Our Favorite Album Covers

00:00:00There's a podcast that's sure all that rocks hard is gold. And they're climbing the stairway to 11. When they get to there they know the record stores are all closed. But online they can get what they came for.

00:00:30Oh, and they're streaming the Stairway to Eleven.

00:00:40Hello, and welcome to Stairway to Eleven. My name is George.

00:00:44This is John.

00:00:45I'm TR.

00:00:46And this is Jay.

00:00:48So this episode, we are going to talk about our favorite album cover art.

00:00:54And that doesn't necessarily mean paintings. This could be photographs.

00:00:58And it doesn't just necessarily preclude us from looking at other areas of the album. But I digress.

00:01:06Yeah, so I was excited to do this episode because when I was growing up, and I think I won't speak for you guys, but I have a pretty good feeling that I...

00:01:19Could you, though, please speak for me? You're okay speaking for me. I'm good with that.

00:01:22All right, thanks.

00:01:24There were a few things that I thought about because when we were growing up, you know, most of us started with LPs and they were pretty good size, 12 by 12. You get a big picture. Sometimes they were gatefold. So it was like double the size when you opened it up. And a lot of the artists really took advantage of that medium and and had art that I felt sometimes was very common.

00:01:53to the music inside. Or it could just be attention-getting. Or it just says something. And it's obviously trying to get your attention. But it also may have implications for the music within. And I thought back to the days when I was growing up. And back then, we all, back in high school, at the beginning of the year, at least where I was, where I lived,

00:02:21They would pass out these large paper covers to protect your textbooks. And you'd fold them up a little bit and slip them into these pieces of paper. Slide it in. Yeah, one of the papers, like on one side of the paper, they had all these ads. And I guess that's why, you know, it was just a big ad and the companies that, like local companies wanted their ads on your book. Well, we all took them and flipped them over and used the blank side so that we could draw

00:02:51on the other side and put our favorite bands and all kinds of logos and whatever else we wanted to put on our books. And back then, I remember specifically drawing a bunch of album covers and different things. And it was your way, other than a t-shirt, of showing what bands you were into because you had something on your textbook and it was like, oh, dude, that's cool. You've got this.

00:03:21or, oh, you listen to them. So it was kind of a way to kind of show, like, who you were into. And just at that time, too, you know, it was a great way, like, that medium was such a great way to commune with the album, right? You put the album on, and then you sit there, and you look at the album cover, and you're just like, you just want to absorb all of it. Like, you just want to take it all in. A lot of times there were liner notes or the,

00:03:51Record Sleeves had more information or lyrics or other pictures, stuff about the band or other things that were really cool. And that was, you know, it was pre-internet. So it was like it was the only way you got information about anything that you were interested in other than like articles in, you know, Rolling Stone or other, you know, guitar magazines or Cream or, you know, whatever. So that was like a direct link to the band, right? Like this is what the band wants to convey. And so it was,

00:04:21a real enjoyable experience for me growing up to look at the album art, absorb it, listen to the record, and just completely get lost in all of that. And so that's why I feel like we're going to have a good time talking about this today. Let the good times roll. Yes. And unless anybody has any comments, I guess we can start with Jay.

00:04:51one singular comment which was i was also and i'm sure you i know you guys were too i was a big fan of liner notes i mean i don't do that anymore and i like i'll call it to mind i gotta believe you guys this registered with you and it stayed with you but like if you read the liner notes in uh um live after death it told like how much orange juice they drank you remember that yeah it talked about everything they consumed on the tour and that kind of stuff but also you know you you know who producers were you know who these

00:05:20And I would read the whole thank you column. And I knew one name in it. I don't know why I was so interested in reading those things, but anyway. I read them because they thanked other bands, and I was looking for bands. And I'm like, oh, well, Anthrax thanked these guys, so I'm going to go check them out. And then those guys thanked these guys, so I'm going to go check them out. Because, you know, no internet. Very good point. Exactly. And they thanked two friends, and they thanked two

00:05:51But that's how much fun covers could do. And I just piggyback on Tiara's point by saying that I was definitely a sit and listen and stare at the cover kind of guy, you know. Not every time, but that was a way to do things for sure. I'm going to start with a really weird one, but I think you guys will get a kick out of it. And it is a record that I like, and I never owned it. There was a copy in my house, but it was playing all the time, and it was on the radio all the time, so you couldn't avoid it.

00:06:19But I think the cover is really clever. And I even like the back cover. And it's Super Tramp, Breakfast in America, which I think is just such a cool cover. Yes, love that album. Google it if you're listening and you don't know it because you're not our generation. But it's a waitress on the cover kind of in the form of the Statue of Liberty holding a drink on a tray above her head instead of the torch.

00:06:47And in the background is Manhattan made out of like salt and pepper jacquins and stuff like that. And then on the back is the band all sitting like in a diner and having breakfast. And it's just great. And I used to that was a cover I used to stare at a lot. I used to think that was a super fun cover. And it's kind of and it's tongue in cheek. It's kind of funny. And that's also like, honestly, as far as just middle of the road rock goes, that's a really good record, you know, jam packed with hits. So anyway, Breakfast in America, a lot of fun.

00:07:19I like her smile it's like

00:07:23yeah she's happy one comment about that is that I saw

00:07:27just had by happenstance and it's been a while now could as much

00:07:31as two years ago but somebody did a follow-up story on a story on the lady on the cover

00:07:35like they went and found her I saw that I just saw that while I was looking for it

00:07:40yeah so that's it I don't have any more comments it's a fun fun record with a fun cover

00:07:44Yeah, that's a great choice. Because if you look at it from a distance, you think they're buildings. Absolutely. And then you look up close, you're like, I'll be damned. And they even have like, for where the docks would be, there's silverware coming out. I mean, it really works. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great selection. It's clever. Okay. So my first one is kind of a, it's more the artist than a particular, I do have a couple of choices from this artist, but.

00:08:14It's Roger Dean, who did many of the Yes and Asia albums. And so my favorites there would be Relayer and Tales from Topographic Oceans, Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe, and then the first two Asia records. And Roger Dean's images are rooted in the natural world, but definitely have an air of fantasy and other worldliness about them, often featuring natural rock formations or other natural scenes, but with fantastical creatures, like the dragon,

00:08:44on Asia's first album, or some sort of floating arrangement that wouldn't happen in nature. I always thought they were very imaginative and evocative, and I just enjoyed looking at them and exploring. They were usually really very detailed, and so you could look all throughout different areas and find all these different details that were really interesting. So that's my first pick, and I pretty much like most of what he did on

00:09:14all of the, you know, whatever stuff he did. Some of it was a little more simple, like close to the edge was just like kind of green. So there really wasn't much to that. But he did all the, he did all the lettering, which I always thought was cool. The way he did all the lettering for the albums. And I thought that was good. I was wondering how long it would take him to come up and it was not long, but I also wanted to kind of call out that, and it might've been the Relayer tour or maybe even several tours, but he did some set design.

00:09:44them. And so they have Roger Bean themed sets.

00:09:48Yeah.

00:09:49I will say his most disappointing cover is also his greatest gatefold, which is close to the edge is the dumbest cover ever.

00:09:59When you have, when you look at the gatefold inside, that should have been the album cover.

00:10:05Yeah.

00:10:05Which is the actual close to the edge with the water running off of that kind of set in some otherworldly,

00:10:14like tower of rock and the water's just pouring off and i always wondered why did they go with a

00:10:20really kind of lame green yeah when you've got this amazing insert you know make the insert green

00:10:27well i i picked one of his too but and it wasn't one you mentioned so when we get to it i did not pick

00:10:33any of his because i knew somebody else would yeah all right so my first one i'm going with

00:10:43The Obvious Choice, for me at least. And it's also probably one of the top five most iconic album covers ever. And I think I can safely say that there's zero exaggeration in this. And I went with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. I mean, it's absolutely iconic. And it's so simple. It's all straight lines. And yet it speaks volumes when you look at it. It's the prism with the bean.

00:11:13The Game Shooting In On One Side and The Rainbow Shooting Out In The Back. There's no name for the band. There's no album title. You literally, no matter how you look at that, you always know it's them. It doesn't matter. It could be at the back of the store and you could see a little poster. Oh, it's a Pink Floyd poster. You know. It's just iconic. And it's artwork that was done by Hypnosis. And I believe also George Hardy was one of the ones that designed it from that group, which they are.

