Posted March 1, 2022 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com (updated 3/4/22)
After nearly forgetting that February is a short month and that I had 3-4 fewer days to prep this monthly summary, something sparked inside my head and I realized that I had to get things together, so what you’re reading today comes as the result of a couple of self-inflicted bonks to the sides of my head. As a result, I’m hoping that everything is in order and makes sense since, after reviewing all of the materials I’d gathered, there seems to be a lot going on world-wide that should be of interest to fans of album cover art and the people that make it, so get ready for a fairly-lengthy summary article.
I do hope that you’ve had a chance to read Part 1 of my article about Box Sets/Limited-Edition packages, something I published earlier in the month and which comes after nearly a year of info gathering and talking with a lot of people who are intimately involved in the area. Here’s a link to that article, in case you haven’t yet taken a look – https://albumcoverhalloffame.wordpress.com/2022/02/04/achof-resources-box-sets-and-special-limited-edition-packages-an-overview/ I’m in the process of putting the finishing touches on the second part of the article and I think you’ll get a kick out of it as it contains both a lot of interesting statistics (not the boring type, I promise) and many quotes from people who know a lot more about the subject than I do. It’s a topic that shows you how many talented people it takes to make a successful package and what each of them must bring to the table if they’re going to make things that fans will appreciate and want to spend their hard-earned money on, so I do hope you’ll enjoy reading this next posting as much as I did putting it together.
I’ve also just posted an article that’s a first for me – a semi-sorta book overview of a two-book set just added to my album cover art/artist collection called Serious Play by ACHOF inductee (and all-around talented guy) Larry Vigon. As readers of this newsletter know, I tend to stay away from expressing my own opinions about how “good” or “bad” art but, in this case, I felt compelled to share some of my feelings about how Larry’s career as both a commercial and fine artist are put on display in this set so that it might inspire a) you to consider adding this book to your own collections and b) you to consider what it takes from both a creative and relationship-management perspective to be able to build a career in this competitive business. I’m leaving the comments open on this article for a while, so I do hope you’ll read it and share your own feelings about the subject with the rest of us, too – https://albumcoverhalloffame.wordpress.com/2022/02/25/a-rare-candid-yet-effusive-art-book-overview-by-achofs-mike-goldstein/ Be sure to check out Larry’s solo show in Santa Barbara this March and April, with details found in the “Exhibitions” section, below).
This month’s summary features an impressive number of examples of some of the most-interesting work being offered by some of your favorite musical acts/labels at present. As soon as you choose to begin your journey, you’ll read about new and ongoing exhibitions, news about the ongoing efforts and output of some of your favorite image-makers (their projects, lawsuits, NFT launches, etc.), new items available for sale or at auction and scores of other bits of album cover art/artist miscellany. You’ll also find links to the work of some of the writers who continue to produce articles that share the back-stories of some of your favorite album covers and many other interesting examples of what’s being done by creative types all over the world. In addition, you’ll find updates about some of the recently (or soon-to-be) announced winners in the album art categories at the Making Vinyl Packaging Awards and the postponed-until-April Grammy Awards, plus news about a new competition that should show us many fine examples of rock photography from purveyors both new and well-established.
So, with Spring just around the corner, the world opening up a bit to being explored again (whether we’re ready for it or not, and assuming we’re not on the cusp of WWIII) and the work output of the talented people who make our favorite album covers continuing unabated, I’m eager to point you once more to this month’s album cover art/artists summary of the articles, posts and announcements I’ve gathered recently. Now that the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics are behind us and the start of Spring Training is months away, we should all have the time to spend a few moments to review the ongoing exploits of our favorite album art-makers. Trust me, you’ll like what you find and, if you do, I do hope you’ll remember to share this with your friends and family. So, as they say in France – Allons-y (native French speakers, please accept my apologies for using the title of my first year French book in my efforts to kick off this month’s summary):
Exhibitions and Gallery Show Info –
a) As part of a show of her work that’s on display at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine (thru June 5, 2022 in the Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery and the Halford Gallery, and travelling later to the Minneapolis Institute of Art and to the George Eastman Museum, in Rochester, NY.), famed photographer Marcia Resnick will be participating in an artist’s talk and book signing event on the evening of Thursday, the 3rd of March. The show’s called “Marcia Resnick: As It Is or Could Be” and focuses on her portfolio of portrait photography. As described by the museum’s pre-show press, “Marcia Resnick was one of the most ambitious and innovative American photographers of the 1970s. Combining social critique with poignant, often humorous performance, her photographs explore—in a conceptual vernacular—aesthetic, social, and political issues at once timely and timeless. A part of the now-mythic creative community in Downtown New York, she created work that challenged traditional ideas about what a photograph could be. This exhibition brings together for the first time her extraordinary photographs from this period.”
Album art fans will know Marcia’s work well, as it is found on the covers and in record packages for many trend-setting musical acts, including the Talking Heads, The Psychedelic Furs, Bad Brains, Laurie Anderson, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, Suicide, Iggy Pop and many others.
Event info can be found at https://www.bowdoin.edu/calendar/event.html?bid=1156949&rid=128156
The New Yorker Magazine also featured Marcia recently in an article by Nick Paumgarten about her career, her personal life (she was married to the MC5’s Wayne Kramer and sold her NYC flat to Laurie Anderson) and this new retrospective show – https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/02/28/marcia-resnick-photography-retrospective-johnny-thunders-gil-scott-heron
b) In 1980, Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger met Chris Stein, Blondie’s co-founder, guitarist and Debbie Harry’s life-long creative partner, and collaborated with Ms. Harry on the iconic Koo-Koo album cover and its accompanying music videos. Now on view (through March 12th) at the Lomex Gallery in NYC is a selection of photographs taken by Chris Stein on the sets of this collaboration, along with a collection of Giger paintings, prints and sculptures that make up what is the largest display of this inventive artist’s work to be shown in this area for over 30 years. Writing for Juxtapoz Magazine, gallery owner Alexander Shulan provides us with an intro to this exhibition, as well as a nice photo carousel of what’s on display there – https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/installation/h-r-giger-hrgnyc-lomex-nyc/
More details can be found on the gallery’s site at https://www.lomex.gallery/exhibitions/hrgync/
c) Now on display (through the 24th of April) in the Museo de la Ciudad in Fuengirola, Spain (on the beautiful Costa del Sol) is an album cover art exhibition that puts 350+ different sleeves on display. According to the local press info, the “Arte en el vinilo (Vinyl Art)” exhibition comprises a beautiful collection of record covers created by world-renowned artists including Miró, Picasso, Dalí, Warhol, Haring, Ceesepe, Mariscal, Guerrero, Úrculo and more. Featuring the work of creators representing different disciplines (painters, illustrators, photographers, designers, etc.), the display will take you on an exploration of the eclecticisms of 20th century culture.” The exhibition was curated by photographer Antonio Lafuente del Pozo, and I learned about its existence via this article by writer Tony Bryant on the Malaga-based SUR in English site – https://www.surinenglish.com/what-to-do/vinyl-exhibition-fuengirola-20220211101050-nt.html
https://www.visitcostadelsol.com/what-s-on/exposicion-arte-en-el-vinilo-p104486
d) There’s a new Elliott Landy photo show – titled “Elliot Landy’s Music Photography” – that’s on display Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays now through the end of March in the Sarah Langley Gallery in the Hammetts Hotel, 4 Commercial Wharf, Newport, RI. This show, presented by Jessica Hagen Fine Art + Design, marks Jessica Hagen’s third collaboration at the hotel (with art group Newport Curates). Mr. Landy (inducted into the ACHOF in 2012) has been with Hagen’s gallery since his first solo exhibition with her at the Newport Antiques Show in 2017. Landy’s connection to the Newport area comes from the fact that he was on hand to shoot the 1968 Newport Folk Festival and there are three photos in the exhibit from performers who appeared that festival – Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Janis Joplin. Photos from the 1968 Newport Folk Festival are also featured in his Woodstock Vision book.
