What Makes a Great Album Cover? - by JCE

NOTE: I wrote this piece a while back and never sent it to Pencil Storm. I had done a number of stories with lists, top ten this or top ten that…..it got tiresome so I started writing mostly about shows I went to see, or great records. Well, thanks to COVID-19, I am not getting to any shows anytime soon, so I dusted this one off for your reading pleasure. Comments at the end regarding what you agree with and what you don’t would be greatly appreciated!

Every rock n roll fan loves album artwork, or at least most do. Some may enjoy liner notes or printed lyrics even more, but me, I love the artwork. I always have. I am the same way with my massive collection of vintage skateboards. It’s all about the artwork. Here are some album covers that I think are noteworthy:

The New York Dolls. I was late to the party with this band, likely due to my age. I discovered punk rock and a whole new world of music starting with The Sex Pistols and The Clash. When I finally wised up to the greatness of the New York Dolls, I found this double album, which was just their first two records packaged together. Love this artwork. Glad I still own this.

Ricki C.’s two cents: JCE has been kind enough to allow me throw in some extraneous thoughts on his picks. He & I have figured out in the course of our long-distance friendship that he’s 11 years younger than me, the same age-gap as my child bride Debbie & I. In the case of The New York Dolls, that 11 year difference is HUGE. I was 21 years old in 1973 when the first Dolls record came out and it quite literally changed my life. I’ve often said - and it’s probably in Pencil Storm somewhere - if it wasn’t for the New York Dolls right at this moment I would have a grey pony-tail halfway down my back, granny glasses on & be listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs. Thankfully I’m not. Here’s photographic proof of that rock & roll transformation from the 1970’s…..

The Ramones / Road To Ruin. The Ramones debut album cover is iconic, and I love the photo of the band in ripped jeans and leather jackets leaning against a brick wall. Rocket To Russia was good too. But this comic book style cover and the bright yellow logo and the big amps with NYC in the background is just awesome to me.

Ricki’s two cents: The first time I saw The Ramones live was in 1976 or 1977 - I was still drinking then, so it’s a little hazy - at a Columbus, Ohio bar called Cafe Rock & Roll, that three months before had been a grocery store. Best conversion of a retail space EVER.

The Damned / Damned Damned Damned. This is a classic punk rock record. It was groundbreaking. The song “New Rose” is an amazing single. But I am not here talking about the music, this is about album covers. I don’t quite know what draws me to this one other than the super clean and simple Damned logo and the fact that the photo screams punk attitude to me (I just realized how similar the Ramones record above looks to this one).

Ricki’s two cents: I bought the single of “New Rose” because Nick Lowe produced it - and Nick Lowe was my Number One Rock & Roll Hero at that moment - and because it was on Stiff Records. What more could a West Side boy have asked for? I never had the album. (And still don’t.)

Minor Threat. This is the debut from legendary D.C. hardcore band Minor Threat. I absolutely love this photograph by Susie Horgan. It was taken during a hardcore show at the Wilson Center, a place I went to several times. Almost everyone thinks the photo is Ian Mackaye, the lead vocalist. In reality, it is his brother Alec asleep on the steps at a Wilson Center show. Alec was not even in the band.

Ricki’s two cents: I never “got” hardcore, probably because I came of rock & roll age in the 1960’s and still needed a little melody mixed in with my love of guitar chaos/noise, hence my affection for Boston’s The Neighborhoods, maybe the greatest blend of punk aggression & pop hooks ever, and the band that is the basis for JCE’s & my friendship.

The Replacements / Let It Be. Boy, what can you say about this. The photo seems so perfect for the unbelievable music that is on this record. Paul Westerberg’s seeming indifference is priceless. I have seen a ton of photos of this band and this one remains my absolute favorite. I recently read that the initial concept for this record cover was going to be the band stumbling across Abbey Road mimicking the Beatles record of that name.

Ricki’s two cents: Yeah, I love this cover. It’s SO Midwest. Perfect.

