134. Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness

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My tweak shares the same idea as John Craig's,  the illustrator who  designed the original album cover art.  His work was  destined to be a square;  mine a
rectangle,  but I ensured that  all the elements  of his work are in mine.  The idea to  repeat the  image of  Saint Catherine  was to emphasize  the central
character at  center although  I would have  placed more of it and/or faded it  towards the sides.  But I liked the colors  so much and  I wanted to preserve
them. My most noticeable mistake might be that I didn't reduce the size of her/their left hand/s to match the other.  

Billy Corgan liked to be involved in the visual side of the  Smashing Pumpkins albums,  sending ideas and rough sketches to the artists via fax.  The original
plan for Mellon Collie’s cover was for a French photographer to take a shot of the band in Victorian garb on an appropriate set, but that plan was scrapped
at the last minute when the  photographer named  an outrageous price.  John Craig,  a commercial illustrator  and collage artist  who was already working
on the internal sleeve art, was offered a shot at creating some cheaper cover art.

The iconic image is a collage made of three sources: the background comes from a children’s encyclopedia;  the star from a whiskey ad; the woman’s torso
from Raphael’s painting ‘Saint Catherine Of Alexandria’; and her head from a completely different painting, Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s ‘The Souvenir’.
FasterLouder

Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Raphael, c. 1507 from wikipedia

The Souvenir by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1787-1789 from wikimedia commons


The selection of the  collage elements was  something of a collaboration between Corgan and Craig,
who dug through his morgue in  search of imagery that  might suit the  musician’s vision.  Once they
settled on a few things, Craig got to work and assembled the woman on the star.

The image is deceptively simple,  as if the artist simply cut out a  picture of a woman and plopped it
on top of a star. In fact, the woman is composed of figures from two separate paintings manipulated
via photocopier  until their sizes  and shapes  fit together  perfectly.  The head  was sourced from an
18th  century  painting by  Jean-Baptiste  Greuze  entitled  “The Souvenir (Fidelity).”  Her  body was
borrowed from Raphael’s “St. Catherine of Alexandria.”

Both are stunning images on their own,  but together, they captured what Craig was after: “With the
Greuze,  there was something  very dreamy or ecstatic about  her expression that certainly wasn’t in
the Raphael painting.  And then [there’s]   the flow and color of the Raphael dress,  just the way it’s
rippling and almost traveling. I guess it’s those primary colors too.” Diffuser


This is the original album cover art design.

No. 76, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000

Cover art design by John Craig, art direction by Frank Olinsky.
Album produced by Alan Moulder, Billy Corgan & Flood. Virgin 1995.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was released on October 24, 1995.  The following week, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, an unusual
feat for a double-disc album that cost over US$20. The album was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Christopher John Farley of Time  called the album  "the group's most ambitious  and accomplished work yet".  Farley wrote,  "One gets the feeling that the
band [...]  charged ahead on gut instincts; the sheer scope of the album (28 songs) didn't allow for second-guessing or contrivance."  Time selected Mellon
Collie and the Infinite Sadness as the best album of the year in its year-end "Best of 1995" list. Entertainment Weekly gave the album an A rating; reviewer
David  Browne  praised the group's  ambition  and wrote,  "Mellon  Collie  and the  Infinite Sadness  is more than  just the  work of a  tortured,  finicky pop
obsessive.  Corgan presents himself  as one of the last true believers:  someone for whom  spewing out this much music results  in some sort of high art for
the ages." IGN gave the album a score of 9.5 out of 10 and said,  "As the band's magnum opus it single-handedly changed the face of Alternative Rock. The
Music Box gave it all five stars and said, "Indeed, for all its melodramatic self-indulgence,  Mellon Collie is one of the best double albums of new material
to be released by anyone in a long time."


Rolling  Stone  gave the album three  out of  five stars.  Reviewer  Jim DeRogatis  praised the album as  "one of the rare  epic rock  releases  whose bulk is
justified in the grooves".  DeRogatis contended that while Mellon Collie "may even match  The Wall in its sonic accomplishments",  Corgan's lyrics lacked in
comparison.  Mojo reviewer Ben Edmunds also praised the music while  criticizing Corgan's lyrics.  In his Consumer Guide,  Robert Christgau picked out one
song from the album, "1979", as a "choice cut."

