128. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

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The album is listed as number 479 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

The work above is a vertical flip and mirroring of the cover art. The band's name and album title were kept upright but in shuffled positions.
I got it - it was done to make fun. 


It's a photograph by Joel Brodsky of Barbara Cheeseborough.
He is credited with photographing over 400 album covers, among them by The Doors, Isaac Hayes and Van Morrison.
She was a Philadelphia-born fashion model who was known for promoting an Afrocentric style and who appeared on Essence Magazine's first cover in May 1970. wikipedia

Essence

This is the original album cover art design.

No. 479, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Photograph by Joel Brodsky; artwork design by Graffiteria/Paula Bisacca; art direction by David Krieger.
The model is Barbara Cheeseborough.
Album produced by George Clinton. Westbound 1971. 

“Maggot Brain.” The very name connotes ugliness, vileness, and disgust.
Considering the front cover art depicting a black woman up to her neck in dirt screaming in agony
and the back cover of said woman’s head now a skull, maybe that’s what George Clinton and his merry band of funksters wanted —
to get inside your brain and melt it into a pile of steaming funk. Solid Grooves

Maggot Brain features one of the more unfortunate covers in music history, with its front cover depicting a black woman buried up to her neck screaming
in agony and back cover showing the same woman’s head, now become a skull. Why, it’s almost as creepy as the cover of Herbie Mann’s Push Push,
on which Herbie shows off his ghastly lubed-up chest pelt for reasons I don’t care to speculate about. And the same goes for Maggot Brain.
Then again, what do you expect from a band that entitles an LP Maggot Brain in the first place? P-Funk was a crazy-eyed crew of
acid-gobbling freaks, and on LSD everything seems like a grand idea. The Vinyl District

(A) Maggot Brain - Can You Get to That - Hit It and Quit It - You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks 

(B) Super Stupid - Back in Our Minds - Wars of Armageddon

"Maggot Brain" live from bushtales on YouTube

    

georgeclinton.com

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127. Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

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It has been said that  The Division Bell deals with themes of communication  and the idea that  talking can solve many of
life's problems.  The album cover art looks like two heads  talking to each other and another  composed of these two and
facing the viewer.  My deviation added  four more heads,  which, taken together  with the originals,  may mean different
things to different people.  My point  was to portray  situations that make  communicating  ineffective,  futile or useless.

It has also been said that listening is the beginning of understanding. I noted that the heads have no ears.


The album cover for The Division Bell was designed by Storm Thorgerson. It depicts two metal head sculptures sculpted by John Robertson, each over three
metres tall and weighing 1500 kilograms.  These were placed in a field in Cambridgeshire  and photographed  throughout a two-week period regardless of
weather conditions.  Sometimes visual effects such as lights between the heads was used.  Ely Cathedral is visible in the background,  as are car headlights
visible through the sculptures' mouths. The sculptures are now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

No one seems to know the meaning of the album cover,  and Pink Floyd has yet to enlighten the masses.  People have been quarrelling over the meaning of
the cover ever since its release,  and although countless interpretations exist,  there has been no consensus.  While the meaning of the cover art remains a
mystery, the meaning of the album title has at least confirmed. The term "Division Bell" refers to England and Australia's parliamentary sessions.

If there is a disagreement about a matter, then a vote must be taken.  The House is said to be "divided" on the issue, and the division is rectified by a vote.
At this point,  the Division Bell is rung and parliamentarians  must immediately proceed to the House.  When the Division Bell stops,  the doors are shut and
anyone who is late misses the vote.

Thus, the Division Bell has an important role in communication and conflict resolution.  The album title was suggested by  Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
author Douglas Adams. Qoura


Two heads are better than one, but not if both are stupid.

So, how many more heads do you wish to see?

No. 234, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time; No. 719, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000


Album art design by Storm Thorgerson; sculptures devised by Keith Bredeen, constructed by John Robertson; photography by Tony May, Rupert Truman &
Stephen Piotrowski. Album produced by Bob Ezrin & David Gilmour. EMI, Columbia 1994.


The Division Bell deals  with themes of communication  and the idea that talking can  solve many of  life's problems.  In the Studio  radio host Redbeard
suggested that the album offered "the very real possibility of transcending it all,  through shivering  moments of grace".  Songs such as "Poles Apart" and
"Lost for Words" have been interpreted as references to the estrangement between Pink Floyd and former band member Roger Waters,  who left in 1985;
however, Gilmour denied this. The title refers to the division bell rung in the British parliament to announce a vote.  Drummer Nick Mason said: "It does
have some meaning. It's about people making choices, yeas or nays."

