Mark, Don & Mel inner sleeve artwork #2

Here's the reverse side of the sleeve I posted yesterday. From Mark, Don & Mel 1969-71 by Grand Funk Railroad. Note the "critic" at lower left who blamed them for his falling asleep while coming down from a mescaline high. Yeah. He probably worked for Rolling Stone. What a douche.

Note: I've been uploading these at about 2000px square. Blogger keeps downsizing them to 1600px.

Mark, Don & Mel inner sleeve artwork #1

I said before I might try to upload some of this. Here is the first installment. Inner sleeve artwork from the 1972 double compilation album Mark, Don & Mel 1969-71 by Grand Funk Railroad. I couldn't get it quite perfect because that one corner is wrinkled. All four sleeve sides are collages of newspaper articles such as this. The common theme is how GFR was very proud of being hated by critics and loved by fans.

Click to enlarge, and it's quite large. Actually, it appears that Blogger, knowing what's good for me in spite of myself, has downsized it from the size I had it saved as, so it isn't going to be quite as easily readable. You know, if Blogger says there's a 8 MB limit on file size for uploads, they should mean 8 MB limit. ****heads.

Here's a text excerpt from some of that small print on the bottom right.

One group that soaks up a lot of money from teeny-boppers and "heads" is the disgusting Grand Funk Railroad. They fit the mold of trashy but saleable music like a deck of cards fits into a poker game [say what now? --ed.] "E Pluribus Funk" (Capitol), their latest release, will take care of the large-bulge-in-the-pockets thing that some people seem to have.

I can just picture that same little kid [wait--what little kid was that again? --ed.] turning the stereo he got for his birthday all the way up and putting on Grand Funk, most likely to bother his mother or something.

On the first cut, "Footstompin' Music," all there is is a bass, an organ playing one chord, and drums that sound more like someone fluffing pillows. One thing that typifies most trash music is a dull, repititious [sic], pounding bass; Grand Funk makes for further proof.

As our "young teen" jerks and twists to the droll pounding of his favorite group, Grand Funk, he imagines himself smoking a "J" with Mark Farner and discussing his three chord knowledge of the guitar (which makes the kid's talent equal to dear Mark's). After his mother makes him turn on the record player "'cause it's getting late," [wait a minute, his mother makes him turn on the record player? --ed.] he pretends to go to sleep, only to sneak out the window of his upper-middle class home. Grabbing his love beads and headband, he strolls on out to the scene on East Colfax. Then, after combing his hair to the wrong side to make it look longer, he goes from freak to freak whispering "D'ya know where I can score a lid?" [Jeez, dude...you need to see someone about your repressed fantasies before it's too late. --ed.]

And it's supposed to impress people that Grand Funk sold 15 million records in the last two years. To whom? Little teeny-boppers who look at music the way a baby looks at a skipping rope.

The quality of the music has nothing to do with record sales; record sales most certainly don't make the quality of the music on the album any better. So many musicians like Paul Parrish and Allen Thomas are extremely talented, but aren't making it.

At least the teeny-boppers have something to musically suck their thumbs with: Grand Funk.

A few items:

No, they are not looking at music the way a baby looks at a skipping rope. They are using music the way a kid uses a rope that was not intended for skipping but is being used that way anyway: they made it themselves. It might not be the prettiest thing in the world, but it works and they love it.

As for the "quality of music" argument, I agree with it, but it's largely irrelevant. It's not an argument that will ever have any effect on anyone. I usually look at how high sales are as an inversely proportional gauge of how bad the music really is. But it just doesn't matter.

I am not really a GFR fan. To me, they are another classic rock radio group that doesn't usually make me change the station. But when I read "critiques" like this one, it makes me want to hunt this guy down and beat the **** out of him. Just on general principles.

You can look Paul Parrish up on YouTube. He was a singer-songwriter type in the early 70s, and there are a few uploads there. I can't find anything on Allen Thomas. Of course, you can also look up Grand Funk Railroad and see scores of uploads on YouTube.

Take that, anonymous critic-from-the-past. You poor, emotionally disturbed b*st*rd.

