Terrible Album Covers

Okay, all my readers, I KNOW it has been a little while since I lasted posted, but I was really busy with the holidays there for a little bit. Forgive me or bite me.
I thought that, since posting a blog about what I consider some great-looking album covers, I would naturally proceed to what I think is some really bad album covers. This is not in any order (altho the first one may take the cake) and is definitely not a comprehensive list, just a sampling, as was the post on good album covers.

I will probably revisit both of these themes from time to time.

I also am not taking into consideration the plethora of BAD album covers that came out during the mid '60's or the stuff that came from "teeny-bop" or "heart-throb" artists. I certainly can't comment on covers of Shaun Cassidy, the Monkees, the Bay City Rollers, etc. I won't include stuff by Barry Manilow, the 1910 Fruitgum Company, or any other artist that I feel can't fit into the category of "classic rock" or "legendary" status. Sorry, Manilow fans, I continue to feel that Barry just isn't up to the prerequisites.

Rush's debut album certainly belied what lay inside the grooves of the vinyl. I find this to be the case in many instances. I always thought that a band should be interested in the cover portraying, at least slightly, what the style or content of their songs happen to be on said LP. I understand that some groups may have not had this kind of artistic control or that they were smooth-talked by some PR person, and then some bands may have just thought the cover wan't really that important. Rush, as a band, are deeper than this cover suggests. This reminds me of the captions that used to pop up during an episode of the Batman TV show. This is something from a comic book.

I realize that I am going back a substantial amount of time here, when many album covers lacked a certain professionalism, but I can't believe someone didn't re-think this cover. This from one of the bands of the time that were attempting to be "cutting-edge" and considered harder acid rock. The theme was okay, the ferocity of the snarling wolf possibly representative of the music's aggressive guitars and organ and the rebelliousness of the lyrics. But the composition of the photo is terrible, the wolf looks stuffed and superimposed...and it's just too predictable, which leads me to think of conformity from a band who is alleging to be non-conformist. It just lacks originality. Looking at this cover, I feel as if this "defiant" band is being led around by the nose by "the establishment". The gold beads spelling out their name was pretty tho.

Chicago took a cool logo and ran it into the ground. NOT a good marketing ploy in my opinion. I mean, Aerosmith, Boston, Kiss, Atlanta Rhythm Section, and many others knew how to work this marketing idea much better. It is really smart to have your own cool-looking logo, easily identifiable, but my gosh, let the logo stand on it's own up in the corner or the center of the LP and get on with some cool-looking covers. After about 3 albums of Chicago, I never got excited about anticipating a new release by them. And back when LPs were all the rage, this was part of the fun. More on this same format further down the post.

What happened to Bob!?! Seger turns us onto this great album of "Night Moves", decent but not outstanding cover, and then blew me away by putting no thought into the very next album cover! Altho "Stranger In Town" was a good album musically and the descriptive title was likely how he felt after the instant success of Night Moves (when he had been around for years), the cover for the Stranger album sucked. Look at the difference in the composition of the photo alone. Plus, the body language.....like going from defiant to compliant. It is like he surrendered something. The soft focus and diffused light of Night Moves is professional looking, and then he goes to a bad employee of Olan Mills for the next cover. Bad Bob...Bad Bob.

This is just cheap-looking. Their first album cover was not that great either, but then they took a step down with this one. Bad attempt at some original font (not a logo, that was done much better for them in the '80's), too-small photos, bad layout, poor choice of colors. And they name it something in a foreign language that most fans can't pronounce or understand. They could have at least cropped the pics the same size. This is musically a good album...too bad that this is their artistic and pictorial introduction to their first major single.

Okay, see the comments on Chicago over-using a band logo. Pure Prairie League obviously took the asinine advice of a moron when they decided to make this cowboy their trademark logo. The drawing is artistic in it's own way, but I got to where I hated this little guy. Again, I never anticipated (think "started dreading") a new release by the band until they must have had an epiphany and decided to kill this dude off. It didn't hurt that this was about the same time they let Vince Gill join. I hope this old cowhand got trampled under a herd.

