RIP Jay Reatard (May 1, 1980 – January 13, 2010). This post was written before his tragic death and we were going to edit it (as it reads a little tasteless now). However, on reflection, we felt that this post was a suitable tribute to Jay’s formidable talent.

I was at a play the other week about an alcoholic 28-year old creative director who has it all but throws it away because of his addiction. The sick thing is that instead of feeling for his plight as his life spiraled further out of control, I found myself resenting how much he had to lose. “I’m 28” I thought, “How come I don’t own an apartment with harbour views?”

You know you’re getting older when you find yourself comparing your age with those that have achieved more.

So it is with Jay Reatard (born Jimmy Lee Lindsey), the precocious and prolific punk rocker that started making music when he was barely 15. He has since played with The Reatards, The Lost Sounds, The Bad Times, The Final Solutions, Shattered Records and the Angry Angles before releasing his first solo album in 2006.

Imagine my horror when I discovered that he was born in 1980. While that still makes him slightly older than me I’m unlikely to bridge the gap in a matter of months. Particularly as I can’t play an instrument.

And yet I can find it in my heart to muster goodwill for Reatard, largely because his one-man garage punk revival gave 2008 the soundtrack it so badly needed.

Remember back in ’08? After the bankers had sucked our coffers dry and we woke up to find that in our drunken state we hadn’t only started dressing like it was the eighties, we even managed to out-do that decade’s horrific penchant for unsustainable excess. But at least as we threw our harem pants and ray-bans in the bin and joined the unemployment queue, we had Reatard’s raw, essential music to remind us that it doesn’t take much to make things of beauty.

Reatard and his label Matador also found an incomparably terrific way to release his rough and ready pieces of punk-pop goodness. Throughout the year they released six limited edition 7”, all of which sold out upon release. Interestingly, aside from the circular mnemonic and consistent typography, the sleeves are all unique and distinctive.

While Reatard made this feverish creative output look and feel effortless, on the cover of the resulting compilation we see the exhausted reality. Weighed down by his singles, with vinyl crawling up the wall, the sweaty and uncomfortable musician looks much more than his 28 years. Serves him fucking right.

This is the fourth in our series of five seminal album covers by female artists

Parallel Lines, the third album by Blondie, was released in late 1978. By 1979, when they were finally huge in the States, the band felt the need to start a “Blondie is a Group” button campaign. Even for those discovering the band’s considerable appeal today, it’s so easy to think of Blondie as Debbie Harry and her backing band.

This is of course disrespectful to the musicians that created some of the best pop songs of all time – but it probably has more to do with Harry’s diaphanous star quality than any shortcoming on behalf of the others. A talented songwriter, confident performer and irresistible vocalist, she’s one of those few that manage to genuinely walk the: “women want to be her, men want to be with her” tightrope. As Rolling Stone puts it, she “invented a new kind of rock & roll appeal that brought New York demimonde style to the mainstream”. I was reading a book about the birth of hip hop which suggested that if graffiti tributes were the measure, then Harry was certainly the number one sex-symbol in the Bronx.

When Parallel Lines was being recorded, Blondies’ Machiavellian manager Peter Leeds was well aware who his meal ticket was. “I was not fond of Peter” Harry told Q magazine “He told the boys that they could all be replaced, I was the only important one.” While the cover for Parallel Lines is widely regarded as an iconic classic, ironically for the band it’s a symbol of manipulation and contributed to the dropping of Leeds as manager. “I don’t think it’s a great design, personally” says Harry.

The story revealed in Q’s “The 100 Best Record Covers of All Time” is really interesting and not at all what you’d expect. Apparently the band were sold on the idea that they would fade in and out of the stripes, which was the one element they liked. The facial expressions – Harry’s sexy as hell scowl contrasted with the guys’ goofy grins – were also Leeds’ idea. According to Harry, he tricked them into pulling the expressions once and then proceeded to make the cover without showing them.

“Everyone just flipped out” Harry said “We were shocked that the artwork had been completed without our approval and that the decision had been made without the band.”

