My All Time Favorite Album Covers (...plus) Quiz

Answer: Miles Davis

This two LP set was recorded and released in 1975 on Miles' Japanese leg of the tour for his album "On The Corner". I actually purchased this album along with Sweet's "Give Us A Wink" LP on the same visit to Govi Schallplaten in Bremen, Germany that winter.

It is not one of Miles' easiest albums to get in to. His trumpet playing throughout is, at times, really mediocre. The backing band is stellar however and this album is funky as all get go. In retrospect this has become one of my three favorite Miles Davis albums ("On The Corner" and "In A Silent Way" being the other two faves). I don't know why I love this album cover so much - it just really appeals to me.

Answer: Santana

Hmmm... since I am putting as much info in the questions as possible I am not really being left with a lot of useful info to add here! Musically speaking this is the somewhat "jazz fusion" version of Santana - in other words if the Santana you like is 'Caravansari' through to 'Borboletta' then you are going to LOVE this live album. Santana had some amazing album covers ('Borboletta', 'Welcome' and 'Amigos' just for starters) but this one takes the cake.

In Japan this album was released both in Stereo and Quadraphonic.

Interestingly the remastered US CD issue had the quad signal embedded into the recording and the US CD remaster WILL decode to quad if you own the proper quad encoding equipment (I think you need an SQ quad format decoder to do this), four speakers etc. Carlos was a HUGE quaddie so Santana albums in particular that were mixed for quad sound are amazing listening experiences if you have the right amp etc ("Black Magic Woman" on the "Abraxas" quad mix will shoot you off into space once the "Gypsy Queen" segment starts and you are sitting in the sweet spot).

Answer: Quintessence

"In Blissful Company" was issued on Island Records in the UK in 1969.

Quintessence were a littler bit prog, a little bit psych, a little bit Indian music and a little bit country and rock & roll. Ok I am messing with you here. They had nothing to do with Donny & Marie Osmond. They were the first Krshna rock band however (and before anybody complains: I spelled Krshna correctly).

They loosely fell into the progressive and/or psychedelic rock categories (personally I'd say they fell into the Jam Band category but such a category did not exist in 1969). How much do I love this band? I once named one of my cats after them.

They formed in the Notting Hill neigborhood of London in April of 1969 and were almost instantly signed to Island Records. I myself discovered them in my yearly summer vacation to Germany in 1970 via the Various Artist Island records 'Bumpers' label sampler when I had just turned 11. This was the same album through which I got turned on to Nick Drake, Fields, Trees, Bronco, John Martyn, If, Mott The Hoople and Renaissance, Spooky Tooth - as a sampler this is one of the legendary ones (and rightfully so) and it too has really great cover art).

There is a (still in print last I checked) reissue of this album that actually kind of duplicates the book (no fancy die-cuts on every page sadly, but hey: At least the full cover and the full book are there!).

Answer: Elton John

One of those rare moments where a number one album just got it right on all levels. Great songs, great playing, great artwork etc. I mean what on earth is NOT to love about this package? Elton's ninth album release when he was on a roll. It shot to the number one spot straight out of the box when it was released on May 19, 1975 and it remained in the number one spot for seven weeks and has gone platinum in the years since more times than you can imagine. And at least to my ears it deserved every last one of those platinum discs. It was also the final album to feature his original great backup band (until they reunited in 1983).

Oh yeah: did I mention the album also came with a poster?

Answer: Chicago

Probably the most elaborate and over the top album package ever. This 1972 release (their best imo)... where to even begin? You got four LPs, each in its own proper cover, two giant posters of the band (one of which could be used to repair an entire wall if one of your walls collapsed in an earthquake or something - you think I am kidding? When I managed a record store a storm cause a quarter of the ceiling tiles to cave in. Wanna guess how I covered that hole?), a poster of Carnegie Hall's exterior, an insert about voting information, and a 20-page softcover booklet containing photos of the band members playing during the concert and a full touring schedule from their first tour through their 1971 U.S. tour on the back. Oh yeah: and the whole thing went into a slipcase outer box.

Opening this record up when I first got it was like an entire Christmas in one album cover. And FOR ONCE the remastered CD issue got it right: they duplicated the entire thing in miniature AND added one more disc of material recorded at the show but never issued previously (including my favorite song by them: "Listen"). Rhino Records: your cd reissue of this set makes me have to take back a bunch of bad things I have said about your label over the years. You guys 100% NAILED it with this one and then some!

Answer: Bloodrock

Bloodrock's USA LP. With the free T Shirt (how on earth now every single copy of this album with the shirt inside the gatefold did not suffer severe warping is a testament to how thick the vinyl that was used to press albums with was back in the day! At least that is the only explanation I have come up with.)

