Things have been pretty quiet around here, we know. But we’re back baby and if you’ve missed your fix of fresh sleeves, the good news is we’re on the job.

“Females”, says British artist Jenny Saville, “are used to being looked at.” As one of the most successful painters of the last two decades, Saville has kept her gaze firmly on the female form.

She made her name with large-scale paintings of almost grotesquely fleshy women. The obsession started during her studies at the University of Cincinnati, where she encountered: “Lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirts.”

The Manic Street Preachers are long-time fans of Saville’s work, having used her painting Strategy on the cover of their third album, 1994’s The Holy Bible.

At that time Richey Edwards was still the band’s lyricist, while Saville was one of the bright stars of the “Young British Artist” movement. Edwards disappeared mysteriously in 1995 and was only declared “presumed deceased” in November 2008.

Journal for Plague Lovers, Manic Street Preachers’ ninth album, is comprised entirely of lyrics that he left behind. Explaining the tribute on their official website, the band said that all “13 songs on the new record feature lyrics left to us by Richey. The brilliance and intelligence of the lyrics dictated that we had to finally use them.”

The band also felt compelled to use Saville’s 2005 painting Stare for the cover. Frontman Jame Dean Bradfield told BBC “We just thought it was a beautiful painting. We were all in total agreement. We just saw a much more modern version of Lucian Freud-esque brushstrokes.”

Inspired by a newspaper cutting, the painting depicts an androgynous girl with a large birthmark on her face. But when presented with the image on a CD cover, Britain’s main supermarket chains saw something else entirely. Thinking that the image depicted a young buy with a bloodied face, they deemed the cover “inappropriate” and refused to carry the album unless it was shipped in a plain slipcover.

Nicola Williamson, Sainsbury’s music buyer, said: “We felt that some customers might consider this particular album cover to be inappropriate if it were prominently displayed on the shelf.”

Having unwittingly contributed a new entry into the pantheon of banned album covers, Bradfield described the situation as “utterly bizarre”. “You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs, but you show a piece of art and people just freak out,” he said.

“A large female body has a power, it occupies a physical space, yet there’s an anxiety about it.” Saville once said of her art, “It has to be hidden.” Many are distressed that the same seems to be the case for a disfigured tomboy.

Journal for Plague Lovers may have been the most controversial cover of 2009, having accidentally sparked a dialogue about art, the body and censorship. You’d like to think that Richey Edwards, known for his highly political songwriting, is smiling somewhere.

This article was first featured in Monster Children Magazine

Is it just me or is all the innovative cover art being done for the least likely bands. Does being popular dictate that you must be safe? Beck would be the only mainstream artists who are doing anything innovative. Moldover, Menomena, ALB, Bright Eyes, Beck and Pine Bender all have innovative covers and yet they would be the bands you’d think would have little budget to do anything but a standard 4 colour jewel case.

Zinplaat’s 4th album Mooi Besoedeling is another innovative album cover. The cover and back are printed with scratch off ink. Like an instant scratchy. The cover appears to be a very simple design and yet hides a very different cover under the ink.

The designers at Fanakalo gave me this brief overview of the covers design.

Zinkplaat is an Afrikaans pop-rock-blues-fusion band from South Africa. The name Zinkplaat is the Afrikaans word for corrugated metal. This, their fourth album comes shrink-wrapped with a scratch-off ink layer on the front and back, as well as a guitar pick to scratch the ink off with. The album’s name ‘Mooi Besoedeling’ translates to ‘Beautiful Pollution’. Their brief was to create a universal artwork that didn’t form one central image, plastered on the front, which serves as a metaphor for the album title.

We responded by creating a colourful collage that represents the band’s various diverse influences coming together to create something new. The silver scratch-off ink resembles corrugated metal and we also designed the actual disc to have the unpressed silver form part of the design. We believe this is a very good functional solution to the fact that a simplistic clean cd cover design stands out most from all the clutter on a store shelf, yet is very boring once bought. We leave the concept open to interpretation, as it can be read as the silver layer being pollution or the fact that by scratching off the ink you ‘damage’ your packaging. However one wants to read the album as a concept, at least it’s very interactive seeing as people seem to love the scratch-off ink…

I have a copy of the album with me (I requested it ASAP after seeing the video below) but now I’m too precious to scratch it off. Luckily there’s already a good set of photos. I prefer the half scratched off look personally. The random montage of images works best when revealed through frantic scratching. I bet anyone seeing this half scratched cover on my desk at work could not resist having a scratch.