It was the final straw and Leeds was replaced by Alice Copper’s manager Shep Gordon. But at least the duo-chromatic cover, with the guys either predicting Reservoir Dogs or remembering the mod craze of the 60’s, featured the whole band. Singles artwork would be even more selective.

Much has been made of Harry’s influence on future female artists but it’s also interesting to see the “Blondie is a Group” dilemma replayed with such striking regularly. Should a band with a charismatic female lead singer resent the fact that she gets the lion’s share of the attention – or just be grateful for the attention?

Or is this just something that many bands have to deal with regardless of gender – after all, when most people think of Blur isn’t it Damon Albarn that comes to mind?

This is the second in our series of five seminal album covers by female artists

A lot of us have wanted to put Bono in his place from time to time. On the weekend I was reading a disturbing feature story on Bono, depicting him walking through Washington’s corridors of power, seemingly without the need for security clearance; every door on both sides of politics open to him. Fawning politicians lined up to tell the reporter that “you couldn’t say no to Bono”. Bono – who so happily mistakes record buyers for constituents and hates poverty as much as he does taxes – was depicted as half-saint, half-pop star.

So you would it would think it would have come as some honour when in 1997 Bono introduced Smith at a music magazine award ceremony as a “sister, lover, and mother”. Instead, accepting the award she said: “I’m not your mother, Bono. Do your own dirty work. Fuck you.” She later told NME that she found the statement “presumptuous”.

I recycle this minor controversy because this formidable attitude is embodied by the cover of Smith’s 1975 debut Horses. It’s an album that contains the unforgettable opening gambit: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” and forever cemented her reputation as the godmother of punk.

A keen proponent of independent theatre and performance poetry, she moved to New York in the late 60’s. Shortly afterwards she met art student Robert Mapplethorpe and by 1970 they were sharing the smallest room in the legendary Chelsea Hotel.

“We used to stay up all night,” Mapplethorpe said, “and she would do her thing and I would do my thing, and then we’d take a break and smoke a cigarette and look at each other’s work.”

Mapplethorpe ended up making his mark as a photographer and I remember studying the controversy his work caused in university. By the 80’s his main theme was interracial homoeroticism, which naturally baited the “moral majority” so empowered by Reagen’s ascendancy.

(Why this shot wasn’t used as the sleeve for the 80’s hit Ebony and Ivory I’ll never know.) His confronting work inspired a heated debate about government funding for the arts, of which Mapplethorpe was a recipient.

But before all the furor, in 1975, he had only just acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and started taking photographs of his friends and acquaintances. In the case of this image, the same sense challenge to gender norms is present. The man’s suit and defensive posture work at contrast with the confidence of Smith’s gaze and the delicacy of her hands to create something new. This isn’t the glam, make-up wearing, cross-dressing androgyny that Bowie had popularised.

Taken with only natural light, the cover emphasises a stark reality. The record company tried to touch the photo up and remove Smith’s hairy upper lip but she wasn’t having it.

There’s also an electric sense that this was the last moment of quiet before both Mapplethorpe and Smith lost their anonymity. They would both see plenty more hotel rooms in their high-profile lives, but never the shared poverty, intimacy and inspiration of the Chelsea Hotel.

Mapplethorpe died of AIDS complications in 1989 (various prayer circles probably high-fived) and in 1996 Smith wrote a book called The Coral Sea dedicated to her dear friend.

Today she still continues to record, write poetry and tour. As Bono very graciously responded after her outburst in 1997, “she never let’s you down.”

This record cover from 1981 is a homage to Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (“The Lunch on the Grass”).

The large scale oil on canvas painting by Edouard Manet was finished in 1863 and caused instant controversy, due to the scandalous combination of a naked women next to two fully dressed men. Their casual, relaxed demeanor underscores the pervading sense of weirdness the canvas exudes – particularly for its era. While today it looks like a relatively tame juxtaposition, at the time it was a provocation to say the least. Of course, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe can now be found in the venerable Musée d’Orsay in Paris and is an important part of any syllabus discussing the modern art period.

