May 2009 Archives

Remember the band Boys Don’t Cry? Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t. They had a hit song called I Wanna Be A Cowboy way back in 1985. That achievement earned them a place on almost every “one hit wonder” list compiled since. The song was very quirky and the group has had the misfortune of being confused with the song Boys Don’t Cry by The Cure. I remember the album cover was somewhat controversial because it showed a woman’s nipple.

Well, Boys Don’t Cry are determined to break new ground and become the first one hit wonder band to have a second hit after almost 25 years off the charts. Their new single is called Don’t Call Me A Country Singer and it isn’t half bad. It is being sold on iTunes and Amazon.com and a video has received a few thousand views on YouTube. It obviously isn’t a high-budget production. However, it is somewhat nostalgic and interesting to see a group make a try for a comeback after nearly a quarter of a century.

I just purchased the two new Pet Shop Boys EPs and the single for Did You See Me Coming? All three were just released in the U.K. today.

I have also discovered that Pet Shop Boys are offering a free download of a remix of Up and Down on their website: 

“Up and Down” is a brand new song that features on the single bundles for “Did You See Me Coming”. You can download an exclusive Tom Stephan remix of the track, for FREE, by filling in your details.

I’m somewhat confused because Up and Down was not included with the three items that I bought on iTunes.

Click the image below to get the free download:

Passion Pit is an electronic/dance band from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their first album Manners has just been released and the first single is called The Reeling. If you like traditional electronic synth bands like New Order, you’ll like Passion Pit. I have not yet download Manners, but I’ve listened to the tracks and they are all very good. The Reeling is definitely my favorite. The video has been on YouTube for about a month.

For the past hour, I’ve been clicking though the gallery looking for albums to include in my next installment of Variations on a Theme. What is quite obvious when going through all of these album covers is that there are three objects that appear more frequently on album covers than anything else. 

So, let’s have a little quiz to see if my readers can name those objects. I will even start out by naming the first and most obvious object.

#1 A guitar

Now, it is your turn to name the next two objects. Don’t hurt your head thinking about it. Just let the image flutter into your mind.

Leave your guess as a comment to this entry. Good luck!

The third full-length album by Brooklyn indie rock band Grizzly Bear has been released. The album is called Veckatimest and it is creating quite a buzz online. The video for Two Weeks landed on YouTube a few days ago. Like many current music videos, it uses some very creative special effects.

I have wanted to write about the cover of Animal Collective’s 2009 album Merriweather Post Pavilion since I first saw it back in February. It is an amazing work of art and science.

The image was created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a professor at the Department of Psychology of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. Kitaoka is known for his visual illusions, the most notable of which is his Rotating Snakes. Note that the image below is not an animated GIF. The motion that you see is strictly an illusion.

There are many of these kinds of fascinating visual illusions on Kitaoka’s website: http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html. The site also includes detailed explanations of how the illusions work and how they were created.

The layout and design of the Merriweather Post Pavilion album was dome by Rob Carmichael of SEEN design. Carmichael also designed Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam album cover.

The only album covers that I know of that are even similar to Merriweather Post Pavilion are two covers created for Soulwax by designer Trevor Jackson. 

  

Of course, there have been covers that used designs by M.C. Esher and similar optical illusions. I am reluctant to put those covers in the same category. If you know of any album covers that use visual illusions similar to Kitaoka’s, please leave a comment.

I just did an article about Butterfly Boucher’s new single Gun For A Tongue last week and was very happy to see that her new album just became available on Tuesday. I haven’t yet listened to all the tracks on Scary Fragile. However, it appears to be a solid album and it is getting great reviews on iTunes. There appears to be two versions of the cover for this album. I think the one with the blue eyeshadow and lipstick misses the mark when it comes to representing this artist. However, it is the official release cover.

According to the Wikipedia article on Scary Fragile, this album was stalled in one of those contract disputes between the artist and the record label. Boucher released tracks from the album on her MySpace page for several months.

Now for something hilarious. Butterfly Boucher has posted a video for a karaoke contest on YouTube. Check it out. She’s very funny.

Transphobia refers to discrimination against transsexuality and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender identity. Whether intentional or not, transphobia can have severe consequences for the object of the negative attitude. Many transpeople also experience homophobia from people who incorrectly associate the medically recognized condition of gender identity disorder with homosexuality.