I’d love to get a poster made of this scratch off ink.

The back cover also got the same ink treatment.

I asked Rohan at Fanakalo if the printing was expensive, which for a small band not doing hundreds of thousand copies might be a major issue. Also was it was tough to convince the band to go forward with it?

The band signed off on it immediately because they briefed us wanting something ‘never done before’. We printed through an agent (hybrid media solutions) who outsourced the printing to Asia, so the cost wasn’t ridiculously expensive.

I guess it’s the band are willing to spend the extra money on the final product. When not looking solely at profit, you have the vision to think about the package as a whole (experience and the music) rather than just the $$$.

I also asked what the response has been in South Africa and record shops.

South Africa’s music industry is very small and monopolised (there’s only 2 big stores/franchises) – and the other thing is that Zinkplaat is an Afrikaans band, which makes it even harder for them to get shelf space because they compete directly with international albums. But after printing and selling the first batch the record store ordered an extra batch about 3 weeks after the album was launched, which is quite a feat in SA. Normally the record store doesn’t request music from local artists.

I asked about the language, as this is the first Afrikaans band I have been exposed to. Why not sign in English or is it like Rammstein?

In a country where we know Afrikaans and English we love having music that is only Afrikaans and only we can understand. Afrikaans is also a very beautiful language which is often much more descriptive and poetic than English.

Some bands from south africa worth checking out:
dear reader
aking
new holland
thieve
die heuwels fantasties

All credit to the band for putting the album together but you have to give credit to the designers for creating something which gives the band a point of difference.

I also like the inside band photo by Mark Reitz. I can’t help but think of The Hangover when I see this.

We were also sent some work in progress artwork for what the cover could have been. Rohan said;

the two montages was the direction we went first and realised it was too ‘picture’ – so we went more abstract and got to the final design. the montages sort of ended up being mood boards

And the designers also made a wine label (for the launch party and merch) and T-Shirt design from the cover.

Seeing the wine label gave me an idea, only to find that it had already been done with Wines That Rock. To make it worse the company only launched in October this year. Damn! I should ask for a freebie for pimping it here :)

You can check out more on Zinkplaat on their Facebook page or Myspace page.

It’s the interactivity of the cover that I like. Like all the covers I mentioned at the top of the post, they all give you something to do with the packaging once you hold it in your hands. It’s not just an elaborate packaging job whose sole purpose is to not fit in your CD holder (do people still have CD holders?) This is something you can’t experience just by looking at it. Even the best piece of typography can be experienced by looking at a jpeg however these need to be held, opened and played with.

“One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting.”
Gerhard Richter 1973

The same could probably be said of music.

When Sonic Youth went into a modest New York basement studio in 1988 they baulked at the $1,000 a day fee. Although they’d previously recorded four other albums, they had yet to achieve a national profile and only had limited means. To keep the budget under $30,000 the band worked through the night and rushed some of their takes.

Despite these limitations, it seems they had some inkling that down in their basement they were building a monument. Everything about the finished result announced a bold intent, from the double album format through to its suggestive title. And the cover became central to its iconic status. As Jutta Koether, a German artist and critic, wrote in the liner notes to the 1993 Reissue, “With the inclusion of “high-art” cover-art, it became visually and musically a description of loss and self-doubt.”

After 8 years of Reagan, the candle represents a lone spark of hope and optimism, one that is albeit vulnerable and lonely. Depending on whether you are a “half glass full” or “half glass empty” kind of person, it could either represent the undying hope that Obama evoked or the dwindling remainder of once-great aspirations.

The featured artwork is “Kerze” (candle), a painting by German artist Gerhard Richter.

Facing the complicated question of what to paint at the beginning of his career, Richter instead decided to amass thousands of images taken from photos and clippings. He would pick one, project it onto the canvas and then recreate it in a photo-realistic manner. The distinctive touch that brought him a worldwide following is the “Blur” – the smudging he applies that disrupts the image.

He also went on to create a body of abstract work.

He’s an amazing artist. But by the late 80’s he was also an artist of the establishment, so the band’s decision to use his image was as unexpected as it was inspired. The inside-fold of the sleeve features a portrait of Sonic Youth circa 1988 and they don’t exactly look like they’re on the best galleries’ opening night invite lists yet.

