(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.

Crappy Album Covers #115 — Trophy animals and trophy women

Album_Cover_Crap_195_Flickr First, let’s talk about trophy animals.Kind of reminds me of the 1986 college radio smash hit “All I Got Were Clothes For Christmas” by Happy Flowers.

Also, looks like the musician is getting friendly with his trophy deer.

There is no info on who this person is or why he has the logo for the American Lung Association painted upside-down on his forehead.

Album_Cover_Crap_192_Flickr Everything was going romantically until Ethel noticed trophies of a beheaded blonde and redhead on the wall, and remembering she is a brunette, she concluded that George must be a collector. Things became tense after that.Yes, trophy women. That is, women’s heads as wall-mounted trophies. This should have been the album cover for Fine Young Cannibals’ “Hunters and Collectors”.

Elliot Lawrence was an American Jazz Pianist and band leader during the late 1950s. He won two Tony Awards for his compositions in TV and film in the early  1960s.

Crappy Album Covers #114 — Cows and Cliches

album_cover_crap_140_cendella_com Moving Geltine Plates (MGP) was, according to this bio from progweed.net, was one of France’s finest progressive rock bands. This album, released on CBS Records in 1972, was their second album, and the critical high water mark of their career. Poor distribution was blamed for the fact that this record didn’t fare well in the stores, and the band soon folded afterward.

I would also blame the album cover which was designed for it. At the time of the first writing of this blog article, I mindlessly thought that this was the head of a cow. Problem is, how many cows are hairless? This one also has half-closed eyes. Like a pig. The ears are cone-shaped like a cow. I’m totally screwed up here.

Lookit. I’m not dumb. I know my cows. Here’s a cow:

HappyCow

What’s so funny?! It’s a goddamn cow! I know my cows!

album_cover_crap_141_cendella_com Former member of White Witch, Ron Goedert recorded “Breaking All The Rules” in 1980, a couple of years after the band broke up. White Witch opened for a lot of seminal 1970s acts, includng Alice Cooper and Grand Funk Railroad.

Allmusic.com makes scant mention of them, except to simply have an entry for Goedert and his record, the only one allmusic.com mentions.

Maybe the fact that one of the members was wearing a yellow sleeveless jumpsuit on the album cover had something to do with it.

 

Crappy Album Covers #103 — My Bruthas’ Johnson (more phallic symbols)

album-cover-crap-58_philipharland_com 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 to #5 on Billboard’s Top 200 despite the album cover.

The record did not release any pop hits, but likely had at least one dance club hit, “Stomp!”. The Brothers Johnson were probably best known for their mid-70s pop hit “Strawberry Letter 23” (peaked on BB as a single at #5 in 1977).

album_cover_crap_136_zonicweb_com Now we have a guitar as a phallic symbol. But they always kind of were. The drummer never gets the girl. It’s always the guitarist. Lead guitarist? Even better. They are the alpha males in the group (if you want to carry the analogy to apes).Chicks also dig motorcyles. And motorcycles and guitars together? SCORE!!!! Evidently, Ray Nelson’s invention of a guitar-shaped motorcycle never quite caught on, except as novelty. Nelson rode around the country in one which he built himself in 1980.

He also recorded this record 10 years earlier with a few colleagues of his. The idea stuck in his mind to build a motorcycle that had a guitar motif, from the drawing on this album cover. If the drawing was followed exactly (it probably wasn’t), they would probably find that the fretboard was blocking the headlight.

Nelson has made several selefless contributions to society, through his “Guitars not Guns” campaign aimed at wayward youth, and also by being a foster parent.

Crappy Album Covers #96 — More Unworkable Trekkie Ideas

album_cover_crap_124_-_nimoy_i 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 get out of depicting his Spock image somewhere on the jacket. There is Spock in the upper left. In the act of trying to make you forget Spock, he reminds you at every turn.

“The Way I Feel” is a title that strikes me as being a little over the top. Also, it’s great artwork; but if you ever want to make the public forget, at least for a short time, who you played, then riding on your own coattails will get you nowhere. He is here coverng songs such as “I’d Love Making Love To You”, “Both Sides Now”, and “Sunny”.

album_cover_crap_125_-_nimoy_ii This album is a more explicit breaking of the rule. It may have been acceptable as a first attempt. But it was not his first attempt. AMG lists this record as being released in the same year as “The Way I Feel”, 1968. 