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness  earned The Smashing Pumpkins  nominations in seven categories  at the 1997 Grammy Awards,  the second-highest
number of nominations that year. wikipedia

(A) Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness - Tonight, Tonight - Thirty-Three - In the Arms of Sleep - Take Me Down

(B) Jellybelly - Bodies - To Forgive - Here is No Why - Porcelina of the Vast Oceans

(C) Bullet with Butterfly Wings - Thru the Eyes of Ruby - Muzzle - Galapogos - Tales of a Scorched Earth

(D) 1979 - Beautiful - Cupid De Locke - By Starlight - We Only Come Out at Night

(E) Where Boys Fear to Tread - Zero - An Ode to No One - Love - X.Y.U.

(F) Stumbeline - Lily (My One and Only) - Tonight (Reprise) - Farewell and Goodnight - Infinite Sadness

"Tonight, Tonight" music video from SmashingPumpkinsVEVO on YouTube.





    

www.smashingpumpkinsnexus.com

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133. Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power

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The original album cover art is a photo of Iggy Pop on stage, lithe, bare-chested, grasping the microphone and staring off at some unseen distant object.
Flavorwire 


In 1972 Iggy Pop & The Stooges flew into London to record a new LP, Raw Power.  With David Bowie as executive producer, Raw Power proved to be an instant classic.
During this time The Stooges, perpetually wasted,  performed a single concert in London’s Kings Cross. This whole crazed period of Iggy’s phenomenal career was
captured on camera by one man, Mick Rock. An unparalleled of Iggy at the height of both his musical powers and his legendary excesses, Raw Power also
serves as a unique visual diary of the heady times which produced one of rock music's most enduring recordings whose famous cover shot
captured my Mick Rock is now indelibly established in modern pop iconography. Mick Rock  


Shown below is one of these shots, with notes by Pop himself, like several others in the series of photos, done perhaps during one of his crazed trips.
He looks more serious and sober on the album cover than on this one,  where he is uninhibited and more contemporaneous with the persona
of the Pop who performs in the album. I did my own thing without minding the Pop in his more candid self. 

James Newell Osterberg, Jr. is well-known for his outrageous and unpredictable stage antics. 

This is the original album cover art design.

No. 70, Entertainment Weekly, The 100 Greatest Albums Ever; No. 128, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time;
No. 302, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000 

Photo by Mick Rock. Album produced by Iggy Pop & David Bowie. Columbia 1973.

Has an album ever had a more perfect title than Raw Power? What words could more accurately describe the contents of this classic by the Stooges –
released in the U.S. on February 7, 1973 – than “Raw” and “Power”?

That was the essence of the Stooges. They removed all the unnecessary pomp and fluff of rock and roll by boiling the music down to an exquisite
primordial sludge. It’s so basic, it’s brilliant. How appropriate that Iggy Pop and company took their name from the Three Stooges.

The history behind Raw Power is a little more complicated. It both was and wasn’t the third album by the Stooges. A few years earlier, the
band out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, had recorded a pair of albums (The Stooges and Fun House) for Elektra, but gained more notoriety
than record sales. Breakup and drug addiction ensued.

Enter Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie was a huge fan of their first two records and discovered a kindred spirit in Iggy after meeting
him in New York. With Pop untethered to the Stooges and spiraling down the path of substance abuse, Bowie brought him
to London. The newly minted glam superstar got Pop to sign to a management contract (with the same firm that
handled Bowie) and landed him a deal as a solo artist with Columbia Records. Ultimate Classic Rock


(A) Search and Destroy - Gimme Danger - Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell - Penetration

(B) Raw Power - I Need Somebody - Shake Appeal - Death Trip



"Search and Destroy" live from Argot Nauta on YouTube

   

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132. Kate Bush - The Sensual World

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This work is pure  creativity without explanations.  I couldn't fully describe it,  what comes to mind first is the

amount of experimentation that went with the work, but a great album cover really makes for a great tweak.