His images of Bob Dylan and The Band, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, Richie Havens, and many others documented the music scene during the “classic rock and roll” period which culminated with the 1969 Woodstock Festival, for which he was one the official photographers. Album art fans will know of his works found on the covers of notable albums including Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, Van Morrison’s Moondance and Music from Big Pink for The Band, among others.
https://www.jessicahagen.com/exhibitions/2022/2/14/elliott-landy-photographs
e) The David Zwirner Gallery in Paris, France recently launched a new exhibition (running there through March 22nd) of the works of the talented family Crumb – famed cartoonists/graphic artists R. Crumb (a member of the original 2012 Class of the Album Cover Hall of Fame in the Illustrator/Typographer category), his wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and daughter Sophie Crumb. This will be the first major joint presentation their work since the 2007 exhibition “La Famille Crumb” at Le Musée de Sérignan in France, the country they’ve lived in for over 30 years.
Born in Philadelphia, PA in August, 1943, the son of a career Marine. Robert was loner in school and started developing his drawing talent there, co-producing comic books with his older brother Charles and, a year after graduating high school, he moved to Cleveland, OH to live with a friend, finding production work at American Greetings Corporation. Within a year, he was promoted to commercial illustrator and drew hundreds of cards over the next few years. He met and married his first wife in 1964, staying in Europe for six months and mailing in his illustration work while he was away.
After a short breakup with his wife, Robert began experimenting with the psychedelic substances becoming popular at the time and travelled the U.S., making stops in New York, Chicago and Detroit and developing some of his best-known characters. In early 1967, he left Cleveland for San Francisco (soon followed by his wife) and settled in the Haight-Ashbury area of the city. He began to draw the first issues of his Zap “underground” comic books, selling them on the street and, in early 1968, birthing his son, Jesse. Notice of his talents began to spread and, in late 1969, he was offered a large advance to pen a book based on his “Fritz the Cat” character. He used the money to purchase a plot north of San Francisco and, in 1970, licensed that character to animator Ralph Bakshi for use in a feature film. Unhappy with the resulting output, he killed off Fritz in a comic book.
Crumb kept busy for the next few years by drawing and travelling, but his personal life went through a number of changes – he left his wife for a new girlfriend – Aline Kominsky, who’d go on to become his second wife – and stopped smoking pot, turning to music instead for pleasure and playing banjo and mandolin in a Bay area band. In 1974, he began producing a comic strip for The Village Voice based on his “Mr. Natural” character. By 1981, he started a new comic magazine titled Weirdo that featured both his work and that of other comic artists. His daughter (with Aline) Sophie was also born around this time and, as he wanted to focus his time and attention on his own comics, he gave up his job editing Weirdo and later published the first of his Hup 1-4 series. As the 1980s turned into the 1990s, the Crumb family decided that they’d had enough of the American lifestyle and exchanged some of his artwork for a house in the south of France, where they continue to live to this day (with his collection of 5000 78-RPM records).
His life has been the subject of film (The Confessions of Robert Crumb, Comic Book Confidential and Crumb) and an exhibition built around his fully-illustrated book of Genesis has toured museums in the U.S. and Europe. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1991 and his works were featured in the Masters of American Comics exhibition at the Jewish Museum in NYC in 2006. While many books of his artwork have been published over the years, one of the most-comprehensive collections of his work – in 17 volumes of comics, 10 volumes of sketchbooks and two limited-edition box sets – was released by the publisher Fantagraphics.
While he famously was commissioned to produce that back cover for the now-seminal album for singer Janis Joplin (Big Brother & The Holding Company’s Cheap Thrills, which ultimately used his artwork on the cover), Crumb’s artwork can also be found on other records such as Earl Hooker’s There’s A Fungus Among Us and Blind Boy Fuller’s Truckin’ My Blues Away.
An article on the ArtDaily news site provides more details about this new show – https://artdaily.cc/news/143837/David-Zwirner-opens-an-exhibition-of-works-by-R–Crumb–Aline-Kominsky-Crumb–and-Sophie-Crumb with more specific info available on the gallery’s web site at https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2022/r-crumb-aline-kominsky-crumb-and-sophie-crumb-sauve-qui-peut-run-for-your-life
f) On view now through the 26th of June at the Downtown Campus of the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, FL is an intriguing display of photos and poetry of the famed creative couple of Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, set among the greenery of some specially-produced horticultural displays. The show is titled Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith: Flowers, Poetry, and Light and, according to the venue’s press, provides visitors with “an immersive, multisensory experience, that features several of Mapplethorpe’s exquisite photographs of flowers, Smith’s haunting lyrics and poetry about flowers and nature, and stunning new horticultural vignettes in our Tropical Conservatory and Gardens that reflect their intertwined work through living art.” The duo made several serious contributions to the world of album cover art over the years, with Mapplethorpe’s photos featured on the covers of Smith’s Horses, Wave and The Patti Smith Masters: The Collective Works; Laurie Anderson’s Strange Angels; Paul Simon’s Negotiations and Love Songs 1971-1986; Television’s Marquee Moon; Peter Gabriel’s Shaking The Tree and others for musical acts including The Swans, Scissor Sisters, the Philip Glass Ensemble and the Kronos Quartet, among others.