Regardless of what people believe about transexuality, most of us know that it is wrong to use hateful and disparaging language when referring to another human being. Unfortunately, it has become very common to see women who are perceived to be somewhat masculine, athletic, or of larger than average stature to be called “tranny” — even though they are not transgender.

Pop singer/reality TV personality Brooke Hogan has been subjected to this kind of name calling for quite a long time. Hogan is the daughter of professional wrestler Hunk Hogan. One of the things she inherited from her famous father is an athletic physique. She is also undeniably beautiful.

This week, the cover for Hogan’s new album The Redemption was released. The cover features artwork depicting Hogan as a scantily clad angel. I suppose the response by various entertainment blogs should have been expected.

The Velvet Painting Awards: Brooke Hogan’s Album Cover

This public display of pure organic fuckery does not belong on the cover of an album. It belongs on the hood of a Trans-Am owned by a tranny chaser. This is every kind of WRONG.

dlisted

Brooke Hogan’s new album cover

Here’s the cover for Brooke Hogan’s new album Redemption, and good news, everybody, trannies do go to Heaven. Except it appears excessive tanning is a prerequisite.

The Superficial

Gallery of the Absurd

Is all of this really necessary? Brooke Hogan is not one of my favorite artists — not even close. To be honest, the album cover art isn’t the best I’ve ever seen. But, it doesn’t look like some amateur drew it with crayons either.

How is calling Brooke Hogan “tranny” any different from calling a man (gay or straight) “faggot”? It is something that just shouldn’t be done. The sad thing is that many of the bloggers who smear Brooke Hogan and others with the word “tranny” are gay!

Anyway, I don’t want to come off as being too preachy on this subject. I just think that blogs can do better than stoop to using hate speech in their articles. As editor in chief of AlbumArtExchange blog, I promise my readers that they won’t read that kind of language here. Humor doesn’t have to be hateful.

I found a fairly decent version of the cover for the new Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie on a fan site called TFormers.com. The art wasn’t quite square (around 750 pixels at 96 dpi) with a fair amount of JPEG compression. I rescaled it to 600 x 600 and uploaded it to the gallery. It isn’t quite the “hi-res” cover an AlbumArtExchange user would be thrilled about. But, it will do until someone uploads a better version.

The soundtrack features tracks by Linkin Park, Green Day, The Fray, The All-American Rejects, Nickelback, and others.

Revenge of the Fallen: The Album Cover Art Unveiled - Hi-Res!

By bwbm on Wednesday, May 27, 2009

We have the cover art to the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: The Album to show you today. The cover art is the same shot that we received last night, and the entire left side lists the artists that will be featured on the CD.

Continue reading…

A new album by Louisiana alternative rock band Better Than Ezra was released two weeks ago. It has taken me a few days to get around to listening to it and I was definitely missing something. Every track on the album is good. I think the stand out is Just One Day. The first video from the album is Absolutely Still. Like many current videos, it uses creative animation. It obviously carries the “paper empire” theme.

While it isn’t specifically noted in the posting guidelines, AlbumArtExchange is a collection of album covers officially released by record labels and independent recording artists. The covers in the gallery are not fantasy creations nor tributes made by fans.

However, there are a few blogs online that feature such album covers. Covermania and Coverlandia are two of the most popular. Both blogs also post official album art, although often smaller than the 600 x 600 size that is preferred on AlbumArtExchange.

Some of the fan-made covers are quite good and obviously created by people with professional graphic design skills. However, they can pose a problem when they are assumed to be official covers. It is very likely that some of these fan-made covers could be added to AblumArtExchange’s collection as official covers.

Here are a couple of recent examples of fan-made covers posted to Covermania and Coverlandia:

As you can see, the quality of both covers is professional. The first example displays the Disney logo and could easily be assumed to be an official Disney album cover. The second example is also excellent quality. The photo and the typography are consitent with what the artist’s label produces. However, the second cover displays the mark of the person who created it in the lower right corner. Unfortunately, very few who make fan-made covers add an indication that the cover is not official.

