Remember album covers?
My favorite 3…
The Stones…Sticky fingers…with the little zipper.
Uriah Heep…Look at yourself…with the “mirror”
Jackson Browne…For Everyman…If the album was in the sleeve he was sitting in the rocking chair…if it was gone the chair was empty.
Yours?
Frank Zappa’s Weasels Ripped My Flesh, especially the “rzzzzzzz”, although I’m not much of a Zappa fan.
Journey’s Raised on Radio only because it didn’t any of the usual crap normally seen on a Journey cover.
Neil Young’s Re·ac·tor, simple red triangle on a black background.
Iron Maiden’s Powerslave. Just for the hours of time I spent with a magnifying glass picking out all the little details.
Most of Gomez’s earlier work had covers done by an artist called Reggie Pedro, whose work I think is incredible.
You can check out his art here:
The Scorpions Lovedrive You know, the bubblegum one, heh heh.
Not especially original viewpoint but I think Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is a great cover. In fact as a kid I used to have it propped up atop my dresser and had the faces pretty much memorized.
Here are some other popular cohices:
http://rateyourmusic.com/lists/list_view/list_id_is_2619
The Clash Londpn Calling. All others pale. Well, Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights is pretty good, too.
Made even better by the fact that it is based on Elvis’s first album cover (scroll down a little).
Or not, since I linked directly to the image rather than the blog it was on.
The Beatles - Abbey Road. Probably a bit cliched and obvious by this point, but I really like this album cover.
Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here
Linda Ronstadt - Hasten Down The Wind
Buckingham Nicks
Herb Alpert - Whipped Cream and Other Delights
(Can you see a theme developing here?)
Oh, I should provide evidence of the greatness of the Lovedrive cover:
Gotta mention two minimalistic, but textured*, LPs:
Fear of Music – Talking Heads. Black, stamped with an industrial design one normally associates with steel loading ramps and the like. Very formidable and unfriendly looking ("…this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco," indeed). Band and album title are in a neon green in the corner.
English Settlement – XTC. The Uffington Chalk Horse, an Iron Age environmental glyph of sorts, is reproduced on a field of mossy green. At the top, the band and album names are in a Celtic rune-like font.
Verve’s early covers complemented their music perfectly.
The guy who designed those (and the covers of other famous British bands from the 90’s) now drives a taxi round Wigan as his dayjob :eek:
I’ll see your Wish You Were Here and raise you Animals.
The Beatles - White Album?
Some of my favorites:
http://glen.utdallas.edu/Glen/CDs/Cream/Cream%20Wheels%20Of%20Fire.jpg
Spinal Tap’s Smell The Glove: none more black.
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s This Beautiful life is pretty good, so is their self titled/americana album. And Royal Crown Revue’s Walk On Fire is very sexy.
I’ve always loved R. Crumb’s cover for Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company.
