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- [00:00]
Alan Cross
Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music, early and ad free on Amazon Music included with Prime. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Feeling lost? Stressed out? Anxious? Welcome to the club. The 24 hour news cycle and doom scrolling and the constant bombardment of information from all directions affect all of us. Yet we're expected to hold it all together. Something that's easier said than done. Men have this thing too, that we're supposed to be strong and steady performers and providers. And you know what? A lot of us do. We just push it down into that black ball inside of us because, well, that's what guys do. We're tough, right? But that leads to depression and burnout and other, shall we say, unhealthy activities as we try to cope. Here's the truth. It's okay to admit that you're struggling and that you need someone to talk to. Doing something about your mental health takes strength. And once you begin to open up and admit all the burdens that you're carrying around, you can work on being the best you can be for yourself, your loved ones, and everyone around you. Now trust me on this. Once you start talking about the things stuffed into your black ball, the whole universe begins to open up. BetterHelp is there for you. With more than 35,000 therapists available, BetterHelp is the largest online therapy platform. It has an App store rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on 1.7 million reviews from clients all over the world. It's so easy and convenient, too. An online session starts with the click of a button at any time of day or night so you can fit therapy into your busy schedule. Learn how to set boundaries, deal with anxiety, and learn positive coping skills. And you can switch therapists anytime. There should never be any stigma around mental health. You take care of your physical health, right? So why should your mental health be any different? As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of experience. Guys, talk it out with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com ongoing today and get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com ongoing.
- [02:12]
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- [02:39]
Alan Cross
Be a very visual program, which might be a bit of a challenge because you're either listening to this as a radio show or as a podcast. So I need you to work with me on this. Vinyl is back in a way that no one could have ever predicted. In countries like Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and beyond, vinyl is once again outselling CDs. And a surprising number of people are buying vinyl even if they don't have a turntable. Now what's the point of that? Well, it's simple. Vinyl is a tangible and physical manifestation and representation of of the music. It is something you own, something that resides with you, and no matter what happens, it is yours. Many fans stream the music while holding the vinyl in their hands, which if you ask me, is the best of both worlds. The vinyl never gets damaged, never wears out, but you get to hear the music just the same and the attraction is the same as it ever was. Liner notes, lyric sheets, and the artwork. For a while we were in real danger of seeing the glories of album artwork disappear. First it was shrunk down to CD size, then with something like itunes you got a little postage stamp sized image. And with streaming you get almost nothing when it comes to something that visually embodies all the blood, sweat and tears, talent and inspiration that went into making that album. So here on the radio or the podcast, I'm going to ask you to conjure up images of these album covers in your mind. Then you can go back to your vinyl library and take a look. We're revisiting album artwork on this episode of the ongoing History of New Music with a look at the stories behind some iconic covers. And after this, you may not look at some of your albums the same way again. This is the ongoing History of New Music Podcast with Alan Cross. Hi there. Welcome again, I'm Alan Cross and here's something that we haven't done in a while. Explore the stories behind the artwork of albums that are probably sitting somewhere in your music collection right now. In the pre digital days, and I'm talking even before CDs, album artwork was incredibly important. Not only did it add to the experience of listening to a record, but artwork was important to the mystery, mystique and marketing of music. If you're of a certain vintage, you can probably think of examples of when you bought a record just because you liked the way it looked, you had no idea what was on the record. You might not have even heard of the artist before. But because the COVID looked cool, you took the risk. Album artwork was once so revered that there were multiple coffee table book collections. I have one right here. It's called the the 100 best album covers. The stories behind the sleeves. I got another one over here called the Album Cover Album. This, if you ask me, is glorious stuff. The covers of these rock and pop albums are treated with respect and offer insights into both the artists who made the record