Bow Wow Wow, meanwhile, are now little more than a footnote of the 1980’s New Wave movement. They were founded by Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols and New York Dolls, to promote the New Romantic fashion lines he released with partner Vivienne Westwood. McLaren must be one of the great post-modern operators of the last fifty years, an artist and promoter that combined aggressive opportunism with a sharp eye for the next big thing. To put together this band he stole most of the lineup from Adam Ant and then auditioned vocalists to join as the lead singer. After many fruitless months he eventually discovered his vocalist in 14 year old Annabella Lwin, who was working behind the counter at a dry-cleaning shop. The band would go on to create an eccentric and noisy combination of 80’s pop and world music and today they are most remembered for their amazing cover version of “I Want Candy”.

Note Lwin’s nudity in the single cover above, because it was McLaren’s enthusiasm for showing his lead singer in the buff that would land the band in trouble. She was only 15 years old when the photography for the cover of See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. was taken. Her outraged mother cried exploitation and involved Scotland Yard in an attempt to keep her daughter from leaving the country with McLaren. After all, who would let their underage child be sexualised just to sell records?

McLaren’s powers of persuasion resulted in a compromise, with Lwin able to remain in the band on the condition that she was not marketed as a “sex kitten”. An alternate cover was issued in the US and UK (while the offending cover art was still released in many major European markets).

Bow Wow Wow would attract further controversy for “referencing” African music a little too closely – with many suggesting that it came closer to plagiarism. And in more than one case you could accuse them of unoriginiality.

But the cover for See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. is still considered a classic today. The composition and photography are beautiful and the performances and fashion perfectly update Manet’s iconic image. It also neatly encapsulates McLaren particular genius – in updating a once reviled but now canonised painting, he succeeds in refreshing its controversy. The viewer is again shocked at the woman’s presence in the picture, only this time because of her age.

Is it creepy? Brilliant? Both? Would it even raise eyebrows today?

It’s been a while since i’ve seen any album covers that spins my wheels enough that i feel like talking about it. But when Jason Noto, from the very talented and creative Morning Breath Inc sent us the latest QOSTA cover and all the accompanying artwork, i decided i oughta pull my finger out.

I think it’s worth mentioning that QOTSA’s previous album ‘Lullabies To Paralyze’, although a great album, had one of the worst covers i’ve ever laid eyes on. It looked like someone’s friend had a friend, and that friend had a cousin who did “design”,who took a flaccid stab at it.

So it was a relief to see such a badass cover created for ‘Era Vulagaris’. It’s the kind of cover that you’d want on vinyl, even if you didn’t have an LP player, just so you could look at it in a larger format. The font it perfect, the illustrations remind me of 50′s-60′s drive-in food intermission characters (like the ones playing on the screen behind Danny in ‘Grease’ while he’s banging on about that chick Sandy, who he ain’t banging), except these characters are a pair of skeezy burnout hoods bathed in hot pants pink.

Jason was kind enough to fill us in on the how the cover design came about.

“So here’s a little back story of the QOTSA Era Vulgaris package. We have had a working relationship with their management for some time, working with some of the other artist, etc. The groups manager thought we would be a good match for Josh’s mindset and wanted to get us on board with the Era artwork. We sent them samples of some of our more personal work so the band could vibe off of. Their was a page in our book “The Early Bird” that struck a chord with Josh, it was an illustration of a retro advertising style of beer and cigarette characters.”

“It was at this point that we could share the same appreciation of nostalgia in art, and a sense of fucked up humor. Josh was really into the idea of that bizarre retro vibe and the idea of cute characters that have that underlying purpose of enticing kids to get into fucked up habits. Josh threw a few ideas our way of characters he’d like to see, and we just ran with it. This may be one of the first packages we’ve done that had a true taste of the kind of artwork we love to produce.”

Album back cover and vinyl singles.

Inside Packing Poster

Single covers and inserts.

Massaged fun holes everyone!