Produced a few years after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc,  "A Great Day for Freedom" juxtaposes the general euphoria of, for instance, the fall of the
Berlin Wall, with the subsequent wars and ethnic cleansing, particularly in Yugoslavia.  Audio samples of Stephen Hawking,  originally recorded for a BT
television advertisement,  were used in "Keep Talking";  Gilmour was so moved by Hawking's  sentiment in the advert  that he contacted  the advertising
company for permission to use the recordings on the album.  Mason said it felt "politically incorrect to take ideas from advertising,  but it seemed a very
relevant piece."  At the end of the album  Gilmour's stepson  Charlie is heard hanging up the telephone  receiver on Pink Floyd manager Steve O'Rourke,
who had pleaded to be allowed to appear on a Pink Floyd album.

In Uncut Magazine's  2011 Pink Floyd:  The Ultimate  Music Guide,  Graeme Thomson   wrote that The Division Bell  "might just be the dark horse of the
Floyd canon.  The opening triptych of songs is a hugely impressive return to something very close to the eternal essence of Pink Floyd,  and much of the
rest retains a quiet power and a meditative quality that betrays a genuine sense of unity."

Uncut reviewed the album once again in 2014 to celebrate the 20th anniversary reissue,  and in their review praised the album for its production,  citing
that the  album  sounded much  "more like a classic  Pink Floyd  album  than  1983's  The Final Cut"  and throughout  the album  noted  the empathy and
connection between Wright and Gilmour, stating that these moments were "at the album's musical heart." wikipedia


(A) Cluster One - What Do You Want from Me? - Poles Apart - Marooned - A Great Day for Freedom - Wearing the Inside Out

(B) Take It Out - Coming Back to Life - Keep Talking - Lost for Words - High Hopes



"A Great Day for Freedom" live from David Gilmour on YouTube

    


www.pinkfloyd.com

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126. The Mystic Moods Orchestra - Emotions

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This work is purely cut and paste; nothing on the portion or whole of the album art that is part of the whole image has been hidden.
The idea is to create a symmetrical image of these parts which is just one of the many possible tweaks that can be made of the album art. 

The original album art already presents a threesome that is somewhat intriguing by itself - if one takes a quick look.
The clenched palms, of course, suggest intimacy without intention and the sprawling mane and the drawn out chin of reckless abandon.
The overlapping bodies then depict multiple intimacies and reckless abandon and my intention was to spread them out further on the sand and see what is left to be said of it. 

Or left to silent imagination.

Incidentally, there's a lot more for the imagination in the music beneath the cover.
The album begins with The Sound of Silence. 


The Mystic Moods Orchestra was a group known for mixing orchestral pop, environmental sounds, and pioneering recording techniques.
It was created by audiophile Brad Miller. The first Mystic Moods Orchestra album One Stormy Night, was released in 1965 through the label Philips.
Throughout the rest of the 1960s and 1970s, the group continued to release similar styled recordings and their recordings continued to be reissued throughout the 1980s and 1990s. 
wikipedia


Here is the original album cover art design.



Information wanted for photo credits. Album produced by Brad Miller. Bainbridge 1968.


Brad Miller was born in California and had developed an interest in railroading in his teens.
After a few years of hanging around rail yards and learning all the lore of steam and diesel engines,
he decided to record the sounds of some of the last steam locomotives operating on a major rail line.
Around 1958, he and his friend, Jim Connella, formed a company and started cutting records from these field recordings,
which they released through railroading magazines and model train shows.

Sound effects recording was quite the rage at the dawn of stereo, and one of these albums of train sounds was even reviewed favorably in High Fidelity magazine.
A few years later, Ernie McDaniel of San Francisco radio station KFOG decided to put one of Miller's albums, Steam Railroading Under Thundering Skies,
and an easy listening album, on separate turntables and broadcast them together.
His late-night stunt produced a barrage of listener phone calls (most of which were positive), much to his surprise.
He later related the episode to Miller, who was inspired by the idea.

While working with arranger Don Ralke, Miller recorded a series of tunes, most of them Ralke originals,
played by a string-laden orchestra, then mixed in a variety of environmental sounds he had collected.
He took several months fine-tuning the blend, then cut a deal with Philips to release it under the title of One Stormy Night,
credited to the Mystic Moods Orchestra.


