The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

OK, so maybe I need to change the title of this series based on the increasing infrequency of posts in it.  But whatever.  I just had to resurrect it when I saw the latest entry at one of my favorite .mp3 blogs, My Jazz World.  It features a great one-two punch of cheesy wordplay in the title and some freaky cover art.  It’s 1973′s Flute of the Loom, by flautist Frank Wess.

Jazz piano giants Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan, who both sprang out of a very fertile post-war Detroit jazz scene, entered Fantasy Studios (the in-house studio of Fantasy Records) in Berkeley, California to record an album of piano duets in January 1978.  The result of that session was the Galaxy Records release Our Delights (GXY-5113).  The album art indeed reflects the very sweet music contained within:

It took a few glances at the photo before I figured out that those aren’t chocolate hearts, but chocolate pianos.  A nice little juxtaposition for sure.  Unfortunately I don’t know who’s responsible for this rather clever photograph, but if anyone has that info please let me know.

The same recording session also yielded a second duet album, More Delights, which featured a similar piano/candy theme.

Since it’s been so long since the last entry, I’ll give you a two-fer.  This marks (I believe) the first entry in the ACotW series featuring a compilation, as well as the first entry from the Fab Four.  These two albums were released in April 1973, less than three full years after the Beatles officially disbanded in 1970.  In contrast to the iconic covers of albums like Rubber Soul or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the images for this career-spanning set are simpler yet more powerful in my opinion.

Up first is 1962-1966, also known as the Red Album.  This shot of the Beatles looking down from a stairwell at the EMI building in London was taken by Angus McBeam, and is actually from the same photo session that gave us the cover of the group’s debut, Please Please Me.

…keep digging Album covers of the week: 1962-1966 & 1967-1970

There’s not much room for expounding on this week’s entry, 1969′s Beck-Ola, the second and final album from the first incarnation of the Jeff Beck Group.  It’s a giant apple in a room.  Very simple, very cool-looking.

The album art is a reproduction the second version of The Listening Room (1958) by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte.  The first (1952) has the apple in a wooden room.  Magritte’s work enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the ’60s and ’70s thanks to its inclusion on other album covers, as well as by album covers inspired by his work.

Perhaps of even more interest is the note included on the orignal album’s back cover – “Today, with all the hard competition in the music business, it’s almost impossible to come up with anything totally original. So we haven’t. However, this disc was made with the accent on heavy music. So sit back and listen and try and decide if you can find a small place in your heads for it.”

There’s something to be said for a little honesty in advertising.

There are a handful of album covers from the Flaming Lips’ discography worth of enshrinement as part of this series.  But for me it came down to a choice between their two best – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and the ultimate winner, At War With the Mystics.  I was tempted to go with Yoshimi because I like the album more, but this cover is just so damn good:

My internet sleuthing tells me the cover art credit goes to Dan Lazenby, although I’m open to corrections on that.  Regardless, I love the mood created by the bright, explosive imagery and funky title font.  It looks it could be the cover of a musty old paperback book you stumble across while browsing the oft-overlooked Fantasy/Sci-Fi section at a rummage sale or flea market.

Right under the Warner Bros. logo it says “Stereo Spaced Higher Dimensions.”  Yeah, that about sums up this album.

I’d wager that if you ask most casual Who fans what their favorite albums by the group are, and they’d probably say Tommy, Who’s Next and maybe Live at Leeds.  All fine choices, of course, but before any of those were even released there was my favorite – 1967′s The Who Sell Out.  It was Pete Townshend’s first crack at a concept album, although this is more of a theme album actually.  The premise is that the entire album (complete with radio jingles) is actually a broadcast from the pirate station Radio London.

It’s the commercials, not the songs, from which the design for The Who Sell Out is inspired.  And it is inspired.

That’s Townshend and Roger Daltrey on the front, pitching Odorono and Heinz Baked Beans respectively.  Honestly the image of Daltrey sitting in a tub of beans creeps me out a little bit.  And on the back cover that’s the late Keith Moon (pitching Medac) and John Entwistle (for Charles Atlas).  I looked for the name of the woman with Entwistle but couldn’t find it.

Graphic design for the album was handled by David King and Roger Law, and photography was by David Montgomery.  King and Law handled the design for another classic album released the same month as this one:  The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Axis: Bold As Love.   Of note is that this was one of the first pop albums (Moby Grape’s debut LP earlier in ’67 being the first) to not list the song titles anywhere on the cover.

As legend has it, John Entwistle was originally supposed to sit in the tub of beans but heard about it in advance and was conveniently late to the photo shoot.  Daltrey was drafted to take his place, and for being a good sport got a mild case of pneumonia (the beans were refrigerated).

There are multiple versions of this album cover depending on the country of origin.  Notably, the Australian release substitutes Medac for Clearasil on Keith Moon’s photo.  This was probably confusing to Aussie listeners since one of the jingles on the album is for Medac, and as far as I know they didn’t record a Clearasil spot.

Surf’s Up?  Isn’t that a Beach Boys album?  Well sure, it’s the middle of January and as I look out my window there is snow on the ground.  But as far as I’m concerned any time of year is a good time to talk about the lads from Hawthorne, California.

By the time of this album’s release in August 1971, the salad days of the Beach Boys seemed like a distant memory.  Brian Wilson, the main creative force behind the group since its founding 10 years prior, had fallen deeper into into drug use and depression.  Younger brother Carl has assumed his place of prominence within the Beach Boys.

After releasing a series of commercially disappointing records (including the excellent Sunflower in 1970) the Beach Boys hired DJ Jack Rieley as their new manager.  Rieley set about to reverse the band’s fortunes, and two of his changes were to put Carl in creative control and to restore the group’s relevance by having them compose more socially aware lyrics.  No more songs about girls, cars, or surfing.  This new world-conscious Beach Boys attitude is duly reflected in the choice of album art for Surf’s Up.

This most un-Beach Boys of covers is a painting based on the sculpture End of the Trail, by James Earle Fraser.  Fraser is probably best known as the designer of the famous Buffalo nickel.  He had witnessed the increasingly futile resistance by Native Americans against the expansionist white man, and created End of the Trail as his way to honor their struggle.  Fraser’s 18-foot plaster sculpture debuted at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.  It now resides at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

It would be really easy to suppose that this image of an exhausted warrior whose people is on the brink of extinction was chosen as an analogy to the Beach Boys’ commercial and artistic plight.  I’ve certainly read others make that comparison, and it could be accurate.  Or it could have just been chosen because it’s a really excellent work of art.