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  1. Loved the art work for Armed Forces, the buyers of fresh air music don`t know what they are missing.

    I`ve always loved the front cover of (shock) `Forever Changes` and there are dozens of prog albums whose artwork is stunning. I also recently bought `Bitches Brew` and the artwork is brilliant.

  5. Doesn’t pop up, or come as a fake local rag, but this to me epitomises LP artwork – the anti Pepper:

    [URL=http://s1302.photobucket.com/user/gary_thompson1/media/Meddle%20IC_zpsqfdolmkg.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1302.photobucket.com/albums/ag136/gary_thompson1/Meddle%20IC_zpsqfdolmkg.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

    • This is a fantastic shot. Serious without being self-serious. Eye contact without a trace of self-consciousness. I suspect four shots were comped together, but that doesn’t matter. Shame the outer cover was such a pig’s ear!

    • I find this picture quite funny. Dave looks really grumpily cheesed off (“I’m telling my mum of you”) Rick is going “hurry up, I want a wee”, Nick’s thinking, “I’m missing the Grand Prix for this”, and Rog, totally out of character, is only just taking it seriously.

  8. The first album I ever bought was Billion Dollar Babies by Alice Cooper (yes, my parents were delighted!). It was constructed like a snakeskin wallet complete with giant dollar bill. In order to get the whole experience, you needed to tear a section out of one side of the gatefold and reveal a picture of…. well I’m still not entirely sure as I couldn’t bring myself to damage the perforations. It’s still pristine to this day with the picture still hidden. I’ve just looked for some pictures and it seems to be worth more money than I expected. I’m not parting with it though.

      • I’ve got that one, Metal Box and Armed Forces as illustrated above. Inventive they may be but practical they aren’t! After a few days I blu-tacked my Armed Forces sleeve together so I could use it as a proper sleeve. I transferred all the bits of MEtal Box (except of course the Metal Box) into a brown cardboard LP mailing sleeve which, all these years later, is where it still lives. The XTC cover simply let the dust in so, although I still use the original sleeve, it has a more sensible inner sleeve inside which inevitably sticks out of corners and rather loses the original interest.

    • The cover of Family’s Bandstand is cut out to look like the front of an old timey telly, like you’d watch the Coronation on. The picture through the “window” is of the band in the studio looking singularly pissed off (as they were, but that’s another story).

      Great album though but – easily their best non-psychedelic LP.

      • Reminds me of an off-shot of that We Buy White Albums thing a couple of years back, when somebody recorded about a hundred different copies being played at the same time. The result was absolutely terrifying (and bits of White are pretty freaky as it is)

    • I’m part of a circle of Lips fans in Berlin who come together once a year with four CD players to listen to “Zaireeka” as intended. As you’ve got 8 speakers there are some amazing stereo effects!

      The four discs can be listened to separately, but sound like demos or instrumentals in part. For example, the bass may “wander” from disc 1 to disc 3 and back, or the backing vocals sometimes are divided over three discs. And there’s a harrowing scream that builds from disc to disc for a really cinematic effect.

      The disc come with a recorded synchronization clip at the start, but that doesn’t always work out 100% – which doesn’t matter actually 😉

  13. Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffitti

    Cut-out windows with different views depending on how the records were inserted.
    (Perfect opportunity to throw in a couple of gratuitous porno shots, or a lobster completely missed)

  17. Led Zepp 3 with the rotating wheel of images.
    Tull’s Living In The Past hard back flold out cover but just some pictures inside a bit meh
    Magical Mystery Tour: much more vibrant- got a pristine copy -any offers
    Who Live at leeds with all the photos and contracts and stuff

  19. XTC.

    In addition to the circular Big Express sleeve, they did quite a few singles with unusual packaging, including these:

    http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/t449/GCU_Grey_Area/DSC_0988_zpslbb0dked.jpg

    ‘No Thugs’ folds out into a paper theatre, while ‘Nigel’ is a board game, and Sgt. Rock a comic (with a band pic on the reverse. Andy Partridge had a major hand in the design.

    http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/t449/GCU_Grey_Area/DSC_0989_zpscwzd8s1x.jpg

    http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/t449/GCU_Grey_Area/DSC_0990_zpsdkyiwarv.jpg

    http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/t449/GCU_Grey_Area/DSC_0991_zpscbjfkxke.jpg

  20. I have a vinyl recording of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, I bought and lent several cd-versions of it, directed by several different directors but I never ever got that little detail that made me feeiling that I am in the cathedral it’s played, a simple, perfect, majestuous echo when on a cd a brutal silence takes place. The B-side is a choirs that no critic had mercy not to call kitsch and ridiculous. And, no, you can’t have that in a CD.

  22. There was a period around 1990 when similar fancy packaging was used to market limited edition versions of some CD singles by some of the major record companies, in an attempt to hype them into the charts. Some of this packaging was quite ornate, and must have cost far more to produce than the retail price of the single. I can’t cite and specific examples, unfortunately.

    They were outlawed when the chart compilers introduced new eligibility rules.

  26. The Who – Odds & Sods

    Track names written in braille, and cut-outs/tears on front cover.

    I’ve actually seen a copy for sale with the advice: “Poor condition – Tears on cover”

  27. Scanning my albums: those HatHut albums are amazing doorsteps with their rugged red packaging, especially the triple One Too Salty Sweet And Not Goodbye by Cecil Taylor; Alone Together by Dave Mason has a fold-out, well, not mountain exactly, more an outcropping; Janis Joplin’s Crumb-drawn sleeve; Traffic’s John Barleycorn and its wheatstraw-effect sleeve; Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection and CSNY’s Deja Vu both channeling sepia-tinted old America; the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request with its built-in “moving” picture; the middle fold out Quintessence; Tusk by Fleetwood Mac is very heavy-duty; then there’s Heavy Petting by Dr Strangely Strange, which I don’t have, but a mate did, very elaborate packaging indeed, not built to last..

  29. Sing it again, Rod in a whisky tumbler shaped sleeve,
    L.A. Woman originally had etched silhouettes of the band on the clear bit of the cover, to stand out against the inner sleeve, with later copies having a clear clear bit, and the picture as was printed on the inner sleeve

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