I am aware  that any  attempt  to analyze  the work  might not come  without an  analysis  of my own psyche.

It would be introspection.  And much  in the same way  as the rose seems  to float  in the air, I would bare my

soul and speak my mind out and tell myself, "I can't explain it!"

The rose will not float in the air until you let go of it. This is the real world.

Photography by John Carder Bush. Album produced by Kate Bush.

EMI (all except US), Columbia (US) 1989.

What's always been remarkable about Kate Bush has been the ability to withdraw from the music world, escape

from the  machine,  and return  months  or years later with  something  rejuvenating,  original,  set apart from

chart-fodder  disposable pop.  Like  David Bowie in the 70s,  Bush in the 80s  has been one of the  true oddities,

exceptions to the rules. Always out of step, always unique.

And always,  as The Sensual World  implies,  provocative.  Bells ring  as you  enter her  'Sensual World',  bells of

celebration,  of sensual joy.  "The communication of music is very much like making love," she once said, so it's

entirely appropriate  that she should derive  her title track from  James Joyce's Ulysses and,  in particular, Molly

Bloom's thoughts on sex, sensuality and oysters at 2/6 per dozen.

"Because I couldn't  get permission to use a piece of Joyce  it gradually turned into the songs about Molly Bloom

the character  stepping  out  of the book,  into  the  real world  and  the  impressions  of sensuality,"  says Kate,

softly, almost childlike.  "Rather than being in this two dimensional world,  she's free, let loose to touch things,

feel the ground under her feet, the sunsets, just how incredibly sensual a world it is. 

Exploring The Sensual World, The Quietus

(A) The Sensual World - Love and Anger - The Fog - Reaching Out - Heads We're Dancing

(B) Deeper Understanding  - Between a Man and a Woman  - Never Be Mine  - Rocket's Tail  - This Woman's Work

"The Sensual World" official music video from KateBushMusic on YouTube




    

www.katebush.com

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131. Chuck Berry - The Great Twenty-Eight

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This album was released in 1982 but the songs are actually from the 50's and 60's. The original album

cover art,  indeed,  doesn't  look like  it was created in the 80's,  even with its  Harlow-like  typeface

(1930's) for the album title and block-type lettering for the name of the artist. The colours are basic;

all three primary colours, and the photo, a posterized black-and-white. 

The pose, of course, is classic Berry. 

It's a  coffee-inspired  tweak  I did  and one that  I would love  to see

hanging on the wall  of my favourite coffee shop  while I sip a cup of

the brew that I'm all too familiar with soft music to go.

No sweeteners required. This time, just Berry.  

No. 21, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 51, Entertainment Weekly, 100 Greatest Albums Ever

Cover art design by Mike Metz. Album produced by Leonard Chess & Phil Chess. Chess 1982.

This is the place to start listening to  Chuck Berry.  The Great Twenty-Eight  was a two-LP,  single CD compilation that

emerged during  the early '80s.  It has proved  to be one of the  most enduring of all compilations  of Berry's work.  Up

until the  release  of this disc,  every attempt  at a compilation  had either  been too sketchy  (the  1964 Greatest Hits
album on Chess)  or too demanding for the casual listener (the three Golden Decade double-LP sets),  and this was the
first set to find a happy medium between convenience and thoroughness. 

Veteran listeners will love this CD  even if they learn little from it,  while neophytes will want to play it to death.  All
of the cuts come  from Berry's  first nine years in music,  including all  of the major singles as well as  relatively minor
hits such as "Come On"  (which was more significant  in the history of rock & roll in its  cover version performed by the
Rolling Stones as their debut release).  The sound is decent throughout (surprisingly, except for  "Come On," which has
some considerable  noise),  although it is  considerably  outclassed  by the most  recent round of  remasterings.  In the
decades since its release,  there have been more comprehensive  collections of Berry's work, but this is the best single
disc, if one can overlook the relatively lo-fi digital sound. Bruce Eder for AllMusic

(A) Maybellene - Thirty Days - You Can't Catch Me - Too Much Monkey Business - Browned-Eyed Handsome Man - Roll Over Beethoven - Havana Moon