Comparison of Styx album covers - the Wooden Nickel era

Their first eponymous album, original release on the left (1972), the RCA reprint from 1980 on the right.
On the left we have the five members of the group, nude and exposed, apparently stoically glaring out from the fires of Hell. On the right we have old-timey racing cars zipping across a salt flat or something with airplanes flying overhead. I think this style is called art deco. Right? Anyway...

On the top left and bottom are two different versions of the original cover of Styx II from 1973. The top left is the one that came with the CD set, the bottom one was found on the internet. I think the one on the bottom is actually correct. I like it better anyway. The group in the act of performing as seen through cut-out letters of their group name. At top right we have another art deco old-timey roadster with a couple in it (I think) and a castle(?) in the background. Also they changed the name of the reprint to Lady because, after all, that's the only thing on this album anyone has ever heard of. (Hate not, Styx fans! I'm being sarcastic. Mostly).

Cool album art here. Click to enlarge. On the left, from 1973: a desert oasis with a giant cobra right in the foreground sitting next to some shrooms, a herd of llamas or possibly alpacas (hard to tell) behind that with...a goat? Okay, and then there's a white bat flying in front of that big saguaro, the really cool image of a wrecked sailing ship in the desert and I think some dude is riding a camel behind that back lake. In the far distance appears some kind of lost city, possibly El Dorado? On the right we have a cute and cuddly art deco snake with fangs so adorable you just want to eat him all up. Also some flowers. This one was retitled Serpent because...well, I don't know why.

From 1974, on the left we have a fairly self-explanatory image of a wizard apparently manipulating the solar system with nothing but wizardry and his bare hands. Nice. On the right we have some art deco old-timey gals (or possibly dames) with great gams hanging out by a swimming pool in front of some pyramids while a decidedly not old-timey jet airplane blasts by just overhead. I don't know. Also this one was retitled Miracles, probably for the same reason the previous one was changed to a one-word title.

I should note that finding all these images of the reprint covers was not easy. I found the original Styx album easily enough, but the other three required some digging beyond merely just looking them up on Google Images. I didn't want to go to the trouble of scanning them. It's like nobody wants to admit they exist. Somebody has the Serpent reprint on Amazon for $29 used, which seems crazy to me. Conversely, somebody else has the Miracles reprint on Amazon for $4.

Anyhow, I know for sure the originals are out of print, and I'm pretty sure the reprints are also now out of print. So there you go.

Bold words from Columbia Records

click to enlarge

"YOU CAN PURCHASE THIS RECORD WITH NO FEAR OF ITS BECOMING OBSOLETE IN THE FUTURE"

--Columbia Records, 1962

P.S. It's monaural, or as we would more likely say these days, monophonic.

Evil increases exponentially

Seriously, if I walked into a room and saw this, I would run screaming. The eyes! The eyes!

Watcha doin' with those cymbals, Sven?

For a plethora of vintage, somewhat odd-looking cover art, check out Svenska Dansband. Example:


I did not know that Romulans played the accordion.

Kathy Dalton - Amazing (1973, LP)

click to enlarge

UPDATE: This post has been bumped back to the top for the videos embedded below and further information.

I had originally grabbed this one for a "weird album covers" post, but I remembered liking it back about 25 years ago so I put off posting until I had finished ripping it. The editing isn't good; a couple of songs have a scratchy sound that I can't get rid of. I really wish someone would re-release a CD of this one. Possibly the most remarkable thing about this cover art is that the album came out a good 10 years before Jabba the Hut took Princess Leia captive.

It's hard to find information about this one. Collectible copies in near-mint condition are going for around $90 in various places on the internet. Pretty much everything I know about it comes from the liner notes on the back jacket. Since the cover art is quite, shall we say, fanciful, here is a photo of the actual Kathy Dalton from the back cover.


Her main backing band was Little Feat, who you have probably heard of. There were lots of other musicians who contributed to the album, and of them the only one I've heard of is Van Dyke Parks. Parks also has an a album called Tokyo Rose from 1989 on which Dalton contributes vocals. All the songs on Amazing were written by Greg Dempsey, but he's another one who I can't find any real information about, although if you wiki or google his name he turns up in all kinds of places as a song writer. Amazing was later re-released with the title Boogie Bands and One Night Stands with a slightly different track list (I think), but it is no more easily available than Amazing.