With the help of producer Leo Kulka, Miller quickly developed a series of One Stormy Night clones.
The musical content shifted to mellow covers of current hits, and Warners modified the packaging of the albums to make sure
there was no mystery that these were records to serve as the preamble or accompaniment to getting it on. wikipedia


(A) The Sound of Silence - Do You Know the Way to San Jose - Eleanor Rigby - Sunny Goodge Steet - Trains and Boats and Planes

(B) Cloudy - Soldier in the Rain - Maman - Homeward Bound - Early Morning Rain - Listen to the Warm

"The Sound of Silence" from 77Fortran on YouTube

   


The Mystic Moods Orchestra discography at Discogs

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124. Depeche Mode - A Broken Frame

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My purpose for tweaking is always to convert a square album cover into a stretched screensaver or wallpaper.  On this work,  the original album cover art design is at
left.  The clouds and  horizon were stretched to the right  through a combination of mirroring and paste overs.  Four more  cut-outs of the lady cutter were added in 
progressively  smaller sizes to create an illusion of space and distance.

I might disagree  with some other  interpretations of the original art work,  but to me,  it simply looks  like what it is - a woman with a sickle  trying to fight off an
unseen or some imaginary demon - or making a symbolic stab at the heavens as an utterance of a curse.


The cover artwork is a photograph, but is intended to resemble a painting. It depicts a woman cutting grain in an East Anglian field, near Duxford in Cambridgeshire.
It was taken by Brian Griffin (who had previously done the cover photograph for Speak & Spell and press photos for the band) using a mixture of natural and artificial
lighting.  Griffin cited  as inspirations  Ukrainian and Russian art,  especially  the work of Kazimir Malevich,  and German  romantic art.  Griffin has  displayed on his
website a gallery of alternative images from the same shoot.

It was featured on the cover of Life Magazine's 1990 edition of "World's Best Photographs 1980 - 1990". wikipedia

Images from briangriffin.co.uk



The awards continued that year (1989) when The Guardian newspaper in the U.K.  named Griffin “The Photographer
of the Decade”  and his photo shot for the cover of  Depeche Mode’s  1982 album,  A Broken Frame, was featured on
the cover of  Life Magazine’s  special issue,  “The Greatest  Photographs  of the ‘80s”.  All along  the way,  Brian has
been the recipient of many other honors, winning numerous D&AD awards and his book Work was awarded the “Best
Photographic Book In The World” at the Primavera Fotográfica in Barcelona, Spain. Album Cover Hall of Fame

Photo by Brian Griffin, design by Martyn Atkins, calligraphy by Ching Ching Lee, clothes design by Jacqui Frye.
Album produced by Depeche Mode & Daniel Miller. Mute/Sire (US & Canada) 1982.


Martin Gore  has famously  noted that Depeche Mode  stopped worrying  about its future when the first  post-Vince Clarke-departure single,  "See You," placed even
higher on the English charts than anything else Clarke had done with them. Such confidence carries through all of A Broken Frame, a notably more ambitious effort
than the pure pop/disco of the band's debut.  With arranging genius  Alan Wilder still one album away from fully joining the band,  Frame became very much Gore's
record,  writing all the songs and exploring various styles never again touched upon in later years.  "Satellite" and "Monument" take distinct dub/reggae turns, while
"Shouldn't Have Done That"  delivers its slightly precious message about the dangers of adulthood with a spare arrangement and hollow,  weirdly sweet vocals. Much
of the album follows in a dark vein,  forsaking  earlier sprightliness,  aside from tracks like "A Photograph of You" and  "The Meaning of Love,"  for more melancholy
reflections about love gone wrong as "Leave in Silence" and "My Secret Garden."  More complex arrangements and juxtaposed sounds, such as the sparkle of breaking
glass in  "Leave in Silence,"  help give this underrated  album even  more of an intriguing,  unexpected edge.  Gore's lyrics  sometimes veer on the facile,  but David
Gahan's singing comes more clearly to the fore throughout -- things aren't all there yet, but they were definitely starting to get close. AllMusic Review by Ned Raggert

(A) Leave in Silence - My Secret Garden - Monument - Nothing to Fear - See You

(B) Satellite - The Meaning of Love - Further Excerpts from My Secret Garden - A Photograph of You - Shouldn't Have Done That - The Sun and the Rainfall

"See You" live from FedekDemod90 on YouTube.





