Sunday , June 27, 2010
nogoodforme Superlatives: Favorite Record Covers
Sonic Youth, Goo / Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures / Merzbow, Dolphin Sonar
These are my three favorite record covers of all time, conveniently broken down for your perusal:
Sonic Youth, Goo: I'm one of those people who prefer it when Sonic Youth slums it as pop musicians as opposed to being all noise-y and art-damaged and intellectual or whatever. They write really great pop songs when they want to, and I wish they would write more. Goo is them at their most sell-outist, pop-ist, fun-ist and trash-ist, and I have always loved this record for using this kind of tawdry Raymond Pettibon drawing, which epitomizes what I wanted out of love when I was a young adolescent: deadpan desperation and aloof cool. Now I want things to be more like the cover of Mary Timony's Mountains or Joanna Newsom's Ys (another one of my favorite record covers, actually), but we won't talk about that here.
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures: I think this is just a triumph of perfect design. This record cover absolutely fits the music: minimal, dark, cold, mysterious and forbidding. It is absolutely iconic: its central motif has not only been reggaefied for a Delia's t-shirt, but it has also made it onto the sole of a sneaker. There are very few record covers that can say that. I pretty much admire nearly everything Factory Records ever designed and almost every record they released, but I think this is a masterpiece of minimalism, both in sound and design.
Merzbow, Dolphin Sonar: This record just came out today and already the cover is a favorite. I mean, really, look at it. It's genius! It is so cute. Don't you love dolphins? They look like really friendly aliens with little radio waves coming out of their brains. It's cuter than most babies! The music, however, is not cute: Merzbow is just brutal, but a very innovative, very idiosyncratic brutal, using elements of psychedelia, free jazz, experimental and straight up loud noise to make some of the nuttiest music ever. This record is actually an angry call against dolphin slaughtering in Japan and is consequently a bit scary to listen to -- it makes you want your mommy by about the third "track." That's okay. Just hold onto the record and keep your eyes on the cute dolphins. They'll pull you through. They have sonar, after all. (Kat)
Practically every Sonic Youth record ever
My favorite album cover is Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers: It's black and white and roses all over, and the photography's by Gus Van Sant, and even the parental advisory looks good on John Frusciante's chin. The tongues tweak me out a little but that's all part of the fun. I love it above all else and that's all there is to say. The End.
So the runner-up prize goes to "Sonic Youth album covers in general," or, more specifically: any Sonic Youth recording that was not put out on Sonic Youth Recordings ('cause that SYR ish gives me hives and makes me hate Sonic Youth like I fleetingly tend to do once every six years or so). The coolest/uncanniest thing is how they always look exactly how the record sounds: Bad Moon Rising sounds exactly like a creepy scarecrow with its head on fire, Confusion is Sex sounds exactly like a bad squiggly drawing of Thurston Moore, Evol sounds exactly like a creepy still from a Richard Kern movie. Maybe those guys missed their calling as art directors.
Speaking of which: Whenever I get around to actually making a book, I want the cover designed by some really ace Sonic Youth ripoff artist. A few years ago I was trying to put together this comp zine with a working title of "Cars & Songs Project," and all I knew about the cover was I needed it to be a total copycat of the Goo art. And let me take this opportunity to formally apologize to all the writers who submitted their gorgeous stories to that project, only to have them languish away in my old iBook. I'm sorry, everyone! I'm sorry, Kat! Yours was one of my favorites. Maybe someday when we're not in the middle of throwing a party or curating a photo show or making cupcakes or engineering interplanetary spacecraft or inventing a new species of equine animal, nogoodforme.com can move on into the fiction-publishing racket. We'll see. (Liz)
The Who Sell Out, and Laura Jane sells out the Beatles
My actual favorite record cover is Revolver (aren't you glad I included a link to what the cover of Revolver looks like? I'm sure nobody would have any idea what I was talking about if I hadn't). This is because the cover of Revolver is objectively the best record cover of all time. I think that on some level, everybody in the Universe's favorite record cover is Revolver (except for boring Normies, who would probably choose Abbey Road instead). Nobody, least of all me, needs to hear some girl on some blog explain why Revolver is a great record cover. If you can't figure out for yourself why Revolver is a great record cover, you are either a toddler or stupid. So that's that.