I don't know who was advising Bob on this decision, but whoever it was needed to be shot....forget the love. This was his third album in his Christian phase, and someone artistically dropped the ball. I thought we were encouraged to offer our best to the Lord. After the Christianity-themed "Slow Train Coming" (which had a nice drawing), and the second Christian installment "Saved" (which took a step down with an overly-used idea done in a "high-school art class" fashion), he releases this cover that makes his style a caricature of himself. Another comic book drawing (see Rush), and not even a good one.

A Sampling Of GREAT Album Covers...

Hi all! I hope everyone is gearing up for a great holiday season!

Looking at the heading that I decided to title this particular blog posting, I guess that I find it a bit humorous how some of us older farts find it hard to change our vocabularies when it comes to certain things. I find it extremely difficult to call a recording anything but an "album". And to think that there are plenty of folks possibly reading this who never really knew that vinyl format. I sometimes feel sorry that some of today's younger people never have known the holding an album in their hands, so much larger than today's CD's. It was an experience in itself, reading the liner notes, the album sleeve, often the lyrics with the credits listed.

I also find that I often apply this same dynamic when I mentally recall certain types of "styles" of music. In my teenage years, "hard rock" was Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Montrose, Bad Company, and yes, even Kiss. I listen to some of this music today and realize how very tame it really was. We had no real music back then like Metallica or Disturbed....we didn't realize that "hard" was a relative term....compared to some of the guttural, almost violent-driven guitars of today.

I thought in this posting I would show a few of the album covers that, for various reasons, I consider my favorites. Some of my choices are just based on great artwork or photography, others on the nostalgic aspect, I suppose. I have placed them in no particular order.

Yes - Yessongs

Just great artwork. Actually, there any number of Yes albums done by the great Roger Dean that I could include.

Bad Company - Straight Shooter

Great artwork for a dynamite album. Brings back so many memories from high school. Maybe the best cover for a Bad Company album.

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

This was a very creative piece of artwork, although not as detailed and imaginative as.....

Elton John - Captain Fantastic &

The Brown Dirt Cowboy

Made me almost think of Alice In Wonderland. The back of the album was just as great!

The Beatles - Let It Be

Great candid shots of a band that most music listeners felt was on their way to separating. I love the fact that each photo was of them in performing mode. Also showed how much each of their personal tastes had changed in regard to their appearance.

Carole King - Tapestry


This, I believe, was a perfect example of showing not only how our generation's music was changing, but how we ourselves were changing. If you saw a photo of Carole back when she was churning out hits for other artists from the Brill Building, you will see what I'm talking about. From "establishment" to quintessential barefoot hippie with freestyle hair....all she's missing is the flowers in it. Serene. Comfortable in her own skin. Peacenik. Love the cat.















CSN&Y - Deja' Vu

A great idea for a portrait. The sepia tone was a stroke of genius...this album wouldn't have made it into my favorites if it had been in color. Loved the idea of the various outfits. Loved the font. And the altruism and selflessness of the times showed in including the bassist's and drummer's names prominently up front.



















This is just a sampling of some of my favorites. I will possible make similar posts from time to time. Also, be advised of a future post of what I think are some of the WORST covers of rock and roll..... :)

Mark Heard

The late, great Mark Heard helped to change my life.

I think it was in 1980 that I bought and listened to his first album.....well, the first album that he made that was marketed nationally. Back then, there was no real firm marketing of recordings in the so-called "Christian" music field....just smaller advertisements in little-circulated magazines....an occasional poster on a Bible bookstore window. There weren't any local Christian music radio stations in southern Indiana, and only weekly, hourlong syndicated programs broadcast on a coupla stations. I listened to those shows as often as I could just to get a taste of what artists sounded like....who was releasing stuff that I might possibly buy. And there was quite a bit of word-of-mouth endorsing.....most kids within the local youth groups seemed to borrow and exchange albums alot. This was a couple of years before the local Bible bookstore finally installed a "listening booth" so that you could listen before buying.

