Entertainment For Lively Minds
What's your Desert Island Album Cover?
This is my favourite album cover. It was my favourite when I first saw it in WH Smith in Dewsbury in 1969 and it's still my favourite now.
I love the way it manages to combine hippy weirdness (I think that's Miss Christine of the GTOs posing in a mausoleum in some LA cemetery) with the kind of simple punchy typography you can read across a crowded room. (I had it in the background when I was interviewed via Skype on some BBC news programme this week and people tweeted 'Hey, you've got Hot Rats inthe background!')
This record wants to sell. It's vivid and colourful and not at all grotesque. It's not an in-joke which only the band gets. Taken together the title and the design make you inclined to like the music inside more than you otherwise would. That's the thing that great sleeve art does.
I've shown you mine. Now you can show me yours.
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I've always loved the cover to XTC's "Go 2"
The text begins:
"This is a RECORD COVER. This writing is the DESIGN upon the record cover. The DESIGN is to help SELL the record. We hope to draw your attention to it and encourage you to pick it up. When you have done that maybe you'll be persuaded to listen to the music - in this case XTC's Go 2 album. Then we want you to BUY it. The idea being that the more of you that buy this record the more money Virgin Records, the manager Ian Reid and XTC themselves will make..."
Well, you can't say fairer than that, can you? XTC had me as a fan for life.
XTC
have a history of great covers. I personally love English Settlement(mmmm... embossed), Oranges and Lemons, Apple Venus (which, like Wasp Star seems Freud-tastically rude to me)...
the manager Ian Reid...
who became the subject of the song "Bought Myself a Liarbird" on "Big Express".
"Due to a legal arrangement with their former management, XTC is unable to discuss the lyrical content of this song". (XTC - Song Stories, Neville Farmer, Helter Skelter Publishing 1998).
I remember meeting Ian Reid....
....when he was managing them. He seemed OK to me. Young bands have a terrible habit of accusing anyone they fall out with of being dishonest. It's all part of building their myth.
Er, hang on
"Young bands have a terrible habit of accusing anyone they fall out with of being dishonest"
Coud be because people they fall out with are actually dishonest. Young bands are usually optimistic and trusting.
Of course it *could* be
But equally it might not be. I know just as many guys who re-mortgaged their houses to help out up and coming bands (and lost out) as I know young musicians who were hoodwinked by their early managers.
Desert Island Album Cover
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Atlantic
Mine has to be The Age of Atlantic - a 99p sampler from 1970. The gatefold sleeve's exterior was modelled in plasticine. On its front it showed the logos or punning representations of the featured bands(including Led Zeppelin, MC5, Delaney & Bonney,Dada, vanilla Fudge), whose album covers were depicted in the interior. The rear features the track listing scratched into a flattened layer of plasticine. The design is credited to Hamish & Gustav.
This album introduced me to the world of interesting music and changed the course of my life.
Aged 13, I was moved to recreate this in plasticine. It remained under my bed until I became an album sleeve designer at Phonogram & Virgin during the 1980s.
I had that!
More truthfully, my older brother did.
It fascinated me too in much the same way. Unfortunately for me I was very young, primary school age I think, so never actually thought to play the record inside.
It got thrown away in a vast purge almost 20 years ago.
God, I wish I'd kept it.
So. Which album sleeves are you responsible for?
Desert Island Album Cover
I thought I'd lost my original copy but found it again...like an old friend. I had quite a selection of samplers. Another was PICNIC from Harvest/EMI with likes of Syd Barrett, Edgar Broughton Band, Third Ear Band. They were a great intro to music you'd not usually hear especially as cash strapped teens. Most labels released them in the early seventies.
In answer to your question, I went on to work on sleeves as diverse as Metallica's, The Human League, INXS, Zodiac Mindwarp, PIL, Elton John, Boy George, Was Not Was, The Lilac Time & loads more. Some good, some bad. Often the artist was intent on using images that plainly would not work but occasionally they were inspired. The fun was lost once the formats changed. C'est la vie.