The gap between the value of the Richter’s painting and the income of the “Daydream Nation” was only underscored when “Kerze” went under the hammer at 2008 Sotheby’s auction. Sonic Youth fans watched on gob-smacked as members of Europe’s high society rapidly drove the price up with every bid. It eventually went for over 7 million pounds.

But who needs the painting anyway? For less than $50 you can score a Daydream Nation poster for your wall and the soundtrack to go with it. You’ll find it still sounds pretty relevant.

In WWII, when American soldiers were asked by journalist why they were going to war the standard response was “for Mom and apple pie”.

For some reason the dish of apple pie worked its way into the American consciousness as a representative of all that was wholesome and good about the nation; a reminder of comfort and innocence. Which eventually made it great fodder for those subversives keen to test another American ideal: freedom of speech.

Enter Mom’s Apple Pie, a ten-member band from Ohio that boasted a sound similar to bands like Chicago. They released two albums in the early seventies and, while they achieved a degree of national success, are best known today for their controversial cover art.

At first glance, Mom’s Apple Pie’s self-titled release features cover art that might be at worst ironic. We see an American Gothic style painting, reminiscent of the work of Grant Wood.

While the “Mom” in Wood’s painting looks thoroughly miserable, the Mom on this album cover is instead licking her lips – perhaps in anticipatory delight. Further subverting the image are the large, modern speakers in the background that suggest that this mom likes to rock out while she’s baking. It’s a strong image but not one that lives up to its legendary status until, as the tagline to American Beauty suggest, you “look closer”.

Meet the oozing, bright-red vagina that resulted in this classic cover being banned. However to imagine that the band was outraged or shocked by the ban would be a little naïve.

Roger Force, saxophonist for Mom’s Apple Pie, gives some background: “I remember (Terry) Knight (the head of Brown Bag records) at one of our recording sessions, showing us the cover. He said it was one of his publicity stunts… He had it all planned, the record would get recalled and it would be a big deal. It was 30,000 albums covers that were recalled.”

“I was 19 at the time. My older brother was a two-term Vietnam veteran; I was the one with the long hair. I took that album home to show my parents and – I’m embarrassed. My father looks at it and he says, “well – it’s not that bad.”

While reflecting on what a cool dad Force obviously had, I also can’t help but wonder what it is about penetrating pieces of pie that seems to capture the imagination?

I suppose don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Knight was a true master of publicity and one of the coolest things about his label was that the records really came in a brown paper bag. He said of the Mom’s Apple Pie campaign: “that was some slice of pie, eh? We sent out piping hot apple pies in brown paper bags to all the DJs throughout New York to promote that record. That was a good campaign.”

He had also anticipated the band’s response to the album recall. When the authorities banned the original cover, a second version was promptly released, with the slice space filled by a prison wall and barbed wire. An American flag sat on top, as a tongue-in-cheek critique of censorship in the “land of the free”. Unfortunately I can’t find an image of this alternate cover anywhere but both versions have become eagerly sought-after collector items.

It’s a striking case of cover art that outlives the music. As Force sardonically observed: “I also remember Knight saying “I can take a piece of shit and turn it into gold.” Meanwhile, I’m famous – for an album cover.”

Okay, so here’s the lesson of today’s story: always pick up cool looking hitchhikers.

Illustrator Neon Park (born Martin Muller) was driving from the Mothers of Invention offices, where he’d finally succeeded in getting paid the $250 he was owed for the cover of Weasels Ripped My Flesh. (We’ve previously written a post about the history behind that awesome cover).

He saw a guy called Ivan who, as he tells it, “was hitchhiking in the rain in a tee-shirt, didn’t have a coat. He was getting very wet. He had a guitar with him, stuffed under his shirt. That’s why I picked him up.” As it turned out, Ivan was a songwriter and a friend of Lowell George, the co-founder of Little Feat and an ex-member of Mother of Invention.

“So I was on my way home, and there was this fellow human being in misery, and I picked him up. Almost got hit by a bus doing it. He said I should come with him to Lowell’s… I had my portfolio with me, so Ivan said I should show Lowell my stuff. Little Feat’s first album had just come out. I showed him my stuff and he liked it.” It was the beginning of one of the great collaborations between band and cover artist, as Park went on to create the images for nearly every Little Feat album to follow. At the same time the band’s line up would change constantly.

The first cover Park created for the band was the highly suggestive and very funny Sailin’ Shoes, which took us to an alternate Versallies for a trippy homage to Marie Antionette.