Logos Bookstore near the Indiana University campus was the best place to go and get music then.....bigger selection. There were a few other places but it seemed like they were kinda stuck in the Middle Ages....Tom Netherton....Evie....Jimmy Swaggart....maybe some Dallas Holm or Amy Grant if the owners were feeling real liberal around ordering time that month. : )
Logos carried everything that they were aware of, and the staff also realized they weren't "all-knowing" and weren't averse to ordering and stocking a particular recording if a customer would just turn them onto an artist.

I always paid a lot of attention to the musician and production credits and liner notes of an album. When I saw this debut LP titled "Appalachian Melody" by some guy named Mark Heard, I didn't think the cover shot was that great, but it was on the Sold Rock label (which I had had some good fortune with) and it also said on a sticker that it was produced by Larry Norman (which sold me on it). After one listen, I was not disappointed.

There was actually another album of Mark's that he had produced independently, titled "On Turning To Dust". To obtain them at the following link, you will more than likely need the WinRar application installed (or some other unzipping application, but I'd go with WinRar) and you can find them for free at various spots on the Web...just Google it. You can go to the following link and download both those albums--

http://www.one-way.org/mp3/Mark%20Heard/

Anyway, I bought "Appalachian Melody" and that album started me on a path of following Mark's music for many years. Most of his early albums (at least 3 or 4) came with these extensive liner notes on the album sleeve where much relevant stuff was discussed, usually in an interview format. I was so intrigued by how his take on spiritual things were so different from what I had been brought up to believe.....and really, how things were still being taught by the local churches. His thoughts opened my spiritual eyes.

I felt as if I had been sensitive to artistic expression by that age....I knew the appreciation of true creativity. But listening to Mark's words and work, I felt as if I was hearing real art for the first time as being done by someone who professed to be a Christian. He didn't follow any kind of prerequisite formula set up by standards of the Church in general. Other artists had broken that ground, but Mark was so.....poetic.
Don't get me wrong....I loved some of Randy Stonehill's lyrics that I had heard before discovering Mark...and the ideas that Larry Norman expressed in certain songs ("Walking Backwards Down The Stairs"; "Pardon Me") was unmatched up to that time. But with Mark Heard, Larry met his match. Some of Larry's thoughts were outstanding...but Mark's vocabulary and poetry was better. Read some of this from "True Confessions"-

"We don't seem to seize on the tenets we hold,
and they slip through the sieve of our deeds..."

or this from "The Pain That Plagues Creation"-

"As this planet falls around the sun, trapping us in the orbit
Creation groans in unison like a race of frightened orphans
The darkness of this raging storm is covering up our portals
But a yearning for the light is bourne in the heart of every mortal

Day to day we ache
With the pain that plagues Creation
Night to night we lie awake
And await its restoration..."

It's real poetry.....an offering from someone who has really put some effort into determining how he wants to express himself....and he does it so well. Here's a link to lyrics to most of his songs-
http://mhlp.rru.com/


