This image really irritated conservatives in Britain at the time…but who cares? Such narrow-minded folk are born to be tormented by people like John Lydon, it’s the natural order of things. And then there’s this:

Dunno if this is the promo artwork for a single, an album or some other nonsense–I can’t be bothered to investigate Britney Spears for a second longer. But I am amused that somebody somewhere thought it would be a good lark to put her on the cross…see, people instantly associate the crucifixion imagery with Jesus and Christianity, but in a historical context, the lowest of the low got crucified.The dregs. Common, dirtbag criminals and people the Romans didn’t think enough of to put into forced labor.

And musically speaking, that’s exactly what’s going on here. Britney has at last found her place with the rest of the human refuse in the music industry. I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it makes me laugh. As does this:

At first I thought perhaps this was Britney’s final freakout–that this artwork was an ad for some kind of new white supremacist tea party nonsense. But we would have heard about that by now. Nope, this has to be something else. It’s not an ad for her new gig at Hats Unlimited, so it MUST be an album cover.

A stupid, stupid album cover.

“Hey look, folks, my head can be used for more than just a battering ram. It’s also a HAT RACK. Now buy my single.”

–Joe Wallace

Brain fried from far too much driving. Here’s a gallery of images I’ve collected along the way, with some snarky commentary free of charge. I have gathered these images between Springfield, Illinois and San Antonio, Texas–and I’ve paid the price, let me tell you–my retinas are seared for life in some cases.

The name of this John Denver Album, in case you can’t read the type, is “I Want To Live”. Sorry matey, but you should have taken the bus.

I love this album cover. He looks like one of those plastinated dead bodies currently causing all the fuss on the museums. The bananas don’t look plastinated, though. Just very ripe.

WHY WHY WHY do people with terminal charisma deficiencies INSIST on putting their mugs on the front cover of these records? The idea behind a good album cover is to SELL THE RECORD, not to inspire me to shovel rodent feces up with it.

This CANNOT be good for your vinyl collection, but it is still the most amusing album-related toy I’ve seen in ages. The Vinyl Killer was purchased in Japan and brought back to the USA for mayhem. You insert the batteries, put the van on a piece of vinyl on a countertop or floor (horrors!) and it drives around the grooves and plays the record. A fun toy to play with on throwaway vinyl records by AC/DC (Powerage!) and Krokus.

There are LOADS more images from this crazy trip and I still have plenty to say about Forever Young Records in Grand Prarie, Austin’s famous Waterloo Records and Antoine’s…and there are still a few more places to visit before it’s all said and done–the madness continues as I drive to Hogwild Records in San Antonio, plus I owe a visit to Recycled Records back in Springfield, Illinois–but not before I search Bloomington, Illinois for some signs of life in the vinyl department.

One day we are hoping that Taschen dedicates one of their luxuriously assembled editions to awful art, but until then this tome is probably THE authority on crapola covers.

Now compare it to the utterly goofy and craptacular cover for this Swedish nonsense– Kjell Kraghe’s Vind I Seglen. This album cover takes the seafaring them to a similarly fucktarded new low. We’re faced with a serious chicken-and-egg question here. Which wretched cover came first? Was this some kind of harmonic convergence of dumbass graphic design? Or was somebody thinking, “No way is that OTHER windmill-and-wooden-shoes country going to show US up in the dumbass graphics department!”

This album cover reminds me of Beavis and Butthead episode where Butthead delivers a stunning critique of a bad 90s music video by merely uttering the phrase, “Look at his FACE!” That’s all we really need to say here, isn’t it? Except those two sails placed so perfectly in symmetry next to this hambone Ricky Schroeder lookalike makes it appear this guy has some kind of freakish protruberances connected to that suit of his. 

So perhaps these are both, on their own,  merely lame-o record covers. But viewed side by side they give me the horrors. We know Sweden and Denmark are capable of better than this…but then again, we haven’t even started looking at the bad death metal album covers from these two countries. Just you wait, this stuff looks tame (well, it IS tame) by comparison.

Porter Wagoner may have been one of the legends of country music, but the dudes who approved the artwork for his records were clearly smoking Jimson weed for this one. Just WTF is going on with this picture, anyway?

Wagoner looks like he’s contemplating drinking this rotgut in spite of the fact that there’s a little man inside. “Hey Porter, over here! Look, you don’t wanna drink this. I just wee’d inside this bottle and it smells like a homeless shelter. Fer chrissakes, Porter…DON’T DRINK MEEEEEEEEE!”

The expression on Porter Wagoner’s face is priceless. It’s a cross between “Goddamn, I really want to tie one on here,” and “I wonder if free will is an artificial construct of the human mind or if it’s a crucial part of what makes our all-too-brief existence what it is?”

Or perhaps it’s kidney stones.

The DJ Sales and Marketing Handbook starts off the list. So far, so good, right? Learn how to set up and get paid to party! That’s what author Stacy Zemon wants you to do. Why the hell not? Now granted, being a club DJ is alot different than being a MOBILE DJ, but a lot of people find the party DJ route easier to get into and they transition to clubs later. Not a bad career path if you ask me…

The Complete Guide To Remixing is probably a good bet, as long as you’re buying DJ how to books. After all, what good’s a DJ who can’t remix on the fly?

Then, there’s THIS little entry in the Amazon list of books, which surprised me on one hand, but on the other, I thought “Well damn, I guess I have some book ordering to do.” Apparently, the Amazon people understand DJ culture better than you might think:

And yes, How To Grow Exceptional Cannabis is STILL FOR SALE. Hurry, now.

Vinyl records vs. MP3s? I own them both. Why are album versions of records better than their MP3 counterparts? The digital Black Flag vs. the original SST Black Flag recordings? Naked Raygun on your iPod shouldn’t sound much different than the vinyl record of the same album, right? Can you find Big Black on MP3? Here’s a a little list:

10.  You can’t accidentally delete a vinyl record. However, your cat may urinate on it. That won’t affect playback…unless you have friends over.

9. You don’t get the nice big cover art off an MP3 download. This doesn’t matter much for modern releases, but for those old, elaborate LP releases or soundtracks to sexy Italian horror and “sexual awakening” movies, big covers are nice. Especially for those Piero Umiliani soundtracks. There’s nothing more fun than a cheesy sexy 60s era album cover, is there?

8. Nobody tries to sue you for making a CD-R burn of some old dusty record in your collection. They’d love to try, but the RIAA would get laughed out of court faster than Rod Blagojevich proclaiming his innocence. Nice try.

7. Unlike an MP3, you can shatter a vinyl record and use the pieces to gash somebody in face when they make fun of your pants.

6. In Shaun Of The Dead, the heroes tried to kill zombies using 12-inch singles. Try doing that with an iPod and you’ll join the ranks of the undead faster than a screaming teenage girl in a filmy white nightgown.

5. George Carlin comedy albums just plain SOUND BETTER on vinyl.

4. You can actually clean a record album with soap and water. You can clean an iPod by…BUYING A NEW ONE.

3. Stores with high theft issues should stock vinyl. You can hide an MP3 player in any body cavity. An album tends to stick out of the most obvious places. Painful, too.

2. Vinyl records are better than MP3s because you can play them backwards and get the messages Satan wants you to hear. Try doing THAT with a downloaded version of Ashford & Simpson’s “Solid as a Rock”.

1. When you get bored, you can safely microwave an LP, put it on the turntable and play it for laughs. Put an MP3 player in the microwave and it will explode. Need we say more?