FACT: One man's trash is another man's treasure. So read on ... |
|
|
If art is indicative of culture then no better state of our culture can be assessed than a quick perusal of the trashy LP covers that appeared between the late sixties and late seventies, or what I call the Golden Age. Specific attention should be given to the ones featuring glamour girls. For sheer trashiness look no further than the awful covers of the records featuring rugby and football songs, or army barrack ballads or, perhaps more exemplary, the covers of Klaus Wunderlich's barrage of Hammond organ greats, notable only for the sleeves rather than the contents. His album covers invariably tended to be resplendent with beautiful, voluptuous girls, most of them often wearing as little as possible, and all striking provocative poses. One wonders how many units our Klaus would have shifted if it had not been for the beauties adorning his sleeves. And of course there is good reasoning behind this approach: Sex Sells. Everyone knows that, not just the advertising executive trying to sell a new car or motorbike, but also the man in the street who knows pulchritude when he sees it. He sees it. He likes it. He has to buy it. If the eighties were the decade when taste was forgotten, then the sixties and the seventies have to be the period of excess, when the record industry knew next to nothing about political correctness and style, and was more concerned with selling bucket loads of cheap, trashy albums by artistes no-one had heard of or really cared about. And the bait was the sleeve. Stick a pretty girl on the cover and it's sure to help the record sell. Unfortunately, this approach also promised more than it delivered. Guaranteed you would be disappointed to find inside not a gem, but a pale imitation version of famous songs, more often than not sung so badly that it went beyond a joke. But that's what you get if you don't opt for the bona fide article: Cheap Trash. Rumour has it that such great artistes like Elton John and David Bowie acted as session musicians on some of the compilation albums churned out each month. The culprits responsible for the plethora of this characteristically unstylish platter were not just the K-Tels and Pickwicks, but also surprisingly the major labels like EMI and Polydor. In our range of albums, presented here purely for your exquisite pleasure, we have attempted to cover the entire gamut of images that were pouring out around this time; the Golden Age of 1969-1979. There's been nothing like it since. So cherish these for awhile, and take a good look at how bad some covers really were in those days. It is very interesting to note the amount of women on these covers who bear no relation to the style of music or actual content of the record itself. This is blatant exploitation of the female body at its best, and, in some cases, at its worst. The best is the artistic endeavour of Ferrante and Teicher's Rhapsody featuring a naked woman lying decorously on shallow water so as to cast a reflection, the double image of her nudity giving pleasing expression to an otherwise remarkably unremarkable album. Compare that with Captain Jock Strapp & His Team Mates' Hearty Rugby Songs. The former is art, the latter is not. Also, see how many nipples you can spot in our galleries compared with the record and CD covers of today. Not that we have anything against it, but try finding one in your local megastore with such points of interest and I'm sure you'll be very hard pressed doing so. In those days it seems they could get away with it. Not now. Indeed, the reason I describe it as the Golden Age is for the sheer abundance of flesh on display, when women looked like women, with real curves and ample charms. Some of the models we can recognise; Caroline Munro on the cover of Hot Hits Volume 11 and Non-Stop Hits before she became Bond Girl Naomi in the Spy Who Loved Me; Penny Irving who went on to star as the sexy secretary causing young Mr Grace to have a near-fatal heart-attack every time she perched on his desk in Are You Being Served? on the cover of Top of the Pops Volume 27; the voluptuous Vicky Michelle, star of The Virgin Witch and the sexy siren lusting after Rene in Allo Allo, on the cover of 40 Golden Banjo Hits (although this has yet to be confirmed); Linda Lusardi, the page three beauty making the best use of her assets whilst posing on the cover of a cheap chart hits album, simply titled Chartbusters and on the cover of the ubiquitous Top of the Pops series (Volume 92) when it was briefly revived in the eighties. Indeed, even her closest rival, Samantha Fox, also adorned such a cover, namely the Best of Top of the Pops 1984, and other notable former Page Three girls. These were recognisable faces used to help sell otherwise worthless pieces of vinyl that nobody really wanted to buy anyway. In fact, there was a time when it was quite embarrassing to do so because it meant you couldn't afford to buy the real records by the real artistes and had to settle for second best. Such examples are the chart hit tribute albums like Hot Hits, Top of the Pops and Smash Hits, etc. None of these records feature the real versions of the songs. And that, in my view, adds to their trash appeal. Worthless, valueless, and ultimately disposable. Photos of these covers and more can be found on this website in all their trashy glory. This site has now been considerably updated and expanded upon, and now includes well over a 1000 images taken from my extensive collection, concentrating in particular on the period when I believe this cover art was at its peak in the trash stakes. Admittedly, I have chucked in a few that fall outside of this time, mainly because I thought they were aesthetically interesting and in themselves give a good counterpoint to what was so great (and bad) about the Golden Age. And some I like too much that to exclude them purely for the reason that they came out in '65 or '82 would be a pity—so why not savour them yourselves. You decide which ones you prefer; the schmaltzy images of the sixties when models wore tons of make-up, or the outright porno of the early seventies. And let's not be too restrictive in our choice by focusing purely on the rip-off albums like the Top of the Pops and Hot Hits, as already mentioned, but also include classical, austere album covers of such master composers as Beethoven, Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakov and the like. When looking back, it is quite apparent that no matter what genre was around at the time each one seemed to be inundated with the girlie cover. So you'll also find the exotic, the oriental, the easy