and the artists who conceptualized and created the artwork. And my plan here is to tell the stories of some of these album covers. And I guess we'll just do this in chronological order. First up is the self titled debut album from the Ramones, which was released on April 23, 1976. It's a very simple black and white shot. The four guys in their ripped jeans and leather jackets against a graffiti covered brick wall. This is a perfect representation of the band as a gang aesthetic. The photographer was Roberta Bailey. She was employed by Punk Magazine, a New York publication that did so much to popularize the underground sounds of the city and actually may have lent its name to this new music. The short form of that story was if punk wrote about you, well, then you were a punk band. The Ramones originally wanted something that resembled Meet the Beatles from 1964, which featured four headshots. A photographer took some shots in that style, but Tony Wadler, the art director of the band's label, Sire Records, wasn't happy with the results. In fact, she hated them. A decision was made to go with a photo Roberta Bailey had taken for Punk. That's where it first appeared. She had Johnny, Tommy, Joey and Dee Dee line up against this wall in Albert's Garden, a private community garden between the Bowery and Second street in New York City. Danny Fields, the manager of the band, thought it was perfect, and he was absolutely right. Blown up to poster size, it made a great impression in record stores. It also helps cement a certain punk fashion look. Over the decades, it has become one of the most imitated album poses ever. It's even part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And here's the kicker. For capturing one of the most iconic images in the history of rock and roll, Roberta Bailey was paid a grand total of $100. About a year and a half after that debut album from the Ramones came out, the Sex Pistols one and only album, Nevermind the Bollocks arrived. This was October 28, 1977. The COVID was quite simple, a solid dayglow background with the full title spelled out as Nevermind the Bollocks. Here's the Sex Pistols. The first three lines are different fonts, while the band's name is styled in a mix of upper and lowercase letters, reminiscent of a ransom note made out of cut up letters from a newspaper. There were two versions, one with a pink dayglo background and another one that was yellow. The artist was Jamie Reed, who loved the ransom note style of lettering that he devised while working for a radical political magazine called Suburban Press. At first he thought he was designing something for a record called God Save the Sex Pistols. But that title was changed in mid-1977 when. When guitarist Steve Jones spoke up, he heard two fans using the phrase Never mind the bollocks, which basically means stop talking rubbish. But when the record was released, there was a huge problem. The word bollocks was deemed obscene by some, which caused all sorts of issues for record stores and radio. In the most famous case of censorship, London police paid a visit to Virgin Record Stores with the poster of the album on display in the windows. The stores were told that they faced the possibility of prosecution under something called the Indecement Advertisements act, which dated back to 1889. This was enough to scare more than a few managers into taking the posters down, and at least one store manager was arrested. But when the story hit the papers two days before the album's release, it became an even bigger deal. Ads started appearing in the music papers that read, the album will last, the sleeve may not. The case ended up in Court on November 24, 1977. The cop at the forefront of the investigation into this breach of public decency was asked why record stores were targeted and not newspapers and magazines who wrote about it. A double standard, claimed the lawyer for Virgin Records. Expert witnesses were called to explain the origin and meaning of the word bollocks, which, as one English professor testified, was a legitimate Old English term for priest. Another pointed out that in the context of the album cover, it meant nonsense. In the end, everyone was found not guilty, and Never Mind the Bollocks went on to become a highly influential classic inside and outside the sleeve. The third album I want to talk about is Depeche Mode's 1987 album Music for the Masses. It features a beige background over which we see the band's logo, the title of the album, and Depeche Mode written in stark block letters. The image features three red megaphones mounted on a Pole ready to broadcast to. Well, apparently no one. Megaphones were a favorite thing of Martin Atkins, a longtime Depeche Mode collaborator. He came up with the idea of speakers in a setting that didn't have anything to do with the masses. They were set up literally in the middle of nowhere, the Peak District of England, which is a spot between Manchester and Sheffield. Who was supposed to hear what they were going to broadcast? The band and the label liked the concept so much that a megaphone was used throughout the band's marketing and promotion. For this record, there was another version that was rejected. It was a stylized megaphone in a white