00:11:43for umpteen number of covers from umpteen number of bands you know to include more pink

00:11:51floyd deaf leopard t-rex sabbath ufo bad company zeppelin acdc scorpions yes on and on and on i was

00:12:01going to mention because of um because tr was saying this is sort of a generational thing here you

00:12:07know especially because of the format we still i wonder how many of those kind of focused companies

00:12:11like that aren't around anymore and can't do business because of the change in... Probably. Yeah. I mean, they may have just moved into some other, you know, graphic art avenue, but this would have been big money in the 70s and the 80s. Oh, yeah, it was. I mean, some of these... I read up a little bit on this and, you know, some of these images that they, you know, would fly to Africa to take a picture, you know, some picture in some place just to get the cover, you know? Exactly. And the bands would pay for that.

00:12:41You know, like it was outlandish, like what they would do to get some of these images. Right. And I mean, if you if you think of hypnosis or how they say their hypnosis, hypnosis, yeah, some people pronounce the G, but it's not pronounced. You just look at what they did for Pink Floyd alone on their album covers. I mean. They I guess the record label was just mortified when they saw the cover for was it Adam Hart Mother?

00:13:11They're like, it's a cow. It's a cow. Yeah. Right. That cover's iconic now. You know it's Pink Floyd. You know, and if anyone's listening to the album Animals, I've actually driven by that factory. Battersea. Yeah. Yeah. On a train. You know? And I think my comment was, where's the pig? Where's the pig? That's my first one. Where's Hypnosis from, John? They're English. Okay.

00:13:41Because I think a similar German firm, I think they were German, but maybe it was Hypnosis. So I want to ask Tiara real quick. Who was the guy who kind of did that run of UFO albums? Oh, yeah, that was, well, Storm Thorgerson. Storm Thorgerson, yeah. Part of Hypnosis with Aubrey Powell. Okay. I thought it must be out of Hypnosis, yeah. Yeah, those are, I think, the two main guys, weren't they? Yes. Yeah. And they did, yeah, like a bunch of those UFO records, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. George? Sure.

00:14:11So my again,

00:14:13none of mine are in any order.

00:14:16So perfect.

00:14:17Place no judgment upon what I place first.

00:14:21So this is some art where I'm going to,

00:14:23I'm going to start with the artist and see,

00:14:26see how quickly Jay responds.

00:14:30Jay's like,

00:14:32well,

00:14:32it's making me think it's probably going to be a kiss record,

00:14:35but this is the artist's name is Randy Barrett.

00:14:41Yeah.

00:14:43We're not as good about that as you guys.

00:14:45I just figured because of this album that you would know.

00:14:49And this album is Dio's Holy Diver.

00:14:52Oh, yes.

00:14:55So this quaint piece of artwork shows the band's mascot, Murray,

00:15:04as he tries to save a poor Catholic priest

00:15:08who apparently got in a little bit of trouble while he was out swimming in really strong, terrible rocks and waters. But, you know, Murray's trying to get him out. He throws him a line, or a chain maybe it is. But it appears that chain has snapped. And our poor Catholic priest, well, I don't think he's long for this world, so I hope he's all caught up on his confessions and such.

00:15:36Maybe he can give himself the last rites. He could have been Episcopalian. I mean, they were callers too. Oh, really? Sweet. I'm Episcopalian. Or Anglican. A side about this is that you can watch in the deal, the very good deal documentary, they kind of went through the creation of it, didn't they? It wasn't in the documentary. Yeah, they talked a little bit about that and the guy actually going to the beach and trying to get pictures of a guy to be able to paint

00:16:06it and draw it the right way and exactly hey you priest get in the water they had video footage of that or i can't remember if the video footage was stock footage but they show the photos at least yeah and there was kind of funny that the guy was going to drown i think yeah yeah they were worried about that yeah that was in uh dreamers never die that was that was a great documentary maybe maybe not wrap the guy in chains while you while you're trying to take the picture here's an idea necessary but we need to get the the detail of the chains

00:16:36Yeah.

00:16:37George,

00:16:38I had the opposite reaction to that.

00:16:43I actually thought that Murray was like,

00:16:45you're going to hell and I'm taking you down there.

00:16:48I had the opposite.

00:16:49He was throwing his ass in.

00:16:50Oh,

00:16:51obviously.

00:16:51Yes.

00:16:51I was just,

00:16:52I was just trying to give Murray,

00:16:54you know,

00:16:54the benefit of the doubt there,

00:16:55but,

00:16:56uh,

00:16:57but we all know what's happening.

00:16:59That's a great cover too.

00:17:00It is.

00:17:02I mean, you know, this was one of those that I didn't pick it up right away. It's one of those albums that I always looked at when I went into the record store. I'm like, I'm going to go in there and buy this. But man, that looks cool. I'm looking at you. I got my eye on you. I'm going to come back and get you at some point. And then I'd go home and I'd come back and I'd be like, I see you. You're still there. And yeah, eventually I got it. But it's a good one.

00:17:32So I noticed an interesting trend from our first picks. They're all drawn images. And it goes to show you what we had options for. We had that, or we had really bad band photos in a fake live setting, or just standing in some studio or whatever that you were like, this is just the worst album cover ever. Yet we all seem to, because we're all roughly in the same four or five year group,

00:18:02all gravitated to this stuff immediately because of the world it took you to when you saw it.

00:18:07You know, which I think is awesome.

00:18:09Yeah. I mean, I can't look at this cover and not think of being in a record store.

00:18:14Yeah. You remember exactly what you would do every time you go in, you're like, yeah, I agree.

00:18:23My next one is, it's a great cover, a great album.

00:18:28And it's like the singular album I think I've ever owned from this band.

00:18:31I did try to do a bit of a deep dive a little while back and there's some other stuff that's worthwhile but this one record is such a standout record and its cover is standout Nazareth Hair of the Dog oh yeah that's a cool boggy swampy I mean it's just a fantastic image and it's it's I mean it's almost a black metal cover really I mean what was that 73 let's find out 73 74

00:19:01early 70s sometime. 75 at the latest. I got it. Right in the middle, I think. It came out in 75. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Still, I mean, that, yeah, that's still early for that kind of image to me, you know? Yes, I would say so too. And, um, it's, it's almost like the great, um, I don't, have you guys read any of those, um, Terry Pratchett novels? Yes. Just squirled. Thank you, George. I expected as much from you and you didn't let me down, which I appreciate.

00:19:32So these are the, what's the name of the series? I forget, George. It's Discworld. Discworld novels. And I bought one in Germany one time just because I needed a book to read home on the plane. I read whatever I brought with me. And the covers in Europe were so much better on those books. So this is kind of like those weird old Lord of the Rings post-its they sold in head shops. Yeah. And like old Conan bookshops.

00:20:01covers. Yeah, exactly. So, Hair of the Dog. Nice. Yeah, I considered that one. Honestly, it wasn't on my list until we started talking. I was like, I forgot about Hair of the Dog. My next one, I've talked about before, so I won't dwell on it too much, but it's the cult, Electric, and also includes all the singles that came along with that because there was a consistency throughout. I was surprised to find out

00:20:30that the art direction was by storm thergeson oh um well post hypnosis because hypnosis ended in 83 but storm and i guess aubrey too they both went on working you know independently and separately um but the graphic design was done he the art direction was storm but the graphic design was keith breeden and i i just really like the aesthetic and the lettering and the art in general i mean

00:21:00It's not really an amazing album cover by any means, but just the lettering of the cult and electric across the bottom. There's a picture of the band in the middle kind of surrounded by all these graphics. And then the singles, like Love Removal Machine and Little Devil and even Wildflower, had similar kind of graphic art and lettering that I really thought was cool.

00:21:29And they made everything consistent across these albums, of the album and the singles. And when I was doing the research for this, I found out that the Wildflower single was actually illustrated by Rick Griffin, who was a totally different artist. But it was so consistent with the others that I didn't even know it was a different artist. But anyway, I really enjoyed that whole Cult Electric vibe and look to all of that stuff. And I thought it was cool that they made it all consistent across

00:21:59all of those different singles that they released and everything.

00:22:03You know, this opens a whole new category that I have to mention because there was about five minutes there in my high school years where if it wasn't like thrash, I was like, I'm not interested.

00:22:13You know what I mean?

00:22:14Whatever.

00:22:15You know what I mean?

00:22:15Like real metal or whatever.

00:22:17And I got over that pretty quick.

00:22:19I mean, I've always had a diverse, but I don't know.

00:22:22I was going through a macho phase or who knows what.

00:22:25But so and so and this literally is the case with this, but there are album covers that tricked us. I thought when you bought something, you're like, this is not what I was expecting based on that cover. You know what I mean? And the kind of fits into that for me. I didn't know what to expect from the cult, but it didn't sound like what I thought the cover looked like. And I'm not putting it down. It's just I got a band to fit that category for EJ. Molly Hatchet.