listening, the soul, disco, jazz. etc., and others I've drawn upon just to prove that girlie album covers were trendy whatever the musical trend. I'm sure you'll find something here that will interest you. If not, then please let me know—especially if I've missed out on what you consider to be the classics of the period. I will be aiming to update these pages on a regular basis when time permits and when I come across more covers I think are worth including. I should, at this point, add a disclaimer, and that is: I am a collector, not a trader. I do not deal in these records, and do not know where you can get hold of specific titles, so don't ask me. I can, however, only point you in the right direction (see below). I collect these albums purely for my own pleasure, not as a business. Nor do I have any for sale. I've only been collecting seriously for about a few years now. The first record I bought to start this collection (for the sleeve and not for the music, I hasten to add) was the Hot Hits one with Caroline Munro on the cover. Then I decided to collect the rest of this series. I never realised it would take me almost a year to pick up all twenty in pretty good condition. Saying that, a friend of mine who lives in London has no problem picking up trashy LPs. With the large amount of charity shops in his neighbourhood it only took him just under a month to collect all twenty Hot Hits, and that was about five years ago. Now to some they are collectors' items and appear to be making something of a revival, as are all things connected with the seventies. Even that innovative record label RPM recently muscled in on the action by bringing out a best of the Hot Hits tunes on one CD. It's worth purchasing, even if you don't dig the music, just for the splendid foldout of all the covers on the sleeve. And if CDs are your thing, you might be interested to know that you can also buy cheap re-issues of the Best of the Top of the Pops albums on CD from Hallmark, the original purveyors of these fine pieces of merchandise. Retailing at only £2.99 each, all thirteen CDs, covering the years 1969-1981, are worth picking up. And it's great to see a retrospective nod to these artefacts of the past in a modern format by making the CD look like an old vinyl record. To be faithful to the original concept behind these albums they've even included a foldout poster of a beach babe (actually Katie Richmond, photographed by the same lady who does all the glamour pics for the Daily Star, Jeany Savage) in place of the original foldout calendars which are now extremely hard to find. Also worth mentioning at this point is the series of wonderfully retro compilation albums put out by Rare Groove Recordings (available from Vadim Music), in both CD and vinyl format. Their catalogue of Latin Jazz scores by such diverse artistes as Hugo Montenegro, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Quincy Jones, etc., are well worth listening to, and of course they all feature glamour girls of the past on the covers, just like the ones you would expect to find featured here. Incidentally, check out volume 6 of the Bossa Nova Exciting Jazz Samba Rhythms. The picture on the cover is taken from the World of Strings Million Seller Hits of '69—a worthwhile tribute to the art of the period. Also, a lot of these original images have been used to sell new product; it's a bit like deja vu when you come across a familiar image on a new CD that you know has been ripped off from an old, and cherished, album cover. Take for example the newly released tribute CD to David Bowie, called Oh! You Pretty Things. On the back you'll find an image borrowed from the Stereo Spectacular LP of the seventies. It seems it's not just me who can't get enough of the Golden Age. Tips on building up your collection:
Your next consideration should be the price. How much are you prepared to pay for a Hot Hits album, or a Top of the Pops LP? Two or three quid? Forget it! Stick to a reasonable budget of a quid a piece, especially from charity shops. At carboot sales you can usually pick them up for around 50p. Some folks are only too glad to get rid of them and will do a deal with you, perhaps even four for a pound. Having said that, I picked up a load in a few charity shops on the south coast. Thinking I was getting a bargain in one of them, as they were only charging 10 pence a piece, imagine my delight when I took them to the counter and found out that everything in the shop was half-price. That meant 15 albums for five pence each! Who said this was an expensive hobby! A few years ago when I was in America I checked out some of the thrift stores to see, just out of interest, how much they were charging for similar items. I was quite surprised to learn they were equivalent to about the average price you would expect to pay here in England, around $1 (or 55 pence in those days). So don't pay any more than that, and avoid second-hand record shops—unless they have a bargain basement. A record shop near where I live charges about £2.50 for albums I can pick up for a fraction of the price; it works out at roughly five for about what he charges for one. So don't get ripped off. Remember, if you're a collector like me, it doesn't mean you enjoy getting ripped off just because you have to add that Parade of Pops golden vinyl edition to your collection. These are the sort of records most self-respecting shops throw out with the trash. And believe me, they do. I have come across second-hand record shops that won't even touch them. And if they end up buying someone's whole record collection with a few of these slipped in, they will be the first ones to be binned. A great pity, and I'm sure many end up going that way. Tips on looking after your collection: If you're a real fanatic, and don't even intend to play the bloody things, but you want the vinyl to look all shiny and new, wipe both sides down with a wet-wipe, preferably ones used for car vinyl seats. Then use a velvet record cleaner to wipe it dry and to remove any lasting signs of smearing. As an experiment, try playing the record afterwards. You'll be surprised how much gunk comes out of the grooves and attaches itself to you precious stylus. Needless to say, avoid damp or wet conditions. Water is murder on paper and card sleeves—even if they are laminated. And lastly, keep them well away from the bright glare of the sun. I've seen too many what were once white sleeves now assume a horrible yellow tinge thanks to direct, prolonged exposure. |
|
|
To view larger images use the Database |
|
|
Site designed by Jon
Lange. All contents copyright J. Lange 2005. Last updated:
04/01/2010 |