Brick lane market:

These are my choices from Brick lane market, they have a couple different stalls selling various 7” and 12” vinyls, anything from £1 to £30, and they are probably a bit more recognizable as well as older. Just to recap, it’s only ones that I like the look of on the day and they are only vinyl because they were my favourite, next time it could be c.d. or singles, anything.

Grace Jones - Nightclubbing

This was released in 1981 and really launched Grace Jones’s career. It was the first time she appeared with the look that she is now best know for, the high top hair cut, the masculine power suits, it really started the trend for the 80’s disco scene. The look was brought together by Jean-Paul Goude, a French film director with whom Grace Jones has a child, but the cover is well made along with the image, I’ve always noticed the forward slash between the name and title, it’s a really definite mark, much like the aggressive stance, suit and cigarette, it’s a well considered piece of typography, as is the choice of font; tall, lean and sans-serif, the wide kerning and the colour.

Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA

The most successful of all Springsteen’s albums and one of the most recognizable images in American popular culture. Released in 1984 born in USA defined American culture that year and gave young men something to identify with. The view of Bruce’s rear end, and the powerful image of the American flag used, but only a very acute close up of it, the white t shirt, blue jeans, red cap, completely encompassing all that is American ‘Cool’. It’s all so simple yet can rarely be done well. Strangely enough, the forward slash is again occurrent, echoing the forceful statement of Grace Jones’ album cover, “This is incredible, it will define you”. The back of Springsteen on the cover beckoning you to follow him forward was photographed by Annie Leibovitz one of the the most famous photographers in the world.

Crosby, Stills and Nash - Allies

A live album from 1983 and one I don’t know very much about. CSN have always been one of those folky groups I just see as a bunch of old grey guys, that Neil Young once played with, But this cover I thought was really cool, the 8 different boxes with their 3 faces in different colour lights, I assume was them trying to copy down different parts of the live set and they are set out in a random order so as to allude to the turbulent nature of a concert. It’s pretty 80’s and I love how distorted the pictures become when they’ve added the colours to the photos. Then there’s the lettering, It’s looks fantastically futuristic, the red “allies” with the shading beneath the box looks like it’s going to take off from the page. It’s a really energetic, appropriate cover for a live album but I also like the juxtaposition that it’s a for a 3 piece acoustic folk act, I think if this cover were for a punk band, I wouldn’t have liked it so much.

David Bowie - David Live

A live album released in 1974, when Bowie was on the “Diamond dogs” tour in America. This cover shows him as the innovator he is, wearing baggy trousers and a shoulder-padded suit long before they were popular. It’s just a live photo, but as with the CSN cover above, the contrast on the picture really appeals to me. The composition of the cover, split down the middle, text one side on top of the photo with the character on the other, is very balanced and pleasing to look at and Bowie’s look of effortless cool is very powerful.

Elvis Costello - This year’s model

Costello’s second album released in 1978 was designed by infamous graphic artist Barney Bubbles. He was an ingenious designer, the mising letters and printers marks on this cover are not a mistake (as was thought when released) and it is a classic Barney Bubbles type of cover, lots of tricks and subtle, subliminal inserts. He did covers for a lot of new wave artists, famously Ian Dury and the blockheads, for whom he did 28 different covers using 28 different wallpapers on the ‘Do it yourself’ LP in 1979. The ‘E’. The ‘T’ go round on to the back cover. The picture of Costello is fantastic in it’s own right, of him turning the camera back on itself and I love the bilateral positioning on the name and title, and the colour taken from the background or perhaps the forehead skin tone.

Rough trade East:

This isn’t a definitive list of my favorite album covers or anything. I was at my local record store the other day and just started taking photos of the covers that caught my eye, a lot of these I’ve never even seen before, let alone heard the music and I choose to photograph the 12”’s obviously because they’re bigger. These are all my photos and I’m gonna try to go round to all the different record stores and do the same thing, hopefully before they all go out of business. It’s a really interesting thing to do next time you have a day off, just see what jumps out at you.

