SINs: It’s Three Dog Night’s Hard Labor. It also came with out fold out manila file folder. It was a parody of a birth chart; the “baby” being the record album. I was only a kid last I saw it. I wish I could see it again because I suspect there was a lot of raunchy stuff on there I didn’t get at that age. The only thing I remember is the left and right footprints: record grooves.
Yep, CDs sure are responsible for the death of album cover art. Too small a canvas.
Some that haven’t been mentioned:
Traffic’s “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” had two corners cut off to make it look like a cube. Their next album “Shootout at the Fantasy Factory” had the opposite two corners cut off.
Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” was in the form of a desk. The record was wrapped in a pair of pint paper panties.
The Stones “Their Satanic Majesties Request” originally had a “magic motion” cover – it changed as you viewed it at different angles. The four Beatles could be seen in the artwork if you got the right angle (only two can be seen in later, flat covers).
Jethro Tull’s “Stand Up” took it’s title literally and had a popup of the group when you unfolded it.
Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” was originally marketed with blue plastic wrapped around it (instead of clear). You had to buy the album to see the cover art.
Joe Walsh routinely had little messages scratched into the vinyl at the end.
The original cover of the Beatles White Album, had “Beatles” embossed on the cover. Each album had a unique serial number. The second printing ditched the serial number, and later printings used ink.
It was actually quite routine for an album to have a booklet or poster in it. The Who’s “Live at Leeds” was probably the champion – posters, photos, their contract to play at Woodstock, a schedule of early gigs, and much more. The album opened like a paper folder from school – the record on one side and all the paper on the other.
The first two Bonzo Dog Band Albums had extensive booklets of art and other madness. Their third, Tadpoles, was die cut so that a parade of images went across the faces – eyes moving back and forth, for instance.
The Stones Greatest Hits Volume II came in an octagonal cover. One group (I don’t recall the name) had a cover in the shape of a big triangle – too big to fit into record bins, so it probably hurt sales.
Captain Beefheart’s “Clear Spot” came in a clear plastic sleeve instead of cardboard.
Dave Mason’s “Alone Together” was made out of multicolored vinyl. A friend of mine once saw it and said, “That record’s moldy!”
Yes put out an album on red vinyl, I beleve. A handful of singles were done on colored vinyl – I recall yellow and red, though not for which ones. There was also a short-lived craze for picture disks – the album cover on the vinyl.
Not an album, but Mad Magazine once put a single inside (the immortal “It’s a Gas”), and several cereal companies put records on the back of their boxes.
I had forgotten about the White Album until I thumbed through my collection and found my copy - with a serial number and the large photographs inside. Here’s a few others that I remember:
Faces - Oh La La. Cover features a man in white tie and top hat. You pushed down on the top of the cover and he rolled his eyes and his jaw dropped. The cover was much better than the album (except for the title cut, which was used in the movie “Rushmore”).
Urian Heep - Look At Yourself. The cover featured a piece of shiny material in the center that served as a mirror.
The original version of “Wake of the Flood” by the Dead didn’t have any song information on the back cover. If you have one that has a track listing you’ve got a bootleg.
The “In the Dark” CD cover has an extra pair of eyes on it (a pair for each member of the band plus one for ?).
I’ve heard about this album. Could someone provide a link?
Also, IIRC Led Zeppelin 4 had a picture of an old, wizard-looking guy standing on the top of a mountain.
If you placed the cover against a mirror, the dual reflection produced the image of a dragon .
The old man on Zep IV is a dead ringer for the Hermit card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck, down to the little Star-of-David shaped glow in his lantern. Don’t know what it means, though. Some Crowleyan thing, no doubt.
Just remembered that Rick Wakeman had an album with anamorphic (distorted) cover art. There was a piece of reflective mylar included that you rolled up into a cylinder and stood up on the cover to see the picture.
There’s currently a copy on sale at Ebay with a photo of the cover.
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1000255704
Yup, I had an Alpha-Bits box record. You just cut it out from the back of the box, and it was a record. It was supposed to be scary for Halloween, I remember, but all it was was a “spooky” voice talking. I can honestly still remember hearing it say that in a dark, deserted house, up the creaky stairs (on and on and on) “WAS…A…THING!!!”
And hey, let’s not forget Spinal Tap’s album, with the cover that was black, blacker than black.
Green’s cover is full of strangeness. The obvious one is that despite the name of the album, the art is all orange. The R is the result of a typo (it’s near 4 on the keyboard) by Michael Stipe, which stuck. Then there is track 11, which has no title at all.
Also, like just about every R.E.M. LP/cassette, the sides are not labelled “A” and “B”. On Green the sides are marked “Air” and “Metal.” Dead Letter Office has sides “Post” and “Script.”
Most FAQs for R.E.M. mention that for a while, there usually seemed to be some sort of number associated with each album:
Murmur: the song “9-9”
Reckoning: the song “7 Chinese Brothers”
Fables of the Reconstruction: the song “Driver 8”
Document: has a number 5 on the cover
Green: R instead of 4
Then there’s “1,000,000” and “Star 69” but the whole thing just seems to be coincidence and not a “countdown” as some people thought.
There are people who know too much about Star Trek.
There are people who know too much about R.E.M.
Then there’s me.
Can’t remember the name of the Double Album by Electric Light Orchestra, something about space because inside was a punch-out cardboard sheet that made into some kind of space ship.
I had a Single record of the Neil Young song “Southern Pacific”, The vinyl itself was a triangle shape, with a circle in the middle (of course).
The Donovan record “Cosmic Wheels” had a big color- by-number inner sleeve.
How many people had the black-light Grand Funk poster hanging on the wall, or the poster that came with
Alice Cooper’s "Killer album, or the Peter Max type poster of Bob Dylan that came with the “Greatest Hits” album?
Bootleg albums were usually cool in that the vinyl was sometimes colored, instead of black. Do they make bootleg CD’s?
Also, remember when Cereal boxes sometimes came with little cardboard records on the back of them that you could cut out and actually play! Cool. Well that was back when “Super Golden Crisp” was called “Super Sugar Crisp”. Burger King was giving out paper records for awhile also, with various artists of the 70’s on them.
Whoa! I thought that was just my copy!
This is interesting. Does anyone know of a site that gives us some idea of what these baby’s are worth?
Ah, we did scented stickers earlier. Forgot about two instances of scented lyric sheet inserts.
Laura Nyro’s “Eli and the 13th Confession”
Millenium’s “Begin Here”
…both late-60s LPs on Columbia.
I’m embarassed to admit I own this, but…
Styx - Paradise Theater. The vinyl had a hologram type image on one side of the disc. It was supposed to be the next great thing in anti-piracy measures, but never went anywhere.