I've always loved album cover artwork. I would intently study the covers of my favorite albums while listening to the music (this was before the advent music videos), trying to glean whatever meanings or symbolism they contained. With the rise of the compact disc, I became a vocal member of the outraged throng lamenting the loss of the LP's comparatively sprawling canvas. As the CD itself shuffles into obsolecence, I fear for the dying art of album cover design entirely. Music can now be plucked from the veritable air and the trappings of packaging now seem positively quaint.
There was a board game in my youth called Husker Du (and yes, aging hipster punks, this is the name of the fabled SST band who gave the world Metal Circus, Zen Arcade etc. , blah blah blah... -- by the way, check out the sideburns on "Dad" in that picture). In any case, a copy of the Danish game landed under our Christmas tree some time in the late `70's, and my sister and I became quite obsessed with it. The basic thrust of the game was a series of tiny pictures covered up with plastic discs (they looked like Oreo halves) that appeard two or three times over the course of the board. You'd mix up the selection of pictures (via a wheel on the side of the board -- not at all unlike the wheel that turns the images on the LP sleeve of Led Zeppelin III), and then cover them up with the discs. With each go, one player would remove a disc and then strive to find a corresponding image of the picture elsewhere on the board. If that player was successful, he or she got to keep the discs (and whomever had the most discs at the end was the winner). Obviously, the game basically put your memory to the test (the literal translation of "Husker Du" is "Do You Remember?", I believe -- I dunno, ask Bob Mould). In any case, it was a great game -- even without its later punk rock affiliation.
Fast forward about thirty years (!!!), and I stumble across the the I Love Music discussion boards (discovered after some poor soul made a disparaging remark about Killing Joke that got back to members of the `Joke faithful). I soon found ILM to be a huge amount of fun and a great place to find out about music I'd otherwise not been exposed to. In short order, I started noticing a recurring discussion thread therein dubbed "Cover Connections," where the basic premise was to point out seemingly incongruous similarities in album covers (see, for example, the pairing above -- arty early 80's New Huevos, Wall of Voodoo's oblique debut album matched with uber-successful, new millenial hip hop superstar, Kanye West's sophomore album -- clearly a coinicidence). I quickly became obsessed with Cover Connections theads -- especially on those deathly quiet overnight shifts at the TIME Magazine News Desk when no news was breaking. It basically became a huge game of Husker Du (as you can see by checking out any of the countless variations of Cover Connections by clicking right here). Sadly, after all this time, a lot of the images may now be broken, but you'll get the basic idea.
Since January, I've had to largely step away from the ILM boards due to time constraints with my new reality (new job, new child, etc.), but thought I'd possibly re-visit here on Flaming Pablum, for no real reason other than that I find it amusing.
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