Crappy Album Covers #221 — Unique Reiligious Concepts

“I stood at Calvary in a business suit, but no one told me that they were gonna have a toga party” is how I paraphrase one MSN blogger who discussed this album. But this could also be one of the earliest depictions of Supply-Side Jesus in a business suit. 

No one would crucify Supply-side Jesus, according to his biographer and publicist, Al Franken, as when the choice was given to the multitudes as to whether to release Supply-side Jesus or Jesus of Nazareth from the sentence of death by crucifixion, the people chose Supply-side Jesus, since he offered the public 20 sheckels to anyone who voted for him. This historic act is depicted here for all to see.

I don’t care if it rains or freezes, s’long as I have my 8-bit Jesus playing on my iPod in my car. Our Lord and Saviour meets Mario Brothers. 

These ditties by Doctor Octoroc may be downloaded again from a web page that touts it as the “second coming of 8-bit Jesus”.

 

Visits: 213

Crappy Album Covers #220 — Poorly thought-out concepts

This is an awfully dry album cover for the former members of The New Pornographers and Wolf Parade. I mean, a courtroom? In their 2009 album “Enemy Mine”, it is not clear if there is any connection at all between this cover and the album’s contents.

Apart from that, this kind of art might be OK for a newspaper courtroom artist who wants to capture the likenesses of large numbers of people. Unless  your album is about famous or notable court cases, courtroom art is a bad idea.

This album is an improvement over Swan Lake due to the lack of a courtroom image.

Al Jolson was known for his imitating a black singer by covering his face in black makeup, but it appears as though this black guy covered his face in even blacker makeup. But alas, it looks like a wax carving.

Some amusing tidbits: I found a larger image than this in a place called the “Uncyclomedia Commons“. The web page containing the image declares that “This image or article is a copyright violation”. Then in small print, it continues: “Luckily, nobody cares.” The link on “nobody cares” points to an aticle in the “uncyclopedia” called “nobody cares“. The Uncyclopedia is touted as a “content-free” encyclopedia, but it appears to be satire.

Visits: 82

Crappy Album Covers #219 — Beefcake or fruitcake? You be the judge!

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 to black-and-white in Photoshop, and made into the cover of his second solo CD, entitled “A Fool For Everyone”, which got released in 2009.

Honestly, I have no idea of the circumstances for the photo. The above idea was competing in my brain with another scenario, that he is photographed here showing the after effects of interrogation, imprisonment and starvation.

Mike Jones was Mike Strallow, lead guitarist of such indie/underground bands as Soldiers of Fortune and The Mighty Flashlight. The Mighty Flashlight looks like it was used in this album cover photo as part of the interrogation, as evidenced by the washed-out image.

Former Italian fashion model and romance novelist Fabio Lanzoni would stand for none of that black-and-white, washed-out photo nonsense. He still looks like he walked off a GAP commercial … the one that might have had the slogan “Everyone in love with themselves”.

Fabio has also appeared in countless movies and soap operas. Not much info on his singing career. If you want to know if Fabio can sing, then buy the album and write me back.

Visits: 85

Crappy Album Covers #218 — Old-School Telephones

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 to heaven? Look at him smiling! Don’t it make you want to rip the phone out of his hands?

“Yo God! I’m really happy for Jer’! I’ll let him finish, but I just want to say that Millie Jackson has one of the worst album covers of all time!”

Jerry Irby mixed gospel with country music. Bobby Bland mixed gospel with blues and R&B. This 1962 single had Bobby imprisoned for overuse of the depiction of a telephone, just because the word “call” appears in one of the titles.

Bland recorded 30 albums and released around 45 singles over the years between 1958 and 1998.  That is, 45 hit singles out of a total of 120.  During that time, he had served in the US Armed Forces. He has been entered into both the Blues Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Visits: 119

Crappy Album Covers #217 — Too much for metal

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 and umlauts above every occurence of the letter “o”.

“Feel the Steel” was released in the UK June of 2009, and a few months later in North America and Australia. Previous albums included spoken-word comedy tracks, but this one is just the music. Their website features this CD and sells it bundled with a T-shirt for around 26 bucks. CD is 11 bucks.

Metal, mullets, tattoos and babes the trappings of the CD design for Reel Big Fish’s 2009 CD “Fame, Fortune and Fornication”. The guy on the cover is actually not a member of the band, but Brian Klemm of the group Suburban Legends, wearing the same clothing (or not) as he had on the album cover of “Let’s Be Friends” from the previous year. Klemm acts as a guest backing vocalist on the LP. No one knows who the token female is.