Sharks = cool
Zombies = cooler
Zombie Sharks: off the cool radar

That’s how I would have pitched this single artwork to the band. Normally I’d feature the album and then the single artwork but it was this Zombie shark I saw on Neatorama that caught my attention.

Here’s Dan’s words about the album’s art.

“‘Abandon Ship’ was the first thing i worked on for Gallows when they signed to Warner in early 2007, it was the first release coming a few months before the re-release of their album. I had worked on the previous release of the original album, but that was only as the illustrator on part of it, Alex Curtis from Thr33 design took on layout and additional illustrations. For this however the Band and label just gave me free reign to do what i wished, its based on a poster that i had screenprinted for them a few months beforehand, the band liked it so much they wanted to reuse it on the single, but i thought i could do better..and literally just went out to create the ultimate vision of sea based carnage, it was the first time my work would be released on such a huge scale, so i really poured my time into it. The single came on two 7″ vinyls, so we went with a gatefold 7″, with two inner sleeves that housed the 7″s. Basically i tried to keep text to a minimum and go all out with the illustrations. Theres a basic narrative to it as well, the beast attacks the ships on the outside, then we go under water on the inside where he is ripping the ships apart, followed by a full on close up of the beast with the inner sleeves (the two connecting to make a larger image when you put them together)

Following the album release they followed it up with another single ‘In the belly of a shark’, we all decided that the first singles format had worked really well, so we didnt deviate from that, i kept with the nautical theme and simply upped the detail in it, trying to outdo myself basically! The format and narrative is exactly the same. On both releases i tried to keep text to a minimum, all copy is on the innner sleeves, and the title of the single and barcode is on a transparent sticker on the front of the Single, meaning you can remove it to be left with basically just artwork.”

Here’s the extended artwork for the 7″. I want this on my wall. Dan informed me that a poster/print may be coming inthe future.

This is actually the second single from the bands debut album “Orchestra of Wolves”. Originally released in 2005 it was rereleased in 2007, this time by Epitaph records with new cover art and bonus disc.

Here’s the original 2005 album cover.

And the reworked 2007 cover. Which is much nicer. Also the type treament here is now the default Gallows logo.

Both illustrated by Dan Mumford although the 2005 release was designed by Thr33 Designs.

Here is the first single off the album “Abandon Ship” which see’s a giant spiderpus (spider meets octopus) creating havok in the seas.

Make sure to check out the rest of Dan’s work. There’s some great stuff in there. My only gripe after seeing his other work is that his style is so strong that the other covers he’s done with the same style loose their uniqueness. A fan might mistake them for one another.

Here’s the poster Dan mentioned was the basis for the new albums direction. I’m glad he didn’t just crop the poster for the cover.

Dan also sent me some work in progress pieces. No sketches sadly but the original line art before it’s coloured.

Gallows lead signer Frank Carter is probably the angriest gingers I’ve ever seen. And I was too scared to contact the band to ask for their thoughts on the artwork, so I’ve put here what I think the response would be. I tried to stay true to the punk attitude.

Seriously though he’s probably a nice guy, and he’s not letting the fame go to his head. He wants to quit the band and keep doing his passion, tattooing. We’ll see how that goes if the money and groupies start raining down.

One wierd thing I found was the official film clip for “Belly of the Shark” below is different to the one found on this director’s website. Both are shot well and then both have tried to “jazz it up” unscessfully.

And lastly I was able to track down an image of what the transparent stickers look like on the final cover. Here is it on “Abandon Ship” singles both of which look different to what Dan provided us with.

A friend made me realise recently that I don’t know shit about comic art anymore. It’s been years since I actually read a comic book. I LOOK at art now and I can analyse colours and shapes and design principles but its been a while since I actually indentified with a comic as heavily as I did with Peter Bagges’ HATE back in the grubby 90′s.
It was the first big, proper comic I read that seemed to bridge the gap between Marvel/DC and the D.I.Y. auto-biographical, nerdy/druggy fringe comic – zines that I read back then. I moved on to Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware and (debatably) better ‘looking’ comics but aesthetics weren’t really the reason to read HATE for me (although, in hindsight, the artwork is fantastic – it’s a glue sniffing, beer swilling ARCHIE – arms flailing, eyes bulging, spit flying – super exaggerated bends and ripples all over characters’ bodies, oversized heads, eyes, hands and feet).