I've got it..
starts with Delaney & Bonnie, ends with Buffalo Springfield, still sounding good, and great cover indeed.
A Collection of Beatles Oldies...
...But Goldies!
Along with the music it made a real impression on me as a youngster. I'd pore over the detail and imagine myself in the picture. The back cover image of the band is equally enigmatic, particularly George. I also loved what I assumed to be an ornate tea-pot on a teachest. It could be a photograph of any guitar band taken yesterday. Not sure how Clem Burke got in the shot though.
what I always liked
About this was the way that the lower rim on the lampshade behind Paul McCartney makes it look as though John Lennon is sticking his tongue or st him.
Oh wow
This was one of the four Beatles LPs in our house when I was kid. They were on full-time rotation when I was off sick from school (which was often).
I don't think I'll ever get used to the idea that its not part of the main cannon, on a level with Sgt Pepper.
This is my rosebud. I'm getting all emotional...
I've got that in my collection!
But I nicked it from my mum & dad...
I once carefully copied the groovy guy into my notebook.
Psychedelic.
Coolest thing a 15 year old had seen in 1978
And still pretty cool for a nearly 50 year old too.
Street Legal was the first newly released Dylan LP I bought and I thought the cover shot was unbelievably cool, especially compared to the fright night harum scarum back cover shot.
http://www.bobdylan.com/music/street-legal-0
Tiernan
Flares.....
.....and a perm.
Not 100% with you!
I'll have 'The Chirping Crickets' with the impossibly blue sky in the background.
Please Please Me by The Beatles
The Beatles did a lot of iconic images and covers, but as I get older, this one is my favorite.
On one level it's incredibly of its time; a picture of the band looking smiley, the hit single in prominent writing, lovely old fashioned font. But it's a statement of intent as well. They are in a tower block, their working class credentials are there on display, but they are photographed from below. Tower block becomes a balcony? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, knowing too much about The Beatles as I do (and knowing how big they became), but it shrieks to me "we are on the way up" and I just love it.
It's the staircase at the old EMI building
They took it with them when they moved to Hammersmith.
There was a section of the handrail
in the canteen at Brook Green (the Hammersmith building). Last time I went past it the building was empty. They're all up in Wrights Lane in Kensington now.
Took the handrail with them
On your left as you approach reception.
Just when I think I know too much about The Beatles!
It's still a cool striking image though and I reckon my cheesy interpretation holds some water.
Lowlife high art?
If we're sticking to lp's (so I can't choose the sleeve of "Temptation" which is possibly my all time favourite) I'd have to go for " lowlife" by New Order . At the time I bought it ( the week after it came out ,the Saturday after I got my paper round money from EGS records in town, it was bright sunny day...) I think Lowlife was the most beautiful elegant thing I'd ever seen certaintly ever held in my hands and owned.
The semi translucent tracing paper sleeve ,the printed matt lettering with a hint of silver,the abstracted portrait of Stephen Morris( it took me a while to work who it was) it was and is perfect. I've said it before but Peter Saville's sleeve designs were like a secret abstract art gallery available to us rubes stuck miles away from the Tate or Momo. They hinted at a mysterious world of ideas and expression far removed from my small town . It helps that the music is great too. Oh and did I mention the beautifully haunting picture of Gillian on the back rendered as if in charcoal and fading like a ghost through the veil of sleeve. This may all be romantic guff but isn't that the point of art to transport us a little to conjure up moods,feelings,other ways of seeing .
And to meet the general critism that it's needlessly obtuse and did'nt sell the lp, well I have best part of a foot of Factory vinyl on my shelves in part bought because I couldn't resist the the sleeves.
Another great Factory sleeve
A Certain Ratio's Sextet, designed by Ben Kelly who later designed the interior of the Hacienda and the Dry Bar. I just like the colours, the textured sleeve and the font which is rather quaint.
Which Temptation?
The 7" or the 12", i'll assume you mean the 12".
Designwise there is scarcely a foot put wrong until the "irony" of Regret et al, which came out on London anyway.
