Brilliant albums with horrible album covers

I'd have to say that the back cover of Miles Davis' Live/Evil can get you seasick, in the wrong state of mind.



< how'd you like to have that one jumping out a ya

 

this is a very good cover

 

It even catches the attention on the clearance shelf. That’s why people always mention Monster when there is a thread about what albums people see most at thrift stores etc.

 

This might be the first example of a brilliant album with a terrible album cover in the entire 34 pgs

 

This might be the first example of a brilliant album with a terrible album cover in the entire 34 pgs

 

I guess you have to see it to see it, but you can’t see it if it’s not there in the first place.

 

I think about every other great punk era LP fits this bill.

 

Angry Samoans had some infectious punk records.
The artwork looked like something you might have made in 9th grade art class when you were in one of your more antisocial phases.

 

I like the concept but not those red pants.

 

I like the Monk cover!

 

Blowin’ Your Cover!

 

. . . or not. Sheesh. As for "Man From Utopia" . . . not a brilliant album.

 

Original copies were textured. Making much more sense. And this a great cover!

 

I admit I deliberately sought out a copy of Live Evil with the alternate (black) cover, didn't want my kids seeing the nekkid chick on the front cover or the demented J Edgar Hoover figure on the back

 

I didn't have a problem with the naked pregnant woman. But the obverse side, with that toad-human chimera- enthroned on a setting inspired by some of the first electron photomicrographs of human blood vessels- is just too strange. Too much potential for trauma.

For what it's worth, the same artist did the cover for Santana's Abraxas LP. More surrealism featuring naked ladies.

 

This cover is iconic! And while it is odd -but in an appealing way- it isn't "horrible" in any way.
Actually, it kinda fits with Monk's music.

 

This Iggy Pop LP is a "pretty good"* record with a suspect (but somehow appropriate) visual esthetic

[ *Midwestern for"brilliant" ]



and its follow-up, which I haven't heard

 

I'll see any of your Pablo albums with a meh b/w pictures and will raise you with Pablo's abominable series "Live in Montreux '77".
When they were reissued on cd a couple of years later, the covers were changed. I wonder why...

 

John Coltrane's Afro-Blue Impressions- a terrific double LP set- uses the same generic template for the LP cover.

 

Then there's the cover of Secret Treaties by Blue Oyster Cult, which is just straight-up sinister. QAnon level paranoid.

 

And there is some great music on those albums. I wonder how many people were turned off by the covers and never even gave the music a try.

 

I've always found this one a little on the creepy side.

 

I went through a brief period of interest in jazz in the fall of 1985. That was my first semester at college and I took a jazz appreciation class that... made me appreciate jazz!

For a while, at least.

Monk was the jazz musician I most liked of those we were taught - IIRC, the class largely revolved around a big Smithsonian "history of jazz" vinyl box - and this Monk album is the only one I ever bought outside of that box.

On CD, too!

 

Damn, that Twitty is a heartbreaker!

 

Reply to a couple of older posts. That's not Charles Mingus on the cover of "The Clown", though you are excused for thinking it might be - the clown in question has those sad, tired eyes.


Yes, Roy Wood did some awful covers. I guess he fancied himself an artist in the surrealist mode, but there's a reason some of his covers were replaced in the US versions.