Stop The Dominoes
I am going to leave ya some download links for some of my favorite songs from "Stop The Dominoes" from 1981. It is his first album that he did after switching labels to Home Sweet Home. I think the production is great. He had started exploring a sound with "harder-edge" guitars on this one, but still left plenty of room for what I consider his forte', the country-rock stuff and the mellower "James Taylor-ish" tunes.
"Stranded At The Station" is a pop/rock romp...it's got that "'70's pop" feel. I love the tambourine (or is it a shaker?) work on this one. His idea that our various periods of indecision can be like "missing our plane" is excellent. "You Could Lie To Me" shows the diversity of musical style that Mark can implement. It is a song directed to Satan (or a proponent of his)....this would have went over like a lead balloon around some of the youth group members that I was sometimes involved with. "A song to SATAN!?!" I can just hear their reactions now. But, of course, if Keith Green did it and made it somewhat humorous, then it was all okay. This tune has more of an early Genesis feel...or at least something from Player or Ambrosia. GREAT Bass line, by the way. "Call Me The Fool" has an intro straight off of a James Taylor song.... "Lonely One" utilizes a great mandolin, and Mark plays that bass like it's a lead guitar! Country/rock with a fantastic steel guitar....the singer is speaking to a sad, mixed-up girl who has lost her way. I love the lines "Smiling with your makeup" and "You're not in love....not even with your lovers..." The last one is "To See Your Face", and it is a very poignant song speaking directly to our Savior and about how small we really are. Here's the link to download them all --
Stranded At The Station- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8XUHDX04
You Could Lie To Me- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EK18RQV0
Call Me The Fool- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YFM4UB5P
Lonely One- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U96I3LYG
To See Your Face- http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U1OMJTJF

Mark Heard suffered a heart attack while onstage playing a concert in 1992. He was hospitalized and released, and within two weeks died of cardiac arrest. I will always remember him as a vessel that Jesus used to help me grow into something better than what I was. Here is a link to his Wiki page-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Heard and there is quite a bit more information by doing simple searches on the Internet, including fan sites and groups.

Lyrics Vs. Lyrics

My teenage years I had spent appreciating many different styles of music...on the harder side, Aerosmith, Foghat, Rush, Kansas, Montrose, Deep Purple, ZZ Top, etc. On the more softer side, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Elton John, Billy Joel.

I was most intrigued by artists that seemed to be able to write tunes that variated between the "hard" and "soft" elements....the Eagles...Boston....Bob Seger...Bad Company...the Beatles. I mean, heck, on the sequencing of songs of "Hotel California", the Eagles went straight from "New Kid In Town" to "Life In The Fast Lane"!!

I have always been dabbling in amateur writing and poetry, so lyrics could be very important to me. I have come to realize through my music-listening experience that the music to a song was probably the most important to the general listener, but it could be something spectacular if you could flesh out that music with superb lyrics. New takes on old ideas.....analogy....simile....metaphor. For example, Lionel Richie, Jim Croce, and '70's bands like Firefall and Orleans tended to write great music coupled with more simplistic lyrics. Read the lyrics to "Three Times A Lady" or "I Got A Name" without the music being played. Actually, Croce had an exception to this with "Time In A Bottle", and he exhibited his strength more in "story" songs..."You Don't Mess Around With Jim"...."Operator".....Bad, Bad Leroy Brown". Firefall-"Just Remember I Love You"; Orleans- "Dance With Me".

Then you have lyric writers on the other end of the spectrum. What exactly is a Hotel California? The Eagles often wrote with great imagery in mind...they painted pictures with words. Henley had a great grasp on extensive vocabulary....no wonder....he was a Lit major. Dan Fogelberg was a prime example of excellent lyric writing...the metaphoric genius of "Leader Of The Band" , "Run For The Roses", & "Heart Hotels". He used words like "rapture" and stanzas like "where precious flesh is greedily consumed"....."once deceased, not easily exhumed". Kerry Livgren from Kansas was always very deep and poetic. Read the lyrics to "Dust In The Wind" or "Carry On Wayward Son". Of course, metaphor in the hands of an amateur can be disastrous. I always cringe whenever I hear the line from Meatloaf's "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad"-- "There ain't no Coupe De Ville hidin' at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box...". Great thought....now go back and rewrite.

Some artists had a talent for lyrically crossing between these two aforementioned points. Bob Seger is one. From the more simple "Her Strut" and "We've Got Tonite" to the deeper thoughts of "Ship Of Fools", "Beautiful Loser", and "Mainstreet". Billy Joel is another. He has a real knack for writing great story lyrics--"Movin' Out"; "Piano Man"; "Only The Good Die Young", etc., but then blows me away with musical poetry like "She's Always A Woman" and "Lullabye". I can kinda compare it to James Whitcomb Riley vs. Robert Frost.