The reason, back then, for me was that I identified with it – I could quite easily (at least, in my own mind) have been boozer Buddy Bradley with weird arse pals, mental girlfriends and terrible personal hygiene – cruising above a sea of wannabe rock stars, pretentious art students and distant parents with a flick of a fringe and a toke on a fag. The satire of Buddy’s Seattle scene was bang on (consequently nailing a million other ‘scenes’ around the western world) and it was hilarious to boot.

Bagge’s name is often distinguished from other mid 90′s comic artists because of the humour and lack of pretension in his art – it’s more comic book/MAD magazine than contemporary design but these covers for Bagge’s band The Action Suits (he plays the drums and sings) are kind of a commercial nadir for that North American punk-rock, stoner (I’m trying really hard not to say grunge) comic style in the mid 90′s (I’m sure many came before and many after, discovered and undiscovered).
Bagge has said that his style developed from a long line of patronage to 60′s MAD/WEIRD magazine artists like “Don Martin, Al Jaffee, Paul Coker Jr. and Sergio Aragones” and his drawings have been compared to the grotesque caricatures of Basil Wolverton and Robert Crumb.

So maybe he didn’t invent funny eyeballs, wobbly lines and ‘slackers’ but that recognisable hand drawn font and the highly stylised, super-emotive characterisation are certainly hallmarks of all his work and damned if he could draw a picture you didn’t know was his.

The ‘Cancer Father’ and ‘Visualise Ballard’ covers are excellent examples of Bagges’ approach to character, colour, composition and layout. For some reason the minute I see his drawings I still get transported to that period in the 90′s when wankers in bad goatees and flannel everywhere were trying desperately to prove to eager A&R guys how ‘authentic’ and riddled with pain they were. I think Buddy Bradley even managed a band at one stage, (except they were the real deal, naturally).

Nirvana be damned tho’ – Bagge even whipped this cover up for the un-suicidal George Thorogood and compiled his own album of rock/pop from his adolescence (below right) , writing essays on each artist and providing the cover art. Slacker my ass.

Minor Threat are credited with being one of the first hardcore punk rock groups to come out of the USA. Along with Black Flag and Bad Brains, Minor Threat are the band to know and their self-titled record (officially known as “First 2 7″s”) is the one to own. It’s debatable as to whether there weren’t a thousand other hardcore bands of that era of a similar quality and ethos, but no other band was lead by a figure like Ian MacKaye.

It is true that amongst the punk-underground-alternative-independent-etc scene this album cover, a photo of Alec MacKaye (Ian’s brother) asleep after a gig taken by Susie Josephson Horgan, has taken on an almost iconic status. And not without merit.

The strength in the sharpness of the colour and the descending print on the right-hand-side is confronting and satisfying. The bald head, the boots, the second-hand clothes and the garbage on the cement floor leave one in little doubt that, if the scene is not desperate, it is one that reflects a subculture of some sort. And I think the band and the label themselves recognised the power of the image by using it three times:

for the first seven inch

for the above mentioned record, and, finally, for the “Complete Discography” CD release

The iconography was taken to new heights in 1995 with Rancid’s homage cover, from Jess Fischer:

Clealy, the band couldn’t simply ape every aspect of the cover and, what they ended up with is something predictable and lightweight. Using their patented punk-rock spray art aesthetic to brand the sleeve as a Rancid record, it looks exactly like what it is, cheap. (This doesn’t reflect my thoughts about the music. It is, in my opinion, a fine pop record.) It is clear that the strength of the Minor Threat cover is in its simplicity and, in contrast to the Rancid photograph, the closeness of the figure to the camera works to emphasise the severity of the situation and, in that way, shouts “MINOR THREAT!”

