Your Similar Album Covers of the Week - Cock Rock

This week we feature two classic, provocative album covers. These two albums were released ten years apart, and not much needs to be said about how much sleazy rock music changed between 1971 and 1981 -- these crotchy albums say it all in a nutshell. In ten years we went from bulging denim to studded leather and chanis: the Stones paved the way for scandal and shock-rock (don't even get me started with their banned 1973 EP), and the Crüe ran it into the ground with their own shallow, over-the top brand, inventing Hair Metal in the process.

It's hard to imagine that Mötley Crüe didn't deliberately conceptualize their cover without thinking of the Sticky Fingers LP (photo by Andy Warhol, vinyl packaging complete with a working zipper which unzips to reveal Mick's skivvies), it's too similar to not be an homage. Whatever their motivation, these two bands were the leading beacons of Cock Rock for their respective generations, and these albums effectively exemplify this in an oh-not-so-subtle way.

Your Similar Album Covers of the Week - Smoking Angels

Ah, innocence lost. What a great theme for a hard rock/metal band album cover. A smoking angel is a hilarious contradiction, working with the fallen angel idea on a number of different levels. Dio-era Black Sabbath devised of this idea first for their 1980 album, appropriately titled Heaven and Hell. This was the first album they released after Ozzy was booted from the band, and was a re-birth for them in a number of ways. With Dio's huge, epic pipes blowing Ozzy's nasal whine out of the water, the band speeds their trademark sludgy riffs into a faster, more energized metal that just kills it. Highly recommended.

It couldn't be a coincidence that Van Halen used this idea only four years later for their last David Lee Roth-era album. They do improve upon the concept with a fantastic smirking, impish Cupid-cherub illustration (a play on the classic Raphael painting), though the concept couldn't have been original after Sabbath used it. Regardless, 1984 sold 10 million copies, so most of you reading this knows this cover well, and have probably never seen the Sabbath one.

Your Similar Album Covers of the Week - Sky Fire

This one is pretty self-explanatory. While the past few posts have been more thematically similar, this one couldn't be any more literal: asteroids falling to earth near a lake at twilight, leaving a brilliant trail in their wake. Bam! 70's album cover gold. The image just has a certain je ne sais quoi that whispers class in just the right way...

These albums were released within two years of each other in the mid-70s. Many are familiar with Weather Report, the hugely successful and ground-breaking jazz fusion group, but the band Firefall has been lost to time, probably for good reason. They're the ones who contributed this little ditty to civilization:



You know you've heard it, the melody is definitely back there in your subconscious somewhere. Most likely it was playing while you were shopping for groceries, or browsing the aisles for slacks at Marshalls. The song fits the department store soundtrack criteria perfectly: non-threatening, bland, unobtrusive, and pleasantly innocuous. Firefall has found a lasting place in society right next to Sade's "Smooth Operator," serenading shoppers around the world into a relaxed anesthesia. I wonder if they get royalties for it.

Your Similar Album Covers of the Week - Cowboy Hippies

The gorgeous Old West/Norman Rockwell theme of a bonneted, skirt-billowing dame gazing longingly in the distance isn't the only similarity in these two excellent albums. Both these bands emerged out of Bill Graham's ballroom-circuit San Francisco in the late 60s, which produced more than its fair share of amazing music.

While many know of Quicksilver and their virtuoso lead guitarist John Cipollina, fewer have heard of the progressive rock band It's A Beautiful Day, which was a Bay Area staple for a number of years during those halcyon days. During the late 60s, those crazy Frisco hippies developed a widespread cultural obsession with the Old West that permeated their fashion, art, and music. It also made for some righteous album covers. Thanks, hippies, for your awesome contribution to pop culture.

Your Similar Album Covers of the Week - Marketing to Whites

This week we feature two albums from the late 1950s. Both are seminal recordings of the most important and influential black artists of a generation, and both feature white females on their covers. What's wrong with this picture?

It seems that in pre-Civil Rights era America, it was pretty tough to get http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthe general white music-listening audience to turn an ear to the "race records" of the time. The solution to this problem was to put pretty young whites on the covers of such records, thus attracting a wider audience of deluded whites, and prompting Miles Davis to ask Columbia Records executive George Avakian "Why'd you put that white bitch on there?" Things soon got better, and subsequent re-releases saw the album covers changed to better reflect the music that was inside. In the following years, Miles and JB were eventually granted creative freedom over their album art, which yielded colorful results. Shit's crazy, though.

Your Similar Album Covers of the Week - Soft Hues

Ah, the golden age of vinyl. It was only during this time -- approx. from 1969-1983 -- that the packaging of records became a real art form, resulting in a product in which the record sleeve's design and art was given as much attention as the music inside (an art form that is all but lost in today's digital industry).

Many record covers in the 70s omitted the traditional glossy shine, opting for a softer, natural cardboard texture, which the grainy, saturated, shadowy-cheekbone photos in these examples compliment nicely. Of course, these .jpegs don't give any sense of the album's texture, which can only be experienced by lovingly holding, cradling and caressing the record in your hands. So head to your local vinyl shop and rub your hands over some classic records, as these are examples of timeless album art for the ages.

Your Similar Album Covers of the Week - Electric Hands

This week starts a new reoccurring segment, in which two existing album covers are picked from time and space and presented as coincidentally similar.

Today's pair both seem to be freaked out that their hands have morphed into unwieldy electronic equipment. The main difference here being that one is a landmark album in the history of hard rock, and the other is a ridiculous, awful joke of a record. Guess which is which?

High Sierra Music Festival Review - Jambase.com

I hope everyone out there in the land of the internets had a grand 4th of July weekend, preferably spent far, far away from any computers or wi-fi connections. I had one for the record books: four days of camping and music up at the High Sierra Music Festival in Plumas County, high in the mountains. There was non-stop music from 10am to 4am, four days in a row, and I did my darndest to catch as much as I could. It is truly the most well-put together festie I've ever attended, and I would recommend it to any music lover. Here's my writeup of the long, exhausting, exhilarating weekend over at Jambase, supplemented with tons of awesome pics:

High Sierra Music Festival :: 06.30.11-07.03.11 :: Plumas County Fairgrounds :: Quincy, CA

The Travelin' McCourys pickin' up a storm among the pines:

Brokedown in Bakersfield was a one-gig-only country band put together to play High Sierra, and they certainly didn't disappoint:

Reggae guitar legend Ernest Ranglin got us all skanking with an epic sunset set. Here Audio Angel helps him out on a cover of The Abyssinians' "Satta Massagana":



Later that night, Ween got us all brown with Skerik on sax for "Your Party":



Gillian Welch closed out her set on the first night with a huge take on "White Rabbit":



Overall, a truly epic weekend.