If the relationship between the cover and the title “Sailin’ Shoes” is hard to discern, that’s because when Park began the artwork the album was to be called “I’ll Eat It Here”.

He would get used to this kind of thing – in fact, it only got worse. The album Dixie Chicken was supposed to be called “Handcuffs and Accordians”, which once again explains the dissonance between the cover and the title.

The Dixie Chicken that Little Feat sing about is a southern strumpet who seduces a guy by singing him a song one night. He goes on to marry her and buy her everything she wants (“My money flowed like wine”). Once she grows bored of him, she runs off – but his humiliation isn’t finished.

Then one night in the lobby
Of the Commodore Hotel
I chanced to meet a bartender
Who said he knew her well

And as he handed me a drink
He began to hum a song
And all the boys there at the bar
Began to sing along

As great as the lyrics are, the woman on the cover of Dixie Chicken isn’t the femme fatale who comes to mind. She seems an urban vixen, as moneyed as she is mean and desirable. Much of the humour comes from how highly sexed the image is, with an instrument as neutered as a piano accordion transformed into a phallic, lust-filled object. The giant, pillowy background with its cold blue tones evokes a world that is one giant mattress; a place for endless play.

Park admits that the change of the title really worried him but the cover was much loved nonetheless. And if the visuals didn’t always match the new album titles, they always matched the feel and mood of the music.

Had he been given the brief for an album title “Dixie Chicken”, he may well have put forward one of the feathered females from his well-known duck series.

Park also worked with David Bowie, Dr. John and the Beach Boys and made illustrations for Playboy and National Lampoon. It is a terrible irony that this great illustrator started to notice a numbness in his hands in the early 80’s. It wasn’t until 1992 that he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. His response to the doctor? “I never even played baseball.”

He died a year later, having already assured his legacy.

It’s always good to see the designers behind classic album covers getting critical and commercial recognition. And few designers could boast of a career as celebrated and prolific as Storm Thorgerson.

Taken By Storm: The Album Art of Storm Thorgerson was published by Vision On in 2007. It’s a selection of some of his best work from the past 30 years. The book also spawned a traveling exhibition of the same name.

Sleeve lovers in Brisbane can still catch Taken by Storm, which is showing at Artisan Gallery until August 1.

The same show toured to Sydney at the Global Gallery last December. For more information about this legend of cover art, there’s a nice article in the Courier Mail and an interesting interview that featured in in Time Out Sydney from late last year.

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

Carly Simon lead the life of 70′s dreams. The daughter of Richard L. Simon, a cultural mogul and musician, and Andrea Simon, a civil rights activist and singer, she had the perfect lineage to take a leading part in an era of progression and creative explosion.

She dated Cat Stevens, Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger and Kris Kristofferson before marrying James Taylor, another successful singer-songwriter. In fact so prolific was her list of famous and egocentric ex-boyfriends that it still remains a mystery who she wrote “You’re So Vain” about.

As a multi-award winning chart topper, she was a part of the early 70′s group of important female singer-songwriters that included Carole King and Joni Mitchell.

1975′s Playing Possum was a commercial disappointment and the album that put an end her chart domination. Today it also doubles as one of the most important record covers of all time and a great example of the power of a talented photographer and a brave subject.

Simon’s previous covers had been forgettable, showcasing her good looks and natural appeal in unremarkable settings.

No one expected that one year after Hotcakes the happily-married mother of one would reappear in nothing but negligee, fuck-me boots and a pair of stockings. Oh – and in a rather suggestive pose that brings to mind fellatio.

As it happens, neither did she. Simon arrived at the studio of legendary photographer Norman Seeff wearing an outfit that was consistent with her previous image. As she tells it, after a couple of glasses of wines, “Norman said: ‘Well don’t you have something on under that?”

It all sounds a little creepy – like the beginning of a bad (or possibly really excellent) porno. But keep in mind that this was one of the world’s most famous pop stars: there was no imbalance of power. In the resulting shoot Simon got “caught in the moment. I was dancing, I was all over the place… I was being Martha Graham.”

A transformation from squeaky clean singer to uber-sexualised vixen has become a cliche for many female (and indeed male) pop stars. A couple of raunchy shoots and some suggestive lyrics and you’ve graduated to an “edgy, adult artist.” In 1975 it was something else entirely.

With the cover of Playing Possum, the personally contented Simon embraced her sensuality and gave expression to a key part of herself.