Writing for the YourObserver.com site, Spencer Fordin shares his overview of the show at https://www.yourobserver.com/photo-gallery/selby-honors-legacies-of-photographer-and-rock-star-in-flowers-poetry-and-light
g) I’d like to update my article about artist Larry Vigon’s book about his careers in both the commercial and fine art worlds by letting you know that he’s going to be showing a collection of his fine art work at a gallery near his home in Santa Barbara, CA beginning March 10th. The show shares the same title as his book – Serious Play – and will be up for viewing through April 30th. If you find yourself in the area on March 16th, there will be an artist’s reception from 6-8:30PM at the gallery – called Silo 118 and located at 118 Gray Avenue in Santa Barbara where attendees can meet the artist and purchase copies of his book (and, for the lucky ones, a piece or two of Larry’s art). Find out more at https://www.silo118.com/
h) COMING IN LATE MARCH – March 25th through June 12th at The Photographer’s Gallery in London (nearest Tube stop – Oxford Station) – For the Record: Photography & The Art of The Album Cover is curated and presented in collaboration with collector and exhibition originator, Antoine de Beaupré, whose collection of 15,000+ albums form the basis of the display.
The show’s site provides us with this introduction – “For the Record brings together over 200 album covers, highlighting the central role photography plays in defining artists and bands, and showcasing some of the most iconic album covers of our times. While many of the ‘artistes on the covers will be instantly recognizable, the exhibition illuminates the often overlooked and multifaceted contributions of photographers and other visual artists to the identity of the ‘stars’ and the labels themselves.
Featuring work from such photographic and artistic luminaries as Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, David Bailey, David LaChapelle, Ed Ruscha, Elliott Erwitt, Guy Bourdin, Helen Levitt, Irving Penn, Jeff Wall, Joseph Beuys, Juergen Teller, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Richard Avedon, William Eggleston and more, many of whom had their careers launched through their cover images, the exhibition also looks at the contribution of a range of equally visionary, though perhaps lesser-known artists, photographers, graphic designers and creatives.”
https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/record-photography-art-album-cover
Here’s a link to an Intro article about the show that I found on the Digital Camera World site – https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/legendary-album-covers-on-display-in-for-the-record-at-the-photographers-gallery
I’ve written before (back in April, 2017) about a book on the art of the album cover that was produced by this show’s curator – “The book, Total Records, edited by Antoine de Beaupré and published recently by Aperture, is one I’ve been eager to see as I’m told that it promotes what we’ve been saying here at the ACHOF all along – i.e., that the works created to illustrate and promote record packages should be treated with the same respect and deference as all works of fine art due to the way that they combine (at least, the good ones do) the best aspects of the fields of design, photography, historical writing and impact marketing”. At the time, there was an accompanying art exhibition that travelled around for a while, with a stop in Berlin being particularly press-worthy at the time – https://co-berlin.org/en/program/exhibitions/total-records
The Total Records album art exhibition – featuring 500+ of the most-impactful record covers produced over the past 50+ years – continues on in Berlin, with more info available to fans via the gallery’s site (in English) at http://www.co-berlin.org/en/total-records
i) COMING LATER THIS SUMMER – Recently-deceased designer Virgil Abloh’s career will be given the star treatment later this year with a show at the Brooklyn Museum. ArtNet News site contributor Caroline Goldstein (no relation) provides us with a bit of an intro in this recent article – https://news.artnet.com/art-world/brooklyn-museum-virgil-abloh-2069386? where she describes the show thusly – “This summer, the Brooklyn Museum will stage a version of the first institutional survey dedicated to the late fashion designer and creative visionary Virgil Abloh. The show, titled “Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech,” will build on an earlier exhibition of the same name that originated at the MCA Chicago in 2019, and then traveled to ICA Boston, the High Museum in Atlanta, and Qatar Museums”. As I wrote soon after Abloh’s untimely passing last December from cancer at the age of 41, Abloh was a major name in the fashion industry who was famous in hip-hop circles for his “Off-White” brand of clothing and accessories and had previously served in the position of Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton’s Men’s collections.
He met and befriended rapper Kanye West in the early 2000s after having worked at the Fendi fashion house and then launched his own space – the RSVP Gallery in his hometown of Chicago – while also taking on the role of Creative Director for Kanye’s DONDA design agency. His thorough understanding of his audience and his unique fashion sense found him applying his talents to a number of memorable album covers, too, a retrospective of that work being found on the XXL Magazine site at https://www.xxlmag.com/virgil-abloh-album-covers/?
Ongoing Exhibitions:
j) ONGOING thru March – Reported on here previously, the new exhibit that opened on October 14th at NYC’s Poster House Museum titled Peter Max: Cosmic Advertising continues its run through March 27, 2022. Perhaps best-known for his psychedelic paintings that helped illustrate the Summer of Love in 1967, the Apollo moon landings in 1969, the Manhattan NY phone book in 1970, Max also has done a number of fine album cover/package illustrations, including those for jazz and blues artists such as Alice Coltrane, Yellowjackets, Gary Burton Quartet and pianist Meade Lux Lewis (his first, back in 1961); rock acts such as The Band, Donovan and YES; country star Clint Black and a memorable one in 1995 for that year’s Grammy Awards compilation CD (among others). Te influence this artist has had on graphic design and illustration since launching his career in 1962 cannot be understated, so it’s wonderful to see him and his work on display in this setting. More information on this show (curated by Angelina Lippert) can be found at https://posterhouse.org/exhibition/peter-max-cosmic-advertising/?
k) ONGOING thru April – Florida International University’s Frost Art Museum hosts a big show of Bob Dylan artwork – https://news.artnet.com/art-world/bob-dylan-retrospectrum-survey-miami-see-pictures-2046986 that’s up on display now thru April 17, 2022 called Retrospectrum: Bob Dylan. Album cover fans have long been aware of the songwriter’s visual arts skills first seen on his 1970 album Self Portrait, but his paintings and sculptures have come a long way in their substance and style since then, as evidenced in the 84-page downloadable gallery guide PDF (in English and Spanish) – https://frost.fiu.edu/_assets/docs/2021/frost_gallery-guide.pdf
Per the guide – “In 1973, Dylan published Writings and Drawings, a book of his lyrics from 1961 to 1972, some of which were accompanied by original drawings. Those original drawings are exhibited here for the first time in the USA. Writings and Drawings marked the first time Dylan illustrated his songs, which he would do again in 2018 with his Mondo Scripto series, a collection of his most iconic lyrics, each handwritten and accompanied by an original drawing. Artworks from Mondo Scripto can be seen throughout the Retrospectrum exhibition, highlighting the relationship between Dylan’s songwriting and his visual art…Also included in the show is Dylan’s 2018 revisit to the cue cards featured in the famous video for ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues.’ The clip was originally used as the opening of Dont Look Back, D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary of Dylan’s 1965 concert tour of England. Shot in an alley behind the Savoy Hotel in London, the music video features poet Allen Ginsberg and musician Bob Neuwirth chatting in the background while Dylan flips through the cards in time to the music.”