A recent controversy took off, when Nike seemed to accidentally borrow the Minor Threat art for their own purposes:

I don’t know that being overly protective of album artwork is useful and constructive, but coming from the idealistic punk standpoint it is to be expected. Personally, I’m unsurprised and unmoved by corporate theft, but would be chuffed nonetheless if the band decide to take action against Nike.

As the debut album for Joy Division it must have been a big decision to go sans text. It’s fortunate Peter Saville had the support of label manager Tony Wilson, featured in 24 Hour Party People, which allowed such great ideas to go ahead. It paid off, it’s minimalist yet still visually interesting. The cover and the music are as timeless and influential as each other.
(Update: fixed my inaccurate info)

I originally thought the lines were sound waves from a track but Wikipedia tells me it’s exactly 100 successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered PSR B1919. Just shows how little I know.

If you’re a mad Joy Division collector check this page for all the versions of the album you can track down and spend thousands on.

Here’s a scan of the original technical illustration from the Cambridge Encyclopaedia Of Astronomy which you can actually still buy on Amazon. I’m not sure if this reduces the “artistic integrity” of the design as it’s really just a scan inversed.

I found these custom NB’s with Unknown Pleasures artwork, more photos here. Pretty sweet but who wears NB’s anyway :)

This has since been shown to be an artist’s homage to Peter Saville (link).

You can also get this as a Threadless shirt here. Although it’s probably sold out like all the good shirts on Threadless.

Update: Tony Wilson died Aug 10 (today) from cancer in Manchester’s Christie Hospital ages 57.

I didn’t get into The Bronx until i heard their second album, The Bronx – II, which is bloody fantastic but with a less impressive cover. I always wanted to like them based on this cover, which reminds me of the horror movie posters of the late 70′s early 80′s. I’d even buy this on vinyl just because it would look sexy in that format and even better as it aged. Unfortunately the inside sleeve and back art is pretty poor and does nothing to continue the style created on the killer cover.

The Sex Pistols’ only official album was released October 28^th, 1977 on Virgin Records. By mid-January 1978, they had broken up, Johnny Rotten quitting at the end of a concert in the US, saying “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” as he walked offstage.

Given the fact that their two and a half year career was the most spectacular PR stunt in music history, semi-controlled by one of it’s most nauseating self-publicists, Malcolm McClaren, maybe there was a little cheating going on. But not by the suitably anarchic artist who designed the cover for “Never Mind The Bollocks” – Jamie Reid.

Reid was working on a radical political magazine called Suburban Press at the time, so really did believe in some of the things McClaren and the Pistols sang and said (they didn’t!). He also believed punk was a legitimate art movement ‘ a movement it turns out, he helped define.

Work on the covers for the first Sex Pistols singles let Reid develop the powerful ransom note and newspaper clipping style that became iconic. First up “Anarchy in the UK” ripped up the sacred British flag on it’s sleeve, then “God Save the Queen” defaced Her Royalness’ likeness just in time for her Silver Jubilee.

The image for which Jamie Reid is best known is this one ‘ covering a monochromatic Queen’s eyes and mouth with slashed newspaper clippings was very naughty at the time, and very clever. It perfectly captured the “fascist regime” sentiments of the song, and pushed an outraged public over the edge.

A couple of singles later, and finally the full album of bollocks landed ‘ a pink and yellow canary on heroin that defined punk visually ever after. Like the music, the design is incredibly simple to the point of being moronic, but before you realise it, you’re staring and dribbling like the rest of them. My own copy of this wonderful record can be seen sideways from 15 feet across the room, a bright sliver of garish light between browns and grays and blacks of covers each side.

Like the Pistols, Jamie’s serious contributions to art and music ended pretty soon after this album came out – now 60 years old and living in Liverpool, he recently said “All that I’ve been doing is re-adapting my work from the late 60′s and early 70′s into different contexts and continuing with the same themes and messages.”

http://www.jamiereid.uk.net/