The easiest way to check whether or not an album cover is official is to look it up on Amazon.com or iTunes. If you’re still in doubt, Wikipedia often displays official album covers for CDs.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs debuted the new video for Heads Will Roll from their latest album It’s Blitz on YouTube yesterday. The video is very entertaining, with a Michael Jackson dance-alike in a werewolf mask and a dismemberment at the end (red glitter for blood).

Slide is a website that allows you to create online slideshows by uploading your own images and selecting from an impressive number of special effects. Here is a slideshow of Beatles album covers that are part of the AlbumArtExchange gallery.

The hottest single in the U.K. right now is Release Me by Swedish pop singer Agnes. If a frumpy librarian is what comes to kind when you hear the name Agnes, that will change forever when you see the video for Release Me. This Agnes is far from frumpy. She’s got the looks and talent that could make her an international star.

In this second installment of Banned in the USA, we’ll look at a couple of album covers that have been censored because they featured something truly horrible — a toilet!

In 1966, The Mamas and The Papas released If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears. The covered featured the quartet sitting in a bathtub, fully clothed. Next to the tub was something that was rarely shown on TV and in movies at the time. The cover displayed a toilet — and not a very clean looking one at that!

The toilet was soon declared obscene by many U.S. retailers and was pulled from shelves. As often happens, a sticker was placed over the toilet and the LPs were redistributed. Subsequent covers were printed with the toilet covered.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the controversy regarding this particular cover. After the hysteria over the obscene toilet died down, someone noticed that four young people were — gasp — in a bathtub together! Not only that, one of the young women appeared to be thrusting her buttocks toward the camera in a very suggestive manner.

You can probably guess what happened next. The cover was censored for a second time. A third cover was created that cropped out the tub and Michelle Phillips’ butt. When If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears was released on CD, the first censored cover that simply hides the toilet was used rather than the cropped version. I guess people were still offended by toilets, but neither the bathtub nor Michelle Phillips’ butt were quite as offensive anymore.

Another well known cover banned for featuring a toilet is the 1968 Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet. Not only did this album cover feature a dirty-looking public toilet, it also showed a wall of restroom graffiti.

The Rolling Stones’ record labels in both the U.S. and the U.K. refused to release the album with the cover and the band refused to change it. The stand off lasted several months, but the band eventually gave in and allowed the album to be released with a cover that resembled a formal invitation.

When the album was released on CD, the original toilet/graffiti cover was used. The scans that we now have of this cover are from the CD, although sometimes I see it incorrectly labeled as the original LP release cover.

We see a lot of albums that make us scratch our heads and wonder, “What the f**k?!” Therefore, I thought it would be a great idea to add a WTF?! category to the blog (inspired by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann).

A few weeks ago, I bookmarked a music video on YouTube that is worthy of being the first WTF?! featured band. Feed The Horse by Danish duo Fagget Fairys has something to do with feeding a horse or beastiality or a nasty ephemism (I’m thinking something to do with a carrot). I don’t know. Both the video and the name of the group are disturbing in a way that I don’t think is intentional.

The cover of the album features a sexually ambiguous couple getting married. The bride appears to be a man who is part horse. Below the couple is a rainbow-colored spray. Between the couple is a symbol that combines the symbol for a same-sex union with horse shoes. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a political commentary regarding same-sex marriage or simply nonsense. Perhaps a language barrier is in play here.

Here is the video (don’t say I didn’t warn you):

I've been keeping an eye out for an album to be released by My First Earthquake since I found a very cute Chanukah song called Fa La Freezing on YouTube in December. Well, it looks like the band is going to release an album called Downstairs on June 15. This group reminds me of the early The B-52s. You can listen to samples of the tracks on Amazon.com.

 

Here's that Chanukah video (I know, I know! Wrong time of year, but you'll like it!):

I recently stumbled upon Popdose, a pop culture blog that features a game called Cover Me. They post framents of album covers and the object is to correctly identify them based on the image. Here’s an AlbumArtExchange blog version.

#1     #2  

Too easy? Leave your guesses in the comments and we’ll see.

A compilation of music from the HBO series True Blood was released last week. It includes several popular artists such as Lucinda Williams, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Ryan Adams. My favorite is the track used as the series theme song, Bad Things by Jace Everett. Everett appeared on the Tonight Show to promote the album in December.

