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Scott Miller (right) standing next to his biggest musical influence, Big Star’s Alex Chilton (1950-2010) (left). The band Game Theory existed in the 1980s, and had a good run as artistic output goes. But during their day, they were beset by various runs of bad luck: the folding of their record label, Enigma, […] Go to article The latest on Lolita Nation  MacArthur Park. I didn’t need to say anything else, didn’t I? MacArthur Park is that unlistenable 1968 hit whose only strength lay in the instrumental piece. How often does Jimmy Webb need to remind us that someone left his bloody cake out in the rain, then strech the metaphor until it loses all focus and […] Go to article [Media Monday] The Difficult Listening Moment in Two Words Go to Rhino Records(Live) on Westwood Boulevard! Go to Rhino Records on Westwood Boulevard! If you sing the above lines multiple times in a music-less, out-of-tune voice while clapping your hands, you have a good idea of the “music” that lay within this 1969 double LP. Rhino didn’t exist in 1969 you say? No […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #222 — CAC Makers with a Few Fries Short of a Happy Meal Crossing the line between soft porn and insanity, Mike Bones offers us this picture of himself spending time at the Betty Ford Clinic. Honest, he just let one of his buddies play with his camera while he was visiting him, and being too drugged up to notice, a picture was taken of him, desaturated […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #219 — Beefcake or fruitcake? You be the judge! Buy this album and you will always be able to see this beautiful photo of a telephone held by someone in a tasteful suit. Yes, I’ll bet you will stare at this one forever. I’m only saying all this because I’m jealous, of course. Aren’t you, knowing now that Jerry Irby has a hotline […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #218 — Old-School Telephones The only thing this album has going for it is the “Explicit Lyrics/Parental Advisory” sticker that tells adolescents that these are the only kinds of recordings they should buy. The Metal parody group Steel Panther currently play weekly in Los Vegas and Los Angeles. They must be metal, because their website overuses gothic fonts […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #217 — Too much for metal Cuban born Perez Prado (1916-1989) showed himself as the Head Honcho of Mambo University. I guess it was the Latin kind, not the horizontal kind. During his tenure, Prado was known as the King of Mambo. Living for most of his life in Mexico, he had a long recording and performing career which extended […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #214 — Where they learn to dance 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 […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #148 — Seeing things from a different perspective 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 […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #147 — Blunders by Major Acts 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 […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #146 — MS Paint Massacre 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 […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #145 — Cartoony Covers It is not clear what year Mike Melvoin recorded this 12-inch LP, but the hits listed on the jacket place this record in the early-to mid-1970s. Hear synthesised versions of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”; Blood, Sweat, and Tears’ “Spinning Wheel”; The Beatles’ “Ballad of John and Yoko”; Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild”; Dylan’s […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #144 — Computers and Electronics This is the album cover from The Bloodhound Gang’s last album as far as I can tell, their 2005 offering called “Hefty Fine”. The album cover has the much-wanted “Explicit Lyrics-Parental Advisory” sticker on the cover. Translated, that means: Kiddies, this is a way cool record! That other stuff without the sticker is garbage! […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #143 — Guys who only want to be your friend By 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 […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #142 — Diving for Crabs 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. […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #140 — Bad Hair III 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 […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #136 — Food on Vinyl V 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 […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #135 — Food on Vinyl IV Here is Mylon, being photographed for his 1977 LP “Weak at the Knees” while trying to get a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken out from between his teeth. While he is from the Southern US, I claim that his French name qulifies as international (hey, it’s my blog, I can do what I like!). […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #107 — The International Language of Bad Taste III The funk/disco/R&B duo The Brothers Johnson’s 1980 recording, “Light Up The Night”, was the high water mark in their career as a duo. Rolling Stone listed this record as #48 in the top 100 records of the 1980s.Looks like George is using his Johnson to light up Louis. Probably didn’t help sales, which went […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #103 — My Bruthas' Johnson (more phallic symbols) You got to hand it to Leonard Nimoy. He had tried so hard to be something more than his public image of Spock, yet the public image of an unemotional, totally logical humanoid was larger than he was. But he keeps sticking it to himself. In all of these “image makeover” LPs, Nimoy can’t […] Go to article Crappy Album Covers #96 — More Unworkable Trekkie Ideas |
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