The entire album consists of cover ska versions of songs done by John Mellencamp, Van Morrisson, The Eagles, Tom Petty, and Poison.

Visits: 99

Crappy Album Covers #216 — Stereotypes and other things that bug me

Come to Sweden, “… where the facts of life are stranger than fiction.” “The most permissive state in the world!” (sez the cover) Well, that’s got to mean only one thing, folks. That they’re all a bunch of debauched perverts, and the rest of us uptight Westerners should pass up this film or become debauched ourselves. Oh! Our virgin ears! Our virgin eyes!

I guess no film has ever lost money over simplistic stereotypes.

Avco Embassy Pictures made mediocre to half-decent movies. They filmed The Graduate (1967), and The Producers (1968) for example. Later films included Blade Runner, and This is Spinal Tap.

Avco changed hands and names several times over the decades. The 1968 film “Sweden Heaven and Hell” is not listed as one of Avco’s “Notable Films” under Wikipedia. The “Hit Single” “Mah-Na-Mah-Na” never made the Billboard Top 40 (peaking at #55 in the US in 1969), but was later used on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street.

Don’t remember the song? Oh yes you do! Scroll down, plress “Play” to hear the Sesame Street version on YouTube. It won’t leave your head for a week! I guarantee.

Here are more things that bug me… Bugs!

Hi-Fi bugs are a class of “bug” species that all point to Magnetic North whenever they hear the key of Middle A, as depicted in this real-life nature photo.

Pete Rugolo was born in Sicily on Christmas Day, and has spent most of his life in Califronia. He played in a band with Paul Desmond druing World War II. Since 1949, he was hired as the East Coast music director for Capitol Records, backing and arranging for such notables as Mel Torme, Nat King Cole, and Peggy Lee. During the 60s and 70s, he contributed music to a number of TV shows, including “Leave it to Beaver”, “Felony Squad” and “The Challengers”. His most recent work was for music to the the 1997 movie “This World, Then The Fireworks”, an adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel.

Mah-Na-Mah-Na was on Sesame Street at one time, apparently:

Visits: 68

Crappy Album Covers #215 — Your Miranda Rights

You have a right to remain silent, while Carmen Miranda has a right to sing her fool head off. It almost isn’t fair, is it? Here she is depicted as being attacked by a fruit bowl, and you stand accused.

She’s smiling because she’s hired the best lawyer in the business, and this is how she finances her jewellery.

Portuguese-born Maria do Carmo Miranda de Cuhna (1909-1955) was a Broadway singer and actress, and many believe she was the highest earning woman in the United States during the 1940s. She grew up in Brazil, earning her nickname “The Brazilian Bombshell”.

Below, the Lady in The Tutti Fruitti Hat sings the title track to this album.

Dick Schory and his merry band of percussionists and other musicians made this LP in 1958 or 1959 depending on what website you are looking at. I’ve seen it categorized as Easy Listening and as Space Age Pop. Either one would be possible for that period.

The music has faded into mediocrity (answers.com gives it only two stars and a lukewarm review), but the crappy album cover lives on in our collective memory. This vinyl LP, whose cover depicts Dick Schory crawling out from underneath a pile of percussion instruments, is considered a collector’s item, with Amazon selling a used copy for around $280.00

WARNING: The picture on the Amazon site, on close inspection is of a 1996 German import CD, not a vinyl LP — Not sure if that is something I would pay close to $300 for. A giveaway is the jewel case, but an even bigger giveaway is the “Compact Disc” logo on the back cover. While there is no overt attempt by Amazon to obscure this (it is listed as a CD), Vinyl Renaissance sells the original vinyl LP used for $55.

Carmen Miranda, “South American Way”

Here is an English translation of the same song by The Andrews Sisters:

Visits: 128

Crappy Album Covers #213 — More TV and Movies

Cushy job there, Dean.

Dino Paul Crocetti, known as Dean Martin (1917-1995), played secret agent Matt Helm in the 1966 movie The Silencers.

I can’t see Matt Helm’s agency remaining secret if he continues to chase women.

This looks like the second redesign I’ve seen about the movie Peter Gunn. Same artist, same movie.

