Right Place, Wrong Time?

A few weeks back I visited a selection of my usual West London charity shop haunts in, what turned out to be, the wrong order. After picking up nothing but a copy of an, admittedly useful, reference book (Jazz: The Rough Guide) in an otherwise treasure-free shop, I sauntered into the next store to see a young, pony-tailed guy hunched over a rapidly emptying crate with a pile of some two dozen LPs by his side. How could this be happening? This shop never has anything apart from the usual dust-gathering James Last LPs. I couldn't help it, painful though it was, I had to see what I'd missed out on. After a quick chat, during which I discovered that my nemesis was actually a nice fella who'd just got into vinyl and was trying to build up a collection, I took the plunge and looked through his finds. He had some choice items, but thankfully, most of them I already have, so I'm happy for him - he's got his collection off to a great start. The only album I was tempted to do a runner with, and it was the one I saw him studying when I first walked in, was a mono, first pressing of Dylan's Blonde On Blonde. Bugger! Fortunately, either his taste or his budget didn't stretch to the entire crate as he left me a decent original copy of Quicksilver Messenger Service's Happy Trails and a London Records first pressing of ZZ Top's Tres Hombres for £1.50 each, plus an armful of 7" singles on the Two-Tone label. Not a bad haul, but I'm still gutted about that Dylan LP!

 

More recently though, I was the one in the right place at the right time. I was digging through an uninspiring and all too familiar crate-full of vinyl cast-offs in another of my local charity shops when some bloke began quizzing me about my taste in music. Now, I love to talk about music almost as much as I enjoy listening to it, but not when I'm in the zone. Give me a plump sofa, a spinning disc and a bottle of red and you have my undivided attention. When my head's in a box of vinyl I'm in my own little world - keep out, trespassers will be shot! Maybe I should learn to be less of a dick, particularly as, it transpires, this guy was getting around to asking if perhaps I might like his ex-girlfriend's record collection which was languishing in the back of his wardrobe - free of charge. Despite his assertion that "it's all crap", numbers were exchanged and, to cut to the chase, I am now the proud owner of said collection of over 50 LPs consisting almost entirely of Bowie's and Bolan's back catalogues. Jesus, did this guy's girlfriend have a thing for Marc Bolan! Some of the LPs are so trashed that I'm considering a sideline in vinyl craft tat, but most of them cleaned up sufficiently well to be worthy of their place in my collection. I have the feeling that offloading the ex-girlfriend's record collection was a therapeutic experience for my benefactor, so we're both happy.

A selection from the Bolan / Bowie haul

You don't half get a glimpse into someone else's head when you dig through their record collection, especially one as focussed and time capsule-like as this one! It's almost as revealing as a sneaky peak at their diary. Much as the former-owner of these LPs had no idea how to treat her records, it's obvious that she loved the music contained in the grooves and every word and image on the sleeves. Posters that would have originally been with the LPs have long since disappeared, no doubt frayed and faded beyond repair after years of being pinned to a bedroom wall. Some of the early Tyrannosaurus Rex LPs had been purchased as two-for-one double album reissues, which obviously didn't sit well with her as she took it upon herself to hack up the gatefolds to create two single LP sleeves to give the illusion that they had been bought as separate albums. Who was she trying to kid, especially as she had used a combination of parcel tape and electrical insulation tape to join the constituent parts together? There is something quite charming about the naive, teenaged fan-ness of her efforts though.

TOOFA becomes one

Tyrannosaurus Wrecked!

A couple of the LPs don't have their original sleeves. Whether this is because they were stuck on a bedroom wall, lost at a party or bought sleeveless from a bargain bin way back when, who knows! Undeterred, the Bolan / Bowie fan created her own customised replacements in a Spinal Tap pre-dating, plain black design, by painting various godawful 1970s easy listening sleeves with thick, black emulsion paint. I wonder if her parents knew the fate of their Klaus Wunderlich LPs?

T. Rex. None more black

I thought I'd stumbled upon a rarity with this gatefold sleeved UK pressing of Bowie's Pin Ups, but no, it's a single sleeved album that has been turned into a Frankenstein's monster of a gatefold with donor parts from another dismembered easy listening sleeve, the Pin Ups album insert and the sleeve from a Bowie maxi single. Creative yes, but what a horrible mess!

Pin Ups gatefold 'rarity'

Inside the custom-built gatefold sleeve

The easy listening innards

And check out this subtle repair job!