There are a lot of great record covers in this world. A lot of them are swirly and tacky and psychedelic. A lot of them are muted and simple and subdued. And one of them is The Who Sell Out by the Who, which is obnoxious and sort of dumb, totally hilar, a really flawless representation of "who" (HA HA) the people in that band are, hot dude-erific, nauseatingly gross, vaguely annoying, ugly, mad cool, sexy, unsexy, puerile, and, above all else, totally genius.
I don't like the Who as much as a) a lot of people like the Who like the Who, b) Matthew Friedberger likes the Who, c) the Who like the Who (I think), or d) I probably should like the Who based on the bulk of my musical taste. But I do, of course, like the Who, and if there's one thing I like about the Who more than all the other things I like about the Who, it's that the Who are never sad. They're never whiny or self-pitying or bored or upset. They're a really positive band. They smile a lot, and they like fun. They love fun! Even Keith Moon was somehow able to manage a raging substance abuse problem with maintaining a totally great attitude and never, like, coming down or whatever.
Maybe this album was supposed to make some sort of high-concept political statement about the ideological strengths and/or weaknesses of "selling out", but if that's the case, it definitely fails. Mostly it's just kind of funny and cute, and it reminds me of why I think dudes are so cool and hot and great. Even though the picture of Pete Townshend applying a mammoth-sized tube of deodorant (for the record: I WILL NEVER FIGURE OUT HOW TO SPELL THE WORD "deodorant"; I had to Google it!) to his nasty stinky Pete Townshend armpit will never cease to trigger the ole gag reflex, that's A-OK. I love him for looking so ugly and lame and creepy on the cover of his own album. Can you imagine that doofus Keith Richards doing the same? As if. Even the Beatles are too cool for deodorant application pix.
In short: this album cover is cool, the Who are chill people (I guess), and Revolver is the greatest record cover of all time. Pardon me while I go fantasize about making out with John Entwistle in matching animal-print. Hot. (Laura)
Tags: anti-"intellectual" music, dolphins, hot dudes, Joanna Newsom, Laura loves The Beatles, Mary Timony, Merzbow, nogoodforme.com's impending world domination, psychedelia, Raymond Pettibon, Red Hot Chili Peppers, selling out, Sonic Youth, The Who
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Posted by Kat, Liz and Laura in Superlatives |
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Got something to say? We'd love to hear it! Name, email and "type in the weirdo drunken text" thingie are all required to comment; don't worry, we won't email you or anything, we just want to make sure you're not an evil spambot. Keeping in mind the good-times mentality we like to keep going here, we've worked hard to keep NOGOODFORME.COM as fun as possible. We welcome all kinds of comments, but insults/abuse/general bitchery are not tolerated. In other words, we put the smackdown on evil troll posts. If you want to be a hater, please go elsewhere. Now, as Salt 'N Pepa say, "Only the sexy people..."
Geez oh pete, I love you guys for posting this! Who else would make record cover reviews this fun?! Sexy geniuses rule.
By katie rose on August 30, 2008 10:08 PM
who else would care as much as you do? MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL
By Laura
on August 31, 2008 5:52 PM
I agree that this cover is awesome, but I just have to point out that the idea that The Who was a happy band made me laugh. Sure they were in the beginning, but starting with Who's Next, they slowly became more and more depressing, due mostly to Pete Townshend not wanting to get old. Not to say that those songs were bad (they're actually some of my favorites), but yeah, listen to The Who By Numbers album and get back to me on how "happy" they are.
By CJJC on January 25, 2009 1:50 AM
I agree that this cover is awesome, but I just have to point out that the idea that The Who was a happy band made me laugh. Sure they were in the beginning, but starting with Who's Next, they slowly became more and more depressing, due mostly to Pete Townshend not wanting to get old. Not to say that those songs were bad (they're actually some of my favorites), but yeah, listen to The Who By Numbers album and get back to me on how "happy" they are.
By CJJC on January 25, 2009 1:50 AM
thanks bud! Like I said, I know nothing about the Who. Actually, I don't know if I said that or not, but either way, I am as smart about the Who as someone who saw "Across the Universe" and knows that "Hey Jude" is a song is about the Beatles. I WILL listen to the who by numbers and get back to you, CJJC.
By Laura
on January 25, 2009 12:22 PM