The Clash / London Calling. I saved the best for last. This is my favorite record cover of all, 100%. I remember buying my copy in 1979 and the sheer aggression depicted just got me so amped to play the album. My copy had a little sticker on it that said “The Only Band That Matters.” That is bad ass.

Ricki’s two cents: I may miss Joe Strummer more than any other rocker we’ve lost, and that’s taking into account Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Johnny Cash & Tom Petty.

I listen to all kinds of rock n roll, including a lot more metal than I care to admit, but when it comes to album artwork, the punks get the nod! - JCE

Ten Albums That Changed My Life, part one, 1964-1973 - by Ricki C.

(The response to the Ten Albums That Changed my Life series launched by our VA. correspondent JCE three weeks ago has been brisk to say the least. So much so that the Pencilstorm Editorial Board has decided to make it our regular “Sunday New York Times” prestige feature. This is the third installment, following Anne Marie’s entry last Sunday and JCE’s kick-off to the series before that. Ricki C. is up for the third round. Future entries will feature Wal Ozello, Jim Hutter & Pete Vogel. Stay tuned.)

THE DAVE CLARK 5 / Glad All Over

From the ages of zero to 12 years old, all I cared about in life was comic books and World War II. (Comic books ABOUT World War II like Our Army at War, featuring Sgt. Rock of Easy Company, were – needless to say – particular favorites, but Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men and Daredevil all played a HUGE role in my character development.) Then, when I was 12 in 1964 The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and Everything Changed. Rock & roll largely became my Reason For Existence, and quite literally saved my life on at least one occasion. (see The Bathtub, Growing Old With Rock & Roll.) Oddly, I was never all that crazy about The Beatles, but I dearly LOVED The Dave Clark 5, who appeared on Ed Sullivan the week AFTER The Beatles’ inaugural three-week run.

I got this album as a present for Christmas in December 1964. It was all I asked for, and all I wanted. (I probably got some shirts & socks & underwear too, but I really don’t remember.) I had bought 45 rpm singles up ‘til then, but this was my first album, and I love it to this day. Did this launch my love of bands wearing “uniforms” that has lasted up until this very moment, and was last manifested by The White Stripes in the early 2000’s? Probably.

THE MC5 Kick Out The Jams / JONI MITCHELL Clouds

Both of these records were released in early 1969, when I was 17, and neatly delineate the next segment of my Rock & Roll Upbringing. These were the records that turned me and my working-class-West-Side-of-Columbus-Ohio friends into Teen Hippies. They couldn’t have been more different: The MC5 is probably the greatest, most outrageous, LOUDEST live rock & roll record of all time, beaten out as the BEST live record of all time only by The Who’s masterful Live At Leeds (but only in the DELUXE CD edition, issued belatedly in the 21st century.) Live At Leeds edges Kick Out The Jams only because The Who had better songs, but when I listen to the MC5 record it makes me wanna BREAK STUFF – even at my advanced age of 66 – and The Who just makes me wanna mimic Pete Townshend air-guitar windmills & appreciate the craft.

The Joni Mitchell record boasts SUPERIOR lyric-writing & is simply just lovely and the dichotomy of me enjoying it AND The MC5 exactly the same amount has exemplified what my tastes in rock & roll have been ever since the 1960’s. Richard & Linda Thompson AND The Clash in the 1970’s; Suzanne Vega AND The Replacements in the 1980’s; Shawn Colvin AND The Mekons in the 1990’s; Mary Lou Lord AND The Strokes in the 2000’s are prime examples of the continuation of that split personality in my tastes. Is Ian Hunter – first with Mott The Hoople, later solo AND active to this day – the best merging of those two poles: great poetic lyrics crossed with bone-crushing rock & roll? Probably.