    

www.depechemode.com

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123. Crowded House - Woodface

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On this work,  the original  album  cover art  design is at centre  with the lights  shining through the
holes and the band's name removed.  The right half was then flipped and  pasted at left and the left
half was flipped  and pasted at right.  These were darkened to give a hint  that the image at centre
is up front.  The pasted images  where then  pushed at bit off centre  and their doubles were pasted
over so that  part of  the image  behind them show  through  which  creates an illusion of  thickness.
The whole image  was then processed  in Craquelure  and Crosshatch  and converted to monochrome
and tinted to make it look like it has been made of very old wood.


Here's the original album cover art design.

No. 80, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.


Cover painting by Nick Seymour, letter construction by Timothy Eames, design by Stephen Walker,
art direction by Nick Seymour  & Tommy Steele.  Album produced by Mitchell Fromm & Neil Finn.
Capitol 1991. 

New Zealand’s Crowded House made one of the best, and most enduring, pop/rock albums of the
1990s.  Released in the  latter part of 1991,  Woodface is a  masterpiece of emotive songwriting,
evocative  singing  and exceptional  playing.  Singer/songwriter  Neil Finn had  moved way out in
front of 1986’s  “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” the biggest hit Crowded House  ever landed in America.

It had an  awkward  gestation.  The album,  the trio’s third,  was close  to being  mastered when
Capitol  Records  president  Hale  Milgrim  told Finn  and his  bandmates,  and  Crowded House’s 
producer  Mitchell Froom,  that it simply  wasn’t good  enough to put out.  He suggested  they go
back into the studio.

At the same time,  Finn and his  older  brother Tim  (both of them  had been  cornerstones of the
Kiwi new  wave group  Split Enz)  were  writing  together  for a side  project.  Neil asked  Tim if 
Crowded House  could have these new  songs for the revised Woodface;  Tim agreed  but insisted
he become a full-fledged member of the band.

“The lines  between  what was going to be a  Finn Brothers  record and a  Crowded House  record
became very blurred,” Neil Finn told me in 1993. “And in the end we decided it was better to try
and make one good album than try and split yourself between two, and not do justice to either.”

That’s how  “Weather  With You,”  “It’s Only  Natural,”  “Four Seasons in One Day,”  “There Goes
God,”  “How Will  You Go”  and  three  others  came to be  on what  should  have been  Crowded 
House’s breakthrough  album – featuring stellar,  Everly-esque brotherly harmonies  from Neil and
Tim, Woodface  is absolutely brimming with first-class, catchy songs, with gorgeous melodies and
that unmistakable Finn melancholy. Bill DeYoung for Something Else Reviews


(A) Chocolate Cake - It's Only Natural - Fall at Your Feet - Tall Trees - Weather With You - Whispers and Moans - Four Seasons in One Day

(B) There Goes God - Fame Is - All I Ask - As Sure as I Am - Italian Plastic - She Goes On - How Will You Go



"Weather With You" live from markk70 on YouTube.





    

www.crowdedhouse.com

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120. The Moody Blues - A Question of Balance

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This work is based on the painting by Phil Travers and I expanded it to the right to make
a great screensaver. I don't want to put a description on the original painting or my own
 deviation, but it really makes for a great album cover,  which is a bit detached from the 
album title.  After 120 deviations  within a year  and a half of deviating,  I've found that
the symbolism expands when the title is detached from the art.

And then the viewer  enters somewhere in between  and goes down to the music within.


My deviation is based on the front album cover.

And that's not all. The symbolism expands to the art below it.

The gatefold is different. It opens from top to bottom instead of left to right.


Phil Travers originally  included a small  painting of a man named  Blashford Snell  within the collage of A Question of Balance (AqoB). Snell
was a well-known  British  explorer  and  children's advocate,  and the  painting on  AQoB was  inspired by a photograph, which appeared in
National Geographic.  The original album  image was of Snell  wearing a pith helmet,  holding a pistol and pointing it at an elephant. After
the album was released, Snell sued Decca Records and the Moodies over the image,  which he said was "a source of constant embarrassment
over being on the cover." rainblow.glo on Travelling Eternity Road at yuku.com


Painting by Phil Travers, photos by David Rohl,  photo montage by Mike Goss & David Rohl.  Album produced by Tony Clarke. Threshold 1970.