There was no stylist on hand or rack of lingerie to choose from, she simply peeled off a layer and let go. While the front cover’s clenched fists speak of power and containment, the back cover is an equally telling image. Her smile and joy seem far more natural than the previous covers.

Seminal British band The Stone Roses released their self titled debut album in 1989. The cover features artwork by band member John Squire, who was largely responsible for the band’s visual identity.

Squire is an accomplished visual artist who at the time was heavily influenced by Jackson Pollock.

The painting featured on the cover of The Stone Roses is titled Bye Bye Badman, as is one of the songs on the record. Both the song and the painting are about the May 1968 riots in Paris, which explains why the tri-colours of the French flag are featured on the cover.

“Ian (songwriting partner Ian Brown) had met this French man when he was hitching around Europe, this bloke had been in the riots, and he told Ian how lemons had been used as an antidote to tear gas” Squire told Q magazine. “Then there was the documentary – a great shot at the start of a guy throwing stones at the police. I really liked his attitude.”

The riots were the largest general strike to stop an advanced industrial country and it’s amazing how quickly their impact have faded from the public consciousness. Less than 50 years after revolutionaries overthrew the monarchy in Russia, students and workers looked for a moment as though they might overthrow the de Gaulle government. It was a revolt against the modern consumer society, with a utopian left-wing fervour that was as critical of Stalin as it was of capitalism.

It’s hard to imagine such a popular wave of discontent and civil disobedience today, which is probably why The Stone Roses sought to evoke the fury and defiance of that fleeting period. The rioters were not louts or thugs, rather Parisian students that found a poetry amid the aggression. As they ripped up paving stones to throw at police, they saw sand underneath, giving birth to a memorable chant that translates as: “Under The Paving Stones – The Beach”. You’ve got to hand it to French people.

The song Bye Bye Badman features incendiary lyrics.

I’m gonna make you bleed
Gonna bring you down to your knees
Bye bye badman
Ooh bye bye

Choke me smoke the air
In this citrus sucking sunshine
I don’t care you’re not all there

Ian Brown explained: “Imagine a protester singing in a policeman’s face during the Paris riots. Then you’ll get some idea what it’s about.” I really like the final verse.

I’ve got bad intention
I intend to knock you down
These stones I throw
Oh these French kisses
Are the only way I’ve found

It’s amazing how finding out the story and inspiration behind any piece of art or design can suddenly make you love it. When I first saw this I just assumed it was a playful and kind of unattractive pastiche – some lemons casually chucked on a post-modern artwork. Now I can see the way that Squire has once again found some poetry in the chaos and anger. “Under The Paving Stones – The Beach”.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, reads the inscription on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. Dedicated in 1886, it welcomed immigrants as they arrived by ship and fast became a potent symbol for the ‘land of opportunity’.

Visitors arrived by air in 1979 and it’s through a plane window that we see Supertramps’ re-imagined New York. Manhattan is now a giant diner – it’s buildings replaced by ketchup bottles and egg cartons; its famous icon a matronly diner waitress who holds aloft a glass of orange juice.

Breakfast in America was the band’s first LP after moving to the US and it would go on to sell 11 million copies worldwide (4 million in the States alone). It also won the 1980 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package

Art Director Mike Doud took his inspiration from the title and worked up various sketches of surreal images and visual puns. One of the rejected concepts involved giant Cheerios rolling down Arizona’s Monument Valley in a flood of milk. Just imagine.

If Doud had the vision and ambition, cover designer Mike Haggerty had the chops to pull it off. He assembled the cornflake box, ashtray, cutlery, eggboxes, vinegar, ketchup and mustard bottles and spray painted them all white. Haggerty’s original instinct was to cast a busty young stunner as the waitress but the band preferred Kate Murtagh, whose bingo-wings and manic smile contribute so much to the cover.

It’s the first time I’ve thought about what an important American archetype the diner waitress is, almost as ubiquitous as the cowboy, the cheerleader and the policeman. Sometimes she’s beautiful and sometimes she’s motherly – but she’s always street smart and careworn.

While Kate Murtagh’s advancing years are key to the cover’s success, it was a strange and cautious kind of vanity that kept Supertramp off their own record covers. “We wanted to be around a long time, and we didn’t want people watching us getting older” says keyboardist Rick Davies. It’s an interesting concern and one that makes more sense when you realise that back then record covers were a band’s primary form of self promotion. As it is, fans could check the band out on the back cover, being served at “Bert’s Mad House.”