00:22:55You nailed it, John. That might be the iconic. Yeah. Oh, my God. This band's going to just be heavy. People are going to be getting killed in the songs. And it's like, whoa, this is like light southern rock. Yeah. Yeah. Like, what in the heck happened here? That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. That's not the music coming out of the van driving down the street without on the side. Yeah. If the name had been different, I might have fallen for that because it was always in the bargain bin.

00:23:25And I'm a big fan of like Conan and stuff. And I'm like, this looks like the old Conan. This has got to be metal. But Molly, I mean, hatchet, that's kind of metal. But Molly, it's like, I don't know what this is. I'm just going to leave that there. I mean, in today's world, Molly would be, oh, it's a drug ban, but not back then. Yeah. Not back then. Yeah. Wow. All right. All right. My next one is actually from last year.

00:23:55And I do not believe this was AI done. I believe there's an actual artwork layout designer. How he does it, I don't know. But this fits a certain category for me. One, this is a band that I know TRs tried to get me into, and I was like, they're all right. And Jay is the one who finally got me over the hump on this band, believe it or not. Also, this artwork is something Jay and I have talked about in the past.

00:24:24because it reminds me of a certain time period and it reminds me of non-music. And I'll explain that here in a second. So I'm going with the band Elder and their EP from last year, Liminality, and the second song is called Dream State Return. This album cover is basically a harken back to the 1970s sci-fi book covers. And just to briefly describe it, it shows what looks like an archipelago

00:24:55in the middle of the ocean. And there's this massive mirror. And it's a cylinder. It's a long, like a tube almost. And the size of the glass from the mirror is then lined up all the way across the screen like they're in line. It's almost like they're going through the mirror frame. And so I don't know if it's, you know, representing different realities or it's looking into your own soul.

00:25:24you know different changes in your life who knows what it means but i just love this 70s style art it's almost got a kind of cleaned up salvador dali approach to it a little bit too like it's mixed in a touch but it just reminds me of every sci-fi book that i looked at or read from the 70s that singular cover where you stared at like okay at some point there's a fight between this guy and this monster on this cliff edge and the dude's wearing this weird space suit

00:25:54When does this happen in the book?

00:25:57You know?

00:25:57Yeah.

00:25:59I'm sure we've all like, you're re-knowing, okay, I'm 400 pages in on 500, and this still hasn't happened.

00:26:05And frequently, it never did.

00:26:08Never did.

00:26:09But there's just something about this, I can just see, if you look up this image, it just looks like, if you're there, you could watch the glass go through this kind of stationary mirror, and then pass through, and then it just continues.

00:26:25So I always loved this artwork. It's surreal. But then at the same time, it's so much simple. But then you look at it like, man, I got like 40 different interpretations of what's going on here. So yeah, and it's and I, I know, George, you and I have talked about Elder in the past. And I kept saying, geez, I feel like I should like this band. I'm not getting into them. And I know a few years after we talked about that, Jay, you had them in your top 25 for the Metal Eds podcast. So I was like, I got to go back and listen, because I know TR likes them. And I was like, oh, wow, these guys are pretty

00:26:55They got proggy. Stonier. I mean, I know it's been going on each album. And I've lost my taste for stoner rock and stoner metal. But I do like them. So anyway, that's my second one. I just love those sci-fi covers. Yeah, John, you raised a really good point about interpretation. I think that when you have art like that, like you said,

00:27:23You came up with all these ideas about what you thought it meant. Just hearing you talk about all these mirrors might mean alternate realities and alternate. That does have to do with the title of the album. I don't know. I think it's so cool that when an artist or when a band gets a piece of art that allows for the listener to come up with their own idea of what it is,

00:27:53And you know when we interviewed Jesse Stiletto, they talked a little bit about their album art from that and not wanting it to be obvious and kind of it was very intentional that they wanted the listener to look at that art and come up with their own idea of what that meant. And I just feel like that's so important for people to use their own imagination and get like then I think it becomes yours more when you,

00:28:23when you develop that. You spend the time, you invest in what you're looking at, and you come up with this story or this idea of what you think it is. And while it may or may not be true or right or whatever, it doesn't matter. You've already built this in your mind. And I think it makes you closer to the band. It makes you closer to the material. And I just feel like it's another element of the band being able to connect with their

00:28:53listeners.

00:28:54And I just,

00:28:55I think that's so cool.

00:28:56You pick that John.

00:28:57Cause like,

00:28:58I hadn't even thought about that one.

00:29:00And now I've kind of looked at it and I'm like,

00:29:02man,

00:29:02that is a really good cover.

00:29:04Well,

00:29:04the problem is we're so far into this concept of albums and covers.

00:29:09I mean,

00:29:10that you,

00:29:11it's impossible to pick it.

00:29:12Well,

00:29:13that's true.

00:29:13There's going to be hundreds that are so cool.

00:29:15But the other thing about that too,

00:29:17is you said you might,

00:29:18you,

00:29:18you,

00:29:18you get lost in it and you have your own little story.

00:29:20But in 1978,

00:29:22there was nobody coming to that bedroom.

00:29:23until you were wrong, man. You know what I mean? Half the point. Exactly. That's right. You know, TR asked in our email chat, you know, how many albums are people going with? And George on cue while he was at Maryland Death Fest, I'm not saying he might have consumed any alcoholic beverages at that point, but he immediately responded with 666.

00:29:52As one does. As one does, right. And I burst out laughing when I saw that because I was like, I could probably come up with 666 albums if I needed to. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, and I, and so bringing this up, and I think we've all sort of brought this up at some point here now. I think Jay, you talking about it now. I, I've actually went with the, I only picked a couple obvious ones. And then I went with just stuff that most people wouldn't think about.

00:30:22because there's just so much to go with. And I did. Obviously, Dark Side of the Moon is pretty damn obvious. However, I felt it was so iconic, it's hard not to mention something like that. And there's another one I have, I think is very iconic metal-wise, but some of these other ones I went with, I think are really cool. Maybe people can go explore and maybe they find something. Who knows? Anyway. I already know what the iconic one is, too. I'm not going to say it because I almost spoiled you on Dark Side of the Moon.

00:30:52Oh, I'm sure we all can guess it. Or at least the band. So we'll leave it at that. Yeah. Honestly, I might be wrong now that I'm not thinking about it. All right. Where were we there? George. George. All right. So my next one is a photograph and not something that was drawn. And it's funny because you'd think I'd know this cover well if I picked it. But I just noticed something about it.

00:31:24that I feel like I have known this before, but I'm old. I forget things. And I just like saw this and I was like, oh, that's hilarious. So I feel like it's been discussed on one of the podcasts before, but it caught me unawares. And so this is a very simple cover. There's not a lot going on, but I've always dug it. And there's two reasons.

00:31:52why.

00:31:54And this is Who's Next by The Who.

00:31:58Oh, sure.

00:32:00It's a very simple cover, you know, is stark, stark landscape, four guys in this big concrete monolith sticking out of the ground for God knows what reason.

00:32:12And the first thing that comes to mind is, of course, 2001 Space Odyssey, the monolith.

00:32:20But it also, because it's British, just kind of associates to Doctor Who's TARDIS as well. Not the right color, nothing, but you know, whatever. The Who, Doctor Who. Oh, that's why. Duh. And I'm just sitting here looking at it going, oh, looks like they peed on it. And that, I was like, oh yeah. Just picking up on that, are you? Yeah. Who's next?

00:32:49I get it now.

00:32:52But while we were talking, I googled it to go.

00:32:54And I literally asked Google's AI,

00:32:57did the who pee on the concrete thing on who's next cover?

00:33:01And it was like, no.

00:33:03That was the look they were going for.

00:33:04I think one of them did.

00:33:05It said that the band could not urinate on command,

00:33:10and so the photographer used water to make it look like they did.

00:33:14Doesn't mean nobody did.

00:33:16Yeah.

00:33:17Okay.

00:33:17Yeah, that's fair.