Visits: 96

Crappy Album Covers #212 — The love of self and others

Common wisdom tells us that you must love yourself if you are going to give love to others. Otherwise, if you see yourself as a miserable chump, others will see you the same way, and only other miserable chumps will be your companions.

The first step in loving yourself is self-acceptance. And with that, being yourself. When you feel comfortable with yourself, others will feel comfortable around you, except your miserable chump ex-friends.

This was the self-help cash cow once milked by Samuel George Davis Jr (1925-1990). That being said this former Rat Packer has won 5 Grammies and 5 Emmies.

Cugat is depicted here, humping jumping on the Cha Cha Cha bandwagon that was all the rage in the 50s and 60s, and which has provided a rich source of crappy album covers for my blog.

He’s doing it wrong. He’s supposed to dance with the lady and put the french bread back on the table.

Xavier was born Francisco d’Asis Javier Cugat Mingal de Bru y Deleufo (1900-1990), but his publicist thought “Xavier Cugat” would not crowd out his picture on the record cover.

Cugat was known for his popularization of Latin dance, notably the Rumba, and has earned himself two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Before and after World War II, his band was the resident orchestra at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. His band has also toured with Enrico Caruso.

Visits: 98

Crappy Album Covers #211 — Domestic Affairs

If you cook either with electricity or briquettes, this album is not for you. I think there was a decade between the mid-50s and mid-60s where there were a spate of “Music for X” albums for every occasion. Cook with gas? Then buy this record!

Harry Fields (?-1988) graduated from Julliard with a Ph. D., and was a contemporary of George Gershwin. His orchestra played regularly for the American troops during World War II. A nice article on Fields gives more detail.

The father works, as is the expectation of fathers of the albums of this period, but on the domestic front, there is the family he provides for.

If John is a farmer, it crosses my mind that in order to work his many acres of land, he needs hands, which is the expected contribution of his family members. The kids seem a little young to be farm hands, and there are only two women, one of whom have to tend to domestic affairs. The other? Well, none of them look like they could pitch hay.

Anyone get the impression that the land they are standing on is not theirs?

 

Visits: 99

Crappy Album Covers #209 — Keyboard Obsessions

There was a period of time that just about every “nerdy” musical act wanted to record something by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. They were the Lennon and McCartney of predictability and commerciality in the 1960s and early 70s.

While they took few artistic risks, it is not to say that they lacked originality. Their catalogue is quite diverse, ranging from “The Story of My Life” to “Do You Know The Way to San Jose?” And anyone who thinks playing Bacharach is easy hasn’t read the sheet music to the song “Promises, Promises”. Dionne Warwick sings it best.

Dick Hyman, that fella with that unfortunate name, certainly likes to tempt us, with both his name and the album title.

I included this 1965 record because in my last posting, I had “The Man From UNCLE” as a CAC, and now this. If this is a depiction of a spy, he looks like a very tired spy.

Visits: 95

Crappy Album Covers #208 — Television II

I remember seeing the title “The Man From UNCLE” in my TV Guide when I was quite young. Never saw the show, but I at least understood that it had this famous guy Robert Vaughan in the show. The acronym apparently stands for the “United Network Command for Law Enforcement”. Sheesh. 

It’s a James Bond knockoff because Ian Fleming took part in its creation. The series ran from 1964 to 1968, and selected props used in the show may now be found in the Ronald Regan Presidential Library, or so claims Wikipedia. A casual search around the Ronald Regan Library website turned up empty-handed.

This is actually the soundtrack for the Grammy-winning music by Stanley Wilson to the series M-Squad. This was a series about police officers fighting crime in the Chicago area. It ran from 1957 to 1960, and starred Lee Marvin.The entire series has been since released on DVD as recently as 2008.If anyone remembers the short series “Police Squad” which ran for a short time in 1982, M-Squad was the show they were actually targetting in their satire. The celebrated reason for ABC cancelling Police Squad was “because the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it.” Later that year, TV Guide took that quote as “the most stupid reason a network ever gave for ending a series.”

Visits: 86

Crappy Album Covers #207 — Television I

The 1976 movie “Logan’s Run”, of which this is the soundtrack, characterized a utopia, a domed city where everything is perfect for everybody (hardly any work, so you can pursue whatever your heart desires), except that when you turn 30 you have to die.These guys have numbers after their names for some reason, like “Logan 5”, or “Francis 7”. Dunno why. Now, some folks in this utopia thought that dying at age 30 was a dumb idea. To escape execution on the Carousel (why the heck they call it that?), you had to leave the domed city and arrive at some camp called Sanctuary, where sandmen will chase you down and put you to sleep. Sleep of the permanent kind.