The Moody Blues' first real attempt at a harder  rock sound still has  some psychedelic elements,  but they're  achieved with an overall leaner
studio sound.  The group was trying to take  stock of itself at this time,  and came up with some  surprisingly strong,  lean numbers (Michael
Pinder's Mellotron is surprisingly restrained until the final number, "The Balance"),  which also embraced politics for the first time ("Question"
seemed to display the dislocation that a lot of younger listeners were feeling during Vietnam).

The surprisingly jagged opening track,  "Question,"  recorded several months earlier,  became a popular concert  number as well as a number
one single.  Graeme Edge's  "Don't You Feel Small"  and Justin Hayward's  "It's Up to You"  both had a great beat,  but the real highlight here is
John Lodge's "Tortoise and the Hare,"  a fast-paced  number that  the band  used to rip  through in  concert with  some searing guitar solos by
Hayward.

Ray Thomas'  "And the Tide Rushes In"  (written in the wake of a fight with his wife)  is one of the prettiest  psychedelic songs ever written, a
sweetly languid  piece with some gorgeous  shimmering  instrumental effects.  The 1997 remastered edition  brings out the guitar sound with
amazing force and clarity, and the notes tell a lot about the turmoil the band was starting to feel after three years of whirlwind success.
The only loss is the absence of the lyrics included in earlier editions. Bruce Eder for AllMusic


(A) Question - How Is It (We Are Here) - And the Tide Rushes In - Don't You Feel Small - Tortoise and the Hare

(2) It's Up to You - Minstrel's Song - Dawning is the Day - Melancholy Man - The Balance

"Melancholy Man" live from Borys W. on YouTube.

    

www.moodybluestoday.com

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118. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story

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I haven't counted the number of copies of the album front sleeve design I used in filling the space above because I was preoccupied with creating the patterns of
insertions left and right. I did start at bottom centre moving upwards and sideways. The decisions I made were spontaneous with the creative effort and
once the patterns were established it was only a matter of measurements and, of course, some mathematics.

The fan pattern  (or the rays,  as you may love to call it)  on the album art did give me the seminal idea and the direction from which to progress.
The horizontal bars  (and more rays)  at the top and the  bottom of  the design  also gave me a sense of  balance and  structure. That may
sound like much analyses, but really, I was amazed at my own work.

Every picture tells a story. The album title aptly describes the work itself.  

No. 172, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time;
No. 236, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

Art direction by Des Strobel, design & illustration by John Craig, photo by Lisa Margolis. 
Album produced by Rod Stewart. Mercury 1971.


Radio overplay of “Maggie May” at the time of this album’s release proved that familiarity can breed contempt (at least when it comes to music). As a result, I
never got “into” early  Rod Stewart  solo material  at the time it was released.  But with the  passage of time, exposure and  perhaps a bit of nostalgia, I
started listening to his early albums. (The same thing happened with Elton John but that’s another story and a different article).

Rod had already proven his mettle as a blues wailer on Truth (a Jeff Beck Group album),  and had a couple  interesting albums on Vertigo (Records)
while also working with the Faces (the English rock band that was formed by members of The Small Faces after Steve Marriott left the group
to form Humble Pie). This, his third album, really carried the ball forward for Stewart as a brand name talent. Despite its commercial
success, it is a very good album, perhaps even better with the passage of time. I now regard it as a classic. Why?

It’s a combination of some  good songs and a few great ones;  some impressive stringed instrument playing that adds layers of
texture and interesting details,  but at bottom, it just rocks– Rod is in prime form,  and the power of the songs, top-tier
playing and  a driving  beat gets your  head  bobbing.  One of  the things  I like  about this era  of rock  is that the
recordings typically  are not over-produced.  There is a lot going on here,  but it isn’t  “slick” sounding. The
fact that some of these  songs are so familiar is no  longer a negative to me;  I guess that’s where the
nostalgia  part kicks in.  It’s a hell  of an album,  and if you  haven’t  listened  to it in years, be 
prepared to enjoy yourself. Immensely. The Vinyl Press


(A) Every Picture Tells a Story - Seems Like a Long Time - That's Alright - Amazing Grace - Tomorrow is a Long Time

(B) Henry - Maggie May - Mandolin Wind - I Know (I'm Losing You) - Reason to Believe

"Reason to Believe" live from diegol3d on YouTube.

                

      

  www.rodstewart.com

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