00:33:20And I'm like, oh, they're like buckling up their belts. I didn't notice that part of it before. I thought they were all just kind of hanging out, like investigating this thing, you know? Nope, nope. They're in the middle of nowhere and like, hey, let's mark our territory. Okay. Fair enough. I don't believe what that is one time, too, and I don't, I thought maybe John would jump in. Do you know what that concrete pillar was, John? I thought I read her. No, believe it or not, as much as I like that album,

00:33:47I don't have it actually believe it or not I always felt I should have got it and I love that cover because I was just like this is so irreverent yeah I never spent any time researching anything about the cover well I've listened to that album for what 40 plus years you know so I'm glad it's not the Alamo I was gonna say I was gonna say Ozzy Osbourne they are not a man who probably can't pee on command yeah yeah all right I can do it

00:34:19My next one comes from a group slash performer who were frequently

00:34:30creative in their covers, but also the packaging more specifically. This is Alice Cooper. And like Schools Out was like a desk, a school desk that opened. That's really cool. Billion Dollar Babies was like a wallet that opened and it was a big dollar bill inside of it. And I think it was Schools Out that had

00:34:47I have it but in any case but that's I didn't go with either of those um I I love Allison and and and his face is really one of the iconic themes of the 70s and and then I you know and maybe the decades after really because he's still around and he's still performing but so I went with from the inside which is the cover that is just literally Alice's face you know and it was after he cleaned up

00:35:17He was no longer an alcoholic. He'd spent some time. This record is about him. You know, back then, there weren't some of the places weren't as subtle when it came to addiction. And so they just threw him in a funny farm, you know, any any. And this record is about that funny farm. And that's great. And the cover is so good because it just I can sort of see what he went through in it. But also, it's just like this iconic face from the 70s. I mean, that makeup and everything. And it's got kind of a sickly green. It's a lot I like about it.

00:35:47You know, and well, there you go. There's a lot of cool Alice Cooper covers. That's probably my favorite one. I knew at some point Alice Cooper would come up with you. You know, it's funny. I went to look for my copy just now because I have an autographed copy. It's in the Alice Cooper section of the records, but I probably was playing with it and set it somewhere else. It's in a safe place. The coop does have some cool covers. Yeah. Okay.

00:36:17My next one is done by someone who only did one album cover ever in his painting career. Interesting. And the artwork was done by a guy named Gary Norman. And the album is called Boston Don't Look Back. That's the only cover that dude ever did? That's the only cover he ever did. He didn't even do the second record? No. Well, that was the second record. Oh, excuse me.

00:36:47So, yeah, let me continue. So I will mention, though, as I looked this up, I found out that the original art that was from that cover that he did was auctioned off in 2021 and was purchased for $81,250, which was way past anybody's estimate on that.

00:37:17I like the continuation of the concept from the first album where you basically had this world exploding and all these guitar starships leaving with the survivors. And on this cover, you can assume that they have found a new habitable planet with lush greenery and beautiful crystal formations. This was an album cover. I mentioned that, you know, as a teenager, I would look at these albums and then I would typically copy them in like pencil. Like I would just, you know, sit there and draw. And, um,

00:37:47And this was one of the album covers that I drew. So I became very familiar with the image. And I just really love it because I think it's just so cool. This, as Jay was talking about earlier, some of these images were on gatefold albums. This was a gatefold album. So you had part of the image on the front of the cover and the rest of the image on the back cover. And when you opened it up, you got the whole thing, which was, you know, two feet long and one foot wide.

00:38:17And it was just a really cool, powerful image of just this fantastical world that this spaceship was kind of coming in on. And it's just so imaginative and I felt really went with the music. And so that's my next one. I really love it. Nice. I always thought the ELO and Boston had similar.

00:38:47ideas and colors on their album covers. At least a couple of them. Who did, Jim? I always felt like ELO and Boston had similar designs. Like down to earth? Yeah. It's funny because as soon as, because I am kind of looking at these, just because even if I know them, I want to look at them while you guys are talking about them. And you know what else came to mind, and I don't know who this artist is, was, and I didn't put anything on my list, but Kansas had some great covers. Oh, yeah. That's true.

00:39:17Two back-to-back covers were Left Overture and Point of No Return. Those are great covers. Wow. Yeah. I feel like I forgot about them. Yeah. And probably my two. I mean, I like their first five albums a lot. So, I mean, they're great albums too. One other cool thing about them is their album covers. Their first one is taken from a mural at like the Kansas State Building or something. That's a

00:39:47And I think it's the guy who founded Kansas or something. But in any case, I wish I had thought of those guys. Yeah. We'll call it a late honorable mention. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. All right. So I'm going to be the first person to have two bands here for this. And there's a reason for it. To me, this is the most bizarre two album covers that ever came out. And you'll hear why. Both these albums came out in 2008.

00:40:18Both of these albums are titled Five. They're both prog bands, one being metal, one being progressive rock. And the images on the album covers are exactly the same. And they were done by two different artists. It is the most bizarre thing. And I suggest you look so you could see.

00:40:46So the first one is Spock's Beard's Five. And the second album is Symphony X's Five. Oh, wait, the full title is Five, the New Mythology Suite. They're both five. They both came out in 2000. If you look at these covers, they have the same red sky and the same yellow desert and the same black mountains in the background. If you put them next to each other, Spock's Beard on the left, Symphony X on the right,

00:41:15the lines match up with the desert the sky and the mountains that's crazy the

00:41:20difference is on the spock's beard album if you go from left to right you have a businessman

00:41:26walking in the desert and he's following a road sign arrow it's pointing right hold on like click my

00:41:32slider oh wow yeah and then when you go to the symphony x cover you've got a mirror in the middle

00:41:38of the desert you've got a black cloaked person touching the mirror and in the mirror is a reflection

00:41:43of that person, all dressed in white, standing on an ocean. You're like, whoa, okay. But if you put them together, they look exactly the same in terms of the background. That's weird, dude. And again, two different labels. Spock's beard was on Metal Blade, which is still to this day bizarre. They were on Metal Blade. And Symphony X was on Inside Out. The artist for Spock's beard is Kazuha Hakamata.

00:42:13And the artist for the Symphony X is... Wait, maybe I got that wrong. And the other artist, I can't remember which one of which, is Thomas Earhart, who ended up just doing this for fun and then ended up becoming this his full-time job. I mean, he's worked with tons of bands like Volbeat, Aman Amarth, Sons of Apollo, John Olivas Payne. He does artwork for like Summer Breeze Open Air and Rock Hard Festival. It just ballooned into a business.

00:42:43for him. But you put the two covers together.

00:42:46And you're like, wow.

00:42:47And they're not on, if it was the same label.

00:42:49And even the sand. I mean, you look at the sand.

00:42:51Yes.

00:42:51The ripples in the sand. It's like, it's almost exactly the same.

00:42:56According to guitarist Alan Morris from Spock's Beard. Yeah, that was a total fluke. We didn't even find out about it until much later. Does it matter? Not really. Particularly when you're dealing with two of the finest albums made by the respective bands. You didn't even care.

00:43:10Yeah.

00:43:11But yet, what are the odds? I mean, it's not like these two artists from two different parts of the world, hey, let's do this and defy the labels in the van. It just makes no sense. So which there's got to be some something in that. But anyway, I thought it would be kind of fun. I don't know if they're even my favorite album covers. But the whole concept behind it to me is this is the kind of stuff I would stare at then for hours and try to figure out, well, wait, there's got to be some connection. And I would pour through the liner notes on both

00:43:41like there's gotta be a thank yous from both of these guys on the albums you know yeah but no parent it supposedly is a coincidence which you know in today's world you're like yeah it's a bunch of crap but yeah you'll take him at his word the guy from spongebeard so interesting wow yeah that's a trick dude i never noticed that i never knew but the weird thing same year same album title it's like this is yeah this is all right there's more proof we're living in the matrix you know so

00:44:10Mmm, steak. Anyway. You mentioned Volbeaten. They've got some really good artwork, too. Yeah. Didn't think of that. And I wonder if it's that guy Thomas Earhard. I think it's how you say his name. My ear is hard. All right. My turn, y'all. Yeah. Okay. So this next one.

00:44:40It's a little bit country. It's a little bit completely satanic. Is it Molly Hatchett? It's not. Oh, okay. This is Slayer's Reign in Blood. Oh. This was done by, oh crap, I missed, I lost my notes, Larry Carroll. And it has always been a rather terrifying and confusing image. It's very busy.

00:45:10There's a goat-headed person on a throne being carried by some other guys, two of whom have rather long erections. There's some people with their heads floating in flaming blood, and a dude who I just learned is a friend of the artist who is impaled on the wall at the upper right corner next to somebody who's

00:45:40Upside Down and it does not have a head. This is a pretty grim, grim hellscape of artwork and that's not surprising being Slayer. And this has just always fascinated me and continues to fascinate me. I'd like to share something about this cover. Sure. And I'm looking at it now because I believe this is the first one.

00:46:11So there's a lot of fun things. You know how like

00:46:17Derek Riggs, you can

00:46:19any number of cool things that he's stuck into things and stuff and you can find

00:46:22all that stuff. Interesting thing about Slayer's covers and I think

00:46:26Rain and Blood is the first one where you didn't do it.

