I'm not a huge Hall And Oates fan (is anybody? ), but I am very curious about the various covers this album had. The "first" cover was black and white. I have seen three different versions of this cover. Two of them are scans that I saw on the internet, the other is the MFSL CD. The vinyl copy I have has a cheap color cover, with RE-5 in the bottom left corner. Is it safe to assume that this album had FIVE different covers? Is it an "In Thru The Out Door" type of deal, or couldn't RCA make up their minds? Not suprisingly, I couldn't find any info pertaining to this on the net.
I always wondered about that, too, especially the really stupid-looking cover that ended up in the racks, with (if I remember) the trendily-clothed artists striking goofy, unnatural poses against a pink background. Another album that changed covers for no apparent reason was Tina Turner's PRIVATE DANCER, although at least in this instance the new artwork was drawn from the same photo shoot. I seem to remember, though, that the second cover looked slightly washed out.
Well, don't forget all the Floyd albums that have had different covers for different regions and/or releases... some of these are subtle, like the minor changes to "A Nice Pair", "Ummagumma" or the North American vs European version of "Wish You Were Here". Then there are complete revisions like Meddle or Relics. Sometimes the cover changes because an album is reissued on a different label than the original release, but the original cover art is still owned and controlled by the original label. In this case it may be too costly for the new label to obtain the artwork, so they just go with something else entirely. Klaus Schulze's "Picture Music" has had 5 different covers over the years...
Ah, you've come to the right place! I am honestly not sure why this cover kept changing, but change it did. There actually are at least SEVEN different covers. The "RE 5" means the fifth revision, or therefore the sixth cover, because the first one (no "RE" on the cover) wasn't a revision, it was the original. Check out almost any RCA record jacket, from the 1950s to the 1980s, and if you see an "RE" on the cover, it was changed somehow. If a number follows it, that's the number of revisions it went through; add 1 to that number and it tells you what version of the cover you have. An RE-3 would be the fourth different cover. Sometimes the revisions are subtle, sometimes they are radical. But if you have the same RCA-related album twice, and one has an "RE" and the other doesn't, the covers are at least slightly different. No, Voices wasn't an In Through the Out Door or Abacab or Fate for Breakfast or several other albums from the vinyl era that were released simultaneously with different covers. I've got 5 of the 7 covers in my collection -- as Voices is a common album, it's easy to find them cheap, so I just picked 'em up for a buck or two as I saw 'em and kept track of what I had. Here's how I have the Voices covers described in my Goldmine Standard Catalog of American Records 1950-1975 and its sister volume, Goldmine Standard Catalog of American Records 1976-Present: No "RE" of any kind on cover: Embossed lettering and sound waves; Hall's head almost touches the word "Voices" on front "RE" on back cover: This is a version I don't have, so I don't know what it is like "RE 2" on back cover: Cover not embossed; Hall's head 3 inches or more below the word "Voices" on front "RE 3" on back cover: Cover lettering is in black "RE 4" on back cover: Colorized photo of Hall and Oates on each side "RE 5" on back cover: I have this listed as "variation unknown," so if you can tell me what your cover looks like, I'd appreciate it. "RE 6" on back cover: Bar code on upper left back corner
My RE-5 is the "strike a pose" color cover. The front simply says "Daryl Hall (purple) John Oates (pink)" and then "Voices" underneath in black with a white outline...the letters getting gradually smaller. The back has no barcode. Besides the same type as on the front, it also says AQLI-3646 in the upper right. RE-5 is in the lower left and the RCA logo is in the lower right. In between, across the bottom, are the song titles...seperated by slashes /. The spine is slightly off-center. It has a copyright of 1981. The inner sleeve says RE-2 in the corner and it's full of lyric mistakes! It's pink with black and white "sound waves" on it.
Now I need to actually pull out my "RE 4" cover and see how it differs exactly from your "RE 5." It's clear that "RE 5" and "RE 6" differ in the addition of the bar code to "RE 6."
