Thursday, July 19, 2012

Bad Album Covers I See At Almost Every Used Record Store

One of my hobbies is buying and listening to old LPs, and over the last few years I've noticed a few albums with epically bad covers that I always seem to find at used record stores.  Some are so wretched that they have sadly been burned into my mind like my bad memories of gym class growing up.  With every hope that this will be an exorcism, now it's time to share the pain with you.

Foghat, Rock and Roll

This is one of the few album covers that can elicit the kind of groans normally associated with a joke told by Fozzy Bear.  At least Foghat managed to concoct an album cover more ridiculous than their name, which is no mean feat.

Mike Rutherford, Acting Very Strange

A middle-aged Boomer rocker wearing a straw fedora and cut-off Sumo wrestling t-shirt in front of funhouse mirrors sounds a lot more interesting than it looks.

Roger Daltrey, Ride a Rock Horse
Words fail.  Since it came out in 1975, I can only presume cocaine was involved somehow.

Fleetwood Mac, Heroes Are Hard to Find
Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs to see Mick Fleetwood in his undies holding a naked child.  The unsettling vibe is also done in by the fact that he's wearing sneakers with gym sox.

Fleetwood Mac, Mystery to Me
This cover is ugly and surreal without being interesting.  I guess before Buckingham and Nicks joined the band in 1975, they were drifting in more ways than one, based on these covers.

Black Sabbath, Sabotage
Not a bad album, but you'd never guess by the cover.  Geezer looks like a street hustler, Tony doesn't appear to want to be there, Bill's red tights make him look like a medieval page as acid casualty, and Ozzy's combo of kimono and platform boots is seventies fashion victimhood/too stoned to care at its worst.

Loggins and Messina, The Best of Friends
Were these guys aware that their picture was going to be slapped on the cover of record sleeves going to stores all across the country?  Loggins is wearing a monkey-shit brown colored sweater, and Messina looks like he just crawled out of the gutter after downing a bottle of Thunderbird.

1 comment:

Brian I said...

Notice that Mick's wearing HER undies, not HIS undies.