Is This A Great LP Cover?

[Noonan McKane]

(clue:yes.)http://www.movieconnection.it/magazine/mc23/electric_ladyland--.jpg

[rubygirl]

Well, it is good, but I wouldn't call it great.

Though the criteria are quite unclear that's always the problem when talking about great covers or great albums.

It's all down to perosnla tastes.

[Noonan McKane]

Well....OK. I was being a bit mischievous, choosing that one. Hotly debated. Some people say it's a disgrace, makes women look like slaves. Others, like me applaud it right up out it's psychedelic mind. Very stoned people have surmised the picture means Jimi is uber-pimp, the photo of him the girl holds out so you can see has the smuggest face of any black cat out of Seattle, anytime.
Fact is, Jimi was so shy and unadvertised, he couldn't stay at the shoot. The ladies were all paid (all volunteered via ads in NME, Radio Times etc for models for 'happening' opportunity, or something daft) £10 cash. £20 if they would take their knickers off. I believe no knickers are visible on the picture.

Fact is, Jimi was such a total big gent, a complicated and a bit emotionally lumbered sort, but a truly nice big lad, that it was inevitable he would be the eternal 'wild man of rock' in the cheap papers. Christ, look: A huge black dude from the Pacific US, plays sessions on all the rnb & soul platters, winds up in swinging London full of LSD, pals with the Beatles! Wild. Poor Jimi got shot by both sides: Endemically racist white European audience mumblingly approved of insanely good blues hybrid of Experience, but struggled with blackness of man. Black militants, raised on blues and soul gospel, who'd have cheered him on a Sam Cooke tour in 1963, despised him by 1966, and called him 'a coconut'. He was black on the outside and white on the inside. It really hurt Jimi. Worse than when, a few years earlier, Jimi got a chance to meet one of his idols, Jerry Lee Lewis on the tarmac at some airport and Lewis turned to his bodyguard and said "Get this ni&&er out of my way." That hurt Jimi.

When the 'wild man of rock' died, and the News Of The W****d told us it was in a wild bleeze of drugs and prostitutes, Jimi was laid quietly dead of mendellsons syndrome. His stomach had only a handful of rice and canape from some shite cocktail party he'd gone to, on his own because Kathy his girlfriend was a bit ill. Jimi came home and got into bed and when Kathy woke next about 3.30am Jimi had died. Sober but still a wee bit lost, god love him. And god rest him.

PS I love 'Electric Ladyland'. Including the cover. I think the girls are all beautiful and it sure doesn't demean them, they're frikken awesome. Y'know people actually object to it because some of the girls are "ugly"! Nazis.


Google: Honoring Jimi:Seattle acknowledges the genius of it's wandering son, or Seattle zoo fury, or insulted JH Foundation challenges...etc, any or all. See what you think yourself.

'my poor mother cried lor' the gypsy was right...'

[elko]

I think it is pretty great, but I couldn't say why. (That is also what I think about the music.) I don't mean to question your authority on the matter, but I thought Jimi wasn't present at all at the photoshoot? I remember seeing his written (confusing) instructions for the cover and they described something quite different - something about a hall of mirrors. The actual album cover was just the photographer's "wouldn't this be wild?" sort of idea.

[Noonan McKane]

No, Elko, you're spot on. I just noticed I wrote Jimi couldn't 'stay' at the shoot, when of course I meant 'couldn't be' at the shoot.

And you're also bang on about Jimi's original concept for the cover. However, when the idea for the 'ladies' was put to him, Jimi enthused profusely. His enthusiasm wasn't profuse enough for him to attend the shoot, though.

How the devil are you, the Elk? Been ages, man....

[Cracked Pleasures]

The picture looks almost drawn or painted rather than being real photographed women. I would usually find this kind of pic very *interesting* but somehow it doesnt grasp my attention

PS you may like this website: www.worstalbumcovers.org

Classic...

[Noonan McKane]

"The Reverend In Rhythm".

God, Prince has just lost it now, hasn't he? That squiggly symbol was bad enough, but "Reverend Robert White" doesn't even sound funky.....

**Further on 'Electric Ladyland': I found hundreds of images of this LP cover on tinternet, and they all seem to give the title as "Electric Lady Land", when 'Ladyland' is one word. Odd.
Every copy of 'E.L.' I've ever seen is pressed with disc one containing sides 1 & 4, and disc two with sides 2 & 3. Apparently, The Who's "Tommy" (which I've got, but on CD) is the same. It looks like Polydor turned out thousands of these, for years, at their plant in Germany, then later at their plant in Britain, without this error ever being noticed. Silly billies.

[Cracked Pleasures]

I would buy the Reverend album, a singing priest is the one novelty I have not added to my music collection yet (although I do believe the old Pope recorded an album several years before his death)...

I also recall a singing nun whose album cover looked even worse. Religion and music don't seem to be an easy match.


If you want a really disgusting album cover, browse for an album named "Bestiality". The cover is even more repulsive than the name of the album... hence why I didn't post it. But it is one of those permanent entries in any list of worst ever album covers.

[Noonan McKane]

Take your word for it, as regards the bestiality LP.

Have to disagree about religion and music not being 'an easy match', though.

I'm thinking mainly about all those hymns, and all those gospel choirs, and all that Gregorian 'chanting'...

Every church I've ever seen had an organ built into it!