THE NEW YORK DOLLS / self-titled first album

By early 1973 rock & roll music had been largely Allman Brothers-ized and James Taylor-ized into an unappetizing form of pabulum hard to stomach for anybody raised on quality rock & roll like The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Turtles and The Left Banke. My two favorite “rock bands” in 1972 were probably The Eagles and Loggins & Messina, and THAT might be the saddest rock & roll sentence I have ever typed. Then I discovered Creem magazine at the corner drugstore by the parking lot at Doctor’s North Hospital where I worked all through the time I attended Ohio State University. Creem became my Rock & Roll Bible, Holy Grail & Koran/Talmud, all rolled into one. Lester Bangs, Ben Edmonds & Lisa Robinson said, “JUMP!” and I asked, “How high?” Creem said, “Buy The New York Dolls,” and I complied.

From the very first Johnny Thunders buzzsaw chords and yowls from David Johansen in “Personality Crisis” that SEARED out of my cheap-ass record player, I was IN LOVE, Jack! Here was everything I had missed/forgotten/been cheated of in rock & roll since Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Yes, America and Seals & Croft had drained/sapped/sucked/vampired the lifeblood out of my Second Love.

It’s one of my most-repeated Smartass One-Liners about rock & roll, and people who know me well are sick of it by now, but it’s germane here: If it wasn’t for The New York Dolls I would be a Deadhead today, with grey hair in a ponytail halfway down my back. I can’t think of any better way to exemplify HOW MUCH this record changed my life than the two photographs below………

ELLIOTT MURPHY / Aquashow

Quite simply: my favorite record of all time, my favorite singer/songwriter of all time, and – true to the IDEA of this piece – a record that literally Changed The Way I View The World. From the very first verse of the first song on the record – “Last Of The Rock Stars” – when Murphy sang, “I’ve got a feeling on my back like an old, brown jacket / I’d like to stay in school but I just can’t hack it.” THE SAME WEEK I dropped out of college and got on with Making My Way in the World to the second song – “How’s The Family” – when he sang, “And the cold, cold ballerina whose thoughts of love & life / Have split her down the middle ‘til she’s cracked like walked-on ice,” Elliott became my new Dylan, Byron, Shelley, Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald all rolled into one, and packed a rosewood Stratocaster and a white suit to boot.

In case you’re interested, much more on Murphy linked here - On Elliott Murphy’s Birthday - from my former blog, Growing Old With Rock & Roll.

Ricki C. will return with five more life-changing albums at a later date…….

Vet's Memorial, part five - The New York Dolls, Sunday, May 19th, 1974 by Ricki C.

To paraphrase Bette Davis in All About Eve: “Fasten your seat belts, kids, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

I can tell you the entire story of the downfall and eventual long, slow, sad Death of Rock & Roll in one fell swoop in a single story about The New York Dolls at Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium, 41 years ago today, Sunday, May 19th, 1974.

As you can see from my tickets reproduced below, it was a pretty big week for rock & roll in my little hometown of Columbus, Ohio.  I saw the Dolls on Sunday the 19th, The Eagles at Mershon the next Saturday, May 25th, and Mott The Hoople the next night, Sunday, May 26th.  I fully acknowledge that the 1970’s were indeed the heyday of live rock & roll concerts, but I must point out: Columbus did NOT routinely get three acts of that rock pedigree in seven days’ time; it was definitely an aberration.  

Anyway, what does this have to do with The Death of Rock & Roll?  I’ll tell ya.  The Eagles show and Mott The Hoople sold out the 2500-seat capacity Mershon Auditorium.  The New York Dolls drew 150 people to the 3000-seat capacity Vet’s Memorial.  I couldn’t believe it.  When my girlfriend (and later wife) Pat and I arrived at the show that warm Sunday evening there were a scattering of cars in the huge Vet’s parking lot, and nobody going into the show.  “Oooooh man, the show must be cancelled,” I moaned to Pat, dispiritedly.  Shows were constantly getting cancelled and/or rescheduled back in those pre-Rock As Big Business early 1970’s times.  Drug problems, sick band members, routing problems, missed flights, equipment truck breakdowns all contributed to missed shows back in the day.  Art and commerce were still somewhat separate then.   

