Fun and Games Category

Pop icon Madonna shocked the world today by revealing controversial artwork for her latest single, Gang Bang. Madonna appears on the cover in what many fans initially mistook for pro-environmentalist commentary. The cover photograph shows her on what appears to be a big game hunt and kneeling next to the body of an endangered African Elephant (below).

However, Madonna's publicist was quick to issue a statement that the photograph was taken while his client was managing her successful ivory poaching business in Cameroon.

Madonna has been a major supplier of ivory to the world for over 25 years. The cover is her way of coming out to her millions of fans about her involvement in this important international enterprise. When people learn the truth about how ivory helps feed and clothe the needy of Africa, they will realize what a great humanitarian service Madonna performs.

The statement continued with the admission that 90% of Madonna's wealth is due to trade in ivory. "You really didn't think she got that rich from selling her crappy music, did you?" said editor of Madonna World magazine Matthew Richardson. "All true Madonna fans know that she's really a bitch who loves high caliber weapons and killing animals."

The Birthers: S/T

The Birthers are an American pop music band that was founded in 2008 in order to perform during presidential campaign rallies of Hillary Clinton. The band broke up after Clinton failed to get the Democratic nomination. However, the band soon reformed with a new group of musicians devoted to the McCain/Palin campaign.

Most critics panned the band's music as a throwback to earlier sounds of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Pat Boone and Mitch Miller. In spite of poor reviews, the band's albums continued to sell to largely white, Midwestern and Southern audiences.

By late 2010, it was clear that The Birthers had carved out a niche in the music industry. They marketed their recordings as being "performed by real Americans" and included copies of band members' official birth certificates in all of their recording packages.

The band's single Show Us the Birth Certificate reached #3 on the Billboard Top 40 chart in February 2011. In March of that year, billionaire reality TV show star Donald Trump selected the song as a potential 2012 presidential campaign theme.

My friend Lindy just emailed me a hilarious Photoshop of Lady Gaga's Born This Way album cover in response to my request for submissions to start a Ride Lady Gage Intermet meme. It is a combination of the Born This Way and Weezer's 2009 album Raditude. Since Weezer created a Photoshop meme with the Raditude cover, this is a very appropriate mash up.

Pop culture blog Dlisted may have started something by posting an image of Paula Dean (right) riding what they are calling the "Cacacycle" as an illustration for a very harsh review of the album cover for Born This Way. I think I will call it the "Gagacycle" instead.

The cover is getting a very bad reaction from all but Lady Gaga's loyal fans. Even many of them are insisting that the cover is a late April Fool's Joke. One fan tweeted, "This is what happens when record labels don't hire graphic designers."

I am certain that we will be seeing many Photoshopped versions of the cover in the days to come. I can just imagine which celebrities are going to be seen riding the Gagacycle. Charlie Sheen? Sarah Palin? Donald Trump?

I am not going to miss the opportunity to place myself on the back of the Gagacycle. Here is my own contribution to the fun and games. If you decide to make your own, upload it to the AAX Facebook page and share it with the world. I would love to get a collection of these going.

Yesterday, I was really just joking when I wrote about creating an Internet Photoshop meme similar to the one found on the blog Album Tacos. I posted the cover of Shakira's new single, Loca, with an ice cream cone added to the image (right).

The Album Tacos blog has now been written about on numerous popular websites, including Huffington Post. The unfortunate thing about the blog is that they do not accept submissions. How bogus is that?

So, I am going to start Album Cones. It is simply a rip off of Album Tacos that uses ice cream cones instead of tacos. Perhaps ice cream cones aren't quite as absurd as tacos, but I think that there are just as many people who love cones as those who love tacos.

Check out the first batch of Album Cones. (Click images for larger view.)

If you want to participate in the AAX Album Cones meme, submit your image along with the AAX links to the original cover image in the AAX gallery (if possible) via e-mail to blog@albumartexchange.com. You must also include your name or AAX forum username.

I will publish Album Cones as I receive them. I will not guarantee that your image will be published (but I'm not going to be too picky).

If you've got a PC and you're an album art enthusiast, you've probably envied the iTunes screensaver that your friends with Macs enjoy. If that's the case, Crayon Room's Album Art Screensaver is the best PC album art screensaver that I've found.

The screensaver is available as a free download on the Crayon Room website. The programmer asks for a Paypal donation from those who enjoy the software.

Visit the Crayon Room Website

I am using the screensaver with Windows Vista and iTunes 9. The images load quickly and the number of the rows of albums displayed can be changes to increase or decrease the size of the images.

I have a large monitor, so I chose to display eight rows of covers. You can also select various transitions for the covers. I am careful about installing software on my computer. I Googled Crayon Room and didn't find anything that would raise a red flag.