More on the show can be found on the museum’s site at https://frost.fiu.edu/exhibitions-events/events/2021/11/retrospectrum-bob-dylan.html
Album art fans will be pleased to see that the front cover image used on the show catalog was done by the late photographer Ken Regan, whose photos of Dylan were used on the covers of several of his albums, including 1976’s Desire, 1985’s Biograph and a number of his “greatest hits” and other compilations, such as The Essential Bob Dylan (2000) and The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975.
Artist News and Interviews –
a) There’s a nicely-penned interview with photographer Neal Preston about his life as a rock photographer and his new online gallery venture by GOLDMINE Magazine contributing editor Ivor Levene that I think you’ll want to take a look at. Preston was originally interviewed in October, 2021, with the article updated with a really nice group of photos of Led Zeppelin (who Preston travelled with) for the April/May, 2022 issue of GOLDMINE – https://www.goldminemag.com/interviews/photographer-neal-preston-is-about-to-change-rock-history Preston was inducted into the ACHOF in 2013, and you’ve seen his work on scores of record covers/packages for artists such as Bruce Springsteen (Live 1975-85 and Streets of Philadelphia); Alice Cooper (Beast of Alice Cooper); Peter Frampton (Peter Frampton and A Day In The Sun) along with Heart, The Traveling Wilburys, Captain & Tennille, Tom Petty, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, Patty Scialfa and many more top acts.
Ivor is himself a talented rock photographer/photojournalist with a lot of writing credits – https://www.ilevene.com/links
b) Three top album cover image makers – Ioannis, James Marsh and Karl Ferris – have all begun to sell NFTs of their work via a service called MusicArt. While you’ll read more about this venture later in this news summary (under the “Items For Sale” heading), there’s an article on the Digital Camera World site – https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/jimi-hendrix-psychedelic-album-photos-by-karl-ferris-to-go-on-sale-as-nfts – that includes a nice interview with photographer Karl F about this new endeavor.
c) – The work of one of the punk music genre’s most-prolific photographers – Edward Colver – is featured in a new article on the Flood Magazine website – https://floodmagazine.com/98492/the-punk-noir-of-edward-colver/
Drawn into the burgeoning L.A. punk music scene beginning in 1978, Colver became a fixture at the clubs there and, nightly for nearly five years, the 6’4″ Colver and his camera were there to document the acts, the fans and their raw energy, taking photos (according to his site biography) “with black and white Kodak Tri-X film, a 35mm camera with a 50mm lens and ‘no fucking auto-focus”. With his friend and fellow photographer Robert Hill, the pair had great fun snapping photos and then retreating to a dark room Colver had set up, spending days developing their film and making prints. In total, Edward photographed more than 1,000 area punk shows and capturing the essence of the cultural extremes that existed at the time in So. CA but, by early 1984, when thrash bands emerged on to the music scene, Colver quickly lost interest. He liked the “fun” that was part and parcel to the hardcore punk scene but, with that now gone, he quit covering the punk scene and took on other freelance photo jobs, including one with his friend Carlos Grasso, who was the art director for the MTV series titled I.R.S. Records Presets The Cutting Edge, where he’d shoot still photos of the happenings on the show’s set.
Since then, selections from his huge archive of photos from the era have been featured in hundreds of publications, including many books on the history of punk rock, in films such as American Hardcore and
d) Back in late 2021, I’d run a brief feature about the series of NFTs that was being put up for sale by one of the people who’ve claimed to originate the Rolling Stones Lips & Tongue logo, that being artist Ruby Mazur. I’d based my coverage of this endeavor initially on an article I’d seen about Mr. Mazur’s recent foray into the NFT world (in partnership with a company called Cosmic Wire), using digital iterations of some of his original works as the basis for the sales. I was quite curious as to whether he’d enjoy any long-term success on this project, considering the many times over the years it had been tried, with the sheer power of the band’s legal team bringing things to a screeching halt.
To update the item a bit, Mr. Mazur had turned to the NFT market to raise money in support of cancer research as he himself has been the direct beneficiary of the fruits of these efforts, having survived a bout with brain cancer, only to find himself now in a new battle with throat cancer. As you’ll read in this recent posting by Suzanna Bowling on her Times Square Chronicles site – https://t2conline.com/ruby-mazur-upcoming-nft-auction-to-fight-cancer/ – this sale produced results that were impressive in their scale and generated a nice donation to benefit cancer patients going forward.
Brief bits:
a) The Muse By Clio editorial team enlisted Position Music’s Michael Frick to write this latest installment of their Art of the Album series, where the DJ and “VP of Brand Partnerships and Creative Synch” for the branding agency whittled down a list of over 50 favorites to one that goes to eleven (kudos to Mr. Tufnel) – https://musebycl.io/art-album/11-great-album-covers-chosen-michael-frick-position-music His parents’ record collection proved to be a strong influence, it’s pretty certain…
Items for Sale and/or at Auction –
a) As I’d mentioned earlier in this month’s report, three noted album cover contributors – designers/illustrators Ioannis (Uriah Heep, Allman Brothers, etc) and James Marsh (Talk Talk, Steeleye Span, etc.) and photographer Karl Ferris (Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, The Hollies and others) – are all selling NFTs of their work via a service called MusicArt. Works for sale include – three images – Citadel, Nevermore 2003 and the very Giger-ish Demon Pilot 2011 – from Ioannis’ “The Images of Heavy Metal” portfolio; The Colour of Spring and The Party’s Over by James Marsh and several of Ferris’ classic album cover images (see site for latest selections). I’ve contacted Emily Smeaton at the UK gallery that represents these three artists – Hypergallery.com – to find out more about how she worked with her clients to extend this opportunity to them and collectors world-wide and hope to have a more-detailed update for you on the topic soon. In the meantime, you can take a look at these and other MusicArt collections on their sales site at https://musicart.io/
b) One of the easiest and least-expensive ways for collectors to add album art images to their collections has always been on t-shirts, so it is with great pleasure that I wanted to share the news about a new collaboration between the estate of the late, great designer Barney Bubbles and the NOAH fashion house that will include several of the artist’s best-known images (some enhanced by text and a BB signature on the back). According to the information I found on this recent posting on the HypeBeast site – https://hypebeast.com/2022/2/noah-barney-bubbles-collab-release-info – “Four designs are available for purchase including a ‘Don’t Join!’ tee featuring a hamburger graphic, which was one of Bubbles’ first works while working at his Portobello design studio named Teenburger. An ‘Armed Forces’ tee urges against joining the army, ‘Smug’ tee displays abstract graphics in his distinct style, and ‘The Show is Over’ tee features a quote from (music writer) Greil Marcus’ social commentary, Lipstick Traces reading, ‘The show is over. The audience turn to leave and put on their coats and go home. No more coats. No more homes’”.