“Let’s get a refund and see if the show’s rescheduled,” I said to Pat as we walked up the steps to Vet’s.  Weirdly, there was a full crew of ushers in the Vet’s lobby.  I walked up to one of the ushers who had been a friend of my dad’s (see last month’s Vet’s part 4 installment) and said, “Is the show cancelled?”  “No,” he said, tearing my ticket.  “Then why aren’t there any cars in the parking lot?” I asked.  “Because there aren’t any people in the venue,” he replied, pointing over his shoulder.

I just couldn’t figure any of this out as Pat and I crossed the deserted lobby & concession area and walked up the steps to our balcony seats.  (In those days I always bought front row balcony seats and brought a little portable Panasonic tape recorder to tape the shows on.  I put the recorder right on the balcony overhang and got great sound right off the stage with minimal crowd noise.  It was great.)  There were four people in the entire balcony: Pat & me and one other couple, who soon joined the “crowd” downstairs.

I couldn’t believe my eyes looking down at the main floor of Vet’s: the first ten rows weren’t even full.  The ENTIRE MAIN FLOOR was all but empty.  Ladies & gentlemen; that was not what happened at rock & roll shows in 1974.  Since the Woodstock Festival in 1969, rock & roll shows SOLD OUT Vet’s Memorial.  And it really didn’t much matter WHO PLAYED at Vet’s: it still sold out.  Aerosmith, Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, Rush, Frank Zappa, Foghat, etc. all sold out Vet’s.  Christ, the fucking Mahavishnu Orchestra sold out Vet’s Memorial.  (But they had Aerosmith opening, that’s a whole other blog for another month.)    

Creem magazine – my Rock & Roll Bible of those days – had been telling me for over a year that The New York Dolls were The Next Big Thing, and I had no reason not to believe them.  As far as I knew, until that May evening, the Dolls were selling out 3000-seat venues (or bigger, I assumed, in cities like Boston, Detroit & L.A.).  This, folks, was definitely a rude awakening.

I really believed to my soul that 1974 was going to be the year that The Great Rock & Roll Reset would kick in.  (Reboot was not yet a term anyone outside a few scientist computer nerds in white lab coats would be familiar with.)  The New York Dolls would become the New Rolling Stones and Mick ‘n’ Keith & company would retire pleasantly to their English mansions and while away their remaining days playing cribbage, growing roses and/or shooting heroin; Mott The Hoople would become the New Bob Dylan and Mr. Zimmerman would live out his dotage in a Woodstock – the town, not the festival – idyll (actually, that very nearly happened); Elliott Murphy & Bruce Springsteen would be Assistant New Dylans, or at least replace the likes of Van Morrison and Crosby, Stills & Nash in the Singer/Songwriter Sweepstakes.  I wasn’t sure who The New Who were gonna be, because Cheap Trick hadn’t been invented yet to my knowledge, it was at least another year before I saw Rick & Robin and the boys open for some long-forgotten lame hard-rock act at the Columbus Agora. 

I wasn’t sure who The New Beatles were going to be.  I think I figured they were just Too Big, Too Outsized, Too Iconic to be replaced.  We would just have to do without.

So after an opening set by a seven-piece, all-female, funk/boogie band (with a horn section!) called Isis – no association with the current Mideast terrorist organization that I’m aware of, although they WERE torturous – The Dolls came out and, truthfully, THEY WERE WEAK.  It was the first time I realized that big-time rock critics might be ENTIRELY FULL OF SHIT.

The Dolls couldn’t BEGIN to fill up the big stage at Vet’s, they stayed crowded together like they were in a small club or a bar; the sound – because the huge Vet’s expanse was ESSENTIALLY EMPTY – was just boomy & terrible; and – worst of all – those motherfuckers just DID NOT KNOW how to play their instruments.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that was what all the 1960’s Batdorf & Rodney and Grateful Dead hippies that the Dolls were supposed to wipe off the face of the Earth said about them, but unfortunately – and I was an incredibly sympathetic first-hand witness, ready to give David Johansen & friends every benefit of the doubt – THEY COULD NOT PLAY.

