Just as an aside, that song is definitely a candidate for Most Ridiculous Song Of All Time.
Yeah, there’s a promo edition with that embarrassing spoken-word section cut out. That’s how ashamed of it the record company was. That didn’t stop it from going to #2 for three weeks, though.
New Order did this for Power, Corruption, and Lies. There’s nothing written on the cover - you have to use the decoder to figure out what it says.
R.E.M.'s Green has a translucent “4” stamped on every “R” on the cover. Apparently Michael Stipe was writing lyrics on a typewriter that stamped a “4” every time he typed “R.”
One that I remember from my radio station days was “Blind Man’s Movie,” a comedy record by Murray Roman. It was to the color black what the “White Album” was to the color white.
There are several books collecting photos of album covers. I highly recommend The Album Cover Album, which this eBay auction doesn’t do justice to. (And, no, it’s not my auction. I prize my copy of the book).
It’s a lovely hardbound coffee table book, and has the good taste to group albums by theme of cover art, and gives a good set of info on each.
Lots of great album covers, both famous and obscure, with gimmicks.
One of my favorites was “Trocadero” by Showaddywaddy. The outside shows an illustration of a street scene in front of the Trocadero from the 1950s. A bunch of kids are horsing around in the foreground. The inner sleeve shows the same scene with people and cars in the same positions, only its from the 1970s and the kids have grown up to be the band. It’s a foldout cover front and back, so it’s a sizeable illustration, very well done.
The Tubes Self-titled albums featured a cover photo of two female hands with brightly painted red nails and clear plastic bracelets on the right hand, which is shown ripping back a triangular piece of the cardboard cover and peeling it back to reveal the record inside. Very realistic, very well done
Breaker & Kuypers “Live-In Shaffy” on the Bvhaast label had the LP tucked into an oversized blank cardboard triangular cover.
Family’s “Bandstand” album had a double cover die-cut to fit the shape of an early 1950s TV set. The back showed a picture of the back of the TV set
Raspberries put out a cover die-cut into a halleck of — what else — raspberries.
Gentle Giant’s “Octopus” had a die-cut cover depicting a squat canning jar with an octopus inside
And ** Paul Davis’** “Ride Em Cowboy” was die-cut in the shape of a western shirt.
This is pretty obscure… My sister had Poi Dog Pondering’s 12" single “U-Li-La-Lu”. The A side had the main song and the “B-side” song, while the B side was smooth vinyl etched with a drawing. I wish I could find a good photo of it to link.
ETA: EBay to the rescue! The guy with the camera isn’t part of the etching…
And just to clarify for those scoring along at home, Metal Box was re-released as “Second Edition” but without the fun packaging.
That reminds me- the B-side to the Napoleon XIV single They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa! was !Aaa-Ah ,Yawa Em Ekat Ot Gnimoc Er’yeht- the same song played backwards.
“Be Good To Yourself At Least Once A Day” unfolded to reveal the very cool Man’s Map of Wales