Some of Saville's greatest works are the first two Section 25 LPs. The way they echo the contemporary covers for New Order is particularly impressive.
Some of his stuff for the less "cool" OMD and Ultravox is also outstanding.
He also was involved in the design of Wham! covers from 1984 on, and you can tell..
This one
It has everything a boy could possibly want
Aladdin Sane
Such a great image for the music.
Was thinking about this only the other day....
As a 14 year old, I loved this album cover so much that i used to take it round the house with me, so i could look at it wherever i was. Seriously!
Of course looking back at it now, it's pretty ludicrous, but i guess that was part of it's charm for a lad in Blackpool in the mid 80's.
It's fantastic
Both this and the Aladdin Sane art from the post above were on my bedroom wall when I was 16. And that was 1990, so something translated.
ATOM HEART MOTHER
I remember reading Nick Mason's explanation of the cow. "Just basic". Yeah man.
My PF Best Of 68-72 ideal cover art.
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/pink-floyd-best-1968-1972
Seems...
... cruel.
Neon Park
I'm a big fan of the Little Feat album covers, especially the ones from the Lowell George era. I think Feats... is probably my favourite. I like the idea of Marilyn stroking George Washington's thigh as he negotiates a mountain pass in a thunder storm, in a Buick
the music's pretty good too
Desert island album cover
It's early 1980, I'm 13, attending school in east Kent and a boy in my form makes the mistake of proudly brandishing his spanking new copy of this album. He is then forced to promise to lend it, in succession, to just about every other person in the form, including myself, so that we can tape it.
Of course, some of us down the link chain bought our own - I distinctly remember a Pay No More than (£3.79 ?) sticker on the copy I bought in my local Boots on a rainy winter's night on the way home from school.
A confession - I'm not sure I even liked it that much on first hearing (more of a Jam man), but went along with the instant class consensus that it was great.
Yes, I have loved it long and hard since, now know that the cover style apes an early Elvis one and is not alone in so doing (eg Tom Waits' Raindogs), but this is the album cover I cherish most. It's a great cover, and in my case - and I doubt I'm alone - it carries a lot of emotional baggage too.
Yes, you guessed it:
Bumpers
If push comes to shove this would be the double LP to accompany me onto a Desert Island. For its design, for its good value (29/11) and for containing the music that turned me onto another world.
I went to a record shop with my younger brother and sister to buy singles. We had 10/- each, enough for three singles in those heady days. This is what we came away with. I still try to identify the artists from the photographs scattered about the inner gatefold sleeve without identification.
For the first time I heard the music of Nick Drake, King Crimson, Renaissance, Fairport Convention, Fotheringay, John & Beverly Martin, Quintessence and many more. To this day Thunderbuck Ram is still my favourite Mott The Hoople song. When I heard about the death of Steve Jobs I immediately thought of the IF track Reaching Out On All Sides contained on this LP. It contains the lyric, "I want it said when I am gone. I moved the world just one step on".
I have bought CDs just to obtain the individual tracks included on this LP. Sadly never reissued on CD as a whole but I do own a *cough* MP3 download. Full details of the music on the LP here: http://www.oatridge.co.uk/bumpers.htm
Is Bronco's "Bumpers West" as good as I remember it?
It was my fave track off an album I've not heard for many a year.
As for DID Album Cover - It's got to be Trout Mask Replica. I wonder how many people bought that having no idea what lurked within.
Bumpers
Thanks for posting that. I loved that album - wish I still had it. Introduced me to the wonderfully eclectic Island catalogue. Yes, Thunderbuck Ram is def Mott the Hoople's finest.
I could look at this forever. So many possibilities.
Totally with you there.
I don't know why I love it but I do.
I always wondered
what was going on behind that window.
Pour Down Like Silver
I always loved the picture of Linda Thompson on the back of Pour Down Like Silver (also my favourite Richard and Linda album). It's a sin that it was relegated to the inner booklet on the recent-ish CD re-issue.
Peter Gabriel's third album...