This time, you see two sides, alright. And rather than being two parts of a whole, they clash. Imagine hearing songs with titles that could appear on a Kraftwerk album (or fill in your own industrial/synthpop group): Amphibious Assault, Spock Thoughts, Once I Smiled, and Highly Illogical; next to songs like: Gentle On My Mind, If I Were a Carpenter, and, The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, for which I presented a video over a month ago. You don’t have to watch it again, unless you haven’t seen it. I’ll understand.

[Video] Giving Leonard Nimoy equal time

I don’t know why I need to pick on Shatner, when Nimoy was far worse.

Bloggers Joe and Darlene Lacy, who have a Leonard Nimoy shrine page, assert, with visual proof, that Nimoy has recorded more albums than Shatner. Actually, with his other recordings (not on the DOT label), he is said to have more than The Beatles. Nimoy also didn’t help his career along with singing anymore than Shatner did. The one track that tells you everything you need to know about songs from Spock is his tribute to Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”, with the song “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.

Time to plug your ears

William Shatner (who played Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek) recites “Lucy in the Sky”. The animator wins big for visual accompaniment. It is kitschy in exactly the right way. Guest starring Lucille Ball and Lucy Van Pelt. Cameo appearance by Ricky Ricardo and The Flying Nun (with Shatner’s face pasted on).

Crappy Album Covers #82 — Classic Crock

album_cover_crap_120_-_beatles_franklarosa_com Rock set to classical music, especially in the 60s and 70s, was done with no small measure of contempt for the rock genre. Here, the greater works of The Beatles is set to opera. 

I can see Elanor Rigby being set to opera, or Yesterday, but Can’t Buy Me Love? Or the song Revolution?

And the line drawings on this cover is an obvious send-up to similar drawings of The Beatles’ Revolver album, which has some of these tracks on it. If it were really a send-up to Revolution, what artwork would they parody? The White Album?

album_cover_crap_123_-_shatner This 1968 album cover is not really crappy, since the general design would be predictable for Shatner: kitschy late 60s computer lettering; Shatner in a trance; and so on. 

What is legendarily horrible about this album lay in its contents. The album’s pièce de résistance for masochists was in his reading of the Beatle’s Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. Those who boldly assert that Shatner’s talents extended beyond acting usually quiet down whenever they hear Shatner take a hatchet to recite this track.

I have a link to a video of Shatner doing Lucy, which is so brilliantly done and animated, that I felt it deserved its own entry.

Warning: Once you view the video, you can’t UN-view it. Sorry.

 

Crappy Album Covers #26 — Phallic symbols

Phallic symbols, their effects, and other weirdness…

Sigmund Freud once was quoted as saying “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” After inventing the idea of phallic symbols, and knowing how much he loved to smoke cigars, there are people who would have disagreed with Freud’s veiled attempt to shield the psychological dimensions of his own smoking habit from public scrutiny. Cigarettes are no different in their role as phallic symbols. 

First, I have got to tell you about Tex Williams. You are looking at the album cover for the biggest hit of his career. “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke (that Cigarette) was a #1 hit on billboard for six weeks in 1947, and was the first million-seller for Capitol Records.

Despite the uber-cheesy look of the album cover, it seems that the song is actually an anti-smoking song, but with a certain postwar morbid sense of humor. Scroll down for the You-Tube video (black-and-white, of course).

Pioneer flautist Herbie Mann is a big name in Jazz circles. He helped get Chick Corea’s career started by having him play with a few of his ensembles. He has enjoyed quite a range of crossover success, with 25 of his jazz albums entering the top 200 pop charts. 

The album cover suggests that he has a talent with more than one kind of flute.

… Just ask Herbie’s taxi driver. He saw everything. He should have first suspected something was up when he picked up Herbie and his GF in a swanky bar in Lower Manhattan, and then they asked to be driven to an obscure Pizza Parlour in Hempstead (Long Island), taking only the side streets. 

After about an hour he had to ask Herbie and his lady friend to tone it down a bit because he had to concentrate on driving the car. However it must be said that talent with playing the flute is really a talent the partner has, and not of the possessor of such a flute.

That taxi driver has quite a smirk on his face…

Jerry Williams, Jr., known to his adoring fans as “Swamp Dogg”, is a soul musician, and has been putting out such music since the 1970s. He has been making records under various monacres since 1954, and has his present name since the 1970s. He continues to make records to this date. 

“Rat On!” is Mr. Dogg’s second LP, released in 1971. Swamp Dogg has commented on the relatively recent trend by rap singers to go for names like “Snoop Doggy Dogg”, “The Doggs”, and “The Dogg Pound”. He seems unsure that he had any influence on those musicians.

Tex Williams: Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!