Photographer Aaron Rapoport captures the long-haired band in a relaxed moment, seemingly unaware of the time warp that has transported them back to the American fifties. It’s a nice touch that they all read newspapers from their home towns in Britain, even though they were never as popular in the UK as they were overseas. In many ways they are just another group of immigrants, finding rich inspiration and a warm welcome in the creative and popular culture of America.

“We didn’t have video back then,” says Ry Cooder. “You had to suggest an alternative environment on the cover of your album. I used to think about ways to do this, mainly to please myself, and this one turned out pretty well.”

This is one of my favourite record covers for the very quality that Cooder pinpoints – the sense of storytelling and creation of an “alternate environment”. It’s a cinematic slice of pop culture that came about organically.

Cooder recorded Into the Purple Valley in a studio next door to a film lot that had fallen into disuse. He arranged for an old staff member to take him around the inactive lot and found his inspiration when he stumbled upon a pile of old painted sets. The now legendary guitarist, composer and producer proved to be a pretty resourceful guy, borrowing the car – a yellow 1939 Buick convertible – from his neighbor. He then cast his fetching wife Susan as the female talent.

It’s very DIY but Cooder is quick to credit the studio rain machine and seasoned lighting technicians for bringing it to life – “otherwise it just looks like nothing — a car and a flat painting of the sky.” If it perfectly evokes a pulpy old Hollywood movie, it’s probably because it was made during the industry’s dying gasps, when the equipment and know-how were yet to make way for special effects and new technologies.

The performance and outfits do a lot to further the story. Her summer hat, which she clutches nervously, immediately tells us that this was meant to be a different road trip entirely. And while she does little to conceal her nervousness, her husband makes a lame attempt to appear calm and in control. But if his posture doesn’t tip you off that he’s struggling to keep it together, his eyes certainly do. I can just hear him telling her that it’ll all be fine and to calm down in a slightly hysterical voice.

The inside cover shows the couple enjoying a more joyous moment.

I’m not sure if this is the happy ending after their harrowing car journey or a glimpse of the lovely couple in more innocent times, before they found themselves under the dark clouds of the Purple Valley.

The first time I saw this t-shirt it was being worn by one of the cool guys in school. I didn’t know anything about Sonic Youth but I did really want the shirt. Unfortunately there was an unwritten rule that if someone from school wore a band shirt first, that was it – it just wasn’t done to go buy your own copy and wear it around.

But I would be sorely tempted only a couple of months later. I was on a family trip overseas when I saw the exact same t-shirt for only six dollars at a garage sale in San Francisco. After guiltily purchasing it, the first thing I decided to do was familiarise myself with Sonic Youth, as it was another unwritten rule that you couldn’t wear a band shirt unless you were a fan of the band. So I purchased a second-hand copy of Dirty two days later and listened to it on high rotation on my discman. And then a funny thing happened – I got into the music.

Actually maybe it wasn’t that funny, as I was kind of determined. Having familiarised myself with the band, I wore my new Sonic Youth shirt shortly after my return to Sydney. The first three friends I saw immediately announced the same thing: “Coby’s got that shirt”. The inference was inescapable. I feigned surprised the first two times and then finally gave up. So the shirt was forever consigned to the dustbin of history, while the Dirty CD stayed on heavy rotation. It’s a perfect example of band promotional material doing exactly what it’s supposed to. It’s also a perfect example of why I didn’t get much action in high school.

But perhaps we should focus on Washing Machine, the 1995 release from Sonic Youth.

The polaroid photo featured on the cover was taken after the April 28, 1995 Lollapaloozas show at Amherst College in Amherst, MA. The boy’s shirts had been signed by the support act, Come. The polaroid was found on the floor and then presented to the band, who instantly recognised its potential but had no idea who was featured in the picture or who took it. They enlisted the help of MTV, who ran a news bulletin asking the boys’ permission for the image to be used as the next album cover.

The boys were never identified, so the band cropped off their faces and used the photo anyway. The fact that their identity remains a mystery poses some intriguing questions. As they are wearing Sonic Youth t-shirts, one would assume that they were pretty big Sonic Youth fans. So when Washing Machine came out, why didn’t they instantly recognise themselves as the talent gracing the cover? Did they know it was them but not think it important to come forward? Or were they Amish boys on a seditious, wild night out that can never own up for fear of being expunged from their community?