We never know exactly why the community needed a dome in the first place.

Henry Mancini (1924-1994) was known for his movie soundtracks. He didn’t just do Peter Gunn, but also “Days of Wine and Roses”, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, “The Pink Panther”, “Victor/Victoria”, the Tennesee Williams film adaptation of  the play “The Glass Menagerie”, and the Arthur Hailey film adaptation of his novel “Hotel”, to merely scratch the surface of just some of what he did.Mancini was nominated for 72 Grammys, winning 20 of them over his 48-year career. He has recorded over 70 albums and soundtracks.

And for all this they give him a shitty-looking album cover.

Visits: 57

Crappy Album Covers #206 — Strange Instruments

 This 1965 album by Count Basie (1904-1984) and his orchestra plays a few ditties made famous by the James Bond series: themes from Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, Thunderball, Dr. No, and other tunes.

Down on the right lower corner, you can see the original United Artists’ label. There has now been a re-release using the same album cover under Capitol as late as 2002.

During his lifetime, William Basie has won 9 Grammies and has had 4 of his earliest hit singles inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

This 1957 album by New York native Billy Mure is one of the “must-haves” for collectors. Rock hadn’t quite gelled with people, and much of the guitar on this album could indeed pass for rock music, due to its high tempo.

Being from 1957, it is mono, but that is not to say that it doesn’t sound good. Remember, tube amps were standard in those days, so most recordings had the benefit of a warm, loud, clear sound. Nowadays, amps like that cost thousands of dollars, and most recordings are done digitally.

This is another Billy Mure LP from 1960, called “Supersonic Guitars” Volume 2. This one is in stereo this time. I have heard that both of these titles are thought to be quite a find.

Visits: 96

Crappy Album Covers #205 — Covers that tell you to chill

Trevor doesn’t seem to be too worried about any trouble over Bridgewater. Just sitting there with his ale, smiling away. I think the reason he’s smiling is that he came up with the clever title (a play on the Simon and Garfunkel 1970 hit “Bridge Over Troubled Water”), decades before Half Man Half Biscuit did in 2000.

No other info exists on either Trevor Crozier or his Friends.

Tune In, Turn On excludes the “Drop Out” part of the Timothy Leary quotation which has become the battle cry of slackers everywhere, ever since the 60s psychedelic era. The exact quote gives it as “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”, changing the order of the first two instructions of this Slacker algorithm.

This record appears to have a selection of “The Hippest Commercials of The 1960s”. Hear the jingle for Cool Whip; or what about the smash hit Alka-Seltzer jingle by The T-Bones, called “No Matter What Shape Your Stomach’s In” (Most of the members of the T-Bones became the soft rock quartet Hamilton, Joe, Frank and Reynolds).

There has got to be some metaphorical connection between ’60s advertising and a photo of an obnoxiously-coloured TV sitting on a barren mud flat. Hmmm…

Visits: 114

Crappy Album Covers #204 — Even More Big Heads

Decca records seemed to also have caught on to the “Big heads” aesthetic, and the resulting album cover is designed to catch your attention and make you buy it before it sinks in that the cover is ugly and, well…

I would place this record in the mod-50s to mid-60s. Fritz Schultz-Reichel (his real name) was born in 1921 and acquired his alter-ego of Crazy Otto in 1953. He was touted to do the same for Jazz that Victor Borge did for classical music, and that is to be its court jester, poking fun at many aspects of  the genre.

A reissue was made in 2008 on Apple ITunes on the Hallmark label with a redesigned cover and Otto’s big head again.

Neil Young should be commended for still making records these days. This is his 40th year as a musician and he’s still at it, with his 2009 album “Fork In The Road”.

No more pretty boy record covers for him, like Decade. No, he would play the part of an Amish farmer better than of a travelling troubador. So you do what Amish farmers do when they see something like a camera: you say something like: “what happens if I press *this* button?” SNAP! and there’s your album cover.

If we do a turn on an old ethnic joke: a <fill in your ethnic group> drives by and asks Neil for help. He can barely speak English:

Neil: Can I help you?