00:46:30Where they didn't do it, but then they brought it back later. Long story short,

00:46:33if you look at the Slayer logo, it's a pentagram, but one of the swords is pulled

00:46:37out of the pentagram, which started with the first album.

00:46:40And the little goat guy is holding the sword. For the first several records and then the last several records, you could always find the sword somewhere else in the cover. That was pulled out. And I think Rain and Blood was the first one where they kind of abandoned that concept. Is there somebody impaled? They went out of their way to have the sword be elsewhere in the... Well, there are some other swords in there, aren't there? Yeah, somebody impaled. Yeah, and so I'm not... I don't want... But it's not obvious. There's not one where it's like, oh, yeah, that's...

00:47:10It's the one that they put out. But they gave it up for a while. But if you look up, like, Hella Waits. Which I am just now doing. And then later, I think when Dave came back, might be when they started doing it again. I can't remember. But it was a cool little thing they did in their artwork. So whenever I got a Slayer record, I'd go look for the sword to see where it ended up. Interesting. Okay, well, we're going to have to do that right now. Can't wait till later. It has to be right now. They did stop for a while, George. So don't drive yourself too crazy looking. But some of them don't have it.

00:47:40Boy, they had a good run of evil covers.

00:47:43Yeah.

00:47:44Yeah.

00:47:44No, they really did.

00:47:46Just south of heaven.

00:47:47I'm looking.

00:47:48I'm looking.

00:47:50Yeah.

00:47:51Again, I think running blood is where they dropped it, but I'll, it's good.

00:47:54Now I'm like, go and look at like world painted blood or something like that.

00:47:56And you'll, it's, it's, I think they definitely did it on repent list.

00:48:00They maybe didn't bring it back until then.

00:48:03Okay.

00:48:04Call.

00:48:06Let's see the repent list.

00:48:08Let's see.

00:48:09Yeah, that guy's holding it. Although that guy's got one too. So maybe there's more than one missing. Can't tell because it's all behind everything. Yeah, but nevertheless, a cool thing that they did. Christ Illusion? Christ Illusion doesn't even have the logo. Oh, interesting. My next one is, I mean, somebody was going to go here, so it might as well be me. So whatever. But I'll start by saying it's

00:48:40It's Ken Kelly

00:48:42who did

00:48:44the famous Kiss Ones

00:48:47He did Rainbow Rising

00:48:50Stop decimating my list

00:48:52I have an interesting thing

00:48:56that I'm going to do here which is

00:48:57I wanted to do a Kiss One because they really did have great covers

00:49:00and I mentioned I think

00:49:02while we were talking once here

00:49:03you couldn't take a bad picture of them

00:49:06How many millions of pictures have I seen

00:49:08Nobody ever looks dumb in any of those photos. I mean, unless you think the whole concept is dumb. But I'm going to go with, first I want to give my honorable mention, this one, which is a live two. Very basic front cover, but there's several things I love about it. One is the picture of Gene Simmons, who looks like he's just been through living hell. He's all sweaty. There's blood running down his face. There's each individual pictures, and those are classy. But this is where the gatefold comes in, and that's where you open that gatefold, and it's the live two-stage show.

00:49:37everything that burns during that show is set on fire during that picture it's a staged photo to be sure but it still represents what they were live and god i must have stared at that photo for six months of my life you know accumulated and and so that i'm going to go with that as my honorable mention for kiss records but i wanted to go with the ken kelly one and um so i'm go with destroyer i just love that well painted comic book arty

00:50:07stuff. When I, which is to say they look like, you know, it's almost like an Alex Ross, the comic book artist where it's like comic art, but taken to a more Baroque level or something. I don't know how to say it anyway. And Kispa is just knocking it out of the park there for a little while that love gun, this guy did. And I probably like this one a little better, but, and it also represents the record pretty well. It's called destroyer and it's a pretty destructive cover. And yeah, you know,

00:50:37I love paintings like that Leviathan by Mastodon comes to mind where they just yeah it's a little bit more classical painting than it is you know or you know or even Frank Frazetta or something since we talked about Molly Hatchett but so Destroyer was alive too is a close second cool nice well you just mentioned him and I I he's this is next Iron Maiden Power Slave

00:51:07This cover features a gigantic ancient Egyptian pyramid with Eddie seated in the center, flanked by Egyptian gods and sphinx-like characters. The art is by Derek Riggs, longtime artist for Iron Maiden. He created Eddie before even Iron Maiden knew about Eddie because it was a graphic that he had and the band saw it and said, that's the guy, that's who we need. Initial paintings and covers were fairly straightforward, but once Power Slave came along,

00:51:39The Beast had a lot of detail to it, but the one after that, what am I thinking of? Somewhere in Time. Yeah, Piece of Mind, where he's trapped in a... It's just Eddie kind of trapped in a thing with chains on him and stuff. He's in a padded cell. Yeah, padded cell, and he's just... It's just that. That's it. He's crazy. He's crazy.

00:52:07You know, when you see this, it's like super highly detailed and complex. It's such an epic picture, and you could spend hours looking at this cover and still not discover all the hidden jokes and Easter eggs. Look closely at all the hieroglyphics, and you'll see what I mean. According to Riggs, he was flown to Nassau in the Bahamas while the band was recording there to paint it. But because it was so humid, it was difficult using the airbrush, because the water would get in there, and it would be a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a

00:52:37make a mess. In fact, he had to have everything flown in because there weren't any art supplies of any kind on the island that he could use. He kept getting ideas and adding to it until it eventually ended up as what you see. This is a picture that definitely benefited from the LP format. You can't see any of the details on a cassette or a CD cover. And so that's why I always enjoyed, you know, looking at this and, you know, looking at all the very, like, down in the bottom.

00:53:07when you're looking at all these different details and the hieroglyphics and

00:53:11you know little different symbols and things that were in there that he put that just was so cool it's like you feel like you're discovering it and like they put it in there for you to discover and if you spend the time and you take the time you will discover it and that's why I really love this album. Somewhere in Time probably has the most Easter eggs in it I'm guessing. Yes that was like right behind this.

00:53:36But the other cool thing about Maiden was they kind of went chronologically for a while there because it basically number of the beats you could interpret it however you want but then there's peace of mind which was in a has been lobotomized his brains been removed and he basically dies and then the next record he's been put in a tomb and the next record after that was live after death he comes back yeah he's back I mean they really had a kind of like little fun yeah like a flow of yeah like what yeah exactly and and that's what's so cool about this because you can always like that's what's so cool about this because you can always

00:54:06I think that's why people love this character because you know they've seen like everything he's been through pretty much and you know it's like they've been there for him you know all right who's up I think it's TR no he just did power slave oh he did power slave so it's me but I I'll just add one other thing to the power slave discussion is that for a while there at least as far as I was concerned Maiden were the king of album covers at least in the world of metal for a while I mean that was just that they were the best packages man

00:54:36You know? Yeah. Always the big exact red thing across the top and then, yeah, good stuff. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to go in an opposite direction musically. However, this album cover is quite iconic for other reasons than music. And I'm going to go with Camel's Mirage, which came out in 1974. And if you're not familiar with this album cover.

00:55:05I am. I would suggest you take up smoking and get yourself a pack of Camel cigarettes. Because this album cover looks like a pack of Camel cigarettes. Albeit, it is blurry a little bit. Mirage-ized. Yeah, exactly. They made it look like a mirage. So much so that this was a problem that they had to create a whole second album cover for the U.S. because they were going to get sued.

00:55:35by the cigarette powers that be. So they came up with one where the camel was on the moon. And it's just like, no, hell with that. This album covers badass. I mean, first of all, the album's awesome. I love this album. And I can thank your brother from Nether Mother, George, Joel, who got me. Mike from Opeth couldn't get me to listen to Camel, but Joel from Thross and Block got me to listen to Camel. And I absolutely love them now. They're so good. It's all because of him that one day when he was on.

00:56:05year-end. But it's such an iconic cover of just this camel with the pyramids in the background and some palm trees. And he doesn't have the cigarette, you know. But the beauty of this cover, too, is it's got a Motorhead connection. And that is because it's illustrated by Phil Smee, I think is how you say his name, who is responsible for the Motorhead logo. So, yeah.

00:56:34I was and I love the colors on this too it's it's got the whole

00:56:38deserty kind of browns everything has a brown or yellow to it and it's it's not traditional

00:56:45colors you know that we're used to on album covers um but that yeah can I just say fills fills me is sort of like bend over I mean

00:56:57that's a very suggestive name yeah somebody's porn name yeah it well yeah

00:57:04It is. Kind of like Brock Landers. Chess Rockwell. Chess Rockwell. Those are great names. Old Phil McCracken, I guess. That's right. Emerson Biggins is another favorite. Yeah. Amber Waves.