I remember seeing it on sale in a street market in 1980 when I was 11. I had no idea who Peter Gabriel was (although I had probably heard Games Without Frontiers on Radio 1), but the cover to that record stamped itself on my memory. The image was so striking and there was something about the elegant, simple lettering of his name that really appealed to me as well.
...and his first:
Another Hipgnosis cover - natch. The sleeve was nice and glossy - I love the beading of the water drops and the colour of the car (which, incidentally, is a 1967 Lancia Flavia).
(I wish I could remember important stuff!)
I saw right through this one...
I heard Faust's first album on John Peel's show, and couldn't believe it. The I saw the cover, and couldn't believe THAT, either: transparent sleeve, transparent lyric sheet, transparent disc. They had me hooked!
One word:
Screamadelica
Thick as a brick
Apart from being a great cover of a classic album by one of my favourite bands, it has the desert island benefit of providing not insignificant amounts of reading matter, competitions, a crossword, etc. Apparently took longer to assemble than recording the music!
Barney Bubbles
You can't go wrong with Barney Bubbles-
I always liked this as the "shifted"(not sure of the correct term) cover still made sense-
"Lvis Costello" and "His Year's Model"
Bubbles' work was consistently ingenious, as
Paul Gorman's book "Reaasons to be Cheerful" amply illustrates.
Here's one of my favourite Bubbles covers, the Damned's "Music for Pleasure":
Wilco's face
I love it. It sums up the title:
Miss Christine...posing in a mausoleum in some LA cemetery.
It's a disused swimming pool.
Kraftwerk - Trans Europe Express
The original UK issue of this is the most staggeringly beautiful object imaginable. From the art deco lettering to the hand-tinted portraits to the purple Capitol label. "TEE" would be entitled to all of its critical acclaim even if it was a record of complete silence. Fortunately for history and for us, the music is well up to the same standard.
These scans don't do the colours justice, but just so you know which one of the many editions I'm on about:
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=179235
Rickie Lee Jones
I could both look at and listen to this all day.
A roll-up made with a liquorice Rizla
what a lovely thought.
No wonder her voice is so good...
Seconds Out - Genesis
I cannot upload pics, but it made live music seem so fantastic to me as a 15 year old.
Good point...
... Fraser, how do you upload pictures?
Childs - Yui
just beautiful. Conjures up the music perfectly.
Sparks - Indiscreet
Brilliant! http://www.chartstats.com/images/artwork/26092.jpg
If I had to stare at an album cover for months until rescued...
...It would be the inner gatefold sleeve of 'Close To The Edge'
I and I step forward for the Doctor...
This is a sleeve which sets out to do just enough, but which ends up leaving much more than it ever intended.
It is fun, vibrant, colourful, full of life, a bit edgy and there is a complete absence of any pretension. It is designer-free design that gets everything just right. Like "Heaven Up Here", "Unknown Pleasures", "Dare!", "Freak Out!" or "Roxy Music", it also looks uncannily like how it sounds.
If you're Jamaican, My guess would be that it has a prick of familiarity as sharp as any picture postcard or cartographic image, and if you're Vivian Goldman or Charles Shaar Murray, I'm sure it was - and is now moreso - a source of almost inexhaustible exoticism.
Didn't Harry Enfield have this on Desert Island Discs?
And does the good doctor look as if he's about to do the old "White-eared elephant" trick?
as immaculate as the music it holds
Frank Sinatra 'Cycles'
In an ideal world though...
it would have had a picture of Frank on a bike.
Is this the right time to say......
.....that that's exactly how I look when I have to listen to Frank Sinatra?
At least you have the decency
to get suitably dressed for Frank
Nah....
....the expression not the threads.
I wear the full Teddy Boy ensemble.
It's what Frank would have wanted.