You can read more about the collaboration and Mr. Bubbles’ career in a posting on the NOAH website at https://noahny.com/blogs/news/barney-bubbles and you’ll find the tees available now ($48) – https://noahny.com/search?q=bubbles&type=product&options%5Bprefix%5D=last
c) There’s a new Aubrey Powell book just released in which the noted designer, photographer and author shares the stories behind a number of well-know Hipgnosis album covers – Through the Prism: Untold Rock Stories from the Hipgnosis Archive.
According to recent press releases, the book delivers “Intriguing stories of creative endeavour, volatile relationships, excessive lifestyles and bizarre events from the world of rock, as told by Hipgnosis co-founder, creative designer, photographer and filmmaker Aubrey Powell” and is published by Thames and Hudson – https://thamesandhudson.com/through-the-prism-untold-rock-stories-from-the-hipgnosis-archive-9780500252376#gallery
You’ll find a more-detailed Intro to the book in this article by Aimee McLaughlin on the Creative Review (UK) site – https://www.creativereview.co.uk/aubrey-powell-hipgnosis-book/
d) While we’ve all been eager to see the new book about Nirvana’s Nevermind album that’s been held up due to ongoing litigation between the band/label and the baby (now adult) featured on the record’s cover, there is something new and exciting that is coming out that will provide us with something to covet in the meantime – that being the new series of prints up for sale at the Modern Rocks Gallery in TX that combine the talents of artist/printmaker Russel Marshall and photographer Kirk Weddle. According to a recent promo email from the gallery, “Teen Spirit is collection of four hand pulled screen prints by artist Russell Marshall, produced in collaboration with photographer, Kirk Weddle and expertly printed by Inky Hands Print Studio. This eye-catching collection is sold exclusively through Modern Rocks Gallery, the home of Kirk Weddle’s famous Nirvana swimming pool collection”. https://www.modernrocksgallery.com/teen-spirit In an edition of 25 30” x 22” double-signed/numbered prints each (priced at $800 unframed), there is also a very small (only 3) number of artist proof sets of all four prints available for $3200.
e) KnuckleBonz is releasing a new series of limited-edition (3000 total) sculptures based on the KISS Dynasty characters – https://knucklebonz.com/product/kiss-dynasty-set/ Set for late Spring/early Summer shipping, these gorgeous figures are priced at $159 each or the complete set of 4 for $572.40. It expands the number of KISS-related items available from the company to 18, including the extra-nifty 3D album covers based on the artwork found on classic KISS albums such as Destroyer and their self-titled debut record. Two earlier sets of sculptures – Alive! and Hotter Than Hell – are sold out, so be sure to grab these before they’re gone.
f) Another successful manufacturer of rock music-related toys and figurines – the Funko company – has just announced an expansion of a line of products (launched in late 2019) based on their takes of classic Iron Maiden imagery, including (of course) the band’s long-time icon/mascot “Eddie”. According to writer Scott Munro’s article on the Louder Sound site – https://www.loudersound.com/news/funkos-new-iron-maiden-range-might-be-their-best-yet – the company has added six new items to their Funko Pop! Line of vinyl figures, including fun new takes on images derived from classic Maiden covers including Somewhere In Time, Powerslave and several others. Pre-orders now being accepted for the Powerslave Pop! Album (retail $20.00) at https://www.funko.com/shop/details/music-iron-maiden-powerslave-pop-album
g) There’s a new series of Deborah Feingold limited-edition, fine art pigment prints now being offered through photographer/gallerist Guido Harari’s Wall of Sound Gallery – https://www.wallofsoundgallery.com/en/deborah-feingold-f33
Reaching out to Christina at the gallery/print-maker for a bit more info on the series, she responded as follows – “We are very happy to announce the launch of a special edition, exclusively for our gallery, of 11 of Deborah Feingold’s most famous photos in the special 28 x 36cm (11 x 14in) size. The editions are limited to 30 pieces of each image and are signed and numbered by Deborah Feingold. The prints are being offered for $800.00 each.”
The images in this special edition are, like all Deborah Feingold’s photographs, also available in the larger formats she usually offers. In the collection, you’ll find photos of Keith Richards, Madonna, Prince, Leonard Cohen (w. Suzanne Vega), James Brown and several other music greats.
h) An advertisement in the latest issue of GOLDMINE Magazine introduced me to a new (at least to me) auction company that has several items of interest available in their most recent offering. The site for ANALOGr offers items in several music-related categories, with a strong focus on musical instruments and studio equipment, while their “memorabilia” category includes signed photos, signed records, stage-used items, etc. What caught my eye were two lots that I thought album art fans might like – 1) an 8 x 10 print of the cover of Queen’s The Miracle album – hand-signed by all of the band – that features a cover image created back in 1989 using one of the original and powerful computer-based image manipulation tools available to designers at the time, that being Quantel’s “Paintbox”. The image used on the cover took all of the faces of the band’s members and combined them together into one large and mighty-strange image – https://www.analogr.com/l/6143acd4-ca94-490d-9232-4567b87d3e51 and 2) a band-signed copy of the first record from Chicago Transit Authority, the group that soon changed its name to just “Chicago” and who’d go on to have scores to top-selling hit records. What makes this lot unique – besides being autographed by members of the original group – is that it is also signed by the record’s album cover designer, another rather-famous music industry figure by the name of Dean Torrence, one half of 60’s hit-makers Jan & Dean and who’d go on to a career as an album cover designer after the tragic death of his music-making partner. Dean has been inducted twice into the ACHOF – first as a designer in 2016 and again in 2018 in the “Album Cover Illustrator/Typographer” category – https://www.analogr.com/l/62019bbf-23ac-44d0-a25b-b777d18d6fc8
i) One of the unique items included in the upcoming Bonham’s “British.Cool.” auction is something sure to make its owner stand out in the Costco parking lot – Item #153 is a 2016 2016 Bentley Continental GT V8 S Convertible “is the result of a collaboration between Bentley Motors and ‘The Godfather of British Pop Art’, Sir Peter Blake”. In addition to the stunning paint job, “Sir Peter’s signature is incorporated onto the fascia panel and embroidered on all four seat headrests…and also includes a personalised playlist from the artist’s favourite music.”