And then there are the lyricists who often transcribe their thoughts from some kind of alternate dimension. The Beatles' "I Am The Walrus"....."Polyethylene Pam"...."Across The Universe". And I have never really understood some of Bernie Taupin's lyrics that Elton sings on some of his biggest hits.... "Rocket Man", "Daniel", "Madman Across The Water". I mean, they are great ideas and I get the jist of it, but so much of it is really left up to the listener's interpretation. What the heck is "Philadelphia Freedom" really about!?!

I remember reading and discussing poetry in my 11th grade Lit class. I would study one poem and I would understand what the poet was trying to beautifully convey. My teacher never commented much about those poems. Then we would read one that I had no idea what the writer was talking about, and Mrs. Gliva would exuberantly lavish praise on the genius of that writer's creative skills. For a long time, I then associated that viewpoint with poetry.......namely, that the less I understood it, the better it must evidently be. : )

I have grown up since then.

Forgotten Music, Episode #1

Occasionally I find new artists that I really love, of which I will possibly write about in another blog post. But today, I thought that I'd write about how much of the music that I listen to nowadays is stuff from many years ago, but which I had not discovered yet. The most common way that I do this is to recall artists of which I may have had one album which I enjoyed, or one single released that kept my toes tappin', and then researching their past discography to find all their releases. Very often, there will be much of it out-of-print, but there are multitudes of blogs that I can visit and find out more. Here is my first sampling of stuff that I have found and am listening to lately. This stuff is kinda in the vein of the country pop/rock of some of those great '70's bands like Firefall, Orleans, and Redbone.

Andrew Gold (1975)
This is Andrew's debut LP. If you don't know much about Andrew, I can tell you he is all over many artists' album from the '70's, including James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. He is versatile on the piano, guitar and backing vocals. I owned an 8-track of "What's Wrong With This Picture?", which had the hit "Lonely Boy" on it, but I really liked the entire album. Andrew later went on to join up with a later incarnation of 10cc, and from that involvement with Graham Gouldman, formed a band called Wax. Here is a download link to acquire a great song titled "That's Why I Love You" from this 1975 release.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K65WDRAN



Fool's Gold - Mr. Lucky (1977)
I remember seeing the debut album of this group in record stores ages ago, which featured a photo of the band on it. There are many decent cuts on it also, but "Mr. Lucky" was their follow-up album. They didn't stay around long....I really don't know much about them. I do know that Don Felder of the Eagles contributed some guitar work on one of their LP's, I am not sure if it was this one. They sure have that country-rock sound that I always heard termed "the California sound"...much like the songs of the very early Eagles. Enjoy this song titled "I Can Hear The Whistle". Find it here--
http://rapidshare.com/files/170038379/Fool_s_Gold_-_Mr._Lucky_-_02_-_I_Can_Hear_the_Whistle.mp3.html


Ozark Mountain Daredevils - 13 (1998)
I have listened to a LOT of the Ozarks thru the years. If you are unfamiliar with their music, the bigger hits they had was "Jackie Blue" and "If You Wanna Get To Heaven". This recording is not from the '70's, but it is still one that I had not discovered until recently, and it still has the great sound that they had back then, but with better production values.
Great songwriters...this has that warm, down-home, cozy feel. It is titled "Dream-O" and you can download and enjoy it here--
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=03KSWR5D

Early Stonehill

I thought that, for my first blog, I would ponder over the earlier music of Randy Stonehill, a "Christian rock" pioneer.
My introduction to Stonehill's music was in the early spring of 1979. My cousin brought me an album to listen to titled "Welcome To Paradise". It is an understatement to say that I liked it very much. It helped to change the way I thought about music with a spiritual bent.
I will focus here on only the first four LP's that Randy recorded...they are the ones that I am most familiar with.


