One last road record before I move onto other topics. Five years after Elton’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, it was gabba gabba hey time for a new lineup of the Ramones. Tommy moved […]
From The Stacks: Ramones – Road to Ruin
From The Stacks: Roxy Music – Country Life
Roxy Music’s fourth LP, 1974’s Country Life, is the Mona Lisa of controversial album covers. Oh, there are more famous banned sleeves, more explicit, more surreal, but sexier? Not to my eye.
From the Stacks: Mark-Almond–Rising
Let’s get this out of the way: This has nothing to do with Marc “Tainted Love” Almond from Soft Cell. Mark-Almond was a kind of mellow jazz band that was most prolific […]
From the Stacks: Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique, Op.14
If you find yourself wondering what the hell I’m doing with a Berlioz album, then you really haven’t been paying attention: I love batshit crazy album covers.
From the Stacks: The Bumpers – The Official Bump Ball Record
The first thing to note here is that this is the OFFICIAL Bump Ball record, not one of those cheap Lithuanian knock-offs. When I first saw this album I assumed it was […]
From the Stacks: The Partridge Family – Shopping Bag
Oh, marketing departments. Sometimes you simply run out of ideas, don’t you? I’d love to have the strategy meeting notes for this one:
159. Crushin’
Record Bar was a cool gig, but to understand why you need a little background on the music industry. When we talk about a song being a top ten hit, what we’re […]
From the Stacks: Jefferson Airplane – Bark
By 1971 Jefferson Airplane wasn’t the same band that played Woodstock. Founding member Marty Balin was gone (for now), as was drummer Spencer Dryden. The band added a violinist, Papa John Creach, […]
From the Stacks: Louis Prima – Call of the Wildest
The problem with Louis Prima is that every bad goombah movie and shitty Italian restaurant chain goes directly to his catalog to soundtrack their faux experiences. Prima is aural shorthand for candles […]
Storm Thorgerson, 1944-2013
Legendary album cover designer Storm Thorgerson succumbed to cancer this week, age 69.
Why It Matters 