Ethnic: Me looking for a fock

Neil: There’s a cat-house down the road a mile-

Ethnic: I no look for cats! Meester, you no unnerstan’. I want a fock on the road-

Neil: I don’t know if any of them are into that. Sorry I couldn’t help you

Visits: 78

Crappy Album Covers #203 — Creepy Similarities IV

1972’s Exile On Main St was one of those Rolling Stones records that grew on the reviewers. It went from having lukewarm reviews in ’72 to being worshipped as Rolling Stone Magazine’s #7 of the 500 greatest rock records of all time in 2003. The Rolling Stones had no albums ranking higher than this. 

But what always creeped me out was that guy in the upper left, who has three large balls in his mouth. See it? Okay …

Reuben Wilson was ahead of his time in 1969 when he decided to depict a lady, with three balls in front of her. Although, we don’t get grossed out by seeing if she could fit them all in her mouth. 

As for the “hair”, they look more like fish scales.

A CD was issued with this cover in 1997.

Visits: 97

Crappy Album Covers #201 — Even more Monsters!

Marty Gold and His Orchestra, with an album that more than likely hails from around the mid to late 1950s, called “Hi Fi Fo Fum”. Not sure if that is supposed to be Gold dressed as The Green Giant on the cover. This site reports that this album hails from a period when Gold’s work was the most interesting.
In April of 1972, blues artist Bill Maloney and (possibly) a few other musicians put out this album “Pleasure Pudding” under the name Sweet Pie. Recorded mostly live in Wilmington, Vermont. In view of this, the second track has the title “Vermont: A Lazy Man’s Colorado.” This would seem to work best place to buy generic viagra only if you live in the New England area. Otherwise, Colorado can be a lazy man’s Vermont.
One of the tracks is called “Too Drunk to Ball”, a song which predates the Dead Kennedy’s top 40 hit (at least in England) called “Too Drunk to F**k”. As Stewart Mason points out: “[Sweet Pie is] an appealingly freaky mixture of spoken word rambles just this side of stoned babbling and spacy piano blues that sound like what would have happened if Sun Ra had taken his outer-space parade into the honky tonks”. If you are indeed curious, you can buy and download thier music at ESP-Disk.

Visits: 187

Crappy Album Covers #200 — Full of sound and Fury, Signifying nothing

“Empire of the Sun” is the name of a 1987 Stephen Spielberg movie, but it is also the name of an Australian musical duo consisting of Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore. The bombastic cover has them depicted as a cross between Michael Jackson and Adam Ant, but the music seems to have been received to warm reviews, and has charted well with the buying public. I have a problem with the title, though: “Walking on a dream?” How exactly does one walk ON a dream? Hmmm.AOL rates this cover as the 10th worst cover of 2009.
This 2009 cover by Ciara has her depicted as a comic book heroine. And this is part of what she wanted to portray, it appears. However, this reviewer gives her efforts spotty reviews, and AOL rates this as the 6th worst cover of 2009, even ahead of Neil Young’s new album cover.You can say it’s overdone, ostentatious, but I just think they could have done better. There was a DC alternate depiction I’ve seen, of the UK release. Much improved. There was also another one, a cartoon depiction of her alter ego (a kind of Wonder Woman goddess), which was even better. Sorry, can’t find the link to that.

Visits: 104

Crappy Album Covers #199 — Crappy for the Holidays

I promised Bunk I would post a 3 Stooges Christmas record in answer to this post by him earlier this week.

Not much info on The 3 Stooges’ “Happy Yuletide Songs”, not even the year of release. However, to put some context into this, when exactly was the last time that a record, even one that’s 45 RPM, in new condition, was marked at $0.49? But you get three, count ’em, three complete Little Golden Records on a single 45 RPM record!

'Twas the night before stocks closed
and all through the house
the free market was rich enough
to feed only a mouse.
The stocks were all kept in the safe box with care
In hopes that Ed Greenspan would soon reappear.
LP Cover Lover (click on graphic for the link) points out that the cover appears to depict all of the elements of pulling off a heist: the clever Santa disgiuse; the stocks and bonds in the sack; and the guy smoking a pipe in an office chair, obviously enjoying his booty.

The title of this 1966 album by God-knows-who is roughly translated as “A Peaceful and Prosperous Home” (the “um” at the start of the title may be a misprint). When we have holiday images of peace and prosperity, it is usually in the context of family and friends. In this cover, there is nothing more than just this guy with a smirk on his face, whoever he is, with his stocks and bonds to keep him company.

Visits: 74