[Video] Stuart, by The Dead Milkmen: A Video Gallery

This was a great song back when I was in university. Here, I have several people who took the song and created their own video with it.

There used to be some excellent photo montages of this vid that got pulled by YouTube. Even a recent montage I noticed had the soundtrack pulled on it.What I am now to make do with is this small crop of Stuart tunes, lip synchs and remakes. Hope YouTube doesn’t pull these.

(1) The original: [media id=64 width=400 height=24]

(2) A lip-synch by a fan:

(3) A cover by Christian Doyle: [media id=66 width=400 height=300]

(4) DM Live (excerpts): [media id=67 width=400 height=300]

… At least now I know what a burrow owl is.

(Cocteau Twins) Lyrics to Fotzepolitic — NOT!

These Fotzepolitic lyrics (or a close facsimilie) had appeared on a newsgroup some years ago. The approximate lyrics are below. I was convinced that these were the actual lyrics, but recently I have looked at some “lyrics” websites, and they all post more or less the same “approximate” lyrics, but to my knowledge, none of them are like the one I have here.

If you had not heard the song Fotzepolitic, I recommend you give it a listen. Seriously, I thought it was a cool song (click below).

https://youtu.be/9lMU7OfdBpk

The Cocteau Twins had this strange style of singing, which could only arguably be called “the English language”. I think they invented a few words and used some non-words also. But of course, we were all charmed by Elizabeth Frazier’s singing and music and bought their recrods anyway. It didn’t matter what she was singing about; it was how it was sung. Their style was atmospheric and ethereal. But Fotzepolitic was more on the “pop” side.

Maybe these are the lyrics, maybe they’re not. But you can play the above video and sing along with these words anyway. They are as good a guess as anything out there.

My dreams are like a chemist
Must be drugs
They're a young girl's dreams

True some drool
and shoot like a baby with stones
But I'll use just rouge

Not like the scary hairs on other singing groups
Like the scary hairs on other singing groups
Big boobs

Family food its you like a stone inside me
Sit on my face

I am stoned; 
I am drowned, now
I'm bleached to blonde
Now I'm empty-headed.

See and saw bounce me back to you, will you?
See and saw bounce me back to you, will you?, 
Will you?

Bobbi Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe, remembered

I was listening to a Pravda Records cover of a song from the late ’60s called “Ode to Billie Joe” (originally a Bobbi Gentry tune). It made me think about the original, the words, and musings about how hard it is to play on the guitar.

I recall there was also a mysticism regarding the words and what the story was really trying to say. Most obviously, it is a story about suicide and how callous people can be when speaking about the death of those not close to them. And sure, the pragmatic farmer’s mentality really comes out in the song. Rumor has it that the Tallahatchie Bridge (the one in real life) collapsed in 1972.

Wes Clark discusses this topic to its ultimate futility.

Deep Purple

I have a retro cassette of pre-Beatles music from the 1959-1963 era. I have had it for years, and it is full of really boring tunes that I hardly ever play. It was an era of sappy sentimentalism, when torch songs reigned supreme, and everyone tried to outdo each other with the ultimate love tune. If you are the kind of person who expects more than McCarthyist, sappy sentimentalism from music, then it wasn’t a good time to grow up. I wasn’t born then, but came accross this cassette in a delete bin at a record store. I guess no one else wanted it either.

There is one song among the collection whose title stood out because I was a Deep Purple fan (you know, those ’70s musicians with the loud guitars — that Deep purple). The song, sung by Nino Tempo and April Stevens, was actually called Deep Purple. Of all the music I heard on the cassette, it was the most mellow among this collection of already mellow tunes. I had largely forgotten about this tune, until this week when I was listening to an all-Jazz radio station, and they began playing a 1940s version of Deep Purple by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra (by WWII — the time of the recording — it became a specially-commissioned orchestra to play for the troops of the Allied Command (British and US)).

In listening to Glenn Miller, I learned something about the Tempo/Stevens version of the song — it was played very fast! Miller’s rendition was at half of the tempo, with no words (I don’t know if Mitchell Parish had written the words yet at that point). I look this song up on Wikipedia, and find it was written in 1929 by Peter de Rose. It was already over 30 years old when Tempo/Stevens sung it, and over 40 years old by the time Donny and Marie Osmond sung it (a version I haven’t heard about).

Sampling versions that they have of this song on EMusic, (there are over 80 different versions listed), most versions I sampled are super-slow Jazz tunes, usually played with piano in the lead, or as the only instrument other than voice. After some sampling, I have to say that I am partial to the Tempo/Stevens version of the tune. I was able to search out the chords to play it on guitar.