The car sports a pre-auction estimate of £300,000 – £400,000 (approx. $402,000 – $537,000), with the hammer coming down on March 3rd at 16:00 GMT.
Digging through the rest of the collection that’s up for auction on March 3rd, I did find a number of other items that will be of interest to album cover art fans, including some nice David Bowie-themed art prints by artist Edward Bell (responsible for the cover of the late Mr. Bowie’s Scary Monsters… album), a Chalkie Davies triptych of a photo used on Elvis Costello’s Greatest Hits record, a limited-edition print (by Coriander Studios) of Sir Peter Blake & Co’s artwork for The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s LP and a copy of what turned out to be album cover artist extraordinaire Storm Thorgerson’s last work, a 2013 print titled Scrutiny, a photo of a huge construction he’d built that “comments on technology versus nature, and man’s paranoia of woman”.
Find these and other items of great interest on the Bonham’s web site at https://www.bonhams.com/live_auctions/27252/?&query=album+cover&page=1
j) French photographer, TV producer/director and author Sophie Bramly, whose photos have appeared on record covers for artists including Tribe 2, Fab Five Freddy and Jill Jones, has just released a new book of her photos of the early 1980’s hip-hop scene that’s called Yo!: Photography by Sophie Bramly, The Early Days of Hip-Hop 1982-84 (on Soul Jazz Books).
An excerpt from Bill Adler’s introduction to the book gives us a pretty decent sense of what you’ll find inside the covers – “Sophie’s work documents all four of hip-hop’s elements: deejays (including Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Afrika Islam, D. St, Jazzy Jay and Red Alert), emcees (including Grandmaster Melle Mel, Kurtis Blow, Lisa Lee, the Fat Boys, Run-DMC, and the Beastie Boys), graffiti artists (including Dondi, Futura, Zephyr, and Lady Pink), and break-dancers (including members of Magnificent Force, Dynamic Breakers, and the Rock Steady Crew). Sophie also chronicled the young fans then embracing hip-hop, the older authority figures who disdained it, crucial players behind the scenes players (including record producers like Bill Laswell, Bernard Zekri, and Rick Rubin, and the art gallery owner Patti Astor, co-founder of the Fun Gallery), and notable establishment figures who early on made common cause with the hip-hoppers (including Herbie Hancock and Harry Belafonte).
And now, 40 years later, we have Yo!, the first deep dive into this extraordinary body of work. It’s late, but it’s not too late. We’ll take it.”
Here’s another nice bit of press on the book by writer Emily Gosling on the Creative Review site – https://www.creativereview.co.uk/photographing-hip-hop-book/
k) For a limited time, photographer Elliott Landy (whose fine art photo works are currently on display in an exhibition in Newport, RI – see my article in the “Exhibitions” section above for more info) is offering prints of some of the photos included in his new book on Janis Joplin at very special prices – https://www.elliottlandy.com/product-category/janis-joplin-kickstarter/ Litho prints are $125 and fine art prints are being offered at 40% off their regular prices. The book, due out soon, is $75.00
There’s a nice video interview with the acclaimed photojournalist in which he talks about his new book of photos of Janis Joplin (just funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx8s69BvNcgL
Landy sat down with friend and host of the Coastal A&E site Michael Sprouse to talk about Photographs of Janis Joplin: On The Road and On Stage which, according to the promo info I received, is “a 196-page book of photographs he took of Janis Joplin from 1968-69, beginning at the Anderson Theater in New York City and ending at the Woodstock Festival. When he took these photos there was no way to publish more than a few. There was no internet and the only venue for showing his incredible work was an album cover or magazine story. Over the years, he has published more than 10 photo books, and less than 30 images of Janis have been included…”, so this new tome will be a welcome addition to my collection. You can learn more about this project on Elliott’s Kickstarter page – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thebandbook2/elliott-landy-photographs-of-janis-joplin
l) – A just-posted auction preview article on the Asbury Park (NJ) Press site includes an item well-known by (in the dreams of young men from the 1980s, at least) fans of classic album cover art – that being a t-shirt that adorned the voluptuous curves of a local model whose image was used on a somewhat-banned album cover image for rockers Bon Jovi – https://www.app.com/story/entertainment/music/2022/02/21/bon-jovi-slippery-when-wet-shirt-bruce-springsteen-lyrics-auction/6882190001/
As noted by App.com writer Chris Jordan, “A piece of Bon Jovi history is up for auction — and yes, it’s dry by now. The tattered yellow T-shirt worn by model Angela Chidnese on the original album cover for Bon Jovi’s 1986 smash Slippery When Wet is available as part of the Julian’s Music Icons auction, taking place May 20 to 22 at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City”
Some early info on the upcoming auction is available for your review on the Julien’s web site – https://www.juliensauctions.com/about-auction?id=380 It includes over 1000 collectible items, with another lot including something that made a fashion statement in its own right – the dress worn by Madonna during the making of her “Material Girl” music video (interestingly, the dress was a rental, having been made originally for a 1980 television movie (Norma Jean) about another “blond bombshell”, Marilyn Monroe.
m) Dear Fans of the Rock Band Queen – I have some good news for you and some not-so-good news for you… The good news is that in early March, there will be an auction in the UK which will put up a real rarity – the original album cover artwork for Queen’s A Day At The Races, with artwork done by famed designer/illustrator David Costa, based on sketches by the multi-talented Freddie Mercury. The sad news is that there was supposed to be another item up for sale – that being Mr. Costa’s artwork for A Night At The Opera but, almost unbelievably, that item has been misplaced and is presumed “binned in error”.
