The short version: Very entertaining, and one hell of a great story, but it was a bummer to discover that there is, apparently, no extant significant live footage of the band in its early-60s performing heyday.
That said, I was blown away by this early LP cover art of theirs...
...which I had forgotten about, and which is really quite ahead-of-its-time stylish. Especially for an indie record on a small regional label of its day.
And which leads us to the weekend's business. To wit:
And your favorite original cover art/album cover for a rock/pop/soul/blues/folk/comedy/Broadway show/classical LP of the 50's and 60's is...???
No arbitrary rules, except I'm going to enforce the temporaral parameters quite strictly. Which is to say if you try to sneak in something released after the music festival at Altamont, I will come to your house and deliver a severe tongue lashing.
Anyway, my Top Five -- in no particular order -- are....
That Stones LP may be the greatest album cover of anything ever, BTW. And I should add that the title of the book the guy in the top Lenny Bruce album is reading -- Pigs Ate My Roses -- has been making me laugh at inappropriate moments for going on half a century now. 😎
I should also add that Lou Reed's entire career esthetic quite clearly derives from that Paragons/Jesters cover, which I still can't believe was ever actually marketed to 50s doo-wop fans. I mean, wow -- that is without question the most (possibly unintentional) gay thing in world history; it could have just as easily been a jacket for some Grove Press banned-in-Boston smut by Hubert Selby. 😎😎
Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be? Discuss.
And have a great weekend, everybody!!!
Too early to look up pictures. Three that come instantly to mind:
ReplyDeleteThe Velvet Underground (banana cover)
The Mothers of Invention: Freak Out
And, bizzarely, The Harmonicats: In the Land of Hi Fi
BTW, I should have noted that the Scheherezade cover was an examplar of an entire school of classical album art in the 50s and early 60s. There were literally scads of other ones just like it from all sorts of classical labels (big and indie-little), i.e. featuring scantily clad babes in exotic outfits.
ReplyDeleteWe all are thinking but not posting Herb Alpert's record will always win... :)
ReplyDelete"Cheap Thrills" - Big Brother & The Holding Company, by R. Crumb
ReplyDeleteJust sticking to major artists comes up with Elvis' debut, King Crimson's debut, Bo Diddley's debut, Cream's Disraeli Gears, Moby Grape's Wow, Stones' Aftermath, Beatles' White Album, Revolver, Rubber Soul, With The Beatles, For Sale, the infamous butcher cover for Yesterday. Woulda loved to put in Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh from 1970, but between ripping flesh and your threat of a tongue lashing, it was too much violence. That Sonics album def belongs on the list, too!
ReplyDeleteC in California
I love the Lenny Bruce SICK HUMOR cover. I've been shopping in and working in record stores for decades but somehow I missed that one. Hilarious :-)
ReplyDeleteJoni Mitchell - Blue
ReplyDeleteSex Pistols - Never Mind the Bullocks
Al Stewart - Year of the Cat
Elton John - Captain Fantastic...
Any cover by Hypnosis
Any cover by Rodger Dean
rob
Well, I see people are gonna nominate post 60s stuff no matter what I say.😎
ReplyDeleteSo much for my reading skills 😉
ReplyDeleterbm
Not to submit an answer, but to say (er...brag?) that, growing up in Portland, I didn't go to teen clubs to hear bands, but if they played my high school cafeteria after the Friday night game, I could do that! Thus, I saw both Paul Revere and The Sonics that way. (Mark Lindsay was still in his rolling-around-the-note-attempts-at-soul phase...so a bit meh. The Sonics powered through their gig without a hitch.)
ReplyDeleteYou saw the Sonics live? I hate you.
DeleteSteve: where did you see the doc? Is it streaming somewhere?
ReplyDeleteJai Guru Dave
Amazon.
DeleteNina Simone Sings the Blues (the best!)
ReplyDeleteMy first thought was...Nappy Brown: Something Gonna Jump Out The Bushes! but amazingly it was released in 1987. Still a great cover, tho.
