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!!!
20 comments:
Too early to look up pictures. Three that come instantly to mind:
The 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.
We all are thinking but not posting Herb Alpert's record will always win... :)
"Cheap Thrills" - Big Brother & The Holding Company, by R. Crumb
Just 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!
C 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 :-)
Joni Mitchell - Blue
Sex 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.😎
So much for my reading skills 😉
rbm
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.)
Steve: where did you see the doc? Is it streaming somewhere?
Jai Guru Dave
Amazon.
You saw the Sonics live? I hate you.
Nina Simone Sings the Blues (the best!)
My 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.
There’s live footage in the doc of them playing live in their comeback phase, and they’re awesome.
Music from Big Pink
I forgot It's A Beautiful Day.
C in California
Trying once again -
Beatles - 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
Bob Dylan - "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Bringing It All Back Home"
...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...
Post a Comment