I am so sad. Read the gory details in Rod Minchin’s coverage of this debacle on the Standard’s site – https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/queen-costa-elton-john-netherlands-japan-b984108.html
n) Another famed photographer with a long list of album cover credits – Terry O’Neill – has raided his portfolio of celebrity portraits to make a fine photo of Sean Connery as James Bond available as an NFT – https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/metacurio-iconic-images-partner-nft-162100385.html
o) During all of the time I’ve spent doing the research for my recent article about box sets, I would always take note when a marketer decided to include a work of art (or two or ten) as a sweetener to a package. To me (and many other collectors), it just made sense to include them (or offer alongside the package) as many cover images are as well or better-known than the music included inside. Artist/illustrator Colin Elgie’s work for music clients includes pieces he’s created for Wishbone Ash (Live Dates and Just Testing), Humble Pie (Thunderbox), Genesis – A Trick of The Tail and Justin Hayward (Songwriter), but he’s perhaps best-remembered for the cover he did for Al Stewart’s mega-smash LP Year of The Cat, so I was quite pleased to see that in the huge (50 disc!) box set coming out in June (titled The Admiralty Lights: Complete Studio, Live and Rare 1964 – 2009) that chronicle’s the musician’s enormous catalog, people who purchase the set will get not one but two limited-edition Elgie prints in the package. Of course, one will be a signed Year of the Cat print, another original art print and posters for 1998’s Last Days Of The Century album and 1977’s The Early Years.
Elgie’s talents have created many memorable images that have been used in books, magazines, music packaging and by many top companies in the fields of advertising, editorial and new media. His extensive list of clients outside the music business includes a host of well-known companies, publishers and household brands, including The Sunday Times, GQ Magazine, Square Mile and Computeractive magazines, the ASDA supermarket chain, Barclays, Discovery Channel and the Leo Burnett and Tangerine agencies.
Learn more about his upcoming release in Jerry Ewing’s introductory article on the Louder Sound site – https://www.loudersound.com/news/massive-50-disc-al-stewart-box-set-to-be-released
p) UPDATED AUCTION RESULTS – Last month, I shared some info about a NFT auction from Beatle son Julian Lennon (coincidentally being marketed by the similarly-named Julien’s auction house) – https://artdaily.cc/news/143212/Julian-Lennon-offers-first-NFTs-of-Beatles-iconography-and-historic-personal-items-from-his-father-#.YfA5TerMI7M – where buyers were able to bid on unique tokens that are copies of valuables from Julian’s memorabilia collection, including handwritten notes, photos, musical instruments and articles of clothing his dad wore on album covers and in films. As with any NFT purchase, what the buyers won’t own are the actual objects featured in the token, but they will be the only ones in the world who will own these copies, which also come with audio files of Julian’s narration for each item. For example, the description of the last item – the 1959 Gibson guitar Julian has in his collection – is as follows: “Used in some of Julian’s earliest performances at Kingsmead School in Hoylake, this was one of his favorite guitars because it had a short neck and was easier to play. A gift from his Dad, it holds a special place in his collection.”
The auction results of the early February sale can now be seen at https://www.julienslive.com/auctions/catalog/id/417 and netted the house and young Mr. Lennon a bit under $159,000 – “Hey Jude” notes written by Paul McCartney – est $50-70K, sold for $76,800; John Lennon’s Magical Mystery Tour Afghan coat – est $8-10K, sold for $22,400; Black cape worn by John Lennon in the movie Help! – est $10-20K, sold for $12,800; 2 Gibson Les Paul guitars gifted to Julian by his dad – est. $6-8K ea, one sold for $12,800 and the other for $11,500; and a 1959 Gibson guitar gifted from J to J – est $6-8K, sold for $22,400. A portion of the proceeds from the sale was donated to a charitable organization founded by Julian Lennon in 2007 called The White Feather Foundation, whose goals is to raise funds and awareness of programs “for the Conservation of Life, giving clean water, education and health and protecting our environment and Indigenous cultures”.
https://whitefeatherfoundation.com/
Special Award Show updates –
a) Abbey Road Studios teams with several vendors to introduce a new music photo competition – Judges will include shooters such as Rankin, Jill Furmanovsky, Dana Scruggs and Rolling Stone Magazine deputy photo editor Sacha Lecca among others. While the initial details are a bit sketchy, I hope to be able to report on this a bit more fully as I learn more about it.
Here’s an introductory article on the topic I found on the Amateur Photographer (UK) site – https://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/latest/photo-news/abbey-road-studios-launches-music-photography-awards-160625
Details on a special site created for this competition – https://abbeyroadmusicphotographyawards.com/competition
b) The 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards® have been rescheduled and will now broadcast live from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Sun, April 3 (8-11:30 p.m., live ET/5-8:30 p.m., live PT) on the CBS Television Network and will be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+. Trevor Noah, Comedy Central’s Emmy® Award-winning “The Daily Show” host and comedian, will return as master of ceremonies for Music’s Biggest Night®. Additional details about the dates and locations of other official GRAMMY® Week events, including the GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony®, MusiCares® Person of the Year and the Pre-GRAMMY® Gala will be announced soon.
As it is my duty to be on top of these things, tune in to the ACHOF site immediately after the awards are announced and you’ll find the news about who won in each category as an ACHOF Breaking News item.
c) One of the better-known photographers working with clients in the music business is Nick Knight, the U.K.-based shooter whose album credits include shots for the Rolling Stones, Squeeze, David Bowie, Gwen Stefani and Lady Gaga (among many others) has been selected to receive one of the country’s top honors, that being the prestigious “Photo London Master of Photography Award”, presented every year “to a living artist who has made an exceptional contribution to photography”. The ceremony will be held this coming May, along with an exhibition of his work at London’s Somerset House studio space during Photo London’s run from the 12th to the 15th of that month.
In addition to his music-industry work, Knight has worked on both commercial and editorial projects for clients including Audi, British Vogue, Dazed & Confused, Christian Dior, Tom Ford, i-D Magazine, Calvin Klein, Alexander McQueen, Mercedes Benz, Paris Vogue, Royal Opera House, Yves Saint Lauren, Jil Sander, Levi Strauss, Swarovski, Louis Vuitton and W Magazine, just to name a few.