Photographer Peter Ashworth has published a portfolio of his work online at http://www.ashworth-photos.com. The site includes several iconic album covers. Most of them require no captions. It is great to find out who photographed these images.

There are photos of many other artists on the website, including Morrissey, Erasure, and The Clash.

I plan on doing one New and Notable post a day. However, I stumbled on the new Bob Sinclar album Born in 69 today. I especially love the first single Lala Song featuring Sugarhill Gang. I have to warn you that it is very catchy. If you watch the video, you won’t be able to get the “la la la la la” refrain out of your head.

Warrior’s Dance is the second single from The Prodigy’s latest album Invaders Must Die. The video and remix CD was released on iTunes on May 19. I really like the album and the video for Warrior’s Dance has some very creative animation.

Here is the Warrior’s Dance video:

A new book claims that John Lennon sold his soul to the devil and that clues can be found through hidden messages in album covers. The Lennon Prophecy: A New Examination of The Death Clues of the Beatles by Jospeh Niezgoda isn’t the first book that examines the possibility that rock stars make a pact with the devil in order to achieve fame and fortune. It is also true that crazy people have been seeing satanic messages on the covers of rock albums since the 1960s. 

Most of us are familiar with the urban legend about satanic messages that can be heard when certain rock albums are played backwards. “Oh, Satan I love you!” is supposed to be recorded backward (the term for this is backmasking) on Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. Most of these rumors have been debunked. However, some artists have included backwards tracks on their albums as a parody of the paranoia of this belief.

A book review on the blog Letters On Pages gives you a good idea of what The Lennon Prophecy has to offer:

Anyway…the point of the book was to use clues from Lennon’s life, lyrics, and music that indicate Lennon sold his soul to the devil. The author comes off a bit crack-potish as he rifles for made up clues. An example is the cover art of a compilation album that was released in 1966. As you can PLAINLY see in the album cover says JOLDIES…which stands for John Ono Lennon Dies. What? You don’t see that? Well…the person’s leg is the J. What? John Lennon’s middle name was not Ono until 1969?  That just shows how subtly clever Satan felt he needed to be in this situation.

There were many funny things in this book…but my favorite is probably the analysis of the Abbey Road rear album cover. Let’s let Niezgoda explain

At the right is the blurry image of a female wearing a blue dress, walking out of a scene. Her identity has never been revealed. She could be, or could be representative of, Satan (devil with a blue dress on)? (emphasis mine)

THAT IS HILARIOUS!!! He is claiming that a 1966 Mitch Ryder song was just a set up by Satan so he could very subtly imply that John Lennon sold his soul 3 years later. (On a side note - that’s a fun song…hard to get out of your head.)

In response to my request for Father’s Day theme album covers, reader Michael suggested Cat’s In The Cradle by Harry Chapin. I actually found the cover online. In addition, I found a cover of the song by Ugly Kid Joe.

Harry Chapin - Cat’s In The Cradle and Other Hits
Posted by: zeefritz

Ugly Kid Joe - Cat’s In The Cradle (Single)
Posted by: zeefritz

Thanks for the great suggestion, Michael. If anyone else has a Father’s Day album cover that they would like to see listed, please leave a comment. I know that this is a difficult theme and we don’t have very many readers at this early stage. Any assistance and participation is greatly appreciated.

The French alternative rock band Phoenix are set to release their new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix on Monday. This is the band’s fifth album. You my have seen them perform on Saturday Night Live on April 4.

Here is the video for Lisztomania:

The few of you who are the first to read this blog during our debut week have undoubtedly noticed that I am partial to Pop and Electronic music — especially 1980s and 1990s era artists.

I would like the focus of this blog to be more eclectic, but I need your help.

If you would like me to feature one of your favorite artist in New and Notable, please leave a comment. I prefer to feature albums and singles that have a video posted on YouTube that can be embedded. (Many record labels to not allow embedding of their artists’ videos.)

 I also welcome requests from agencies and record labels. Just let me know if you have something you want to share.

Pop singer Jimmy Somerville has just released a new album called Suddenly Last Summer. During the 1980s, Somerville was the lead singer for the groups Bronski Beat and Communards. He had a rather successful solo through the 1990s.

