WTF Album Covers: Mew And The Glass Handed Kites

The WTF factor on this album art by Mew is so high that you might get a nosebleed while contemplating its awfulness. Fortunately for this band, the music itself does not choke the way the cover does.

And The Glass Handed Kits features music that sounds a bit like a more pop-oriented (and less uber-trippy) Gang Gang Dance. There’s an epic quality to many of the tracks on this record that are totally misrepresented by this violently awful cover. Though it has to be said, they manage to veer excruciatingly off into Neil Young “Harvest” territory at times…and do we really need anybody besides Neil Young warbling away like that? Er, not realllllly.

Ignore the cover and try to head toward the experimental pop portions of this Mew record. You can preview bits of all tracks at the Mew And The Glass Handed Kites Amazon page.

Vinyl Blogs To Love: Bad Record Covers

This totally bewildering album cover (ok, it’s the cover for a SINGLE, not a full-length album, but STILL…) come by way of the absolutely fabulous Bad Record Covers site, which has plenty of visual atrocities on display for your amusement. Behold:

This HAS to be some kind of ironic statement about the futility of war, right? Because otherwise it’s likely some kind of sick nationalistic drum beating exercise designed to whip people into a frenzy of…well, ok, settle down. It’s probably nothing aside from a really awful idea for a record jacket.

I hope.

The real point of all of this is to send you over to Bad Album Covers to get your fill of awfulness for the day. Some vinyl blogs might consider a site like this “the competition” but as far as Turntabling goes, there can NEVER be too many bad album cover detectives working out there. It’s a big, scary world filled with millions of intimidating discount record bins. Who could get through them all? Not me.

–Joe Wallace

WTF Records: Cerrone 3 Supernature

No, I haven’t got a damn CLUE what’s going on with this album cover. But isn’t that the best part? Trying to guess what was going through the minds of the people responsible for this is half the fun! See if you can guess what kind of record this is by looking at the album cover–no fair researching it on Google you cheaters! Is this 70s-era hard rock? Experimental farm animal acapella? Brian Eno-inspired ambient drones with an emphasis on medical jargon?

Nope. Wrong on all fronts. Take a listen to this via the clip below and marvel at how totally disconnected that cover is when viewed  while listening to the actual music. Whaaaaaaat?

WTF Records: ELP Go Gibb

This album cover would make a LOT MORE SENSE if it had the words BEE GEES on it somewhere.

Vinyl Blogs We Love: Waxidermy

In a never-ending quest to find bizarre, out-of-print, and rare vinyl, the journey takes strange and wonderful turns.

One of the most enjoyable as of late? Waxidermy, a vinyl blog dedicated to out-of-print rarities and oddities that has an outstanding section called Incredibly Strange that will not only change your life, but might actually ALTER it substantially. It’s MIND BENDING.

Proof? The too-short-by-a-mile post on the vinyl record titled “Fist” Goodbody’s Traveling Torture Show, which has sent Turntabling on a torched-earth bughunt for this WTF record. It cannot be said that it must be owned, “whatever the cost” but there is a definite interest in procuring this vinyl freakshow for permanent installation in the Turntabling Collection. If you own a copy of “Fist” Goodbody’s Traveling Torture Show you want to sell, by all means get in touch.

Waxidermy is a massive, massive site and there is so much to explore that you might just fall over dead before getting through it all, which is never a bad thing. Waxidermy must go on and on forever, because it’s simply too awesome not to. Done gushing now…just get over there and have a look. You won’t be sorry. Your brain may be damaged forever by the Incredibly Strange section, but that just means Turntabling will have plenty of company.

–Joe Wallace

WTF Album Covers: Rodney Carrington King Of The Mountains

Never mind how appallingly, redneckity-sexist this album cover is. Forget about how stupid the album cover concept might be, and dispense with all your well-founded objections over it being simple-minded and flat out DUMB. Just for a second.

See if you can guess what kind of a record this is just by looking at that idiotic “please laugh at my jokes” expression on Rodney Carrington’s southern-fried face for a moment.

That’s right, kids, Rodney Carrington is perched on a woman’s breasts in order to sell his particular brand of “comedy”, which seems to entail a sort of sub-Jeff Foxworthy redneck-in-the-city schtick, complete with an “aw, shucks” delivery in the most contrived tractor pull accent he can muster.

And to make things worse, he’s a SINGING comedian, too. Oh, lord, please kill us all now in a torrent of nuclear fire so that we never, EVER have to endure another listen to this crap. It’s not just funny, it’s offensively not funny. As in, these jokes are so stupid you’ll actually get offended that someone is trying to sell an album full of them.

Here’s a direct quote: “”The zoo is so dayumm boring, they need to make it more exciting…take a Slim Jim, stick it in the ayuss of a death row inmate and haive heyum rum thraw the lion cage widdowt geddin beeyut.”

Effing HILARIOUS, to somebody somewhere, probably. But not anywhere near an area with a population greater than three.

Don’t get the wrong idea–we’re not in favor of whitewashing comedy in favor of an all PC landscape free from anything that might be “wrong”. Transgressive humor is funny because, well, because it’s not supposed to BE funny. But there’s a big difference between pushing boundaries and brick-in-the-face DUMB, which really gets the hackles up for certain writers who discover these things while idly surfing the internet for bizarre recordings.

WTF Album Covers: Not Even Gustav Holst Is Safe

The Planets by Holst gets a cheeseball marketing spin, cooked up by someone who clearly believed that if you just put a sci-fi theme and plenty of cleavage on the album cover, stupid kids will buy it thinking maybe it’s some kind of new wave record or science fiction LP.

Can’t you just hear the board room conversation around this one? “Hey, dead guys don’t get paid royalties, right? These kids today love spaceships, right? Let’s CASH IN!”

And doesn’t the hero in this picture look like someone out of Wall Of Voodoo? I wonder what Sir Adrian thought when he saw this little beauty come out with HIS NAME ON IT.

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NME’s “Worst Ever” Album Covers

The NME jumped on the WTF album cover bandwagon with a list of its own “Worst Ever” album covers, but this once cutting-edge music pub has clearly fallen out of touch. Naming the Beatles (Magical Mystery Tour), Black Sabbath, and a few other luminaries in their worst-ever list was not only lazy, but a little bewildering. There are PLENTY of MORE awful LP covers than the ones they pictured…

For example, get an eyeful of the boring, stupid, but ultimately NOT “worst ever” cover for a Chris Brown recording called Graffiti,

Now granted, I don’t know anything about Chris Brown aside from the fact that he beat the living daylights out of his girlfriend a few years back and that his music does NOT appeal (give us old-school Isaac Hayes funk over reheated me-too hip hop any day of the week), but this album cover certainly is NOT one of the “worst ever” in spite of what the NME staff coughs up.

Granted, NME gets points for the Chumbawumba “live birth” album cover for Anarchy, and one from Royal Trux which is so vile it beggars belief. If NME were running a “three worst album covers ever” post, they might have something, but the other 47 or so are nowhere near close to being the worst ever made. No, this is just sad, lazy and pretty weak. Not to get all record nerdy about it, but five seconds worth of digging will come up with far more horrifying images, believe me.

NME doesn’t even get a pass on the sourcing of these covers, as many other collections of “best ever” and “worst ever” photos are tagged “as voted by you”. Not so on this particular group of awful album covers…ahh, NME, once upon a time you were tops in your field. Today?

And when it comes to “worst album covers”, with few exceptions, none of the records in the NME collection come close to being topped by this:

You may commence screaming now.