I recently discovered a fun online tool called Image Mosaic Generator that allows used to upload photographs and convert them into images rendered from millions of tiny photos. I couldn't resist uploading a few classic album covers to see how they would turn out (click the images for a larger view).

David Bowie - Black Tie, White Noise

Michael Jackson - Thriller

The Beatles - Abbey Road

The only thing that could make this any better would be if the tiny images were actually other album covers. Hmmm, perhaps that is something that should be discussed with the developer.

If you’re looking for some great Halloween sounds to play for the trick or treaters tomorrow and you don’t have a lot of time to make your own mix, consider downloading some classic horror radio programs featuring Vincent Price and Boris Karloff. These radio shows are more interesting than the typical Halloween sound effects CD and fun for the whole family.

A 23-minute track of Boris Karloff’s Death for Sale is available on Amazon.com for only 99 cents. The program features spooky sound effects and the unmistakable and creepy voice of Boris Karloff. This is a real bargain.

Also, available on Amazon.com is Witchcraft & Magic by Vincent Price. It features 14 tracks for $8.99 or selected tracks can be purchased for 99 cents each. It isn’t quite the deal as the Karloff album, but it is still worth the Price (pun intended).

AAX blog regular and friend Lindy sent me a great shot of her living room with the DuckyInferno Weezer Raditude cutout Photoshopped on it. This cover makes it look like Sidney the dog is getting some serious air!

UPDATE: Here’s an absolutely brilliant Raditude cover from AAX blog reader Michael! This one has to be the best on on the Web right now. If anyone else has one to share, please send it to blog@albumartexchange.com.

UPDATE #2: New AAX blog visitor David sent me the following Raditude cover, daring me to post it. He don’t know me very well, do he? Seriously, this one is hilarious. Sidney dancing in a gay nightclub. Brilliant!

David Medsker’s Cover Me game is up and running at Popdose. Pop on over and see if you can identify the album cover fragments.

   

Cover Me, Game Thirty-Six

by David Medsker

Below are magnified fragments of album covers. Most of them are well-known albums, but there are a few obscure covers (or lesser-known albums from well-known artists) mixed in to keep you honest. You must guess both the artist and album cover. In order to keep things simple, live albums, soundtracks and singles compilations will not be used, and with all apologies to our European and Japanese friends, we are going with the covers that appeared in the US record stores…back when we had record stores. Sigh.

Friend and AlbumArtExchange blog regular Michael sent me the following photograph with the caption “We’d never see Fritz again!”

He’s probably right. If I were to be turned loose in a room like this with a scanner, I would want to scan every CD on the shelves. I know that there are people who have collections like this. I don’t know the story behind the photo or whether or not it is a private collection. I own about 1,000 CDs and they take up about 10 three-foot shelves. Just imagine how many are in this room!

Look what I found on Flickr this evening. A very talented artist who goes by the handle Littlepixel™ has taken several classic album covers and reinterpreted them as Pelican paperbacks. They’ve gotten quite a bit of attention and have been featured by B3ta, MusicRadar, Wired, GQ, Design Week, and Drawn. Check out the entire set.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/littlepixel/sets/72157594269138651/

I’m not really sure why this concepts works, but it certainly does. I think it could have something to do with all of those years I worked as a bookstore manager. 

Here’s a fun way to kill time. I stumbled upon an Internet meme called the CD Cover Meme.

http://covermeme.com

Here are the rules:

Make your band’s album cover meme:

1. Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
   or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
   or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
   or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together. Remember this is Album/CD art, so keep it square. Images need to be 500 pixels x500 pixels or larger.
5. Email image, band name, album title to post - at - covermeme.com. Optionally include attribution and links for the image and for yourself to be used in the public posting one this site. We will not use your name or address from your email. Only information you specifically share in the body of the email.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Name of Band: Nowy Wiączemin

2. Title of Album: life enables us to disregard them

3. Photo:

I tweeked the photo in Photoshop just a bit. I figured a band called Nowy Wiączemin would be a little bit avant garde and industrial. It was also difficult to find a font that includes that “a” with the little tail. So, I had to go very basic.

Try it. Then, go look at some of the other covers that have been submitted. I don’t think the one I’ve posted here is cool enough to submit. I’ll have to keep trying.

This is too much! There’s a thread going on over at FARK.com of famous album covers that have been Photoshopped into ad parodies. There are literally dozens of them.

Photoshop theme: Turn an album cover into an advertisement

Here are a few of my favorites.

How good are you at recognizing album covers? David Medsker at the pop culture blog Popdose a regular game that challenges players to identify album covers based on a small fragment of the cover.

Here are a couple of examples from this week’s game:

Think you’re up to the challenge? There are 25 images like this including a bonus “puzzle cover.” If you like these kinds of games, pop on over to Popdose.

Cover Me, Game Thirty-Five 

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.