Category Archives: on your sleeve

luck on every finger

Posted on March 8, 2009 | Leave a comment

crooked

Here we have the cover of Pavement’s 1994 LP, Crooked Rain Crooked Rain. And below we have a page from the March 1978 issue of National Geographic. What a find!

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Posted in context, music, on your sleeve

pills ‘n’ thrills and bellyaches

Posted on March 5, 2009 | 6 comments

facd320

When the Happy Mondays’ third LP was released in November of 1990, one UK music magazine reviewed it under the headline “Shambolic Mancunians In Really Good Album Shock.” The two prior Mondays LPs were at best sporadically decent with perhaps at least one brilliant moment, but Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches was, and remains, fantastic. It comfortably blended the dance and rock genres; (perhaps unfortunately) gave U2 the musical blueprint for their first comeback and proved for the Mondays (but not Shaun Ryder) an impossible act to follow.

It also has an impossibly fantastic cover. The sleeve, with its dozens of copyright violations, must have worried someone at Electra, the band’s U.S label, because the cover that appeared in the States is considerably different. While the U.S cover is not entirely awful–it is still garishly colored and overly busy–it certainly pales in comparison to the one with the candy on it. The “censored” cover has seemingly crossed the Atlantic and was for a while the only one that was available in the U.K. as well.

There appear to be at least two different versions of the candy cover. In the one above, the image of Minnie Mouse in the A and P of Happy is conspicuous in its absence. Below is the sleeve as I believe nature intended. The cover was designed by Central Station Design, who often contributed artwork to Factory and Mondays releases.

pills n thrills 6

This label was affixed to some initial copies of the LP.

pills n thrills label

pills n thrills record label

The front and back of the U.S. edition.

pills n thrills seven

pills n thrills 8

The cover of one of the many (but none authoritative) Mondays best-of comps out there. Hideous.

loads

The next five images were, I believe, created for the 2007 U.K. only reissue, which restored the cover to the candy original.

pills n thrills 5

pills n thrills 4

pills n thrills 3

pills n thrills 2

pills n thrills 1

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Posted in music, on your sleeve

years after the event (you are the plastic ono band)

Posted on February 24, 2009 | Leave a comment

Plastic Ono Band “Give Peace a Chance” July, 1969.

I hope you’re all sitting down while reading this because I have a major announcement to make. Just today I received in the mail a copy of a 1970 John and Yoko wall calendar (got on ebay) and I fully plan on posting one page (representing one month) per week for the next thirteen weeks (yes, the calendar has thirteen months, the last of which is a blank grid that the owner was encouraged to fill out himself). Seeing as how this calendar was originally included in the first run of the Plastic Ono Band’s Live Peace LP and is therefore 12″x 12″, it is a touch too large for my cheap scanner to handle. Fear not, I have access to a larger scanner and will do the scanning tomorrow. You all will feel like it’s 1970 on some level or other within a day or so. To hold you over, study this beautiful ad and 45 cover.

awasigpac

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Posted in apple records, context, music, on your sleeve, years after the event

french apples

Posted on February 8, 2009 | 2 comments

Some person on ebay has listed a number of early-ish Apple Records 45 releases from France. The covers of these 45s are all pretty interesting. Let’s have a look.

The French “Get Back” sleeve leaves a bit to be desired.

french get back

The same goes for “The Long and Winding Road.”

french road

“The Ballad of John and Yoko” looks pretty good.

french john and yoko

The “Let It Be” is the same as the one in the States–pretty boring.

french let it be

This Ringo single is fantastic-looking.

french ringo

I’ve posted this cover before but it is hot enough to warrant a second look.

french another day

While I was looking at these I noticed that some dirtbag was trying to sell an ad clipped from an old issue of Cash Box for $20.00. The ad is pretty great though.

a is for apple

Also, some Beatles photo blog that I follow recently published this gem. My goodness, I’d do anything to own this. It’s almost upsetting to me that I don’t have this.

apple crate

UPDATE: That ad sold for $66.00.

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Posted in apple records, context, Macca, music, on your sleeve, years after the event

what’s wrong with being sexy?

Posted on January 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

pressure drop

This will probably be the first of a series–sort of an extention of the magazine cover art series but this one will feature record covers (or photos–I have a pretty awful one of Kiss that I can use in the future) of rock/pop stars being, um, sexy. I think that this will serve as a pretty classy first installment. While investigating this record, the cover of which I have admired for ages in the used bin of a local record store, I discovered that the title track is in fact a (forgettable) cover of the Maytals song.

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Posted in being sexy, music, on your sleeve

let’s give it up for the fabulous baby huey and the babysitters

Posted on December 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

The other day I came upon an amazing find on ebay. For two dollars I got a 45 by the semi-obscure Chicago-based R&B act Baby Huey and the Babysitters. Baby Huey only released one LP, the misleadingly titled/posthumously released Living Legend (1971), and a handful of songs on a handful of 45s. The 45s are from the early 60s (or so I thought) when the band had yet to develop the sound that can be heard on the long player–the difference in sound is the equivalent of the difference between those early songs that Bowie released on Deram and the stuff he was doing in his Ziggy days. This guy seems to know something about the early singles but they don’t interest me much.

The record that I got is a single from the same time period as the release of the Living Legend LP. It has on it a track that was not included on the album or any of the CD reissues of it that I know of (making the most recent one something of a disappointment despite the great sound quality). The songs on the record are both covers of Curtis Mayfield’s Mighty Mighty (Spade and Whitey). For some reason the song is listed on the record as Mighty Mighty Children. The B side is the odd but fantastic version that is on Living Legend, but the A is a completely different, more straightforward version of Mighty Mighty without the little girl singing or the mention of Thunderbird (Christ what I wouldn’t do to get my hands on some of that stuff) or red beans and rice or ox tails. It does feature some amazing screaming from Baby Huey in the fade and can be heard here. For some reason the copy that I have is on Radio Active Gold records and not Curtom.

In other Babysitters news, their best song, Hard Times, can be heard in the trailer and film JCVD.

Also I have gotten confirmation that this band of squares have no affiliation whatsoever with the actual Babysitters. Imagine thinking you’re booking an evening of heavy, heavy funk and R&B for your party and instead this wedding band arrives.

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Posted in music, on your sleeve, record labels

who’s a man that we admire?

Posted on December 13, 2008 | 1 comment

Serge&Bardot

This was an easy choice. French singing legend, ladies man, life-long smoker and, of course, a man who wanted to fuck Whitney Houston.

Oh, and creator of one of the greatest LPs of all time.

Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg a la premiere du film "Slogan" de PierreGrimblat le 28 aout 1969

And get this: Serge and Dirk Bogarde. There isn’t room for any more greatness in this photo.

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Posted in a man that we admire, booze, on your sleeve

another day

Posted on December 10, 2008 | 1 comment

Italy

I recently scored this Italian edition of Macca’s Another Day 45. I am quite happy with it. While waiting for the Italian version to come up on auction, I got a tour of Another Day around the world. Let’s have a look, shall we?

Germany:

Germany

Spain:

spain

Portugal (they practically got the Let It Be sleeve):

portugal

Japan:

japan

Then there is sheet music:

domestic

Australian sheet music:

aussheetmusic

Some weirdo is trying to sell this old ad, clipped out of a magazine, for $30.00! Good Luck, dude:

Someone else put the same ad to good use and made their own sleeve with it. Sort of Another Day folk art. This now rests in a pile of 45s on my shelf. He was selling it for one dollar.

ignorant art