Despite some of the horrors described and shown here, I count myself fortunate to have found enough quality items to fill most of the gaps in my less-than-comprehensive Bowie collection (where has the brilliant Station To Station been all my life?) and I now own more T. Rex albums than you could bang a gong at. Random accidents of geography and timing like the one that brought these LPs to me are what make record collecting such a buzz.

Offensive Record Sleeves

If you do a Google search you will find numerous links to 'the worst album sleeves ever', some of which aren't so much bad as unintentionally comical and shoddily conceived. In my book, that makes them a damn sight better than the glut of clichéd, computer-generated fantasy artwork slapped on every neo-Prog and AOR release of the last ten years. These I find offensive. Soulless, unimaginative Roger Dean wannabes the lot of them! Other LP jackets are, I believe, tarred with the 'worst ever' brush rather unfairly. The Scorpions' Lovedrive LP always features in these lists, but to me it's blindingly obvious that the band, and sleeve artists, Hipgnosis, had their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks when they thought up, and brilliantly executed, a design which is striking, provocative and, no doubt, helped to stimulate album sales into the bargain.

The same excuse can not be made for the original sleeve for Virgin Killer which bypassed provocative visual humour in favour of a thoroughly offensive, exploitative image. I won't reproduce the cover image on my blog if it's all the same to you as I don't particularly want to end up on a register for nonces. There are many sleeves from the 1970s which get cheap mileage from images of, and allusions to, 'jailbait', but I can't think of any as cynical, blatant or unpleasant as the Scorpions one. There seems to have been a strange and insidious cultural tolerance of the sexualisation of minors during the 1970s, which probably goes some way to explaining how scumbags like Jimmy Saville, Jonathan King and Gary Glitter were able to satisfy their prediliction for the underaged without being censured by their peers. There definitely seems to have been an element of amused tolerance in the Seventies' music industry: a nudge-nudge, wink-wink, roll of the eyes, "oh, what is he like!", chuckle, chuckle, let-him-get-on-with-it attitude. For those who weren't serial sexual predators of children the intervening years seem to have acted as an amnesty. People like Jimmy Page who, back in the Seventies, is said to have been in a relationship with the underage Lori Maddox who, rumour has it, lost her virginity to David Bowie at the age of thirteen. Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith anyone? I'm not suggesting a witch hunt, but Christ, haven't attitudes changed! Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins' recent arrest on child sex charges would suggest that the days of turning a blind eye to the unhealthy sexual appetites of some rock stars is at an end.

Meanwhile, back in the Seventies, Silverhead achieved the seemingly impossible by coming up with cover artwork for 16 and Savaged that equalled the tastelessness of the album's title. It's a great album, with Michael Des Barres in fine voice, but without the excuse of social commentary, it seems that the band was using the subject of teenage rape as titillation.

There's a whiff of Spinal Tap's Smell the Glove about Scene Stealer's First Offence album sleeve, with its 'clever' (in prominent inverted commas) twist being that the schoolboy is the aggressor, not the victim. Not that the scantily-clad woman is likely to be ushering the boy into her boudoir to help him with his homework! It's pretty tacky however you interpret it: does the first offence of the title refer to child abuse or rape? You decide.

 Many sleeves that have provoked an outcry are best taken with a pinch of salt; you have to pick your battles. The image on the cover of W.A.S.P.'s Animal (F**k Like a Beast) single was one that I always found comical in its calculated bid to shock. It's hard to take offence at a man who, once upon a time, nearly blew his own bollocks off in the name of entertainment when his firework-stuffed codpiece backfired on stage.

Not all record sleeves that make for uncomfortable viewing do so because of allusions to sexual taboos. Alquin's Mountain Queen has a photograph on the rear sleeve of a fat man taking a beating while amused bystanders look on. The fact that this is clearly not a staged photograph makes it especially unsettling. How the image relates to the music contained on the album I've never managed to work out. Is it gratuitous or does it pick up in some way on a lyrical theme that I've managed to miss?

Despite the stiff competition (and this selection just scrapes the surface of what is out there), the album sleeve that I find most offensive adorns the 1978 reissue of the Stoney and Meatloaf LP that originally came out in 1971 with different, superior artwork. A lazy concept, shoddily executed, has resulted in the ugliest album sleeve I've ever clapped eyes on - it turns my stomach every time I see it. There's no justification for this vomit inducing portrayal of tepid, unappetising food, even if it has been arranged to resemble a pre-diet Mr Loaf. Perhaps the fact that the reissue leaves off some of the better tracks found on the original LP is what ties the lukewarm cover concept to the LP's half-baked contents.

Okay, you're right, Virgin Killer is worse.