00:57:34Yeah, that's my next one. Camel Mirage, 1974. All right, so this next one is, I think it's an iconic cover, and it certainly takes me back to my youth. Yeah, you know, whatever. It is, it was done by Margot Nahas in 1984, and it was Van Halen's 1984.

00:58:05Nice. Wow. Speaking of cigarettes. The cherub. Yes, exactly. The camel didn't have one, but the little kid did. The cherub with the angel wings looking over his shoulder as he's taking a hit to have some cigarettes and he's like, is anybody watching? Anybody? I'm not going to get busted for this one, but yeah, anyway. I love it. And I just, this is one, whatever reason that I remember,

00:58:34Kneeling on my bed, holding it up, and just looking at this and going, what the? Yeah. Because it's so angelic looking. It's such a beautiful image. And yet he's got this cigarette just parked there between his index and middle finger, and clearly he's feeling a little guilty. And yeah. If that doesn't represent Van Halen, I don't know what does. Yeah. There's another color that plays with that concept.

00:59:04which I've always loved because I thought it was kind of cool and tongue-in-cheek. Has it come to mind for anybody off the top of your head? Yeah, I think it's heaven and hell maybe. Heaven and hell. And I just loved, I thought that was such a clever representation of that sentence. Heaven and hell. There's a bunch of angels sitting there having a smoke break. I just think that's hilarious. Well, and actually that came from a picture. I looked at that and it was like there was some sort of, and this was from like New York in the 20s or something.

00:59:34Okay. Maybe the 30s. And there was a photograph of some acting company, and they were angels, and they were on a smoke break in between scenes or whatever. And somebody took a picture of this, and that was what the cover was. They used that cover or that picture to make the cover. I did not know until I looked into it. Those hairstyles are the 20s or 30s, for sure, now that you say that.

01:00:03I believe that is one of the stories in the

01:00:10injustice for art stories of heavy metal album covers. I think that's in one of the issues of that.

01:00:16They talk about heaven and hell. And they actually have the original photo with it in there and talk about that. If you don't know those books and you like metal and you like art, there's five of them now. Well, the fifth one is just a revision of the first one, but it's like twice as big now.

01:00:33They're awesome. I think I've got the first three. Yeah, the next one was a live one after that. And he was talking to the guy who said he was done, but then he kicked out the first one again, but he revised it and made it just this monolithic book. Did you say it's called Injustice for Art? Yep. They're awesome. Yeah, they are. So if you're jumping over to me, I purposely kind of stayed away from Straight Up Metal. I don't know why, but whatever. Yeah, that's fine. But I'm going to throw out one of my,

01:01:04honorable mentions then because we talked about heaven and hell and i always thought that live evil had such a clever cool cover well painted a figure on the cover that represents each song it's just so cool the very cool thing to do um it's a great pick george i love that album cover it was a great pick yeah and it and it's um it's uh it was kind of weird for it um it was different than every cover before it in the van halen

01:01:33lineup. I know there's just something about it that, and it, which is also too, because that's sort of one of their iconic records. So that works, that it's just this weird standout. If you set them all next to each other, you might reach up and grab a one, that one and be like, what's this? Yeah. They had a lot of head scratching covers, like the one and women and children first are just them on the cover. And you're like, okay, two is cool because it's just the logo, the VH, and it looks cool. Four is different, but it's cool because it's so dark and violent. It's weird. Diver Downs,

01:02:03that hippie next door that's got the bumper sticker on his car you know and then yeah then you drop 19 if we're like whoa this is wild where did this come from yeah it seems like more often than not they're just like just put us on the cover kind of i think yeah you know well the funny thing is those two covers that have them in pictures are still ones that they had to to nail because if you like if you look at all the artwork from women in

01:02:33Children First, I'm not artwork, but all the photos. That just was one random shot of a bunch that they took, and it just so happened that one they liked the most. It's such a cool photo, though. It is a great photo. That's one of the few where I like a band photo. That is such an iconic photo to me that it really calls to mind the Marines putting the flag down in Iwo Jima. You know what I mean? It's just like a snowstorm. They had a Van Halen poster of that, too. They do have that, yeah. That is why that came from.

01:03:05They reenacted that whole Iwo Jima scene and Dave is, you know, looking out and they're putting the flag in the, you know, pitching the flag in there and the whole thing. Yeah. I got it. I got it. It reminds me of the Kiss Spirit of 76 poster where they were like, yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Wow. Good, good one. George, you got it. My next one comes from, I think it must have been Hypnosis because I didn't really realize they were involved with this artist.

01:03:32But it's such a good cover and it's so iconic and so monolithic. And it's a T-Rex Electric Warrior. Oh, yeah. That tall amplifier. Yeah. Standing in front of it, it's taken at such an angle. It's just such a great rock and roll photo, you know. And you'd recognize it no matter what it was on. Like, oh, it's T-Rex. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have really any more comments on that one. Just that it's such a cool.

01:04:02The cover speaks for itself. All right. Well, my next one is Joe Satriani, Surfing with the Alien. Oh, yeah. I knew that was coming. It was coming. Now, I was never a Marvel Comics fan. I was more of a DC guy. But this image of the Silver Surfer was just so cool and seemed to fit perfectly with the music. Now, Joe hadn't intended for the Alien,

01:04:32to be the silver surfer. He wrote the music with other imagery in mind, but when the image was suggested, he liked it. The image had to be licensed from Marvel by the record company. While it was renewed many times over the years, they couldn't come to terms in 2018 and an alternate cover was put out that is simply a guitar neck and headstock. Not nearly as cool, but after 40 years with the original cover image, it probably doesn't matter since that's the image people will remember.

01:05:01It's just such a bold image of the Silver Surfer kind of coming at you with this red background. And it's just, and then if you look at the backside, it's like the Surfer's coming out of this massive hand. And it's just a cool, like, comic book image. And when you listen to the music, it's like, yeah, that's exactly what it's, that's what it is. That's what it should look like.

01:05:27Is the hand Galactus? It is. I believe so. And so, you know, they, and later on, you know, Joe Satriani actually used some, made some titles of songs that were Marvel related, like back to Shalabal and... Surfing with the Wolverine? Something like that. Getting clawed by the Wolverine.

01:05:59So there was some kind of, you know, it did build off of that. But I just always thought that that was such a cool image, and I just really liked it a lot. Absolutely. Yeah. And when that came out, I was like, that was when I was getting into Marvel Comics. And so I was just like, oh, what? What? Yeah. It sounds like this. What comic book is the mystical potato?

01:06:30I think that's from High Times.

01:06:36Well put.

01:06:38Thank you.

01:06:38And I think that's one of only what three covers he did where he's not on the cover for his 20 some albums.

01:06:47So that's a good point, John.

01:06:48I think it's that the debut, which the debut might as well just be like his name only because it's kind of like, yeah.

01:06:56Right.

01:06:56And then I believe,

01:07:00which is the one that came out in 2000,

01:07:01the electronic album he did.

01:07:03Engine of Creations.

01:07:04Yeah, Engine of Creations.

01:07:05Which might be his head, but it's not his face.

01:07:08Yeah.

01:07:09Yeah.

01:07:09That's very cool.

01:07:10That's interesting.

01:07:11Another one I didn't take as much as I wanted to,

01:07:14because I knew you probably would.

01:07:15And I love it.

01:07:18And the beauty of that is in the song Servant, the Alien,

01:07:21you hear these swishing sounds,

01:07:23like he's flying by you in space.

01:07:27There is no sound in space, apparently. But if there were, it would sound just like that. Well, for comic book purposes, there are. And Star Wars. Talk about Star Wars. Great shot, kid. Now don't get cocky. Let's blow this thing and go home. That's no moon. Did I know your sex tape, George? Yes.

01:07:55All right, so moving along. We've covered a lot of ground, and I've got still more to go. This is great. I'm loving it. I'm loving all these covers. So, okay, I'm going to do this. This is metal. It's an iconic cover. I think it is. And I think this one speaks volumes for the scene at the time. This is also quite possibly the greatest year ever in metal. Any guesses what year that might be? 1986?

01:08:28It's got to be the best year ever in metal. It has to be. In terms of albums that absolutely defined metal, I'm going to go with one. I don't care about politics in my music. I'm not making a statement. I'm just saying it was never drawn to it. I know there's this argument of politics and rock always were together. I'm like, yeah, well, go listen to the Lemon song and tell me what the politics are in that song. All right.

