The most annoying album cover in history
OK, I'm a 'southern girl' instead of a 'southern boy,' but this seemed the appropriate category to post a message with nothing at all to say, other than getting something off my chest:
That hideously annoying cover of Amanda Blank's CD is just about enough to make me quit checking the 'new releases' on AmieStreet. (If I were a man and a woman with that sneer told me "I love you," I would run for cover as fast as I could.)
Apologies to Amanda Blank fans.
That hideously annoying cover of Amanda Blank's CD is just about enough to make me quit checking the 'new releases' on AmieStreet. (If I were a man and a woman with that sneer told me "I love you," I would run for cover as fast as I could.)
Apologies to Amanda Blank fans.
Comments
I dunno, maybe she is trying to play the Chrissie Hynde angle, but less authentically and artfully.
However, one night I left it out on a table and forgot that the two older ladies who do our housecleaning were going to be there the next day. When I came home the next day at noon I walked into the family room in time to see their horrified faces rise up to greet me after their close mutual perusal of said cover.
I was kind of stunned, and stammered, "Err, I guess you have to listen...to it...ummmm...to understand it...uhhhh..."
now I will also have to look up the Blind Faith!
Seriously. That wasn't a covert invitation.
It is pretty intimidating. Crikey!
That's the one. Guh.
Don't knock that cover: it was an attempt - perhaps rather inept - to remind the world that jazz is about the body, and it's about raunch, and it's about other stuff than those terribly terribly dry and boring blue-note look at us, we're serious men covers that set the standard at that time. The music was all right, too. I purchased this while living in Martinique in the early 70s; there wasn't much jazz available, so I picked it up, and found it very enjoyable. Along with an early Wailers collection, the Dead's 'Wake of the Flood' and Hancock's Mwandishi, (along with a lot of island beguine) it was the sound track to my son's birth and early days. Could have done worse.
You can't knock the Blue Note covers!!!!
They're design classics.
They make me want to buy more Jazz just so I can have those coooooool covers.
But then I come to my senses and remember that a little Jazz goes a loooong way for me.
Also, Jazz is about the body and the raunch??
Really?
I must have listened to the wrong sort of Jazz then, because that makes it sound more appealing :-)
Jazz was essentially dance music until Bebop; it was (mis)led into scholasticism by a covey of intellectuals and college geeks who packaged it in those despicably tasteful Blue Note covers that should be an abomination to punks, boppers, juvenile delinquents and roadrunners everywhere. (There is a special circle of hell reserved for Reid Miles and other members of the accursed race of graphic designers).
Some of the musicians were dragged into it for a while, but when Davis heard the Keith Richards quote - "Mainly, we play for the feet" - he saw the light and hired a Motown bass-player. The world came right-side up again and Blue Note went bust.
You need to look at more Bluenote covers. For every "serious" album cover you find, I'll find two that aren't taking themselves very seriously. It is kinda neat to find someone, however, who doesn't like the BN covers (which I do love). I'd like to hear a more detailed explanation of why you don't like them, referring, perhaps, to specific covers in particular, but also an overall opinion.
p.s. That request isn't some sort of faux-invitation for some ambush debate about it; I'm genuinely interested to hear your opinion. Hanging out on jazz forums like I do, it's a rare thing to hear that someone doesn't like the BN covers.
edit: Oh my god, I just noticed you told people not to knock the Push Push cover. Whatever the intentions of the creators of that cover, the result was an embarrassing watermark in the development of jazz marketing. The derision that cover has generated both from inside and outside the jazz circle necessarily outweighs any good intentions they may have had. Big time.
I'm sure the musicians creating be-bop at the time would've been tickled pink to learn that Minton's was considered the epicenter of music intellectualism. Or are you talking about the label & producers (and not the musicians)? Let me tell you, aside from the fact that BN was a label that paid musicians well and treated them right, those old BN titles are still generating revenue for the musicians and their estates. And people could dance to it. You want to find a time when the music starting getting over-serious, you'll have to search for a date later than Alfred Lion's imprint on the scene.
BlindTimMason
But you'd still need to be careful, she could have somebody's eye out.
Second one looks like i should recognise it.
I think from some 70s/80s rock album cover.
But probably both based on an older original.
...both still in the 'going blind' territory though ;-)
I have hated that album cover since the first moment I saw it.
Looks like a Vargas print from Playboy.
As for Tim's second link, it reminds me of The Fratellis:
Craig
jonahpwll - sure you can dance to bebop. When push comes to push, if you can't dance to it, it isn't music. But there was a lot of talk about how bebop could *not* be danced to, and that its undancability was a good thing. Who talked that talk?
billyjoebob - I think that's probably the case: Mann was a buddy of Heffner's apparently.
But it helps that she's attractive, whereas he looks like a fairly ordinary bloke, who, if he was much hairier, could have called his album 'Plush Plush'.
Probably the same person who told you cigarettes won't hurt you. And don't say 'when push comes to push' on this thread.
This was exactly the kind of thing I was afraid would happen if I bought the album up. My bad; I knew better.