Belle and Sebastian - Fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant

Belle and Sebastian’s 4th album released in 2000. Their artwork follows the same features each time, a black and white photo with a colour filter over it, the yellow they’ve chosen here makes it look eerie and strange, it feels like there’s an underlying menace to it, the lettering always in black and white. I’m a big fan of all their covers and this one drew me in the most, it’s a photo of twin girls from the Icelandic band ‘múm’. Maybe it’s cos I just found the girls attractive, but it’s also because I’m really big fan of this style of photography, capturing the narrative between people, using film as opposed to digital or even film where the shutter speed is really quick and you get a very crisp image, I like to see an image where the light comes into the camera slowly, it just seems more honest. Quite a few of the covers i’ve picked out have this feature. It especially looks great on a 12″ cover.

Xela - The Illuminated

I’ve never heard of this band before now and the metal section at rough trade east is the most easily accessed of the vinyl collection. This LP is from Norway and was released in April this year. I really like texture in artwork, and the photo of an archaic dilapidated cathedral in black and white and on cardboard works together well.

Wavves - Wavves

Wavves debut album came out this year, I was quite familiar this photo and the album. Both really great. A nostalgia provoking film photograph, it looks like it’s from the 70’s, real simple, no text. I always like a cover that has no text, makes it seem more of a statement, makes you want to hold it in your hands and cherish it, rather than just use it.

Va va va - Va va va

Another band and LP I’ve never heard of before and as you can imagine, google searching “va-va-va” is quite fruitless. The picture isn’t great but I hope you can make you the cover it’s a photo that’s been manipulated or over-exposed in some way, not being sure how old it is, it’s hard to say how. But it has really nice atmosphere. The building, I think it looks like a baroque French city hall or something. Outlined in lights, the white looks kind of ethereal against the blue background, a really, mysterious but soothing image.

Conifer - Crown fire

Another random plucked from the metal section. I was first drawn to this because it didn’t immediately have a black cover with a white gothic font on it, like most metal albums. This image transfers really well to 12” format and being square. A really beautiful image, looks like it’s from the 1970‘s but i think it was released last year, the colours are enticing, calming and wholesome and the character in the bottom right is a really nice idea.

Swell maps - A trip to Marineville

Swell maps - In “Jane from occupied Europe”

This was their debut album, released in 1979, and I also took a picture of their second (and last official) album “in ‘Jane from occupied Europe” (again, I wasn’t seeking out any of these albums, just taking in what suck out). They were one of the first ‘post-punk’ bands in Britain or anywhere and were a huge influence on many bands like sonic youth, pavement, all the grunge or post-punk bands you can think of, and us as well. The cover almost looks like something from a sci-fi film or maybe a comic strip, all the primary colours and hazy detail. But I also like it cos it doesn’t look like a typical punk band cover. The band’s logo looks like it was written on an off kilter typewriter. Like with the standard Metal design of being in black with white gothic font, most punk albums look like this: “” which is o.k. but it’s great when there’s something different. Swell maps were really different, their artwork (and music) really set themselves apart, they weren’t generic which is what so many punk bands try not to be and inevitably are. Their approach gave them their own plateau to stand on and made them timeless.

J. Ridoux.

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I’m sure y’all saw this on bbc at glastonbury, I like everyone else am so into this!

At the Luminaire in Kilburn. Its all ages so all you young ‘uns and old ‘uns who wouldn’t normally dare come to one of our shows are very welcome indeed. Let’s Wrestle who we rather like are playing as well so should be a larf.

Doors at 7:30 PM

Costs 8 bucks I think

I’m so scared of the mosquitoes that I can’t sleep, I just lie there in terror listening for them….

x

G Sung Park

my favourite actor and my favourite song.

Joe

In a change of tack here is fatboy slim’s “Don’t let the man get you down” I’ve been listening to it all day. The video kinda sucks though, I would have put it here, but “embedding is disabled by request”, what can you do? I hope your dad likes it.

J

Fuck this band are good.

Joe x

We’re Playing 1234 Festival in Shoreditch Park on 26th July. Pretty sweet i’d say.

I’m going to Venice ’till Friday. Also Sweet.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

George Takei