This is here almost more for the super limited edition t shirt that was included with a couple-a-hundred copies of the album, than the actual artwork itself (which is in large part identical). The shirt is beat to heck but I've still got mine. The shirt had the color art on it. Sort of. The bullet is crashing through a very stylized female body part.. Look the album up on Discogs (good luck finding any images of the shirt online though). When I went to school in Northern Germany (where it snowed in the winter) I was forced to go to choir class on Saturdays (In Germany you had school six days a week - for me having to get out of bed and go to class for one hour of CHOIR PRACTICE was insulting). So one morning, in the middle of winter, I went to class barefoot. Wearing this shirt and an off-white pair of women's pants that were super tight and slightly transparent (My father was a very high up at Levis, so I had some clothes NOBODY else had) and had to stand front and dead center (where the teacher made me always stand) with bright sunlight shining on me. The teacher was so thoroughly distracted by my outfit that NOTHING got done in that class that day and we were allowed to go home early. I was the class hero for the next week. Me? I like to think it was the shirt that did it.

I bought my copy on this album at Warehouse Records in Woodland Hills the very final record purchase I was allowed to make in my Summer 1972 vacation back to the USA before leaving back to Germany the next day. I have, since returning to the USA in 1976, have serious record collectors tell me to my face "This never existed". I would go to music swap meets WEARING the darn shirt and have record collectors tell me it did not exist! Really? Then how did I get a copy and oh yeah: what is this I am wearing? I have never seen another one of these t shirts ever. Hence my assumption that maybe at best Capitol Records made 100 of them for giveaway with the record. With ZERO info about this shirt available online (at least that I can find) I think that assumption is as good as any.

Answer: Pink Floyd

I admit: I feel kinda guilty for the impossible Bloodrock question and thought I'd throw something less obscure your way. And since I happen to LOVE the packaging on this album it's a compromise I can easily live with. Released in 1975, there was a minor difference between the European and US editions of this album.

In one place (Europe) they had black shrink wrap covering the artwork and in the other (USA) they had extremely dark blue shrink wrap. I got my copy at Boudisque in Amsterdam on our school trip to Holland in September 1975 right when it came out. I have to admit: after "Dark Side Of The Moon" (an album I just plain have never liked much) I was not at all wild about this album either.

However (unlike "DSOTM", which I still kind of dislike) "Wish You Were Here" has been tied along with "Ummagumma" and "Relics" as my all time favorite Pink Floyd Top Three.

The packaging is quite simply stunning: four incredible photos, one each on the front and back out cover and one each on both sides of the innersleeve. And then a very cool postcard. I do not remember if it came with a poster or not.

Answer: Gentle Giant

A good friend of mine at the boarding school I went to in Ottersberg, Germany was a BIG Gentle Giant fan and always trying to get me to give them a listen. So one day whilst at my weekly visit to Govi Schallplatten in Bremen I saw this album on their new release wall.

It was very simple but very striking looking. I grabbed it off the wall and saw it was by that band Gentle Giant my friend was always on about. And I decided: 'This week I shall give these guys a chance'. I took it back to the boarding school and fell head over heels in love with the album (which, as it turned out, had a very unique mix unlike any other issue of this album I have ever heard since - mainly noticeable on the first 30 or so seconds of the very first track).

This music inside this cover? A prog fan's dream come true!

Answer: Zweistein

Zweistein. "Trip, Flip Out, Meditation". A three LP set that elicits either excited chittering (by people like me) or painful groans and moans of "Why?" (a whole lot of other people) by those that are familiar with it. This album is either your idea of an aural acid trip or just sheer self indulgent and over-long drivel. I am going to attempt to sum up information you can find in very great detail online about this album and the people behind it if you chose to know more.

This 1970 three LP set was issued in Germany and one of these two stories should be the real story behind the album: As far as I am aware there are two stories in regards to Zweistein's legacy. The first concerns a love affair between a Philips record producer and a young woman from the band. According to legend, the producer was so mesmerized by the woman's beauty that he allowed her and a couple of her friends to record in the studio after hours. Shortly after the album's release, Philips quickly deleted it from their catalogue (I can vouch for this as when it first came out I remember seeing it in the stores and wanting it badly - it is a STUNNING album cover - but it was really expensive and by the time I had the money together to buy it it was unavailable at every single store I tried to find it at (I eventually paid #100 for a pristine copy in 1979). In addition, the producer was fired from Philips.

The second story tells of a man known as Jacques Dorian who enlisted help from his wife, children, studio engineer Peter Kramper, and certain mind altering drugs to record the album. You chose.