It’s an enigma wrapped in a mildly interesting riddle. In today’s online age the band would have identified the duo within a day at the most. So perhaps this tale should be treated as a telling reminder of how much things have changed.

But for me, this album cover will always have a different message. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a glimpse of an alternate teenage reality, where two guys can own and wear the same t-shirt with pride.

The gun featured on the cover for Foo Fighters self titled debut is the “XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol,” which was released in 1935 as a tie-in toy for the Buck Rogers comic strip and radio show.

The photo was taken by Grohl’s then wife, talented photographer Jennifer Youngblood, who is responsible for some iconic images of Grohl’s former band Nirvana.

Grohl has, or had, a fanboy-ish obsession with all things sci-fi. “Foo Fighter” is a term that was used by American fighter pilots in WWII to describe UFOs or mysterious ariel phenomena. This album was released by Capitol Records in association with his own label,  Roswell Records.

It’s all very mid-90’s and takes me back to a time when Scully was the sexiest woman in the world and the truth was almost certainly out there. After the considerable success of this album, in the next two years the Foo Fighters would record “Walking After You” for the The X-Files soundtrack and “A320″ for the Godzilla soundtrack. How endearingly geeky!

What I like about this cover is the treatment of the ray-gun. It doesn’t cash in on the object’s kitsch-value but instead presents the ray-gun as an artifact – a weapon from some bygone era now that only lives on in scratchy sepia-toned memories.

And for someone who still remembers reading about Cobain’s death in the newspapers and then putting up a couple of extra Nirvana posters on the wall, there’s also something meaningful about Grohl’s decision to put a toy gun on the cover. If only Kurt had been content with goofy plastic guns like Dave.

I was told about this album from someone I had just met via email. I dropped into the conversation that I ran Sleevage and he mentioned this was his favourite album sleeve. I should add Sleevage to my email footer as crowd sourcing sleeves to post about is much easier than real research.
I was happy enough that the sleeve was constructed out of sandpaper as that seems both impractical and expensive. However to find out it was a Factory Records design and actually assembled by Ian Curtis of Joy Division (who needed the extra cash) while the rest of the band watched porn in the same room. (source) made the sleeve even more interesting. Even if this last story is untrue it shows that an album with a story is much more interesting that one without.

Here’s the back cover which is also devoid of information.

FACT 14 refers to the Factory records number system which you can read about here. There were two FACT 14s the other being Martin Hannett’s “Testcard”.

The first edition on sandpaper was limited 2000. The sandpaper sleeve comes in various editions: Some with spray-painted FACT 14 in black or in white, some without spray-paint. This makes for a very rare collectors item. Sadly The Durutti Column isn’t as “cult” as Joy Division so don’t expect to pay off the mortgage with it.

If you were to buy the album from Amazon now sadly this is what you’ll get. An ugly interpretation of the sandpaper.

The official TDC site has this on the album’s page. I’m not sure if this is a photo of a limited edition re-packaging or the album itself was a photo. Anyone know for certain?

The credit for designer was hard to track down. Each site I went to credited different people. Discogs has Steve Horsfall, while Wikipedia has Peter Saville and Tony Wilson and the official The Durutti Column site has the designers as Dave Rowbotham and Anthony Wilson credited with the sandpaper sleeve concept.

So Peter if you’re reading this please set the records straight. For now I won’t credit anyone individually until I hear otherwise.

The one thing we do know for certain is that the cover was inspired by the 1959 bookMémoires by Guy Debord a Marxist theorist, French writer, filmmaker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International. Cover is below.

With a Wikipedia entry like that you can imagine what kind of dinner conversation Guy would have had. You don’t see ideas like hypergraphist or Psychogeography being theorised any more. I understand these concepts properly you could say Tomato’s work fits into this nicely. Especially projects like mmm… Skyscraper I Love You.

Compare this to a double page spread from Mémoires.

While I like to think my music knowledge as expansive, I’d be lying if I said I knew of The Durutti Column before this. It seems I say the same thing for almost every album that get reviewed here :) I’ve sampled some tunes on the official Myspace page and a fan page and it’s nothing like I expected. It’s quite chilled. I’m not sure if this is the same sound as they had 30 years ago though.

What I love about the cover and the idea behind the original Memoires is that the sleeve would leave it’s mark and potentially ruin other albums it sits next to. Like Stick Fingers, with the zipper that ruined the record, these impractical design solutions were created back in a period where experimentation in music and design for music was encouraged instead of feared.