I have been a big fan of Jimmy Somerville since I first heard Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy and Why? over 25 years ago. Those of you who are familiar with Somerville’s amazing vocals will not be disappointed by Suddenly Last Summer. My favorite track has to be Somerville’s version of the Pasty Cline classic Walking After Midnight. It makes me want to go out and do very bad things.

Sunday, June 21 is Father’s Day and I’m looking for the top Father’s Day album covers. I’ll start the ball rolling with a few suggestions of my own.

If you have a favorite Father’s Day-related album cover, let me know by posting a comment. The song does not have to have anything to do with fatherhood or Father’s Day. Artwork that depicts fatherhood is equally acceptable.

Graffiti Soul is Simple Minds 15th studio album. The band just celebrated their 30th anniversary last year. It is hard to believe that they have been around so long — and that I was still a teenager when they made their debut.

The first single from Graffiti Soul is called Rockets. To be quite honest, I’m not that crazy about it. I’m hoping the rest of the album has a bit stronger sound. Rockets certainly can’t be compared to Alive and Kicking — always an ’80s favorite.

Here is the video for Rockets:

I often describe myself as a font geek. I have literally thousands of them. Some of my favorites are retro fonts from a foundry called Font Diner. You’ve probably seen their fonts used in advertisements and on product labels. Font Diner fonts have also been used by the designers of album covers. Here are a few examples:

This album cover uses a font called Chowderhead from Font Diner’s County Fair Picnic font set. This font is one of my favorites from the Font Diner collection. Check out some of the others in the set.

This album cover features Al’s Motor Inn from Font Diner’s In-Flight Meal font set. I have seen this particular font used several times on other album covers.

The font used on the album cover is called Leisure Script. It is part of Font Diner’s Casino Buffet font set. It is a nice script with a cool retro look.

If you’re a fan of American Idol, you probably had a favorite to win this year’s competition. Mine was Adam Lambert. So, I am a little disappointed that he didn’t win. Yet, between the two finalists Adam was the one who needed the title less in order to have huge success in the recording industry. We have not heard the last of him.

Judging by the two singles released on iTunes tonight, I think Lambert’s A Change Is Gonna Come is vastly superior to Allen’s weak performance of What’s Going On.

 

The new album by The Crystal Method, Divided By Night, was released last week. I am a fan of electronic music and I must say that I am really enjoying this album. 

Here is the video for the single Drown In The Now:

Is the imagery too subtle or is it me? I was just reading an article about M83 that mentions that the cover of their album Saturdays = Youth is an homage to “Breakfast Clubbers”?

The tour is particularly apt given that as much as Saturdays is a tribute to youth, it’s also an homage to the ’80s, from Cocteau Twins and Tears For Fears to the John Hughes pantheon (just check out the gang of Breakfast Clubbers on Saturdays album cover).

I like the album and I recalled seeing the album art for the first time. Nothing about it made me think of “Breakfast Clubbers” (we called them the Brat Pack in my day) except maybe the girl who looks a bit like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink.

 

Am I missing something here? I guess these covers could represent how many young people view the 1980s. But, I certainly didn’t look at them and see kids from a John Hughes movie!

I find the whole thing a bit odd. I really liked the cover of the album and the covers of the various singles before I read about what the concept is supposed to be. Perhaps I need to rent a few John Hughes movies for a refresher course in ’80s pop culture and fashion.

Now, they kind of leave me cold.

Here’s something that made me laugh out loud. It is a YouTube video of an Eminem fan cracking open the new album Relapse for the first time. Everything is recorded for posterity — from the opening of the jewel case to paging through the booklet.

This is interesting. According to news articles, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse are giving away their new album online as a free download due to a legal dispute with their record label. Not wanting to waste the David Lynch photographs that were intended to be used as album art, they are selling a blank CD that includes the booklet.

http://www.dnots.com/

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse unveil new album - a blank CD-R!

The duo are encouraging fans to download their forthcoming album from an illegal filesharing network, as an undisclosed legal dispute with EMI prevents them from releasing it

Dark Night of the Soul, the hotly anticipated new album by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, will be “released” as a blank recordable CD with a note encouraging fans to download it from an illegal filesharing network. Although the album can be heard through an authorised internet stream, it will not receive an official physical or digital release, the group have announced, due to an unspecified legal dispute with EMI.

