In no particular order here are ten albums covers that impressed me as a kid and I do mean as a kid, as I have grown my tastes have changed, I like what I like, do I like all of the albums musically, mmm some of them I love some of them I’m not bothered about, but the album covers are stunning, some bands are missing in action, I love Queen and I like the artwork of most of the albums “like” being the operative word. I love most of the Iron maiden albums covers and Mark Wilkinson artwork for both Fish and Marillion and many other artistes, again there’s nothing here from them. So lets delve into my youth and see if there's anything that you like!
1. Blue Oyster Cult – On Your Feet or on Your Knees 8.5/10, the first album I bought with my own money, (Tubular Bells at a charity shop doesn’t count) there’s just something sinister about the cover, I had a huge poster from Callers in Newcastle I was there when they took it down in the shop and my mum asked them for it, if I had asked they probably would have told me to bugger off, but my mum asked and I got it rolled and put in a tube, it took one whole wall in my bedroom, I had a girlfriend who didn’t like to visit me simply because of that poster (LOL).
2. ELO – Out of the Blue 8/10. An album cover that’s quite simple (unlike the music) but whenever I see it it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, again an album of its time and a time when I was usually happy, I know me with my reputation, times were good just like this album!
3. UFO – Obsession 9/10. what an album, what a cover they both blew my mind , I already liked the band, but this simply took it to another level and it took me a while to realise that the artwork was actually the bloody band, why only 9 out of ten, well about 20 years ago I went to an exhibition of alternative artwork and this was there in a multi colour version of this that was simply stunning!
4. Wishbone Ash – Live Dates 7.5/10. an album my brother had and I always wanted this as a
t- shirt, I love the art and I do like the music, I did see this as a t-shirt for sale in the USA but it wasn’t worth $80, but I was tempted, I do go back to the album from time to time, but the artwork has stuck with me.
5. Kansas – Point of Know Return 8.5/10. I kept seeing this album cover long before I ever heard it, but the second I heard it, I had to devour everything that I could, still one of the only bands I wanted to see that I never got to, and yes I do play most of the mid 70’s back catalogue of this band I simply loved Steve Walsh’s voice!
6. Tom Robinson Band – Power in the Darkness 9/10. The album cover that was the first thing painted on my school haversack (it was a 70’s thing) the album came with a stencil (which is now worth more than the album) I played this album non stop when it came out, the next thing on my haversack was The dickies logo, it lasted a fortnight before I repainted the TRB logo, that shows you how easy the stencil was to use because I did it myself (the second time) and it stayed for the rest of my school days!
7. The Skyhooks – Guilty until Proven Insane 8/10. the cover made me buy the album, I paid £1 for it my local shop cut out bin (I used to by a lot from there as I was always skint) and I loved the whole album, I knew nothing about the band but I played it a couple of times a week (and I still do) about a month after I bought this, a band called Iron Maiden released a cover of Women in Uniform that came from this album, I prefer the Skyhooks version.
8. Molly Hatchet – Debut 9/10. their best album but the album artwork by Frank Frazetta turned me onto the artwork of this fab artist, who I unknowingly had liked his previous album artwork ( Nazareth) good album great artwork.
9. The Scorpions – Lovedrive 9/10. At the time I thought that this was a weird cover (just about all of the Scorpions album artwork was) however similar to the UFO album, the band was on fire as was the artists, this album artwork was produced by Hipgnosis as were quite a few of this list and a lot of wonderful other artists, the album kicked the band out into the stratosphere I think the album cover helped.
10. Judas Priest – Killing Machine 9/10. I love this album cover (and all of the music) I do actually like quite a few Judas Priest album covers (there’s a couple of stinkers as well) this just about brought the decade to a close, things from here went through the roof and again if I went through the decades I probably compile a top one thousand covers, no I have no intention of doing this, don’t worry I know I do wander off the beaten track from time to time but with this I can assure you that I will stray this time!
Now this was all about the covers not the music , mind you I do like all of the albums, some of them I love, believe it or not 99% of the time covers have not influenced my buying pedigree of music, but that 1% of the albums I have bought based on a cover and not knowing anything about that band all of them have have been fantastic! Now what to blog about next time, you will just have to wait and see but until then …….Toodles!
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