and orange motif with the megaphone sound waves drawn in. About 135 copies were prepared for shipping to stores. But then the band and the label had a change of heart and had all those copies recalled. They all came back and were destroyed, except about a dozen, which stayed with retailers. Then Depeche Mode keyboardist Alan Wilder auctioned off his copy in 2011, and he got about $4,000 for it. And today it would sell for much, much more. They rarely come up for sale. Discogs, the website of record for collectors, reports that they have never, ever sold a single copy. Will you give it to me? Will you take the pain I will give to you? Here's another album from the 80s with an interesting cover. It's Mother's Milk from the Red Hot Chili peppers, released on August 16, 1989. Now visualize this. A black and white photo of a giant topless woman cradling all four members of the band in her arms, with her left nipple covered by a rose. Anthony Kiedis had the original idea, based on a poster he had as a kid of Sly and the Family Stone back in the 1970s. Guitarist John Fruscianti was really difficult. He rejected every photo of him except one, which shows him sitting down laughing. Two women were photographed. One was Ione Sky, Anthony's then girlfriend. The other was a woman named Dawn Lane. And it's her photograph that was chosen, and she's the person that we see on the COVID However, dawn claimed that the band did not ask for her permission for her image to be used. Meanwhile, a number of record store chains refused to stock and display the record because they thought there was too much female nudity. Although you really can't see a thing. Some retailers, like Walmart, ended up with a censored version which featured the band members blown up bigger so that they covered more of Dawn. Things got even weirder when a limited number of promotional posters were sent out with Dawn's breasts completely exposed. Again, she had no knowledge of this. Imagine her surprise when she saw herself topless in a record store. She sued the band and won a settlement of $50,000. More stories of album mark coming up right after this. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Feeling lost? Stressed out? Anxious? Welcome to the club. The 24 hour news cycle and doom scrolling and the constant bombardment of information from all directions affect all of us. Yet we're expected to hold it all together. Something that's easier said than done. Men have this thing too, that we're supposed to be strong and steady performers and providers. And you know what a lot of us do? We just push it down into that black ball inside of us because, well, that's what guys do. We're tough, right? But that leads to depression and burnout and other, shall we say, unhealthy activities as we try to cope. Here's the truth. It's okay to admit that you're struggling and that you need someone to talk to. Doing something about your mental health takes strength. And once you begin to open up and admit all the burdens that you're carrying around, you can work on being the best you can be for yourself, your loved ones, and everyone around you. Now, trust me on this, once you start talking about the things stuffed into your black ball, the whole universe begins to open up. BetterHelp is there for you. With more than 35,000 therapists available, BetterHelp is the largest online therapy platform. It has an App store rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on 1.7 million reviews from clients all over the world. It's so easy and convenient, too. An online session starts with the click of a button at any time of day or night, so so you can fit therapy into your busy schedule, learn how to set boundaries, deal with anxiety, and learn positive coping skills. And you can switch therapists anytime. There should never be any stigma around mental health. You take care of your physical health, right? So why should your mental health be any different? As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of experience. Guys, talk it out with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com ongoing today and get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com ongoing Limu Imu and Doug here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural Ally. Doug. Uh, Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.
- [16:48]
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- [17:17]
Alan Cross
We're looking at the stories behind some famous album covers. And next up on the list is Paul's Boutique from the Beastie Boys. This one is truly iconic. This was the highly anticipated follow up to License to Ill, a monster album that became the first rap record to reach number one on the Billboard charts. Expectations were that the Beasties would deliver more of the same. They did not. Instead, they released something so ahead of its time that the record was initially a commercial flop. That's all changed now, but back in 1989, Paul's Boutique fell very, very, very flat. The packaging, though, was something else. It's best viewed in its vinyl form. It's a gatefold sleeve, which means it folds out from a 12 by 12 inch square to something that's 12 inches by about 3ft. When you do that, you see that it's all a panoramic photo of