Don’t get me wrong, the songs were – and still are right up to when I was blastin’ ‘em on CD today – great, but once Johnny Thunders & the gang got OUTSIDE of those song structures, they were finished.  Case in point, the Dolls went into a jam in the middle of “There’s Gonna Be A Showdown” from Too Much Too Soon and COULD NOT FIND THEIR WAY BACK INTO THE SONG!  They muddled around for a full minute while guitarists Sylvain Sylvain & Thunders and bassist Arthur Kane tried to find the beat, then just simply petered out to a full stop before drummer Jerry Nolan counted off 1-2-3-4! and they lurched back into the last verse.  It was humiliating.  To this day I have never witnessed a major band demonstrate that big a trainwreck onstage.  

I thought things would get better.  I desperately WANTED – almost PRAYED – for things to get better, thought maybe the band just had to get warmed-up, but it never got better.  At one point, while the band was pissing around between songs, trying to get their guitars in some semblance of tune, I yelled “DO SOMETHING AMAZING!” from the balcony.  Johansen looked up into the stage lights, almost smiled, then shook his head like he knew there wasn’t gonna be anything amazing to be had that night in Columbus.    

The first time I saw Kiss top-billed over the Dolls in Cleveland later that year, I knew things were all over.  I discerned from the beginning that Kiss was just Deep Purple or Uriah Heep in comic book get-up’s, but it didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter how good the Dolls songs or records were, if you couldn’t deliver the goods LIVE to the stoned, bluejeaned masses in the Great Midwest, all the rock critics on the East & West Coasts couldn’t save you.  (Further, my love for the 1973-1978 Aerosmith knows no bounds.  They pinched just enough from the Dolls – attitude-wise and fashion-wise – with the added bonus of ACTUALLY KNOWING HOW TO TUNE & PLAY THEIR INSTRUMENTS.) 

So here we are in the 21st century, in 2015.  The Who played Columbus last Friday night.  Bob Dylan played Columbus last Saturday night.  KANSAS, for fuck's sake, played Newark's Midland Theater a coupla weeks ago.  The Rolling Stones are playing May 30th.  Rush is playing June 8th.  We never exactly got that Rock & Roll Reset I was lookin’ for 41 years ago today.

Up to 1974 or so, rock & roll was a living, breathing thing: Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly & Little Richard gave way to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Velvet Underground and The Kinks who should’ve given way to Elliott Murphy, Mott The Hoople, The Modern Lovers, the Dwight Twilley Band and The New York Dolls, who would then have given way to some group of bands in the early 1980’s, and so on. 

Instead, right around 1975 the instigators of what would become Classic Rock Radio decided that we were all gonna listen to The Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and, yes, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, and Rush for the REST OF OUR NATURAL LIVES.  And then – after we were sick enough of Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page” to puke in our mouths every time it came on Q-FM 96 – then we’d start puttin’ the songs in COMMERCIALS, thereby sucking every last iota of vitality, life & integrity of the Baby Boomer’s precious rock & roll.

I should’ve seen it coming that Sunday night in 1974, but I didn’t.  I see it now. – Ricki C. / May 17th, 2015 

(By the way, it was this 1974 Dolls show that sparked my "celebrity encounter" with David Johansen detailed in my Exchanging Pleasantries With David Johansen blog in Growing Old With Rock & Roll.)

Shows I Saw at Vet's Memorial May Honorable Mentions 

May 14th, 1968 / Cream

May 11th, 1969 / Janis Joplin & the Full Tilt Boogie Band

May 3rd, 1970 / Sly & the Family Stone (instead of attending my senior prom, exactly the right choice)

May 2nd, 1974 / The Mahavishnu Orchestra w/ Aerosmith opening (more on this in September)