Final Useless Fact: The Durruti Column was the most famous column of anarchist fighters during the Spanish Civil War. The band intentionally spelt it incorrectly.

Thanks Jon for the info on the sleeve.

Here’s a first. The artwork for an album that hasn’t even hit the shelves (yep, that makes this a premiere). You Am I’s eighth studio album “Dilettantes” has some stunning high contrast illustrated artwork courtesy of Ken Taylor, who has previously worked on artwork for Tim Rogers, amongst a long prestigious list of other international and local rock icons. But more on that later.

Right now we’re lucky enough to have the first glimpses of artwork for the new album, plus a preview of the album itself (scroll down for full length streams of the tracks ‘Erasmus’ and ‘Dilettantes’), plus an interview with the band conducted by the way-too-cool Symon Parnell from Under Oath Magazine.

Ken Taylor, on Art Deco
Tim and the band were really into the art of Aubrey Beardsley, as I was too, and all of us essentially thought that this kind of classic look would fit the album really well. I wanted to maintain a hand crafted aesthetic throughout the piece so I decided that everything must be drawn in ink and the type needed to be all hand drawn as it would of back then. they were really into the art that was done for a lot of the Oscar Wilde plays which also had a very hands on feel to it.

On fonts
The font as I mentioned above is actually all hand drawn. it references old style fonts of that era. I based some of the forms on readily available fonts such as desdemona but added more authentic touches to it.

On inspiration
The artwork unashamedly references the style of Aubrey Beardsley and although it has all been redrawn and is an original artwork I was drawing it all with a bunch of his old stuff in front of me at the time.

On the front cover illustration
The image for the front is original. The idea was for a jaded dilettante – reading over her artists works with tears running down her face. I decided to place the lyre bird in there for compositions sake more so than anything else – I just kinda thought it would look cool. the peacock pattern under her dress though is a direct nod to Beardsley though.

On colour
Tim really liked a piece of old artwork where this had been done and I am a sucker for old Japanese woodcut prints so it just came from there. It was always going to be a simple classic colour scheme from the very beginning.

On direction from the band
As I mentioned above it was kind of a group thing. They were all lovely to deal with and had a very strong direction in mind from the beginning

On the decision to use an illustration over a band photo
The album was always going to be quite a different sound for the band and You Am I have in the past often gone with a photo. if not of themselves, of something else. They wanted the artwork to look different from anything they had done it the past.

It was a very tight timeline (surprise surprise!) and they new what they wanted. I sent through the original sketch (below) and it was approved straight away and I just went on my merry way from there.

You Am I: Dilettantes: Rough Sketch

You Am I: Dilettantes: Detailed Sketch

Inside sleeves
Andy

Davey

Rusty

Tim

You Am I: Dilettantes: Back

You Am I: Dilettantes: Spread

You Am I: Dilettantes: Spread

Only a couple of weeks ago You Am I were in the studio finishing up some final work on Dilettantes, & our mate Symon at Under Oath Magazine: The Indie Alternative found some time to catch up and chat about Dilettantes, and the recording process. We love it, and are sure you will as well…

Genius! But wait, there’s more!

Sleevage has 2 brand-spankin’-new You Am I songs for your listening pleasure, complete with an excerpt from Tim Rogers, just press play.

Erasmus

“I Like this kid. He’s been given the name of a 16th century philosopher, steadfastly ignores his physical shortcomings in the face of the desires of the flesh and digs the Pretenders and Van Halen. he’s got a plan to win the heart of a young lady, and just ain’t gonna hear no. Could be the stirrings of a reciprocal restraining order I hear, but he’s a good kid, although the aforementioned lady’s current boyfriend? His arse is grass.”

Dilettantes

“I first loved the word after hearing Duke Ellington use it to describe the members of his consistently brilliant bands. The meaning of the term has a duality- either referring to folks who dabble in appreciation of arts of culture, of those who have a deep love for works, or performers. On returning from a funeral of a recent acquaintance who was as charming as he was caustic, I was left, again, musing on the deep joy and befuddlement I’ve experienced in the company of a friends legacy. More often than not, the people who have left the deepest impressions on me have been those who have delicately bashed my ears with their love of music, art, literature, and with no airs and graces, more peanuts and beer. Ad somewhere up there is a BBQ I wanna be part of, ever serving the drinks. some day.”

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!