Ludlow street, which is on the Lower east side of Manhattan. It's the perspective of 99 Ludlow street, if you want to get specific. It's said that the photo was taken by Nathaniel Hornblower, which is one of MCA's aliases. But the real photographer was a guy named Jeremy Shetan. Back in the day, he was the original bass player for the Beastie Boys, when they were still pretty punky. Jeremy shot about 30 rolls of film that day, including some bird's eye shots from the roof of 101 Park Avenue. Those photos seemed to be lost. There was no such store as Paul's Boutique. That was the name Mike D conjured up. The store we see was actually called Lee's Sportswear, but the band just hung up a temporary sign. Today, fans looking for Lee's Sportswear will be disappointed it's no longer there. Neither is Ben's Shoes, the place next door. Google Street View shows a bank where the store used to be. Here's another piece of artwork featuring a real person. It's what we see on the COVID of alice in chains 1992 album Dirt. In 1992, grunge was still very new when Alice in Chains pivoted to a new image and sound. When they began in the 80s, they were more of a glimy hair metal band, but. But seeing the running on the wall, they were able to make the switch. By the time they got to Dirt, their second album, they were fully invested. Given the dark themes and sounds of the album, photographer Rocky Schenck wanted something appropriate, hellish in his words, and the more disturbing the better. So what we have is a cover featuring a nude woman half buried in what looks like a cracked and dry desert floor. Is she alive? Is she dead? We don't know. However, Lane Staley did reveal that he offered input based on, and this is a quote, a certain person who basically buried my ass. So the woman on the COVID is kind of the portrayal of that person getting sucked down into the dirt instead of me. Now, this photo shoot did not happen in any desert. Instead, Schenck built a desert in his Hollywood photography studio. The mountains were miniature and the ground was made of foam core and clay and a body shaped hole was left in the middle. Now keep in mind, this was the 90s when there was a budget for this sort of thing and we didn't have AI generated artwork. The woman in the photo is Mariah o'. Brien. She had some cover art experience thanks to Spinal Tap. If you go back to their single Bitch School, that's her on the front cover being led around on a chain. So once and for all, the woman on the COVID is not Demery Parrott, the then girlfriend of singer Lane Staley. When the shoot happened on June 14, 1992, Mariah had to lie in that hole for eight hours as Schenck took hundreds of shots, adjusting the lighting countless times. She remembers having to pee very, very badly, but had to hold it in the entire time. A few other photos showed up in other places. If you have the 1999 box set music bank, it contains a few. And that's her holding her heart inside. The booklet of Black Gives Way to Blue, the first Alice in Chains album with new singer William Duvall, and Last Word. Mariah o' Brien is working as an interior designer in Los Angeles. The COVID artwork for Nirvana's Nevermind has been dissected a million times and has been the subject of plenty of litigation pursued by the baby on the COVID His name is Spencer Eldon. And if you want to know about that mess, just give it a Google Instead, let's look at the COVID of in utero from 1993, a record that Kurt originally wanted to call I Hate Myself and Want to Die, he said at the time. It was a joke, but we all know how that story panned out. In the end, the title In Utero was chosen because everyone realized that I Hate Myself and I Want to Die could encourage people to do some dangerous things and perhaps result in some lawsuits. Then they thought about calling it Verse Chorus Verse after a song that would end up being retitled Sappy. In the end, In Utero was excised from a poem Courtney Love had written. The COVID created by art director Robert Fisher, features a winged figure on a pale, cracked background. The angelic figure is ripped open. We see bare bones and exposed organs, a nod to Kurt's fascination with human anatomy as art. It's both peaceful and disturbing. What we actually see is known as a transparent anatomical mannequin with the wings tacked on. This is a life sized, anatomically correct model of a female body that's used to teach wannabe doctors about anatomy. Kurt found it in the Mall of America in Minneapolis at a store that sold medical stuff. Nirvana had several mannequins that they hauled around for stage props for the In Utero tour. If we flip the album over, we see more things from that store, along with a few other things from Kurt's collectibles. Plastic fetuses, body parts, a turtle shell, orchids and lilies. Everything is laid out on Kurt's living room floor and photographed by Charles Peterson. There are symbols from a book called the Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects. Kurt had this thing about artwork representing sex and women and birth and death. And the COVID works well too, because, well, it hints at the rawness of the music contained on the ins. Hey wait, I gotta recover. A couple more album artwork stories coming up.