(B) School Days - Rock and Roll Music - Oh Baby Doll - Reelin' and Rockin' - Sweet Little Sixteen - Johnny B. Goode - Around and Around

(C) Carol - Beautiful Delilah - Memphis - Sweet Little Rock and Roller - Little Queenie - Almost Grown - Back in the USA

(D) Let It Rock - Bye Bye Johnny - I'm Talking About You - Come On - Nadine - No Particular Place to Go - I Want to be Your Driver

"Johnny B. Goode" live with Bruce Springsteen from Johnny B. Goode on YouTube

    

www.chuckberry.com

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130. The Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

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On this work the original album cover art design was shaded on the sides to make it look like it has been pasted over the surface of a beer bottle.
The tin foil effect was obtained through a manipulation of the properties in the Render: Lighting Effects filter.

This is indeed, a great album cover.


The album cover is labelled as one of the "22 Album Covers That Changed the Face of Music" by The Coolist, which had this to say:

Resembling a tin of tobacco, the art of Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake created a stampede of artists who stopped making their album covers look like album covers,
and instead stood as an example of doing whatever the hell the band wanted, however odd, to go with their music.


The title and the design of the distinctive packaging was a parody of Ogden's Nut-brown Flake, a brand of tobacco that was produced in Liverpool from 1899 onwards by Thomas Ogden.

The album was originally released on vinyl in a circular novelty package of a metal replica of a giant tobacco tin, inside which was a poster created with five
connected paper circles with pictures of the band members. This proved too expensive and not successful as the tins tended to roll off of shelves. wikipedia

cdandlp.com


Not running out of parodies, and there's one for The Lord's Prayer, too.

Small Faces
Which were in the studios
Hallowed by thy name
Thy music come
Thy songs be sung
On this album as they came from your heads
We give you this day our daily bread
Give us thy album in a round cover as we give thee
Lead us into the record stores.
And deliver us Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake
For nice is the music
The sleeve and the story

For ever and ever, Immediate


We go in circles or we go nuts while the nut's gone flake.

No. 337, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000, No. 21, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers

Cover artwork by NIck Twedell & Pete Brown. Album produced by Steve Marriott & Ronnie Lane. Immediate 1968.

The album’s title and the  circular sleeve design are  inextricably linked,  although nobody seems to remember  which came first  –  which is not surprising  given the subject matter.
‘We assumed that marijuana would  become legal quite soon,  which was  perhaps a little naïve,’  stated (Ian) McLagan.  ‘So we thought  we’d be ahead of the game.  We envisaged 
that rather than cigarette machines there’d be joint machines,  with all the packaging and everything. The people at Immediate got (pipe tobacconists) Ogdens to send over all their
old designs and scrapbooks  going back to the previous century,  and we browsed through them.  We were looking at this  design on a tin which said  ‘Ogdens’ Nut Brown Flake’,  and
Steve (Marriott) suddenly went: ‘Nut brown – nut gone! That’s the one.’ We got an artist to come in and change the wording, but we kept the original design.’

The band originally wanted  to release the album in a tin,  but the cost of manufacturing a 12-inch  tin proved impractical,  not least because of the cost  (John Lydon’s Public Image
would have better luck a decade later).  Instead they opted for a circular  something up their sleeve:  the original circular Ogdens’. . .  album cover cardboard  fold-out sleeve which
was almost as impractical when it  came to shop displays.  It wasn’t easy to rack,  it was flimsy, and the  record kept falling out.  None of this  mattered if you were stoned,  but the
majority of record retailers were pretty straight.

Nevertheless, when it was released at the end of May 1968, after a nine-month gestation period, the album became The Small Faces’ biggest success. This Day in Music

(A) Ogden's Nut Gone Flake - Afterglow of Your Love - Long Agos and Worlds Apart - Rene - Son of a Baker - Lazy Sunday

(B) Happiness Stan - Rollin' Over - The Hungry Intruder - The Journey - Mad John - Happy Days Toytown

"Song of a Baker" live from TwistForAWhile on YouTube

    

www.thesmallfaces.com

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129. The Beatles - Help!/Abbey Road

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This work is a collage of images composed mainly of cut-outs from the cover art designs of the albums Help and Abbey Road by The Beatles.
The cut-outs are here arranged as each member of the band appears on the cover of the album Help!