Burning Ambitions Compilation
and then spending hours working out whose who (again)
or this one:
I only bought this album
I only bought this album because I was fascinated by the artwork of Mark Wilkinson and his work with Marillion. It took a long time to appreciate the music as a teenager, but after buying this album, I started collecting the band's 7 inches and 12 inches every week, because I loved the artwork. It became the highlight of my Saturday afternoons and I slowly started appreciating the music and Fish's sometimes ludicrous lyrics. For a brief period in time, the band were almost cool and imagine my surprise one night, when I heard "Kayleigh" playing from my elder sister's bedroom. I was amazed and delighted to discover that she had bought the Misplaced Childhood album on cassette from Woolworths. I still have that tape, must give it back to her, as I've borrowed it for a while now. As it's Friday tomorrow, I think I'll play it in the car on the way to work. Pictured below is the full gatefold of the cover, the preportions of the chair are slightly wrong, but I love the colours and the expression on the Jester's face.The two posters in the room are for the band's debut single Market Square Heroes and He Knows You Know (I think). The terrible mattress reminds me of a terrible one I slept on, in the backpackers hostel in Piccadilly a few years ago.
Fishy Marillion are a guilty
pleasure of mine. The covers have a lot to do with it.
Me too
It's all about being 17 for me. And they'd split up three years before that point.
(I refuse to recognise Hogarth marillion.com)
Just For The Record
Glad I'm not alone in my fondness for them. On a really geeky front, just received my tickets to see Marillion in December and noticed they are using the old Fish era Marillion logo on the tickets. Maybe they'll thow a few oldies into the set, as it's a Christmas show.
The singles covers were great too
ASSASSING had a great cover that looked brilliant on a t shirt!
Another Zappa Cover
Not done by Calvin Schenkel, his usual cover artist, but by Neon Park who did all those classic Little Feat sleeves.
Now -here's- a cover that leaps out from the shelf at your eyes!
Roxy Music...
... any of the first five, really....but this would be a favourite...
Agreed, except for
the back of Country Life....what were they thinking? Red script on the green bushes...it's unreadable!
In fact, it's only really the typography on those early Roxy sleeves that lets them down; otherwise they look like they could have been released yesterday.
All the years I've owned that record
I've never been able to see the whole thing at once. Cheers! Reminds me of the great 2000AD wraparound covers which, being comics, were available for your perusal:
Bold as brass
You're a beautiful thing baby!
I remember setting eyes on this in the racks and was intrigued and seduced. One of those mysterious, unforgettable cover designs - enigmatic and classic. Somehow it conveys the contents too.
Pulsar CP1919
What it actually is is pretty cool too. Works for me anyhow - as did the 7" cover of Transmission.
The Dan. Go to be a bit of The Dan.
Countdown To Ecstasy's always been my favourite.
Aja and Gaucho
have such beautiful sleeves that I've always tended to think I like the albums more than I actually do.
Which is the point of sleeves, of course.
There's only one that
I'd need on a desert island
that
and Stranded formed an important part of my adolescent education. Musically, of course.
Ah! Stranded
So considerate of them to make that sleeve wipeable. Ditto Country Life. Yes I know one of them's got a weird face. But... mantlepieces... fires...
Virtually any Blue Note Jazz cover you care to mention
Today? This one:
Blimey - he's ripped that cover design off
of Joe Jackson! What a liberty. :=]
Never Printed
but this was an intended cover for Sun Ra's Solar Flare Arkestral Marching Band project. I love the mixture of childlike/psychedelic/cosmic imagery:
http://solarflareark.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/sunraalbmcvr.jpg
I love this...
...die-cut, gatefold beauty. Despite the contents.
See also
The Mothers of Invention - Weasels Ripped My Flesh
Gang of Four - Entertainment!
and this...
It manages to be uber-traditional and very weird at the same time, and, cover the text and it couldn't be mistaken for anything non-European.
not sure I've seen that Stockhausen cover before
but I think I might have trod on it once ;)
I've always like this one.
The pic doesn't do this justice but I want to hang out with these guys. It looks such a lovely day too!
this as well, I love Barney Bubbles work
even got it on a t-shirt, I'll wear it next Friday at the MacMassif Meet.
