Hello. This is my first post here, and I have a question.
I was walking along the other day with my portable CD player and I pulled my old “Blind Faith” CD out of my backpack. (Blind Faith was a one-album group made up of Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ginger Baker and Rick Grech.) I hadn’t listened to this CD in years.
Once I pulled it out, I realized that I was strolling through a park in front of all these people with a CD showing what is apparently an underage girl, topless. If you’ve seen the CD, you know what I mean.
I never thought twice about this when I bought the CD, but things have changed. After quickly turning the cover around in the jewel case, I started wondering: could you get busted for owning this CD? I’m absolutely serious.
It all depends on how zealous the prosecutor is in the jurisdiction where you are carrying it. If the CD was the only evidence of “child porn,” then it would be difficult to make a case and it isn’t likely he’d bother. Further, the fact that the CD is sold legally in most record stores is a good point in your favor.
Now, prosecutors can get very zealous, and juries are especially hard on child pornographers, so it is possible to be convicted if you don’t have a good lawyer. But the chance of that happening is remote and unless you have other child porn, it isn’t going to be worth the prosecutor’s time.
I’ve never heard of any case of anyone being busted for having the album. The same thing for the film Pretty Baby. There are enough clear-cut child porn cases to chase down without wasting time on something like this.
No. It does not show an actual underage girl (it would be difficult that the subject of the painting is underage), it is a painting not a photograph, and it is not intended to arouse arousal (is that the right phrase?). You have a fine CD there, and should be commended for you good taste.
It’s a common misconception that any picture of a naked underaged person is child pornogrophy, but that isn’t true. The picture has to show them in a sexual situation or be otherwise lewd. Obviously, what is “lewd” is somewhat subjective, but a simple picture of a girl showing her naked torso almost certainly doesn’t qualify.
I was thinking of the album cover for Layla , which now that I actually look at it ( I was relying on memory–my first mistake), doesn’t look like much of anything.
So, I’m going to go back over here and wait until I have something useful to add to the conversation…
The album cover with the young girl was hard to get in America. The record company forced them to substitute a picture of the band instead after the initial controversy.
The album was and is one of my favorites ever. I mourned for the loss of the band. Damn egos.
I bought the album when it came out. It was not hard to get the original cover. Atco released the other version for stores that refused to carry the original cover. Both versions were available for a while until Atco dropped the second version because it didn’t sell as well as the original.
Atco originally only shipped the B cover (the band) in the U.S. All of the ads at the time featured it.
They did make the A cover (with the girl), but it was a special order (I worked in a record store at the time and ordered the A cover to see what it looked like). It wasn’t hard to get, but the record story had to specifically request it.
It had nothing to do with egos and everything to do with the fact that the band was booked into arenas (or the equivalent) despite only having one relatively short album’s worth of material. The pressure put on the band by the public was too much. In addition, the fact that Steve Winwood – who was much lesser known in the U.S. than Clapton and Baker – sang and generally fronted the band, led fans to feel dissatisfied, making the whole experience distasteful for the musicians, Clapton especially.
Chuck, everyone agrees that the stresses of a tour with a limited repertoire and massive expectations tore the group apart, but you can’t argue that ego had nothing to do with it. A band could have come together, done more rehearsing, and written new material but a collection of superstars with individual agendas in the first supergroup could not. Cream had already broken up in part to ego conflict (especially Clapton vs. Bruce) and Traffic had broken up when Dave Mason was fired for the second time.
Clapton notably retreated behind the anonymity of Delaney and Bonnie until he could recoup with Derek and the Dominos and Winwood returned to Traffic for a series of excellent albums in which he was able to meld with his former bandmates - minus Mason.
The late 60s were destructive. Fame got to be too much, money got to be too much, stress got to be too much. Cream, Traffic, Blind Faith - and the Beatles, and Simon & Garfunkel and Crosby, Stills and Nash (who themselves formed out of clashes in their original groups). It all hit the fan within a span of a year or so in 1969-70. Ego played a big part in the breakup of every single one of them.