The components are described in detail as follows.

H - "Harrison" was cut out from the purported signature of George Harrison.                      
E - "I Need You" is a song from Help! composed and sung by George Harrison.                     
L - "Lennon" is the author's self-styled calligraphy of the name.                                         
P - "Paul" was cut out from the purported signature of Paul McCartney.                              
! - "Oh Darling!  is a song from  Abbey Road  composed  and sang by  Paul  McCartney.  The
songwriting credits are given to John Lennon and Paul McCartney.                            

The image of the car was cut out from the front cover of Abbey Road.                     
"28IF LMW" is the car's license plate. Mail Online                                                                            

According to conspiracy theorists who advanced that Paul McCartney had died and    
had been replaced by an impostor for the album cover shot, Paul would have been   
28 IF he hadn't 'died'. In fact, Paul was only 27 when the album  was released in       
1969 but the theorists were still correct, for The Beatles had been followers of         
Indian mysticism and for them, the age of a person is counted not from birth but      
from conception. "LMW" stands for "Linda McCartney Weeps", referring to Linda        
Eastman whom Paul married earlier that year. 

A - "Starr" is the author's self-styled calligraphy of the alias. His real name is Richard           
           Starkey.                                                                                                                           
B - "Bach" refers to Barbara Bach, Ringo Starr's second wife, who starred as Anya Amasova   
in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.                                              
B - The image is from the cover of the album The Concert for Bangladesh, recordings from 
two concerts on August 1,1971 which were organised by George Harrison and Indian
sitarist Ravi Shankar in order to raise international awareness and fund relief         
efforts for refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), following the Bangladesh
Liberation War-related genocide. The shows were a pioneering charity event and    
set the model for future multi-artist rock benefits. wikipedia                                                

E - "George" is the author's self-styled calligraphy of the name.                                          
Y - "Yoko" is the author's self-styled calligraphy of the name of John Lennon's wife.             

The image of the girl in blue dress was cut from the back cover of Abbey Road.       

R - Nobody knows the identity of the girl dressed in blue. On the night of the theorists' 'car 
crash' it was raining heavily and Paul is said to have given a lift to a fan called Rita.
It could be that this girl is her, either fleeing the scene or running to get help.        
Mail Online

O - "O Garden" refers to "Octopus Garden", a song written and sung by Ringo Starr which     
appears on side A of the vinyl LP Abbey Road. It is only the second and last song      
that Ringo had written and sung for The Beatles.                                                   
A - The letter 'A' is here substituted by the legs of Ringo Starr, who appears to be flashing  
the semaphore signal for the letter "V" on the cover of Help! The signals flashed are
for 'NUJV'. Feel Numb
D - The letter 'D' stands for drum, Ringo's instrument with The Beatles.                             

The tweak of the album cover art design of Abbey Road is on this page.

This is the album cover art design of Help!

No. 119, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 273, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time;
No. 331, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time


Photo by Robert Freeman. Album produced by George Martin. Parlophone 1965.

The album cover features the group with their arms positioned to spell out a word in flag semaphore, leading most to assume that the
band is spelling out the word HELP. According to cover photographer Robert Freeman,

“I had the idea of semaphore  spelling out the  letters H.E.L.P.  but when we came to
do the shot the  arrangement of the arms with  those letters didn’t look good.  So we
decided to  improvise  and ended up  with the  best graphic positioning  other arms.”

The best graphic positioning of The Beatles ended up spelling out NUJV. Feel Numb

(A) Help! - The Night Before - You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - I Need You - Another Girl - You're Going to Lose That Girl - Ticket to Ride

(A) Act Naturally - It's Only Love - You Like Me Too Much - Tell Me What You See - I've Just Seen a Face - Yesterday - Dizzy Miss Lizzy



"You're Going to Lose That Girl" live in the studio from Bruno Acevedo on YouTube.

    

www.thebeatles.com

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