Aoxomoxoa - Grateful Dead
my mate and i pooled our pocket money, and bought this from the NAAFI on the base where we lived.
it was so awful to our young ears, we put a three inch scratch in it with my mother's bread knife.
the lady behind the NAAFI counter could not apologise enough, as they only had the one copy and would we like to chose something else.
we hastily left with CCR's 'green river' which i still play to this day ...
The Dreadful Grate
wonderful sleeves and eventually t-shirts, really naff wee electric folk band who took loadsa mind expanders.
before anyone falls out with me:
I really wanted to like this band and for 30+ years I have been trying.
They don't do it for me, but then I was actually hoping for a Yank version of Hawkwind.
That they are not. Bland, longwinded, dull and tedious - yeap, that's them.
I really dislike The Band too.
gimme hell
John Barleycorn..
by Traffic is very basic, effective, and beautiful.
The Nightfly
Perfectly describes the music contained within:
One of my faves...
... and what a chunky-looking turntable that is - can anyone tell me what make it is?
Early 50s RCA
The album is Sonny Rollins and The Contemporary Leaders.
It also says, "This is not Steely Dan"
"Look, I've had a haircut".
Great evocation of the period though. When his show's through he's got a meet with Don Draper.
Nice version of "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" on that Rollins album he's playing, by the way.
Dire Straits by Dire Straits
Smashing record too. Had forgotten just how much it actually rocks.
Beiruts
first album Gulag Orkestar has a pretty striking cover and I also really like the Weather report album cover for Mr. Gone.
Pat Metheny frequently has interesting album covers so much so that I have ended up buying the album for the cover on a couple of occasions. I love the cover for hio latest album but don't need any more of his music at this time.
Not for the artwork
I've written before on this blog about the triple album sampler from Columbia Records in 1971; The Music People; that my dad brought home from touring the US and mistakenly gave to my brother (who wasn't into any music except classical at the time, so I quickly made it mine).
The front cover was just blue sky with some white clouds, not very exciting, but when you unfolded the sleeve the inside had all the pictures of the albums that the songs were taken from, with a short but enthusiastic passage about the artist/band and their new record.
One of the inner sleeves was also a sort of newsletter.
I poured over this sleeve like it was the Holy Bible of rock music, and to me it was. Because of the fact that my older brother was distinctly unhip and I hadn't even started school yet, music magazines were unknown to me, but this became my first taste of what music magazines could be like. A bit too uncritical of course (a bit like Mojo, ha ha) but informative and above all, exciting!
All at once I found out a) there were more artists out there than the Beatles, and b) knowing something about them made it more interesting to hear their music a lot of the times.
It also turned me into a) a very eclectic music consumer (I also blame that triple-album for my habit of buying in bulk, one album never seems enough), and b) a lifelong reader of music magazines.
There are lots of bad tracks on that sampler, but even those have had a great impact on my life. I formed some harsh opinions upon first hearing them than no better songs have been able to cure me of...
And the good ones led me to artists that I still hold higher than most to this day.
I was probably six years old when I first listened to this album, I still listen to it sometimes, and read the notes in the sleeve smiling at the contrast between the hyperboles and the sometimes rather lame music they descibe...
It's only fitting that I make it my DID as well.
Strange Days, Atom Heart
Strange Days, Atom Heart Mother second
Broken English - Marianne F
has a certain something
The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Great cover - but it's the inside gatefold that I found endlessly alluring
Never seen that.
I've only ever owned it on CD, where they printed the lyrics in the booklet but omitted the picture. (My copy was issued some time in the 1980s.)
Get Happy
I agree with the previous post about Barney Bubbles. But my favourite of his is the cover for Get Happy!! by Elvis Costello and The Attractions, complete with 'pre-worn' look.
http://www.elviscostello.info/disc/official/gh/gh_pic.htm#PIC
Surprised this hasn't popped up...
...has done before on album cover posts.
http://www.motifake.com/28353
(Carly Simon)
How could I forget this one?
*sighs*
The coolest man in jazz?