[…]

Unable to purchase the music, fans are encouraged to buy the project’s accompanying book, with photographs by filmmaker David Lynch, which comes with a blank recordable CD-R.

Continue reading…

Butterfly Boucher is probably best known for her duet of Changes with David Bowie on the Shrek 2 movie soundtrack. She’s just released a new single called Gun for a Tongue. The video appeared on YouTube a few a weeks ago.

I ran across this news article today about a 73-year-old owner of a country music radio station who designs album covers — for a British rock band!

KRIM owner also designs album covers

Wednesday, 20 May 2009 10:26

By Carolyn Wall
Gazette Correspondent

At 73 years young, Steve Bingham, owner of KRIM-FM, is still having fun.

The Rim Country’s own KRIM was the first radio station to play the 2008 International Songwriting Competition’s first prize song, “Worlds Away, Yards Apart”, by the group Hiding in Public. Bingham also created the album cover for “Worlds Away, Yards Apart”, the second cover he has done for the English rock group.

“What makes it interesting is the fact that this is a very up-and-coming group,” Bingham said.

Continue reading…

This just demonstrates the diversity of the artists, photographers, and graphic designers who create album covers. Bingham’s photography is pretty amazing. You can view his work online at http://www.dustylens.com/.

Here are the covers:

The Liberty of Norton Folgate, the new album by Madness, has just been released in the U.K. The first single is a catchy little song called Dust Devil. 

 

Here’s the video for Dust Devil:

There are lots of lists of the “worst album covers” published in newspapers, magazines, and online. Personally, I’ve always found most of them to be disappointing. They almost never include the really bad album covers — the ones that are responsible for a loss of sales and maybe even the demise of a recording career.

Over the next few months, I will be asking the readers of this blog to nominate album covers that they feel are the worst ever. I want the AlbumArtExchange list to be the most comprehensive and include high quality scans of each and every cover.

I will begin with my nominee, David Karsten Daniels’ Sharp Teeth:

Posted by: zeefritz 

Just read the review from iTunes:

Any discussion of Sharp Teeth generally begins with some mention of the cover art, which depicts a bearded, razor-toothed young man devouring the innards of a likewise hairy and sharp-toothed woman in the middle of a snowy wilderness. For better or worse, the music itself isn’t as gruesome as the cover might imply. David Karsten Daniels turns out to be a pretty gentle guy: a folky indie singer/songwriter along the lines of Chris Garneau, Sparklehorse, or Sufjan Stevens… 

The main purpose of album cover art is to sell the album. Since cannibalism really has nothing to do with Sharp Teeth and “folky indie” music in general, this cover didn’t do the job. The fact that it became the focus of the iTunes review demonstrates the problem.

What album covers do you think qualify as the worst ever? Why? Post a comment and let me know which covers should be included. Just make sure that the cover is part of the AlbumArtExchange collection. 

I read this article a few months ago and couldn’t wait to write about it on the new AlbumArtExchange blog. Graphic designers Peter Saville and Peter Blake have declared album art to be a dead art form.

What I find interesting is that this is coming from two men who are from very progressive generations. Yet, they can’t see that album art as a digital medium has unlimited potential.

Album Art Declared Dead

Peter Saville, the designer responsible for the covers of albums by Roxy Music and New Order, has declared the art form to be dead.

Speaking to the Independent On Sunday, Saville blamed the introduction of CDs and then mp3 players, for the decline in popularity of cover art.

[…]

Sgt. Pepper’s designer Sir Peter Blake, echoed Saville’s comments: “It (album art) survived from the LP to the CD, but… if that becomes obsolete then I guess album art won’t exist. I think it would be a big loss.”

Read the entire article…

The fact is, we still need album art to identify and catalog our music. I am sure that will always be the case. How else could you browse through your iTunes collection or glance at your iPod to see what’s playing?

What artists must do is figure out news to adapt to the changes. Saville and Blake are stuck in the world of printed materials. They don’t understand that ink and paper are already a thing oif the past.

I predict that we will soon see Flash animations introduced into album cover art. They could even be mini movies. Currently, I stream music from my computer to my HDTV via Tivo. If I could also display high resolution album art on the screen, I would be thrilled. If something like that becomes standard, we will probably see a new widescreen format for album art.