Welcome To Paradise (1976)
This album introduced me to Randy and his music. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it was heavily influenced by the production of Larry Norman. The cuts that stood out to me at the time were "King Of Hearts", "High Card (The Winner)", "Keep Me Runnin' ", "First Prayer", and "Song For Sarah". "Hearts" and "Runnin' " both presented the wonderful sound that you can have by marrying electric and acoustic guitars to each other, and they are ultimate classics in this genre. "Song For Sarah" was always a special favorite for the beautiful falsettos Randy was able to achieve in his vocals. In "Prayer", Randy sang from the viewpoint of someone who had never really known any kind of relationship with a Savior, but was trying to understand the new journey that he had begun. Outstanding lyrics! The harmonies of Larry Norman were all over this album, to it's benefit, along with the creative lead guitar of the late Jon Linn. Rating: 8.7 out of 10

The Sky Is Falling (1980)
Having 4 years in between recordings is not that strange nowadays, but back in the day this was nearly unheard of. Fortunately for me, I had been turned onto "Paradise" in '79, so I didn't wait as long for the follow-up as some other fans. I think this album lacked some of the "heart" of "Paradise", but it is far from disappointing. Stand-out cuts are "Jamey's Got The Blues", "Emily", & "Counterfeit King". This album of Randy's is where I started to realize that he was not going to place himself into a box in order to overtly sing about his salvation and/or his God, but more pointedly sing as a fellow human being on a spiritual journey. Songs like "Venezuela", "Jamey", and "Through The Glass Darkly" reflect his insights into his relationships and speak more of the human condition rather than mentioning Jesus or God. He started to stretch a bit musically on this LP also, exploring a Caribbean sound with "Bad Fruit", although I found myself tiring of the tongue-in-cheekness of "The Great American Cure", more of a novelty song that he had experimented with on "Lung Cancer" from "Paradise". These type of songs seem to rely more on the lyrical content than on "good music", although "Cure" has a great acoustic guitar sound. Rating: 7.6 out of 10


Between The Glory And The Flame (1981)
This album marked Randy's move from the Solid Rock label (Larry Norman's startup label) to Myrrh, and also his involvement with Terry Taylor (of Daniel Amos fame)producing. The title cut reminded me a little bit of the songwriting of Tom Petty with better vocals. "Die Young" seemed to touch upon the staccato guitar-romping that was popular at the time (think Cars), mixed with some mid '60's melodies. "Fifth Avenue Breakdown" utilized definite power chords, much like "Trouble Coming" from "The Sky Is Falling", although with much better lead fills. My favorite from this album is "Find Your Way To Me", a pop tune that shows that Randy doesn't like to repeat himself much in lyrical phrasing or guitar fills within a song structure, much like some Dan Fogelberg tunes. Great falsettos here again. The first side of the LP was much better than the 2nd side, although that means nothing in today's CD world. I admired about 60% of this recording. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Equator (1982)
When I talked with Randy after a concert in 2002, he told me that this LP was his favorite. When I asked him why, he said that he had had the most enjoyment recording it. His answer kinda surprised me at the time, but now I have had more time to reflect back on that. This was his first album after finding a new love after a painful divorce. He and Sandi were experiencing having a baby daughter, and they remain happily married today. This was also the second recording away from the conflicts within the Solid Rock label and free of the debut pressures of his new label. Evident light-heartedness may be reflected in some of these compositions, e.g., "American Fast Food", "Cosmetic Fixation", "Big Ideas" (In A Shrinking World)", although they return to the satirical format that I don't enjoy as much. "Ideas" shows a foray into utilizing a synth-pop sound, while "Fast Food" has a '50's feel. "Shut De Do" (think Negro/Jamaican traditional) got old real fast, although it still remains a crowd favorite in concert today. To me, the best cuts are his mellower tunes on this outing, namely "Light Of The World", "Even The Best Of Friends" (made me ponder at the time on what was going on between him and Larry), and "Turning Thirty". Rating: 5.7 out of 10