It’s sad. It really is, that classical musicians must feel that they have to have low-brow record covers in order to sell records. 

And to top it off, we have three Daisy Duke imitators holding their fiddles seductively against their bodies. That’s violins against women!

Not much is known about “Festival Strings”.
Album_Cover_Crap_184_Flickr Hmm… this is another classical album, an opera by Gioacchino Rossini, and the title is in Italian, so in case you can’t read Italian, the album designer left a couple of clues for you in the photograph, which needs little translation. 

And for those who are not only unable to figure out Italian, but are too impatient to listen to all of “The Barber of Seville”, this album only has the “Highlights” of this opera, according to the cover.

Visits: 101

Crappy Album Covers #121 — Phallic Symbols III

Album_Cover_Crap_178_Flickr Whirlwind Heat formed 12 years ago in Grand Rapids, Michgan, and continue to make recordings of their own unique brand of alternative music. 

For their 2006 offering, their second full-length album, they find that this young lady closes her eyes when she licks her wood. Or maybe she was told to. You never know with these photographers.
Album_Cover_Crap_175_Flickr This is another woman who likes to close her eyes. There is also something that appears to be smoke rising from the banana. Or steam. 

I have no information on the group Bananas or their recording “Get it & Come” “Come & Get It”. It’s probably a rock album. Most rock albums have something to do with the sex act or with getting laid in general, don’t they?

Visits: 101

Crappy Album Covers #119 — From Here To Paternity

Album_Cover_Crap_197_Flickr Not much is known about Fontanna and His Orchestra. But the guy on the cover of “Music for Expectant Fathers” seems a little presumtive. He seems to be all geared up to have a boy, but how does he know that? I am guessing that this LP came out before the days of ultrasound.
Album_Cover_Crap_196_Flickr Germans Ralf Bendix and the voice of a little baby girl named Elizabeth made a worldwide smash hit in 1961 with Babysitter Boogie.

When the single came to North America it was played without any translation. It didn’t need any. It was a delightfully funny novelty song. Bendix made me laugh when I first heard it, and I don’t understand a word of German, or for that matter German baby-talk (which I would suppose is the same in all languages).

Here is Babysitter Boogie, with a much older Ralf Bendix (and, uh, the baby looks older too) from 1979:

Visits: 128

The TI-NSpire: On the bright side

I have said much that I think needed to be said about the down sides of the NSpire CAS calculator. This was because I had heard enough promotional peddling from other people about this calculator that I thought the air needed to be cleared and people be brought down to earth about the calculator. I had gotten enough hits on this topic that I thought others must be concerned as I am too.

This time, though, I would like to say a few things about this calculator that make the CAS indispensible. For Grade 12 math, I find that, because the CAS hands you the answers, it is easy to make questions for the students using it. Also, when it comes time to correct, I can enter a calculation a student gives me which I hand’t thought  of, and quickly check if 1) expressions are equivalent to my answer key; 2) their calculations lead to the same answer as mine when it becomes unclear, and the student hasn’t explained their logic. Marks come off whenever students make me go to this trouble, but it is good for assigning partial marks, and saves me lots of time.

I was also able to write answer keys very quickly for things that would take some time in calculating and be more error-prone, such as cross-products and simultaneous equations in three unknowns. The latter could be found using the rref() (that is, “reduced row-echelon form”)  function and converting the equation system into a matrix.

Even as I have computer-based software such as Maple that already has a CAS, the NSpire CAS is much more portable, enabling me to do quick solving or graphs anywhere so there is less of a need to have to lug my laptop around all the time.

Visits: 74

Crappy Album Covers #117 — Scantily-Clad Ladies Reclining On Top Of Things

Album_Cover_Crap_191_Flickr I chose these records because both women have similar poses, except this one is more clothing-challenged. 

What this lady doesn’t seem to know is that Cerrone keeps more ladies in the freezer she’s reclining on. Cerrone has used nudity on several of his records. When being marketed to his more uptight American audience, the nudity had to be greatly subdued, or covered up.

French musician, talent scout, and stud with the ladies, Jean-Marc Cerrone, marks this as his fifth album out of 26 he has made in total since 1972, the latest one, “Cerrone XXIII”, being released in 2009.
Album_Cover_Crap_190_Flickr The lady may not be nude in this second album, but it has every other element needed for proper seduction: a piano, a waiter to keep up the flow of booze to reduce the inhibitions, a smoky bar. I have to admit, however, the lights are a tad bright. 

While I can’t think of any women who would be interested in listening to ragtime, Eddie “Pianola” Barnes proves with this 1957 release that, by playing ragtime tunes on his piano, he can play ragtime on his piano and still be a hit with the women.

Honky Tonk Piano is listed on some websites as a jazz album.

Visits: 115