What do you think? Is album art a dead medium? Or are we on the verge of a renaissance?

Industry is a new Irish pop group that will be making their debut with the single My Baby’s Waiting on June 19. It has been a long time since we’ve seen a trendy boy/girl foursome on the pop music scene.

Posted by: zeefritz

Check out the video which debuted on YouTube last month:

Via Chart Rigger.

The United States has a long history of censoring album covers. Typically, retailers will object to a cover being displayed on their shelves and the record companies respond by either changing the cover or placing a sticker over the offending part of the cover.

One of the most controversial banned covers is John Lennon’s Unfinished Music, No. 1: Two Virgins — commonly called the Two Virgins album. The album features John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono in full frontal nudity.

As could be expected, the Two Virgins cover created a huge controversy. Retailers sold it in a brown paper wrapper and thousands of copies were confiscated as obscene material by local police across the country.

Eventually, an alternate cover was created for the album that showed the nude couple in a much more modest pose.

In spite of the publicity, the album was not a chart topper. However, it continues to be known as one of the most contorversial album covers of all time.

The reissued CD features a brown paper insert that simulates the brown paper wrapper in which the LP was forced to be sold.

So far, neither the reissue cover nor the alternate cover have been added to the collection.

There are many more album covers that have been banned or censored over the years. From time to time, we’ll do a feature on a particular cover. If you have one in mind that you think should be featured here, leave a comment.

Every now and then, we run across an album cover that looks familiar. That shouldn’t be too surprising. There are only so many original concepts and hundreds of album covers being produced every week. Therefore, variations on a theme is a very likely topic for this blog.

 
There are lots of album covers with people on TV screens.

 
How many times have you seen an artist turned into a doll?

 
Ah, the old “Goldfinger” treatment.

There would be no album covers without the thousands of artists and graphic designers who create them. From time to time, we will feature the work of specific artists who have contributed to the special genre of album cover design. We’ll display some of their most notable designs and give you a little information about who they are and what they do.

Peter Max is a German-born American poster artist who became famous for his “psychedelic” posters during the 1960s. Max has designed numerous notable album covers over the last four decades. His latest is for Quartet Live, a Jazz album by Gary Burton, Pat metheny, Steve Swallow, and Antonio Sanchez.

Posted by: zeefritz

Unfortunately, Max is best known for an album cover that he had nothing to do with, The Beatles Yellow Submarine. Heinz Edelman was the artist behind Yellow Submarine. Yet, Max is frequently credited as the artist.

Posted by: Music Hog

A few other famous album covers by Peter Max include, Badfinger Say No More, Aretha Franklin Through The Storm, Yes Talk, and Alice Coltrane with Strings World Galaxy.

     

Many of these classic album covers have yet to be added to the AlbumArtExchange collection. If you have a Peter Max cover in your collection, upload it and let us know.

Pet Shop Boys released the video for their new single Did You See Me Coming? on YouTube on Thursday. Pet Shop Boys is one of the most popular bands on AlbumArtExchange with 175 album covers uploaded.

Two CD singles and a bundled set are scheduled to be released on June 1st in the U.K. The album covers have not been uploaded to AlbumArtExchange at this time. Who will be the first to scan and upload these covers?

    

Here is the video:

JT (1977)
Posted by: ptrainer

Covers (2008)
Posted by: zeefritz

Welcome to my our blog powered by Movable Type. My name is Fritz (user zeefritz on AlbumArtExchange) and I will be the editor in chief here on the AlbumArtExchange blog. What that means is that I will be using the album art that you upload to AlbumArtExchange as a basis for fun and entertaining articles.

We’ve got a lot of great ideas for regular features, such as contests for the best and worst album covers in numerous categories and much more.

As of today, the AlbumArtExchange has a collection of over 40,000 covers. And the collection is growing every day. The collection features just about every kind of musical genre from 10,000 Maniacs to ZZ Top.

All of us here at AlbumArtExchange have one thing in common — we love album art. Some of us have backgrounds in graphic design. Some are musicians themselves. Others are historians who know just about everything about album covers.

What I want most of all is for this blog to be a collaboration between people who have eclectic tastes and a willingness to share. If you have ideas or suggestions regarding the blog, please leave a comment.