I also saw the Sonics live, albeit a latter-day version of the group. They played an outdoor show at Dundas Square in Toronto around 2009 or 2010 and (bonus!) it was free. The line-up was guitarist Larry Parypa, sax player Rob Lind and keyboard player/lead singer extraordinaire Jerry Roslie, augmented by three other musicians who'd been in the touring bands of other Pacific Northwest garage acts. The group as a whole still really rocked.
ReplyDeleteThere’s live footage in the doc of them playing live in their comeback phase, and they’re awesome.
DeleteMusic from Big Pink
ReplyDeleteI forgot It's A Beautiful Day.
ReplyDeleteC in California
Trying once again -
ReplyDeleteBeatles - two album covers
Meet the Beatles (1964)
Yesterday and Today - Butcher Cover
(1966)
Miles Davis, again two
Sketches of Spain (1960)
Round About Midnight (1956)
rob
And may I just concur for all of those, and especially Sketches of Spain?
DeleteBob Dylan - "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Bringing It All Back Home"
ReplyDelete...both by Daniel Kramer
The Who - "Sell Out"
Led Zeppelin - first
The Louvin Brothers - Satan Is Real ...help me Jeebus!
Little Jimmy Scott - "Falling In Love Is Wonderful" ...the original is already jaw dropping, then I did a version with smirking Bill Cosby's head dropped in...
The Standells - Why Pick on Me
ReplyDeleteThe Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, LTD
Between the Buttons
I'm going to cheat by stretching the time line into 1971.
ReplyDelete"Who's Next"! Of course instead of the monolith I now imagine it's "45"s face The Who are relieving themselves on.
Captain Al
I'll give you the Who album.
DeleteThe point being, the golden age of album art pretty much stopped after the Beatles....
Steve, what about Rodger Dean/Hipgnosis album covers.
DeleteSign me perplexed
Dude -- I really dislike that stuff. https://powerpop.blogspot.com/2008/05/elp-band-that-wouldnt-die_2770.html
ReplyDeleteTried to reference your link - no bueno. Perhaps you are referencing Geiger's, Brain Salad Surgery cover.
DeleteAs too Dude - 😎
My men called me Hefe and Grande Man - I can roll with it
rob 😉
Moanin'' the Blues by
ReplyDeleteHank Williams
Strange Days by the Doors
rs
Tom of Finland was probably an influence on Lou Reed, too. It's also likely that he and that Paragons vs. The Jesters album cover influenced Kathryn Bigelow's "The Loveless", starring Willam Dafoe and Robert Gordon.... not that there's anything wrong with that...
ReplyDeleteTom of Finland for sure.
DeleteGotta include period work by the great Jim Flora:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.jimflora.com/galleries/flora-classic-album-covers/
How did I not know that man?
DeleteThose are fantastic!
Delete- Paul in DK
The Who’s album covers were always very good, although the Who Are You cover was unintentionally tragic with Moon’s chair stenciled “Not To Be Taken Away”. But I’ll abide by the rules and nominate The Who Sings My Generation as it was called in the USA, clearly in the spirit of the Stones and Sonics covers, and also add Tommy and its lovely artwork by Mike McInnerney. And of course the 1971 Who’s Next album cover is iconic, although according to the liner notes in the 2023 box set they didn’t actually piss on the monolith :-).
ReplyDeleteAnd for other iconic covers…Johnny Cash at San Quentin is right up there.
Kinks - Face to Face
ReplyDeleteGrateful Dead - American Beauty
Mothers - Freak Out (I bought this, sound unheard, strictly on the basis of the cover at the Sam Goody at the Garden State Plaza)
Bruce - Born to Run
Beatles covers already mentioned, although Revolver set a new standard
Stones - Let It Bleed
Yardbirds - For Your Love
Jimi Hendrix Experience- Axis: Bold as Love
ReplyDeleteThelonious Monk - Underground and Solo Monk
Charles Mingus - Ah Um
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
- Paul in DK
The front cover of the first Moby Grape album but it has to be the version in which Don Stevenson has his middle finger extended, not the subsequent version where Columbia Records airbrushed the finger out.
ReplyDeleteYou are wise, grasshopper.😎
Delete