Original issues missing the mirror would sell for about 1/5th of what the album can go for with the mirror intact - Now one thing you should know about this album is that in this day and age you will NOT find a mint original cover. The cover is fragile as hell and almost always with noticeable ring-wear IF you can find a copy, period. On the plus side: the Japanese Captain Trip label did a gorgeous mini LP style cd EXACT reproduction of the album and it includes two singles that are even harder to find than the album itself. The cd is also now out of print but you should be able to find one for under $100. Which is a lot less than a presentable original copy of the vinyl will set you back. It is not that hard to see what the album looks like online. I strongly urge you to give it a look-see.

Answer: Various Artists

This is a picture disc. In a clear plastic sleeve. So not an album cover proper. In 1979 a STUNNING picture disc of mostly punk bands showed up here in the USA. The band most people might have heard of on it (if any) were the band Eater. Apparently there is also a black vinyl version of this that was made but I have never seen one. Google "Various The Label" and pick the 'discogs' option to see this in all of its glory (and now imagine how great this thing looks glowing in the dark!)

Answer: Yes

Surprisingly enough this album HAS actually gotten better with time. Is it still a self indulgent pretentious mess? Yeah. Kind of. But one no longer automatically thinks "What on EARTH was Anderson thinking?" when side four ends (as most people did back in the day). Now one thing that NOBODY griped about with this record was the cover art. Personally (and yeah: like the quiz says: MY all time favorite album covers/art) I think it's Roger Dean's best Yes cover. You wanna disagree go ahead: and write your own quiz (and as I said elsewhere: as long as I am not seeing questions about an exploding dirigible, four guys crossing a road, spaceships shaped like guitars or light being reflected through a prism against a black background I'll absolutely TAKE that quiz of yours, guaranteed).

Answer: Split Enz

A British issue of what (outside of New Zealand) was thought to be the first Split Enz LP. This featured a somewhat modified version of their first NZ album of the same name (the track listing was a mixture of tracks from their first two NZ albums) with a peppermint cane border around the artwork (which set it off beautifully).

The album was originally issued in New Zealand in 1975 and picked up for distribution in the UK by Chrysalis Records in 1976. I bought this one shortly after moving back to the USA simply because I had to know what any band that looked like this would sound like. I was very happy with what they sounded like.

Answer: Doctors Of Madness

I saw a picture of this record very shortly before moving back to the USA in 1976. And no: in the very short time I had left back in Germany I could not find a copy of this record anywhere. As with the previous Split Enz cover: when I saw this cover I just had to own it simply to know what on earth these guys who looked so strange might sound like. On the UK Polydor label. I was in no way whatsoever disappointed once I found a copy in Los Angeles on my second day back when my mother took me to Tower Records on the Sunset Strip and handed me $200 to buy records with (afterwards we went and got me a stereo set up as my record player had to be left in Germany - and was five years old and falling apart anyway).

The first five LPs I grabbed going into Tower that day you ask? The three Nick Drake albums I had been seeking for YEARS in Germany, this Doctors Of Madness LP and the first Ramones album I had been reading about over in Germany. I bought about 50 LPs that day and to this day I can tell you each and every last one of them. Up until Germany 2000 purely from a record buying point of view it was the happiest day of my life to that point. Did this album ever come out in the USA? Kinda - as one LP of a two-lp set that was issued after their second UK release.

The US two lp set combined both albums, stuck them in a very dull black and white cover with a live show of the band on the front and I sometimes think I was the only person in the country that paid full price for a copy of it. Sadly this band never came out to Los Angeles to play. I'd have killed to have seen them in concert.

Answer: The Nice

I admit: choosing between this and 'Five Bridges' was NOT an easy choice to make. One of my top five all time favorite bands. Is it the band's best album? Not really. Is 'Five Bridges' their best album. Nuh-uh. But album cover wise? There was a two LP US issue of both of those albums issued in one of the ugliest album covers ever. I will always maintain that had both albums been issued over here with their gatefold European album cover artwork intact they have sold a boatload more copies that the "featuring Keith Emerson of Emerson Lake & Palmer" cash-in ever sold.

In Europe this (and 'Five Bridges') came out on the Charisma label. In the USA they came out on Mercury Records. Do not insult your eyes. Go for the original British issues if you want to own them.

Answer: Iggy & The Stooges

The sexiest photo of a guy on the front of an album cover ever. Even as a straight teenage male when I picked up this album on my first record buying trip to the Govi main store in Hamburg, Germany in 1973 I thought "This guy is HOT". And then those great Mick Rock photos on the back cover.

This is one of the precious few album covers that you can hand to somebody and say "This album sounds exactly like this cover looks" and in all likelihood the person you said that to will agree after hearing it for the first time. Everything about this album is monumental.

Some might argue that David Bowie's murky production kind of ruins it but if you bought the cd with the Iggy Pop mix back in the early 00's (NOT the 2012 record store day reissue that purports to have that Iggy mix on it, but clearly it is not the same mix that came out on cd about 10 years earlier.