- [24:20]
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- [24:49]
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- [25:19]
Nancy Hickst
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- [25:49]
Alan Cross
This is a show on the story behind the artwork of famous albums. And if you've ever wondered about the angry sheep on the COVID of Pearl Jam's Versus album, here's what's going on there. Versus was another much anticipated album. How would Pearl Jam follow up the glories of the 10 record? Well, first of all, you need to know that's not a sheep. It's an angora goat. I don't know the goat's name, but he or she lived on the Lifeline farm in Victor, Montana, which is just south of Jeff Ahmet's hometown of Missoula. In fact, Jeff took the photo with a strong message in mind. The goat, by the way, wasn't angry at all. It was very friendly, very curious, and completely oblivious to the fact that it was soon to be slaughtered. Jeff says this is how the band felt at the time. Slaves to the star making machinery of the popular song. And yes, he did use the word slaves. This also explains the original title, Five Against One and the final title, Versus. It was the band against the record industry. Stone Gossard said this for me, that title represents a lot of struggles that you go through trying to make a record. Your own independence, your own soul versus everyone else's. Versus had more. If you look at the other panels, you'll see some human feet walking in the mud. That's the band again. The mud is symbolic. Oh, and one more thing. Versus was released in stages on October 11th, 1993. A vinyl edition was released in the UK on October 12th. North America got a vinyl version and the CD and cassette did not come out until October 18th and 19th. Why? Eh, Phil Jim just wanted to mess with the system. So they did. In their mind. It was another way to stick it to the label. And in 1993 none of the members had a CD player yet. They loved vinyl and hated that Epic Records was trying to kill it off in favor of more expensive, higher margin and more profitable CDs. Jeff Eymette wanted a cassette version because that was the only way he could listen to it. To mess with everyone even further, the vinyl doesn't feature the title of the album or the name of the band. Epic had to slap a sticker on the shrink wrap. And finally, another picture carried some controversy involving a woman. For the first pressings of Verses, there is a picture of an elderly woman. She apparently never gave permission for her image to be used. And that's why later pressings feature another woman. And that's why the liner notes say, the new and improved woman behind the counter. Try to get that from a stream for the elk. I dreamed you'd return, but now here you are. Here one more for this show and we're going to turn our attention to another album from 1993, Siamese Dream from the Smashing Pumpkins. This was their second album, released on July 19, 1993 in the UK and a week later in North America. Billy Corgan's initial idea was to have some kind of outsider artist create the COVID And by that I mean someone with an approach that's so avant garde, so untrained and so untutored, but also executed with an incredible amount of passion. Most people don't understand or even like outsider art, but that was Billy's point. It didn't fly, though. The label rejected the idea and a photo of two little girls was selected. A couple of seven year olds, Ali Langer and Lisandra Roberts of Los Angeles. They were both child models and were booked for the shoot through their agency. They had their picture taken on a sunny Los Angeles afternoon at a little house they'd never met before, so they're not Siamese twins. But that day they had instant chemistry. They were shown some outfits and they picked what they wanted to wear. The photographer was Melody McDaniel, and the girls were smiling and smiling and smiling. Thanks to an ice cream truck that passed by, they got all the popsicles they wanted that day, which caused something of a sugar rush. They only settled down when they were told that they could keep the shoes that they had tried on. In 2018, Ali and Lissandra got back together to help promote a reformed Smashing Pumpkins and a tour. Allie is now a nurse and Lisandra has a job in it. By the way, do not believe any stories about one time Pumpkin Space's Nicole Fiorentino being one of those girls. She even fooled Billy with that claim. Alas, as cool as that story sounded, it is false now. This was too much fun. And I've got a pile of records next to me with some interesting stories. Cover stories. That's clever. Let's pick things up next time with more tales behind iconic album covers. Meanwhile, there are more than 500 ongoing history podcasts that you can catch up on. They're available for free download wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're in a downloading mood, there's my other podcast too. Crime and mayhem in the Music Industry. And just like it sounds, it's true crime meets music. I'm on all the social media channels goofing around with all kinds of things. I have my website, a journal of musicalthhings.com which is updated with music news, opinion and music recommendations every day. And I encourage you to reach out via email or DM if you have any comments or questions. The email is AlanLancross CA. See you next time for part two of our look at great album cover art. Yeah, Cover stories, Tactical productions by Rob Johnston. Talk to you next time. I'm alan Cross. Friday, October 17 My name is Mickey Fox from the producers of Fire Country. I'm sheriff of Edgewater. A must watch new series on global and streaming on Stack tv. Drop the guns.
- [31:54]
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- [31:55]
Alan Cross
I know them. I got it. In this town, fighting crime hits close to home. Sheriff's authority ain't recognized up here, Dale.
- [32:03]
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- [32:04]
Alan Cross
Sheriff country new series. Friday, October 17th on global and stream live and on demand on Stack tv.