01:08:55I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Yeah. I don't deny it. I just never gravitated towards it. You know, I just didn't. It wasn't something like I was. That's why I never really got into Crosby, Stills and Nash and that stuff. Not singling them out. I'm just saying I never gravitated to political lyrics. However, this album cover is badass and it kind of speaks volumes because it's kind of a catch all in terms of politics. And that's Megadeth's Peace Sells, But Who's Bind?

01:09:24With Vic Rattlehead.

01:09:25I thought you were going to go.

01:09:28I thought you were going to go with the next one.

01:09:30No.

01:09:31Well, yeah.

01:09:31So far, so good, so what?

01:09:33Oh, no, no.

01:09:33Okay.

01:09:34Rest in peace.

01:09:35Rest in peace.

01:09:36Yeah.

01:09:38But I just love this because, you know, first of all, Vic Rattlehead.

01:09:42First, there's Eddie.

01:09:43Yeah.

01:09:43There's Vic.

01:09:44Yeah.

01:09:46And by the way, artists.

01:09:48Anyone?

01:09:49Ed Repke.

01:09:49Ed Repke.

01:09:50Yeah.

01:09:50Yeah.

01:09:51A big famous name there for covers.

01:09:54But I just love how the UN is in the background. It's in shambles. There's these fighter jets swooping in. And there's Vic dressed up like a real estate agent on the for sale sign. You can just hear him going. There's a lot of, you know, there's like some offers in. So you might want to work fast on this one. Just saying, guys. Yeah, exactly. First of all, the cover's got these bright,

01:10:24and red and purple and yellow and the logo is just bursting out of it and to me it's just it's great it's not any one particular side of any aisle of politics it's just all of politics that you know and that's absolutely screwed up and i kind of always like that about i have we say whatever we want about uh dave mustane but his early days he really just kept it focused at everybody which i didn't have a problem with that so if you're going to go after people

01:10:54You go after everyone. I'm fine with that. Yeah, like South Park. Yeah. Well, yeah. But then you listen to this album, minus the cover song on the album, all these songs kind of feel like this album cover and the album cover kind of feels like the songs or looks like the songs. Just angry, aggressive. It's still my favorite Megadeth album. That album cover is my first heavy metal t-shirt. Oh, such a great cover. Yeah. And I got it in white because I clearly not.

01:11:24Following the program in the 80s, but first heavy metal shirt, it was white. Well, but you know, you bring up a good point, George. Back then, white was way more popular for shirts, especially softball shirts with the long capri sleeves. Three-quarter sleeve. I have a white mob. I have a white mob rules with black three-quarter sleeves. I would kill for that shirt again. Yeah, I had the Journey Escape shirt like that.

01:11:54I always thought those were so cool I've never owned one like that yeah they they sold yeah we bought all that crap um anyway I just I again it's kind of an obvious metal well what it's not necessarily maybe everyone's pick but I think it just speaks volumes to anger at that time it just 1986 for thrash you can aim to three albums at the very top this Metallica and Slayer and they all

01:12:24Well, Anthrax. I was never a big Anthrax fan, but thank you for adding up. They all just spoke to that period of how chaotic Thrash was, which made it so cool at that time, which I had to circle back to it. I was living in the Bay Area at the time. Although Megadeth is a Southern California band, they all went up and down the coast like crazy. Anyway. And we've now covered two of those albums.

01:12:50Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

01:12:53All right.

01:12:56Excellente.

01:12:57Is it my turn now?

01:12:59It sure is.

01:13:00All righty.

01:13:02So this is one that I learned something about as I put this together.

01:13:09This is the Psycho Billy band The Cramps.

01:13:13Oh, I love their artwork.

01:13:15Bad music for bad people.

01:13:16This is a compilation album, but it is definitely probably their most iconic artwork.

01:13:22It's a yellow... I was supposed to pull this up, and I did not. I love a lot of their album covers. Yeah. So I know this just off the top of my head that this is a... Yes. You recognize it, though, right? I'm finally picking up on this, because I never listen to them. I don't know them very well. But you probably know the image. You've probably seen it. Yeah. I mean, it's like Eddie Jr., kind of. Yeah.

01:13:52Yeah, so it's like a caricature of Cramps singer Lux Interior. What I did not know is that the cover art was done by a man named Stephen Blickenstaff, who created it on Halloween night, 1983 in Frederick, Maryland, which is where I reside. Wow. That's cool. That is cool.

01:14:22That is very cool. By the way, George, I love their logo, too. That whole kind of, remember the whole, the horror kind of, whatever magazines that uses that type of logo, the sex horror, whatever you want to call that, the exploitive horror type stuff. It has that logo style. I love that. It was like Creep, Creep, and there was a few of them. Yeah. Me too, I love that stuff. In fact, I have one of mine coming up.

01:14:52that kind of thing. Yeah. I love that horror 50s horror stuff. And I don't even what do you call that sound music George? The cramps it's like a psycho Billy kind of thing. It's like it's like it's like punk meets Elvis kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And these guys and these guys are really I think pretty popular around these parts. I don't actually know where they're from. I guess I should look that up. But the the cover here.

01:15:22you see it around town like there's stickers and stuff in fact

01:15:27there's a sticker sticker there was a store actually I think they're closed now maybe not

01:15:35there's a record store downtown Frederick and they had this like sticker like slapped on the door

01:15:40you know and so I saw it many many many many times but I've seen it other places around town as well and

01:15:50this image is kind of like almost defines the DC punk rock scene. People are going to kill me for saying that. But I mean, for me, it's reminiscent of it. Let's say that rather than defining it. Where are the cramps from? This is when we need a girl from Ibaniba playing. Ah, they're from New York City. Okay. So yeah, they definitely don't define the DC.

01:16:18music scene. But the image... Coming from Frederick. No, but the image is just like, you know, I mean, DC's got minor threat, they got bad brains, you know. Good stuff. I'm sure they played down here a bazillion times. I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did. Because while I wasn't here, there was a huge scene here in DC. Yeah. Well, you know what that always reminds me of? John mentioned the

01:16:49But is the unofficial second film in Night of the Living Dead, which is Return of the Living Dead, which was this great 80s zombie flick. Just Google it. You'll see. And it's basically a cramps cover, the poster for the movie. And it's a great movie. It's really good. Return of the Living Dead? Yeah.

01:17:18Jay, that period there, that early mid 80s is right in line when all the, like George said, the Psychobilly, that whole scene was blowing up at that time. And it's carried forward to much lower levels, but I think maybe I'm wrong about that. No, no, no. I think you're right. But it seems like that was just, and that was a huge thing in the Bay Area. There's just a lot of people who are still into that stuff.

01:17:45My next one is gatefold related again. The cover itself is fairly nondescript, but it's a cover that I like. But I had mentioned earlier that there's one that every time I look at it, it makes me hungry. John smiled. I think he knows where I'm going with this, but I'm going to have to show and tell it. I'm not sure that everybody here has witnessed it, but it's ZZ Top Tres Hombres. Tres Hombres. But what's wonderful about Tres Hombres is the gatefold picture on the inside.

01:18:15Yes. I love it. Absolutely. Literally. I've always wondered, did they go to their favorite restaurant? And it's legit Mexican food. It's not like, you know, this isn't. I'm thinking they ate that food. This didn't come from Chili's, I'm pretty sure. You know what that reminds me of. That was the coolest thing to put on the inside of an album. It's just, I mean, look how good that looks to, man. Oh, I know. Yeah. Dude, now you're making me hungry. I know, I know. But,

01:18:45But I also think the entire package is very cool. On the front, this is pre-beard ZZ Top. They're kind of doing things around Texas and stuff. Was that their third album? In the Fine Tradition, it says, which I'm sure is something from a menu. That's their third album, right? Let's see. It goes ZZ Top's first album, The Mud, The River, whatever that one is. Yeah, I think it's the third one. Yeah.

01:19:13Yeah.

01:19:15Trace.

01:19:15So, uh, Trey Sombra said, if you haven't seen that, if you're listening to this and you don't know what's on there, just Google ZZ Top, Trey Sombra's Gatefold, and you will see some of the best Mexican-looking Mexican food you've ever seen in your life.

01:19:26You know what that reminds me of is in the 80s, as a little-known band called Metallica were coming up, there was, uh, I don't know what magazine it was, but it was one of the magazines I had.