Thanks for the link, aubries, though I think we need a note that any link to the original cover is not workplace friendly. Very interesting story, though I think the photographer is a B.S. artist as well as a graphic artist.
What started me thinking about this was a thread in another forum on a woman who was ordered to cover up her snow-woman because it was too busty.*
It’s true, Amok, that there is nothing indecent about the human form itself, but I was also thinking about the rocket ship on that cover. It is so phallic that I have to assume it was meant to be, thus adding an element that, if not overtly lewd, was at least suggestive. Phallic shape and nude minor are skating on some thin ice here.
And as for whether the authorities might look askance at this, well, there’s that poor woman who had to cover up the snow-woman. I had totally forgotten what was on the cover of this CD until I found myself absently holding it in my hand while walking in a park full of families. In the U.S., local communities often set the obscenity standards, so what’s fine in New York might not fly in Gopher Prairie. I know I won’t be packing that CD if I have to get on an airplane – imagine the baggage search. Or better yet, imagine having it in your luggage when you arrive in, say, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.
*I’d link to it, but I am still practicing the codes here.
You could always just take the artwork out of the jewel case, or put the CD in a different jewel case (artwork or no).
If you feel a need to carry around the liner notes or track list, then photocopies (or by-hand copies) with the “offensive” parts removed and cut to the right size should fit just fine where the artwork once was. There are even a few shareware or freeware programs out there which allow the user to create jewel-case inserts of his/her own design.
Unless, of course, the photo is printed on the CD itself, in which case burning a copy of the CD would let you listen to the music no matter where you were (at least in the U.S.), and no prosecutor in their right mind would even think of charging you with owning an album cover which you left at home, or of copyright infringement, either (you wouldn’t be depriving the record company of any money, since the CD you actually purchased would be sitting around gathering dust).
As one who used to haunt record stores at that time (hitting about half a dozen different record stores about 3 times a week each, knowing which day each store’s shipments came in, often getting yelled at for opening cases of albums before they were put on the shelf. Yeah, if I didn’t spend my entire disposable income on vinyl between the years 1967-1974 I would have been banned for life from most of these stores.) I repeat, “It was not hard to get the original cover. Atco released the other version for stores that refused to carry the original cover.”
I bought the album the day it was released. There was only the original version. I didn’t even see the second version until at least a month later. Seeing the censored version cracked me up. “Why would anyone buy this?”
After a while even it seems even Atco agreed with me as they dropped the second version.
Another story about Blind Faith was that it was, for Clapton, an escape from the battle of egos of Cream that they decided to form Blind Faith. When they first got together, only Clapton from Cream was going to be involved. Somehow, Ginger heard about the meeting and just kind of showed up assuming that naturally he was a part of it saying, okay what are we going to play.
Neither Clapton nor Winwood had the heart to tell him that they hadn’t planned on him being a part of it, so he just started playing with them. Essentially Baker’s endearing cluelessness and Clapton & Winwood’s not wanting to hurt his feelings got him the gig.
Someone from the UK said that its legal to do that on page 3.
I’m in california & work at a thrift shop & we had a big print poster of a famous art work called ‘September Morn’ for 6 months on our wall. I asked the boss about having it in the shop & he said it was just fine. It eventually sold.
Right. We may be saying the same thing from different ends. Yes Atco released the girl cover at first. I’m saying Atco replaced the original cover almost immediately and kept the band cover on for years afterward. Possibly the original cover was available in certain locations or by special request. Possibly record stores in some locations refused to carry it. Possibly the band cover was put on so quickly that some stores never got to carry the girl cover. Record distribution was more of an art than a science in those days. But in my experience of haunting record stores in that era, the original cover was impossible to find and much sought after, going for a premium price when it was available because not everybody bought the album on the day it was released.