UPDATE: Kathy Dalton (then Kathy Yesse) was in an earlier band called Daughters of Albion who released a self-titled album in 1968. Below is one song from it, "Hey, You, Wait, Stay."



Amazing is another album that I picked up at Yesterday's Warehouse, and as you can see if you enlarge the cover art, it belonged at one time to the Schertz Library. (This is not the only album I have with that stamp on the cover). Eleven tracks with a total playing time of around 33 minutes. The songs range from boogie to rock to country. Favorite tracks of mine are "Pour Your Wine" and "I Need You Tonight," but to me the whole album doesn't have any weak spots. One song called "Ride Ride Ride" seemed vaguely familiar to me, so I looked it up and it turns out it was recorded by Lynn Anderson in 1966, so that's probably where I heard it long ago. Never mind, it's not the same song. There seem to be several songs with this title, none of which are this one.

If I ever come across another decent copy of this--LP or CD--that I can afford, I'll buy it.

--

UPDATE: Embedded below are two tracks from this album. The first, "Ride Ride Ride" is a more up-tempo rocker; the second, "I Need You Tonight" is sort of a countrified power ballad.

Another very special album cover for you

That is some terrible cover art. The black thing on that one guy's throat isn't a hideous tattoo fail--it looks like a previous owner scribbled something there with a felt-tip pen. Anyway, I will say more about this later but for now I'll just say that I've listened to side one and so far, I actually like it.

But egads, that is bad cover art.

Who's this?

A selection from some old cover art. He hasn't shown his face this openly in public for a long time.

UPDATE: Babel answered correctly in comments. Below is the full album cover.

A very special album cover for you

I haven't listened to this in a long time so I will not comment on the music now except to say that it's 80s thrash/punk. Click to enlarge. Seriously, check it out. You can actually see the sweat running down his belly.

You should have seen it in 1800-pixel resolution like I did. Or maybe not.

That's Zedong to you, fella

Here is a scan of the back cover of an album which I am, for the nonce, not going to identify. This kind of hyperbole about a mere rock band always both bemuses and amuses me. Click to enlarge and if you don't already know who this was written about, take a stab at guessing. That trope that "it...cannot be ignored" was commonly written about some bands from this era (such as The Doors, for example--but they aren't the band in question here). Certain items at the end have been redacted to prevent giving away the answer, but I will say that it was a trio.

UPDATE: Here is the front cover of this album. In case you're like me and you're still saying What? Who?, as Albatross correctly answered in comments, the band in question is Grand Funk Railroad. I plan on ripping this one eventually so I'll not say more about it now except that it looks like it's in exceptionally good condition for a used album.


P.S. Mao?

Cool album art: Armored Saint - March of the Saint (1984)

I haven't ripped this one yet, and I might not at all, because the music isn't really my thing--plain old unsophisticated headbanger metal, but here is one I bought back in 1984 just because of the cover art. Click to enlarge. Front on the left, back on the right.

Metal bands have all the best album covers

This is the kind of thing I would buy (and have bought) just for the cover art, but only on vinyl so I could get a big album-sized version, suitable for framing.

via Collecting Vinyl Records

Emphasis on Dog

First I would like to make a clarification. There is a group called Dogwood who is currently extant who are a Christian punk group (the mere mention of such a genre has sent my curiosity meter to 20 over 9), but they are not this Dogwood.

When I was attending college in Abilene I walked into the dorm one day to find someone had put a bunch of junk they didn't want on the RA's desk in the lobby. By the way, the whole time I was there I think I saw the RA only one time, and that was for a little talk/sermon he gave to us about...er...um...uh...promiscuity, I guess is a good word for it. I remember the whole episode as being somehow awkwardly embarrassing yet disturbingly arousing. Anyway, all this junk had little price stickers on it and there was a small cardboard box to throw your money in for anything you wanted to take. There was this record there, so naturally I took it. The price sticker which I peeled off before scanning the cover says I must have paid 30¢ for it. Then I saw there were actually two records inside the jacket, the one that was supposed to be there and another different album by the same duo.