Not even remotely close to that killer mix. Regardless: one of the best records ever released on the CBS Records lanel.

Answer: Tyrannosaurus Rex

I was a Tyrannosaurus Rex fan from a very young age. I saw this album in a store in Germany the week it came out and had to have it. The cover art was stunning. And from that point I was hooked and became a devoted Marc Bolan fan. Released July 5, 1968 on the UK Regal Zonophone label. I have no idea if it ever came out ion the USA in its original form or only as a two LP set with their follow-up album 'Prophets, Seers & Sages The Angels Of The Ages' in what has to be one of the most hideous album covers ever (Seriously: what was WRONG with record labels in the USA issuing great packaged, great music and making it look like something you'd hesitate to line your cat's litter box with because it was too ugly for that purpose?)

Answer: Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity

I should almost do a quiz where I make you guess who did the cover art for some of these albums. Wanna know who did this one? Does the name Ralph Steadman rock your boat? I actually bought this for musical reasons. YOU try growing up in Germany in the later '60s and try avoiding this band! Along with The Nice, another one of my Top five all time favorite bands. I do not know if this album is still available on vinyl with the great gatefold cover, but when I grabbed my last upgrade in 1988 it was still in print in Germany (I do not think this album has ever been out of print in Germany ever since first coming out in 1969). Bizarrely it was issued in its complete and identical form in the USA as well! AND, depending on if your preference runs towards matte covers instead of glossy covers, you might even prefer the US issue (Good luck, however, finding a flawless matte US cover though: I have come close, but never 100% perfect in every way).

The original UK issue is on the Marmalade label, The German on Polydor (originally) as well as Karussell (later pressings) and the US one is on Atco.

Answer: The Bee Gees

This album came out with the velvet cover in just about every country it was originally issued in. The main difference would be a Germany issue that came in a white box with red velvet on the front and back (and the inside gatefold art printed on the inside front and back box panels). Original issues were on the Polydor label.

Then, once the band became famous again in the mid '70s RSO decided to reissue this long out of print masterpiece. As a severely butchered single LP in a red and gold single sleeve. That did not fold out. That did not have the info printed on it in gold leaf. That had a red printed cover, not a velvet cover. I am not even going to both getting upset over the bozos who were responsible for that mess. I wore out my German box set of this well before moving back to the USA. And then one day in the very late '70s I was at Licorice Pizza on the Sunset Strip going to some punk show at the Whiskey and what do I see? For $49.99? A brand new JAPANESE Polydor reissue of this with the velvet definitely thicker and richer looking than on original issues and the gold leaf looking just STRIKING! Back then $49.99 was a LOT to pay for a new two lp import. I hesitated for about oh... not at all and to this day this is the copy I proudly have in my collection :-)

Answer: Yoko Ono

You probably hate this album. Hey: that's your right. I personally love it. I bought this at Karl Von Kothen records in Wuppertal Germany when The Rolling Stones 'Exile On Mainstreet' had JUST hit the stores that very afternoon in 1972. I went to the store to buy 'Exile'. I saw this one as well and after copping a visual of it I bought both of them. And to be perfectly honest: It took me one or two listens to get in to 'Fly'. It took me YEARS to really get in to 'Exile'...

In a strange way both albums had similar packaging (both included postcards for example and both were double albums). The Yoko had this strange slightly out of focus photo of her face and her feet photo is underneath a super high gloss laminate. And a postcard. And a poster. Did I ever tell you how easy it was to impress this lad at that age with a free poster in a rekkid? One interesting tidbit about this record that makes me want to find a Japanese issue now that I never knew about before researching this album for info here is this: "Each edition of the US, UK and Japanese albums utilized that country's distinctive telephone ring in the track "Telephone Piece" (i.e. each edition of the album used entirely different recordings)" (Wikipedia). Now THAT is seriously cool even if you hate this record! John & Yoko's 'Wedding Album' (another album I played the hell out of) is pretty much tied with this one as far as packaging goes. 'The Wedding Album' is FAR more elaborate but for some reason (don't ask me why because I do not know) I prefer 'Fly'.

Answer: Man

This 1972 UK release on the United Artist label is better seen than described. The front and back of the gatefold are nice: really good and slightly out of focus live shots of the band. But open up that THICK gatefold and step back a foot: it folds out into this massive pop up of a map of Wales as drawn by the band (with places THEY find important highlighted).

This album was my introduction to the band in 1973 (I was well familiar with individual songs on various sampler by them but this was the first full length release I ever purchased by them - bought it at the same time as Sweet's wonderful 'Sweet Fanny Adams' LP at Ear Records in Bremen, Germany).

The packaging on this record gave me an excellent insight into their overall world view.