Hands down, the best part of the WFMU record fair is the album covers. If it weren’t for the sullen or bored stares of the various salespeople and collectors, I could have spent the entire day improvising a slideshow out of crate after crate of collectable vinyl, and not just because it used to be a lot more acceptable to use semi-naked 13-year-olds to sell music.
Cover art is so integral that it’s hard to remember it had to be invented around World War II, that no one realized the record sleeve gave you a square foot of advertising space. As the music industry grew, the increasing number of albums catalyzed an explosion in visual creativity, some great, and some terrible. The most inspirational cover of all time has to be the one at right, for Sonny Rollins’ “Way Out West“, which (no shit) inspired Mel Brooks to write a forgotten movie about a black cowboy. It’s called Blazing Saddles.
The packaging’s gradually shrunk since then, to the point where record labels are beginning to rely more on the postage-stamp-sized covers on the right than anything large enough to inspire anyone. Sure, they’re recognizable at almost any size, but no one really uses them to fuse an image to a sound. When was the last time you bought an album based purely on the cover? Even if it was one of the worst covers of all time?
(The best album I ever bought based on the cover was “No Protection“, the remix of Massive Attack’s “Protection“. The worst was Royal Trux’s “Sweet Sixteen“, which I couldn’t give away.)
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I bought Chipmunk Punk just for the cover. A lot of the time,the albums I get already have built in bonuses, like the great Stones covers from the 70s or the Stevie Wonder albums that have track listings in braille.
psst, your text links for “No Protection” and “Protection” seem to link right back to this entry.
see: Goblin Cock – Bagged & Boarded
Best WFMU Record Fair find: inexpensive copy of Dinosaur Jr. “Just Like Heaven” 12″… one side of the record is music, the other is crazy melted-vinyl art.
dammit…links fixed. sorry!
I also bought a Chipmunk album based on the cover:
Chipmunk Punk.
Yeah, that Goblin Cock album cover gets Cover of the year!
related, from an interview with Deerhoof in Econo Culture, about one of the items on the cover of The Runners Four:
“What?s a cat tent?
“(Laughs) You know, that?s a question for Trevor, the guy who designs the cover art? I don?t know. It?s something very personal to him, I guess. I?m not at liberty to discuss the cat tent.”
http://www.econoculture.com/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=119&Itemid=46
AGREED! Goblin Cock wins!
I know that this is off the subject, but I found Spoon’s Gimme Fiction album… It’s free of cost, spyware, computer HIV, etc. here:
http://www.tartetatin.com/spoon/
Cheers!
Chris Ives
I found Luke’s birthday pictures!
http://www.tartetatin.com/
Holy cow, those covers in the Pitchfork article are utterly confounding. I hope whoever thought that any of those album covers would’ve been acceptable is either dead or in an appropriate mental health facility.
While I don’t think I’ve ever bought an album solely based on its artwork, the art has always been a factor in my purchases. Recent example is the new Rogue Wave album. I had only heard “10:1″ but I liked the artwork enough to buy it.
Artwork that inspired me to listen to the albums (and eventually buy them) include The Album Leaf’s “In a Safe Place,” Josh Rouse’s “Nashville,” and Mars Volta’s “Frances the Mute.”
I’m surprised the worst covers list doesn’t include Collapsis’ Dirty Wake. They wrote pop rock music, then put a cover on their album that was inspired by a Tool video.
http://tinyurl.com/9vfhh
That’s their lead singer, btw.
http://www.cenedella.com/stone/archives/2003/10/worst_album_cov.html
Another version of this website. Damn there are some awful covers out there. Check Orleans.
at least Pitchfork kinda/sorta restricted it to albums they might actually review.
yeah, that goblin cock is insane
I bought MOON SAFARI based on the cool watercolor Mike Mills art (thought I *sorta* knew who they were and was going through an armchair-electronica phase at the time — ask to see my Lionrock CD!) … But anyway, great purchase obviously. I fell in love with them and named a blog after one of their song lyrics. And now I am commenting on said blog. How meta.
Jim/Jed — where’s the pic of that AWESOME 12″ we found at the record fair?
that royal trux ceedee rox cox! what r u smokining?
I just want to say the disc was left in jed’s hands…