I found it to be a quite difficult task to find anything about this group on the internet. I finally came up with a mention of them that described them as Christian folk/country. It would have been more accurate to say they were extremely lame Christian folk/country. I listened to one of the records, then considered putting it back and taking back my 30¢, which after all was enough to pay for half of a honey bun, or 3/5 of a can of Mr. Pibb. But then I decided that no, I would keep it as a reminder that not every record is worth the 15¢ you pay for it. I never listened to the other record.

The cover art should have warned me off, but at the time I was thinking there was no way I could lose for only 30¢. I was wrong.

My 80s fantasy woman

If she looks familiar, it's because she's that woman who played "Micki" on Friday the 13th: The Series. And here she is, looking pretty much just like Micki but with more makeup, like that time she was possessed by that one artifact and it turned her into...no, wait a minute, that didn't really happen. That was just one of my, uh...fanfic stories. Yeah, that's the ticket.

So anyway I came across this at Yesterday's Warehouse* and bought it cheap, probably 50¢ or so. Because, well, because it was the woman who played Micki. It apparently had one minor hit called "One Night in Bangkok" but I've never heard the song anywhere except on this record.

She is a musician and songwriter as well as actor. She co-wrote two of the songs on this album. I listened to it a couple of times way back when and I remember being unimpressed. The record looks like it's in good condition, though. I might have to play it again just to see how it's held up. It's unusual to get a used record that looks this good, but then again I don't think it got much use to begin with. This is one of a handful of records I have with a disclaimer like this on the back jacket:

Amazon.com does have this CD, however it is titled One Night in Bangkok. My record has no title other than her last name, which she also used to identify herself in the TV series (her first name is Louise). Most of the comments there are favorable, so I guess I'll have to give it a new listen sometime soon and see if my opinion has changed from back then. Also the track list is different on the CD. The CD's tracks 1-4 make up side 2 of the record, while track 5-8 make up side 1.

So this started out to just be another "odd cover art" post, but I guess I'll have to post something about the music itself once I get around to listening to it again.

UPDATE: Okay, well, it's just plain old solid 80s electronic dance pop. Nothing to make it bad or good--it's just sort of there. I think my favorite from it is "Bored and Beautiful," which pokes fun at vapid teenage airheads, and which is probably going to be a timeless theme. Then again my favorite title is "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show," which is...a lovesong? I think?

As for the record itself, I got a near perfect rip without any editing, which is really amazing for a used record.


*Which means nothing to most people who read this, but quite a lot to two of you.

The knees! The knees!

This must be from the inherited collection. I'm not saying I didn't buy this, because it's exactly the kind of thing I would buy just for the oddness of it--but I'm pretty sure I didn't buy it myself. This is an album of music for contest twirling--the contestants were to use it to practice for the actual contest.

I'm not sure why anyone who was not a twirling contestant would have bought this. Every time I look at this I think that someone, somewhere missed an opportunity at creating yet another weird anime movie.

They Live

I'm sure this album of duets by Chubby Checker and Bobby Rydell is chock full o' perfectly fine vintage rock and roll. But for some reason I find this cover art frightening.

Also that's Potsie in the corner, eating fries in eternity

click to enlarge (in case the small version isn't sanity-blasting enough)

Witness Jimmy Milligan and Betty Sue Olsen. Just two kids looking for a night of fun, a night of dancing, in a place new and exciting. They took a road they had never been on before, to a little place that serves burgers and malteds all night long and the jukebox is always free. It's a friendly little place not far away and just inside...the Twilight Zone.

See his mouth drawn back in a rictus of unspeakable horror. See her blank gaze, struck numb with a terror from which there is no relief nor recovery.

This is another inherited record. Back in the ye olden days certain record companies would record a bunch of moderate hits using unnamed studio musicians and release records like this. So no, you're not going to get "Another Saturday Night" by Sam Cooke or "My Heart is an Open Book" by Carl Dobkins, Jr. You're going to get a bunch of lame covers by a group of perfectly adequate studio musicians who did the dirty work and never got credit for it.

