Bought It For The Cover

Many years ago, my girlfriend (now wife) and I would buy records specifically for the covers then hang them on the wall in our living room.  Generally, it was for the killer cover art but, occasionally, it would be for the high weirdness factor.  Sometimes, the music on the record in that cover would be good but, most often, this was not the case.

Over the years, I’ve gotten extremely picky about what records get to stay in the collection. A lot of this comes down to limitations of space.  I only have so much room for records so each one has to earn its keep.  If something is just terrible, why keep it around?  If the vinyl itself is heavily damaged, it’s got to go.  I do a sort of ongoing culling of undesirables and, finally, the time has come to address some of these records we bought for the covers.

A case in point is this Pickwick release:

REVOLUTION!!!

How awesome is that cover?  Pretty freakin’ awesome.  And some of those songs are great, too!  “Love Her Madly” from The Doors, Ray Charles’ “Booty Butt,” the T. Rex tune “Hot Love.”  Nice!  Sadly, Pickwick engaged in the practice of having studio musicians cover hit songs, generally in a hideously insipid manor.  The Street People are no exception.  As much as I want to love this record, it’s truly impossible.  The liner notes state:

“Somehow, the music of the people has always been a special kind of communication.  It’s an eternal dialogue that wails and throbs out on hot tenement fire escapes, candy stores and beach blankets.  The cigarette smoke these turbulent days is not just hanging in the air between long pauses of silence or whistles at chicks in tight shorts.  These days the people are rapping about how to change the system.  Our young people (including myself) are approaching problems with a hard thinking intellectuality.  And the problems are much more than their own.  They are the world’s.  These days, people are concerned with people.  POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

The songs in this album are more than just tunes, they are special messages for everyone.  They are what’s happening right now, this second and they cannot be ignored.  Songs like John Lennon’s “Power To The People” and the driving rhythm of “Put Your Hand In The Hand,” originally made famous by Ocean.  Read the contents of this disc, buy it for a few measly pennies, put it on and play it.  You’ll be satisfied and I’m not putting you on.

P.S. – Our group, The Street People, stand on their own musical feet.”

Really?  Are you kidding me?  Can you imagine the young revolutionaries of yesteryear buying into that crap?  Even if they did and took it home and played it, can you imagine the disappointment they must have felt hearing some pretty great songs watered down and robbed of their fire?  How many copies of this record sailed out the windows of those tenements?  I don’t know if Ocean’s version of “Put Your Hand In The Hand” had a “driving rhythm,” but the only driving the Street People manage is driving me crazy.

Pickwick had a subsidiary called Design Records.  You can read more about Design here:

http://www.bsnpubs.com/pickwick/designstory.html

Design compiled recordings they owned and packaged them as cheaply as possible.  They would also lease songs from famous artists but these were rarely anything approaching hits for those artists and made for some pretty lackluster compilation LPs.  They did, however, have a great design team because their covers were outstanding.  Take this 1965 gem, for example:

I don't think they understand what "action" means.

Where the action is!  Yeah!  Look at this cover!  The action’s gotta’ be right here!  But, no, it’s not.  If the list of artists doesn’t hip you to the lack of action, a spin on your turntable will.  Nothing against Barry McGuire, but there ain’t much action going on in “So Long, Stay Well” and that’s the opening track!  In fact, the most rockin’ track here is Neil Sedaka’s “Ring-A-Rock.”  That’s incredibly telling.

The cover from 1965’s The In Crowd is a little closer to the truth:

Hey, lady, your hat's crooked.

It would be the whole truth if the in crowd were into mellow, more or less substandard songs from big name artists.  It’s not that there aren’t good songs on these Design Records releases, it’s just that those songs are too few and far between.

Pickwick and Design were clearly aiming these albums at a respectable demographic that wanted to appear a little edgy and with it, but weren’t exactly into edgy, with it sounds.  Like I said, though, their design team was on point.  These are all great covers but these LPs are on their way out to make room for records that I’ll actually listen to. 

Fun fact: Lou Reed was a writer at Design for a while in his pre Velvet Underground days.