AL*** COVER ART

Too bad he died the following year though.

Cheese

Erik

BTW - If you are unterested in album cover art, try:

SwankRadio
317X

[This message was edited by Dr. Exotica on TUESDAY 15 January 2002 at 02:03.]

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Exotica everytime

This one is hard to beat - fantastic album as well.

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I win!

Dick Schory – Music for bang, barroom…, Peter Appleyard – Percussive jazz doctored for Super Stereo (possibly the best album of all time!), Harry Breuer – Mallet Magic (I would kill for a mint stereo copy of this), Esquivel – Strings aflame (not his best album, but still barking mad).

Tony.

PS Be very afraid... I have more.

Steve
(Who's considering taking up busking!)

I've always rather liked Rush's Signals, Undertones' Positive Touch, Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh, various Neon Park covers and Lemonjelly's .ky, amongst others.

Pete.

Cheers

Keith.

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Tony Lonorgan states:
I win!

Dick Schory – Music for bang, barroom…, Peter Appleyard – Percussive jazz doctored for Super Stereo (possibly the best album of all time!), Harry Breuer – Mallet Magic (I would kill for a mint stereo copy of this), Esquivel – Strings aflame (not his best album, but still barking mad).

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Not so fast. Esquivel is decidedly excellent - Strings Aflame is a classic. However, consider this gem:

Belly dancing music always wins.

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PS Be very afraid... I have more.

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On the contrary, I want more.

Erik

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Not so fast. Esquivel is decidedly excellent - Strings Aflame is a classic.

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I read the sad news that Esquivel died this month. Music will unquestionably never be the same again.

I have both 'Exploring new sounds in hi-fi' and 'Other worlds, other sounds', but only on CD (good vinyl being stupidly expensive and hard to find) - I rate both as being even more insane than 'Strings Aflame'.

Tony.

I like Ray Price covers, a picture tells a thousand stories. The king of male heartbreak by the way.

John.n

Peter

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I read the sad news that Esquivel died this month. Music will unquestionably never be the same again.

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I had not heard this news - this is quite sad.

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I have both 'Exploring new sounds in hi-fi' and 'Other worlds, other sounds', but only on CD (good vinyl being stupidly expensive and hard to find) - I rate both as being even more insane than 'Strings Aflame'.

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Agreed regarding insanity.

As for the availability of the Esquivel vinyl, it is fairly common around these parts (LA). I picked up a bunch of good Esquivel vinyl at a record show for $7/album (Ebay is way overpriced). Guess I'm lucky living in the epicenter of the vinyl industry.

Erik

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As for the availability of the Esquivel vinyl, it is fairly common around these parts (LA). I picked up a bunch of good Esquivel vinyl at a record show for $7/album (Ebay is way overpriced).

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If you stumble across any original, not insanely priced, and good condition copies of Esquivel's early Living Stereo albums please drop me a email, I would be very interested indeed. Same goes for some of the more bizarre items on Audio Fidelity records. As well as Percussive jazz doctored for super stereo, I also have Al Hirt at Dan's Pier 600, both are absolutely mint original pressings. I would kill for good stereo gatefold originals of any of the Harry Bruer Mallet Magic series.

Percussive Jazz is stunning in a totally unhinged way, along with the equally insane Dick Schory album pictured above is actually amongst the finest quality recordings I have ever heard. They are also amongst the most musical absurd - Percussive Jazz includes versions of TV themes such as Dragnet which are given a ultra-cheese percussive loungecore treatment. Unquestionably one of the best albums ever made.

Funny how the industry got stereo vinyl exactly right from the beginning (the three albums I mention date from 1958-60), then gradually got worse until the last few years when sound and pressing quality has started to go up again. The covers of the early Audio Fidelity albums are the best quality I have ever seen, they are really heavy laminated high gatefolds - a sadly lost art. The Dick Schory album has been re-issued on Classic Records, and is IMHO actually better than the original (I have both!). Worth a punt if you like really stupid music (think somewhere between jazz, lounge, and 40s-50s Warner Brothers cartoons).

To get back on topic and talk about album cover art, I am surprised no one has mentioned Blue Note - this label was responsible for some of the best covers around. Think of the brilliant simplicity of 'Somethin' Else', 'Midnight Blue', 'The Sidewinder', 'Go' etc. I'm actually hard put to think of any bad Blue Note covers. There is something so right about a Blue Note album, it’s a whole package, looks great, sounds great, its a total package. IMHO to own Blue Note recordings on CD is to miss a large amount of the experience.

Tony.

Ron The Mon

m]Z µ b

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Durutti Column-name forgotten, but was sandpaper-wrecked adjacent sleeves to show pop was disposable

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It was their first album, the wonderfully titled 'The return of the Durutti Column'. Its a really good album. I love the design of most of the Factory Records products of that period - Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Atmosphere etc, A certain Ratio's early 12"s and first two albums etc. Quality stuff.

Got most of the other stuff you mention too...

Tony.

The identification between the artist and the label have had to vanish too ..... the music of Traffic, Spooky Tooth and a whole raft of Island groups of that period is forever held for me in a mysterious pink aura - if you listened carefully, you could almost hear the pinkness.

Same with Procol Harum & Tyrannosaurus Rex and the semi-victorian look of Regal Zonophone. For Blue Note & Verve artists, I imagine the connection is just as strong, in fact probably stronger. Nowadays, what label a band is on rarely registers.

Classical music companies hardly seem to bother with interesting covers, although they look as if they try to preserve the prominence of their label (DG, EMI etc). Apart from say, - Nonesuch, which has a fair stab at originality in their design, most covers look the result of a quick 15mins with Photoshop and a World of Art stock photo CD.

I particularly liked Scritti Politti's 'Anomie and Bonhomie' for Virgin, where various carefully chosen small bits of packaging were retouched with the group's name - really cleverly done, and must have taken ages, and Nonesuch's Philip Glass Symphony No 5 which has pieces of stiff textured card printed with the texts the work uses, held together in a paper band. Shame the music's on the dreary side, though.

Any thoughts on recent CD's which can hold their heads up with past masterpieces?

I agree very much with your selections.Weasels Ripped My Flesh is not only an excellent cover,but also fits the music therein.

That's why I think the Pink Floyd covers are so good - they are almost part of the music.

Throbnorth

Ther was always something special about Elektra albums from the late '6os and early '70s.They were quite plain (colour photo with their standard lettering) but very effective.

As I no longer buy (and rarely play) vinyl,the effect of covers has somewhat diminished for me.The fold-out extravaganzas of Quintessence are gone and only something like Bill Laswell's Santana remix (Divine Light) comes close,but it's not the same.