What we miss out on when we go digital

I'm on the lagging edge of the LP listeners: I spent a lot of my childhood studying record album covers and trying to figure out what they had to do with the music (AutoAmerican blew my mind in the third grade). I'd make up stories -- perhaps the dragon on the Asia cover was summoned by the bridge in "Heat of the Moment"? And wasn't it nice that everyone in the Mamas and the Papas were such good friends, they could all hang out in a bathtub together?

Then I was buying CDs by high school and -- well, jewelboxes don't have the same visual cachet.

Perhaps we as a culture are poorer for that. Because how else can we see such delightful treasures as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel has collected in "Worst Album Cover Ever?"

A lot of these covers are surprisingly poignant, as the subjects project nothing more than an earnest desire to entertain the listener, and by golly, they'll do that if it means covering themselves in sour cream and shocking the grandchildren. What can I say? I'm a sucker for sincerity. However, some of these album covers suggest richer backstories. Those are after the jump.

Roger surely has more than six facets. We've only seen him as whimsical, smoldering, expansive, admonishing, pensive and mirthful. Where is the wrath? Where is the near-suicidal depression? The amoral lust? The Quaalude-fueled somnolence? Roger is selling us all short here.

  The neighborhood swingers' club decided to throw a masked Mardi Gras ball, but Hal hadn't anticipated the perils of blending in with the Tomlinsons' rec room walls. Sure, his hair looked good, but why go to the trouble of using the super-hold spray if nobody was going to invite him into the beanbag room?

  Jerry's joy at being surrounded by three space babes is going to go sour the minute he realizes that NASA forgot to put zippers in the space suits.

  Ricky didn't care what the folks down in the holler thought -- he liked Obama's cap-and-trade policies and planned to vote for the man come hell or high water.

  Julie had thought she had forgiven Daddy for selling her during that poker game five years ago, but now that the dreaded birthday was here, she wasn't as live-and-let-live as she thought.

  As Mike laid down the backing vocals for the final track, his brother Steve fumed. Most people just wrote thank-you notes, but noooooo, Mike had to go and make a whole album! It was so unfair.

  Ken would like you to stop requesting "Free Bird." It's begun to haunt him in his dreams.

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ETA: An astonishingly high percentage of these album covers also appear on Hurling Invective's far more comprehensive -- and frightening -- gallery of bad album cover art. For those of you who would like to compare 1960s bad to 1970s bad to 1980s bad, I suggest heading that way. I'm going to stay here and chew on the intellectual property implications of making ad money off free stuff you found and collected online.

Comments

[Becky]

Those album covers are awesome. And so earnest! Nothing will ever top Thank You for the Dove, ever.

On a related note, since buying most songs and albums on MP3 nowadays, I really miss liner notes! How else will I find out the lyrics of a song, or who played the hammond organ on such-and-such song?

[Ben]

eMusic does an excellent job with the liner notes, it seems to me. iTunes could learn something there. As for lyrics, isn't that what Google is for?

[Timothy Moriarty]

LOLZ OMG YOU LINKED TO MY SITE I LUV U.

You like my imitation of an illiterate bottom-dweller hick with internet access?

So yeah, anyway, thanks for the props on the albums covers. I've really been meaning to flesh out that part of the site and now you've inspired me to hurry up and finish up my captions for those album covers.

I linked to your site in my blogroll. Prost!

T.M.