Museum of Bad Album Covers

[huedell]

I can't see "artist value" in either one.
It's put there for SHOCK VALUE ... perhaps even for a more devious reason.
Regardless, they should have spent some time in jail for that.

Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and White Album proved, you can have a total crap album cover --- but if the music is great ... suddenly the album covers are deemed great as well.
After all, it is about the music to begin with.

Not that I'm for putting naked kids on album covers but
I thought I'd mention that "shock value" IS "artist value" as you called it.

----music is only as "serious" as you want or need it to be
and doesn't always have to be beyond shallow "sizzle"---

some of the best music in the world is indeed style over substance
and "stupid" or "shocking" album covers are part of that complete package
---a goofy artistic goal---but artistic (i.e. "conceptual") nevertheless.

[Brue]

Even though I liked the Music on it in the 80s - I couldn't buy Loverboy because of the album cover.

[mego73]

Blind Faith (featuring Eric Clapton) put out an equally (maybe more so) LP cover back in the late 60's/early 70's. Rumour has it the young girl on the cover turned to a life of booze and drugs and committed suicide. Strange thing is, is that it is available in record stores even today. I think it gets past obscenity laws as it is deemed to have "artistic value".

Blind Faith was a bare chested shot of a 14 year old girl in a neutral pose which is not as much of a big deal as Virgin Killer with a much younger girl in a provocative full length pose with only a superimposed glass crack covering her at the most crucial area.

Underage nudity, on it's own is not illegal. Major films such as Pretty Baby had a pre-teen Brooke Shields nude, the more obscure Possession Of Joel Delaney had a killer force a boy to disrobe (and everything was shown) and dance to avoid him harming other members of the family (I caught it on cable one night and had to pick my jaw up off the floor, so did Steven King who wrote about the movie in an article in Entertainment Weekly).

The more sexual the nature of the nudity is, the more it flirts with being pornography. IMHO the Virgin Killer cover does at least flirt with it and Blind Faith one does not.

[nvmbrsdoom5]

Both the Scorps and Blind Faith covers are awful, but the Blind Faith one isn't nearly as bad, as mentioned it's not really something you could say was "sexually provocative". Either way they're both in bad taste, in my opinion. As for jailtime.....well, if they weren't breaking any laws then I guess that's why there was no jailtime. You're talking about Europe where even today the laws and attitudes towards (at least partial) nudity is much more relaxed than here in the U.S. Funny thing is, I know that the laws over there are much more strict regarding the use of blood and gore and violence on album covers, even now, moreso than images that are more sexually provocative. Whereas over here it's much easier to get your album released with violent imagery without major censoring.

Anyhow, great website there, some really hilarious stuff, I couldn't stop laughing at the album covers with the ventriloquists.

[4NDR01D]

[QUOTE=mego73;225397]Blind Faith was a bare chested shot of a 14 year old girl in a neutral pose which is not as much of a big deal as Virgin Killer with a much younger girl in a provocative full length pose with only a superimposed glass crack covering her at the most crucial area.QUOTE]

what you and nvmbersdoom are failing to mention (as did I) is that the 14/15 year old girl on the Blind faith LP was holding a DILDO/AIRPLANE!!!
Hardly what I would call a "neutral pose".
I think something like Led Zeppelin's Lp cover "Houses of the Holy" could lay claim to having artist merit. The other two IMHO are explotive garbage.
Anyways, no arguments here, and I wasn't trying to hijack a humourous thread and turn it all serious. as I have approx. 4000 crappy records in my garage I definitely recognise alot of those album covers, especially the religious ones. I'll do some digging around and try to find some good ones.