Just in case you missed it in the big version above, here is a cut-out to highlight what someone once wrote on the cover.


Other than the minor scratches that come with a record of this age that hasn't been well cared for, there is nothing physically wrong with it. So I can only speculate on what the person who wrote that meant.

If that cover art isn't a picture of two lost souls suffering eternal damnation in their own special kind of hell, then I don't know what it is.

Cover art of local interest

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21 All Time Golden Hits Vol. One - KTSA

This is not one that I would consider strange or weird really, except that it has some images specific to San Antonio and is a reminder of the olden days when KTSA was a Top 40 station. I did find some information about this and related records at this Take 6 Album Discography.

Take-6 Enterprises, Incorporated, was located at 6565 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Take-6 issued albums exclusively for radio stations to use as promotional items, giveaways, or sales. Occasionally they were sold in stores, but only locally. Since the albums issued were all local items not meant for national distribution, Take-6 used the opportunity for a huge overlap in songs from album to album, with Take-6 licensing a relatively small number of songs and reissuing them over and over. The albums themselves were not reissued per se, but the songs were mixed and reordered so that two albums may differ only by one or two songs, although the song sequence was quite different. Album cover art was reissued, however, as several of the albums have the same basic cover art, modified to meet the needs of the particular station, even to the extent of working drawings of the deejays into the cover scenes.

[...]

Since Take-6 albums were issued in limited quantity only to certain locales, they are difficult to find today. Since they were manufactured for radio stations, they did not show up in standard references such as Schwann Catalog.

If you follow the link and scroll down to view the various variations on cover art, you can see that the KTSA version is basically identical to the KROY, KDWB and KIRL versions except that images of the Alamo and the Tower of Americas have been added. The majority of these albums all used the same elements in their cover art but the elements are arranged differently. Also, further toward the bottom of that page you can see that this record was issued for KTSA another time with entirely different cover art, which looks to me like someone was trying to imitate an R. Crumb comic.

No specific year on this, but the songs are all rock & roll hits of the 60s with a couple of tracks venturing into the more commercially accessible boundary of psychedelic rock and maybe a couple more that could be called folk-rock. A full track list is available at the link.

I haven't listened to it yet, but looking at the record I'd say this one isn't in good condition and so even though it's a relative rarity I doubt if it's worth anything.

I think I'll pass

click to enlarge (if you dare)

Today I went through the shelves and grabbed a few of what to my perceptions are "odd," "strange," or perhaps even...but no, I don't think I quite have anything "bizarre" that I know of. These records were selected not for the music on them, but for the strangeness of the cover art. I thought I'd go ahead and just get this one out of the way. Note: This is something from my late mother-in-law's collection.

Wikipedia:

Steam was a pop-rock music group best known for the 1969 number one hit song and perennial favorite "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye." The song was written and recorded by studio musicians Garrett DeCarlo, Dale Frashuer, and producer/writer Paul Leka at Mercury Records studios in New York City. The single was attributed to the band "Steam" although at the time there was actually no band with that name. Paul Leka and the studio group recorded the first album.

So, if you've ever been afflicted with that song and I'm pretty sure at one time or another you have, this is where it came from. I found this passage from the above link particularly amusing:

To make the song less palatable to DJ's, they lengthened the song with a repetitive chorus of "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye". Nobody believed that Na Na was worth anything and since neither Leka or DeCarlo wanted to have their names on it, the song was attributed to a non-existent band that they named Steam.

And they used this song for a throw-away B-side. But even though they intentionally tried to make the song even worse, some DJ decided to flip it over and play the B-side, requests for it came pouring in, Mercury noticed it was getting airplay and spent $50,000 to buy 100,000 copies of their own single to make sure it went onto the Billboard charts, and...

By the beginning of the 21st century, sales of "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" had exceeded 6.5 million records.

I've listened to side 1 and the rest of the songs on that side are the same kind of bland early-70s bubblegum pop. The last song on side 1, "Love and Affection," even throws in an occasional "na na na na" to echo the hit song that begins the side.

I hope you'll allow me the luxury of not listening to side 2.