More about this upcoming show and award can be found in this article on the ArtDaily site – https://artdaily.cc/news/144217/Photo-London-lines-up-a-strong-seventh-edition–Nick-Knight-announced-as-this-year-s-Master-of-Photography#.Yh0AX-jMI7M
https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/photo-london-2022
Miscellaneous Items and other Brief Bits –
As always, I’m going to have to keep these short-and-sweet (well, most of them, anyway):
OBITS) While I’m happy to report that I rec’d no notices of album cover art-related passings, I was sad to read about the death of one of rock’s great voices – Gary Brooker of Procol Harum – who died in late February at the age of 75. I saw a couple of videos on YouTube of Mr. Booker singing “When A Man Loves A Woman” and “Whiter Shade of Pale” in fairly-recent performances, and his voice and Hammond B-3 sounded every bit as good as they did 50+ years ago. Here’s the obit on the Art Daily site –
https://artdaily.cc/news/144117/Gary-Brooker–singer-for-Procol-Harum–dies-at-76#.Yhk1KOjMI7M
A voice that surely will be missed.
a) In a recent interview with Twiggy Jalloh for the Vogue.com site, M.A.C. Cosmetics “director of makeup artistry” Terry Barber talks about the influence of the album art found on records by top disco/80s/90s-era musical acts such as Grace Jones, Donna Summer and Diana Ross had on the work done for a recent London Fashion Week show staged by noted fashion designer Harris Reed – https://www.vogue.com/article/harris-reed-london-fashion-week-fall-2022-backstage-beauty
b) The educators at the TeachRock organization produced and distributed an entire series of articles in February that explored a wide ranges of Black History Month topics, but the one that caught my eye dug into the music and imagery that were (and are) part of what’s known as “AfroFuturism”, with one handout that they developed including pix of a nice range of album covers influenced by the movement’s goal to show Black people “an infinite range of possibilities…to live free and whole in a future of their design”. Time travel, human flight and the exploration of unknown worlds are common themes in the designs of the costumes and album cover imagery produced for artists such as Sun Ra, George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic and Janelle Monae.
c) Nice article on how hip-hop artists – longtime promoters of the links between the visual arts, fashion and music – have teamed up with some of the fashion industries best-known designers such as Virgil Abloh, Riccardo Tisci and, as the focus of this article on the GQ website, Sterling Ruby, to bring their unique senses of style to the album covers of musical acts including Ye (AKA Kanye West), Playboi Carti and, in Ruby’s case, rapper Pusha T.
https://www.gq.com/story/pusha-t-diet-coke-designer-album-cover
d) Everyone’s favorite Luke Skywalker, actor Mark Hamill, seems to keep himself in the loop when it comes to mentions on social media, so it was kinda fantastic to find him posting about a fan mash-up he found that blended elements of a famous scene from one of the Star Wars films with the recently-controversial floating baby album art found on Nirvana’s Nevermind album – https://screenrant.com/star-wars-luke-skywalker-nirvana-nevermind-mark-hamill-response/
e) A publication called Relevant Magazine – aimed at 20 to 30-something Christians – recently posted an article about one aspect of the album cover art world that doesn’t get a lot of coverage – that being the imagery created for the covers of Christian metal music bands (part of the whole CCM or Contemporary Christian Music scene).
“Seven Strange, Deranged, Occasionally Awesome Christian Metal Album Cover Classics” gives you the details on seven record covers from bands such as hair metal stalwarts Stryper and Barren Cross to thrashers such as Deliverance and Tourniquet, who all worked hard to deliver images that would tweak the interest of both fans of the genre and mainstream audiences as well. https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/music/seven-strange-deranged-occasionally-awesome-christian-metal-album-cover-classics/
f) One of the things that I and a other writers covering this topic enjoy delivering to you readers is the story behind the making of a favorite record cover, with many of these stories delivering details that have made readers go “wow” when they’ve learned them. Here’s an example of such a story – one that adds a “whew” after the “wow” in that it involves a photo of a musical duo called Muscadine Bloodline moments after they’ve been threatened with violence – https://www.whiskeyriff.com/2022/02/12/muscadine-bloodline-had-a-gun-pulled-on-them-while-taking-the-cover-photo-for-their-new-album/
g) Here’s a story about the infamous “hanging balls” element found on the cover art for Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours –https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/reason-mick-fleetwood-two-balls-hanging-between-legs-album-cover-fleetwood-macs-rumours.html/
h) Update on the what-seems-to-be-never-ending coverage of the twice-failed lawsuit filed by former Nirvana baby Spencer Elden against the band, the label and the photographer (Kirk Weddle) that took his picture 30 years ago – the band’s patience at an end, they’ve just filed to have the most-recent filing dismissed (again) – https://www.nme.com/news/music/lawyers-for-nirvana-call-on-elden-spencer-to-end-nevermind-cover-art-lawsuit-3150905
i) A local music/entertainment pub expands its scope to present an appreciation of the album cover art found on some recent releases by musicians based in the area – https://www.centraltrack.com/taking-a-look-at-the-album-art-of-dallas/
j) The ACHOF has reported on the work done by those employed in the graphic and other visual arts for over ten years now and, on occasion, we have published stories about conflicts between these creative individuals and their clients (and, more recently, some of the people featured in these images) but, I must say, until today I’ve never had share the news about an album cover photographer being convicted for harassing the Jewish bakery in London that his sister works at.
Leon Lecash, the photographer of David Bowie’s 1987 “Never Let Me Down” picture disc single, has also shot album covers for (just-announced R&RHOF soon-to-be-inductee) Pat Benatar’s Crimes of Passion and Precious Time, Rod Stewart’s Body Wishes, Jefferson Starship’s Modern Times, and Air Supply’s The One That You Love and others for Bob Welsh, Ray Parker Jr. and Savoy Brown (among others). As you’ll read in the following articles on the story, he seems to have some difficulty dealing with personal relationships that, while it doesn’t detract from the quality of his professional work, does make me wonder what the future holds for him – https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10467881/Celebrity-photographer-snapped-David-Bowie-Rod-Stewart-convicted-harrassing-Jewish-bakers.html
https://www.yahoo.com/video/rock-photographer-shot-david-bowie-162551423.html
k) In other album art crime-related news, a rapper named Bugzie The Don, who went into the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 insurrection and then used a photo of the attempted coup as the background on the cover of his latest record, now faces 21 months in prison for his actions and lame-brained attempt to impress his audience with a photo of his efforts (while he wasn’t accused of any violence while at the Capitol, he was out on probation for unrelated felony charges at the time of his special guest appearance).
https://allhiphop.com/news/rapper-faces-prison-sentence-after-using-capitol-riot-for-album-cover/
That’s all for now – stay tuned and be on the lookout for timely news alerts on our news feeds (sign up below to get an automatic email every time there’s something new on the ACHOF site). I’ll be returning right around the first of next month with another news summary for you. Until then, enjoy the lead-up to Spring, with Peace and Love and wishes of Good Health to you all.
Unless otherwise noted, all text and images included in this article are Copyright 2022 Mike Goldstein and AlbumCoverHallofFame.com – All Rights Reserved. All of the trade names mentioned in these summaries are the properties of their respective owners and are used for reference only.
Album Cover Hall of Fame.com 