As soon as I saw this thread I thought of the Blind Faith cover.

(And the Beatles "butchers" cover--so why make fun of the "White Album" concept which replaced it--didn't it? in retrospect the whole thing looks like a planned 'manufacture a legend' kind of thing, thought up by Lennon in a cynical moment and passed to his pr people to pull off. Let's say they were tired of the relatively wholesome image they had developed...and wanted to shock the "in-crowd" but still end up selling a lot of records...)

But to get back to Blind Faith, I absolutely loved that band, an early version of the "supergroup"--a combination of well-known players from other bands. Great great arrangements, playing, vocals. The lyrics were the weakest link--had they been stronger the album would have been in top-ten rock albums ever.

The pedophile-fantasy cover is certainly an arresting image in more ways than one--I would say it is not so much BAD design, technically, as very, very disturbing, especially in its context of "buy this record". For those who haven't seen it, there is nothing overtly sexual in the picture, it exudes a combination of innocence and oddness. Certainly didn't belong on an album cover but neither would the work of Robert Mapplethorpe or any of a bunch of other controversial but talented artists.

...y'know, I just thumbed through a shelf of album covers lookiong for something just plain bad. The worst I found was the Allman Brothers' hokey gambling motif "Win, Lose or Draw", a saloon table scene surrounded by a cliched psychedelic border.

My larger conclusion was that I sure miss album covers, most of them were pretty good. A five-inch square CD only gives you room for a glorified logo. It was always a nice touch, especially for a locally popular band or performer, to get a cover done by a local artist who really understood something about their music and how to portray it.

And Nicole's got a point, as usual. Whether you loved or hated Aqualung, you sure remembered what it looked like...

W-O