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.