01:19:42I'm probably like the only person on the plane that remembers this because it was probably

01:19:46is it the Chinese food thing yeah where there's just like a table and it's just like food like

01:19:52everywhere and like beer empty beer bottles and they're just like and I think Ross Helfand might have taken those that would make sense for sure yeah

01:20:02it's at their house though they took at the house that they lived in and um what was the name of that town John

01:20:08Is that where they lived? No. It's El Cerrito. El Cerrito. Yeah. And you know, you were sending me that stuff the other day about, you know, that video of like an 80s bedroom kind of thing. That was on my wall. Yeah. Because I was just like, that's cool. I don't care if it's stupid and disgusting. It's cool. I think it was in Perang, which would make the most sense since Helfand would have worked for Perang probably.

01:20:38I think it might be the same one

01:20:40in the same article from which they have the

01:20:42alcoholica

01:20:44remember that

01:20:45the big inflatable bottle of

01:20:48vodka

01:20:50maybe I don't know

01:20:52yeah I know the one you're talking about that always makes me hungry too

01:20:59alright am I up

01:21:00you're up

01:21:01alright so my next one

01:21:04and this is kind of

01:21:06kind of like a group

01:21:10So basically,

01:21:13and I'll give you a little spoiler here.

01:21:18It's Journey.

01:21:21Most of their late 70s and early 80s records.

01:21:25Journey had a series of albums from Infinity to Escape

01:21:29that employed the talents of Bay Area artists

01:21:31Alton Kelly and Stanley Mouse.

01:21:34And this is where the iconic Scarab spaceships came from and the winged planets with infinity symbols. They were colorful and cool and imaginative. And I loved them all. And it just, every record, you weren't sure, like, you know, talking about building off of the last one, it was kind of, that was how those Journey albums were going, right? Like, you know, every new record, it was like, oh, what's it going to do this time, you know?

01:22:03And so you were kind of looking at like, okay, what's the theme going to be? And, you know, and of course, you know, when they did Captured, it was like they're captured in this thing and then Escape, like they blast out of it, you know? And so it was just really cool. I just really liked all of that. It was very colorful art and just really imaginative and I just loved it. So all those 70s and early 80s journey albums,

01:22:33that Kelly and Mouse did. Nice. I'll still die on the hill that captured one of the best live albums from that era. Oh, yeah. I'll die on that hill any day. I'll die on that hill with you, buddy. Yeah. No die. No die. Yeah. No kill. All right. So my next one. Like Pink Floyd, this band is iconic and has iconic covers.

01:23:03My reason for selecting this is not because of the band, but it's because of the imagery on the album. And it reminds me of a time when I was a kid. I'm going to go ahead and say I was seven or eight. And my parents had just picked or bought a house in South Lake Tahoe. So we had like this summer winter place to go to. And I remember we stopped. I don't know if it was a 7-Eleven or something late at night. My mom and I went up to the house and the drive. Jay would know this. The drive from the

01:23:33Bay Area to South Lake Tahoe is about just a shade under 200 miles, but it could be anywhere from four hours to a nightmarish eight hours, depending on the weather and traffic. So, and I remember we got in late and I don't know if you guys remember this, but they were, they had these little tubes and you remember how you had these little tubes and you could pull like a little scroll out of it. I don't remember anything like that. And I remember my mom got me this one. I don't, she's probably just trying to shut me up. And it had a bunch of,

01:24:05Oh, wow.

01:24:31I just always loved the sun and moon and then the sun rays around the sun and moon which is a circle with the white background and the red trim and I just always kind of captured my mind and I love the album too first of all but just something about that so anytime I see that artwork or that that style I always like oh what is this and I'm like oh what says here I'm gonna meet my love of my life this way

01:25:01Like financial gains are abound. Yeah. So. You can just let me out here because it looks like I'm about to strike it. Right now. I'm going places tomorrow. And then when you realize it's all BS, you're like, well, I like the artwork still. Yeah. Those little. Yeah. Yeah. I remember the scroll things. Yeah. They were very celestial.

01:25:29There'll be stars and comets and everything. And I don't know what it was. You get older and you're like, man, this dude talking about this stuff is full of crap. You know, but I like his t-shirt, you know. So I was like, are you into this? Nope. I love the artwork. So anyway, that's my next one. Another older album. And I like, I'm picking all these. By the way, there's another band like Pink Floyd. Whether you like their covers or not, you know,

01:25:59a King Crimson cover. You see it, you're like, oh, wow, jeez. I wonder who that is. Why didn't it show up in somebody's list? Yeah. George is reenacting. Yeah, right. But then there's the album Discipline, which are the circular knots, which you've seen around. Then there's the album Red, which is just their three faces. You're like, what is they thinking? Why are they doing a Van Halen cover? Oh, wait. Why is Van Halen doing that? Wait, why are they doing Queen? Wait, okay. Wait, that's a Queen album cover.

01:26:30which was apparently very popular back then. But anyway, I think this is their best cover. Oh, Queen had some good covers too, though, since you mentioned that. We will hear one. I don't know. Oh, yeah. What is the one with the giant robot? News of the world. With the blood dripping off its fingers. News of the world, yeah. So anyway, that's my next one. All right. So yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, Drew. I just want to give a shout out to T.

01:26:58because I was the fellows here being very nice because I put some food in the oven. I had to go check my wife's food. But I wanted to just piggyback and say, TR, I think the Journey covers were great. I love it. Absolutely. I also love Journey. Yeah, we already talked about how Captured is just Dying Hill live album. Anyway. Yeah. Anyway, George, sorry. So in 1983, I was saying things like, screams break the silence.

01:27:29Waking from the dead of night. Vengeance is boiling on Jay's stove because he's making dinner. But he's returned to kill the light. And this is Ozzy Osbourne's Bark at the Moon. My first Ozzy album, of course. And what a curious album cover this was for young George. That's putting it mildly. Ozzy all dressed up.

01:27:58So, oh, I forgot to mention who this was. In fact, I haven't done that for a while. Oh, wait, no, I did. I did. I mentioned all of them. Never mind me. This was photographed by Finn Costello, and Ozzy is dressed up as a werewolf in this image, and that was designed by special effects artist Greg Canham. So Ozzy is clearly overjoyed by the fact that he is a werewolf, and he is hanging out.

01:28:28out on a large tree branch with the moon and clouds in the background. And he's like, what's up? You can see him saying, what's up? And, you know, I love this because not only this, but the Ozzy's logo and the album title have all sprouted hair. They look like porcupines. And that's so metal. It's so metal.

01:28:57And this logo is to me the classic Ozzy logo. I had this pin, like not the, not like a round button, but the, but the metal pin of this Ozzy Osbourne logo. And it went right on my hat because I wear hats. And I'm like in like seventh grade and I have this Miller High Life hat for some freaking reason.

01:29:25And I have an Ozzy Osbourne pin on this. Did they let you wear that in school? They did for some reason. Really? I remember it was a big deal. Our school banned shirts that said, grab a hiney. We were all wearing these grab a hiney. I didn't. Some of these kids had grab a hiney because it was grab a hiney. Grab a hiney t-shirts. And they banned those shirts at our school. Nice.

01:29:55I can't imagine like a seventh grader coming in with a Miller. I know, right? They wouldn't that my school wouldn't was a Sam Sears. You could never there would be it would have been like you take that hat off. I mean, there was no way we would have gone in there with that. Yeah, that's funny. George, where did you go to school in Michigan? Oh, man. They were like, well, that's probably because they were like, yeah, beer. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Do you have that in your lunch? Can I have one? Yeah. Yeah. You'll go.

01:30:25Go ahead. That's okay. Okay, that's a little more Fargo, but you know. There's more cheese in that tier. Yeah, there's a little cheese in there. Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, no, but there clearly is a Michigan accent. Yeah. And I have shed it myself, but many of my dear friends still have it. Yeah, I had Wisconsin until I was probably 12. Mm-hmm. Excellent. You know, the thing I always liked about Bark at the Moon, too, and I'm not even sure if I'm right about this, but I just

01:30:55just assumed because i was like isn't it how at the moon and i was that must be the british take on it is bark at the moon like i always sort of thought that's probably because ozzy's a brit and that's what you say in britain like you know the werewolves bark at the moon because that was but when ozzy was barking mad yeah yeah all right i'm gonna um this is where i kind of back uh piggyback on george's uh cramps uh choice and i wanted to to choose something

01:31:25by this band because I love the 50s horror aesthetic. In any case, I ended up choosing two because it's too hard for me to choose, but one of them is Misfits and it's Walk Among Us. Oh, yeah. There's so much going on there. It's great. They're just the coolest looking bunch of dudes standing there. And then we've got the big walking UFO from like, you know. War of the Worlds or some shit. And then underneath that, there's like,

01:31:55some creature that I think they just made up. I don't know. Might have come from something. And then and but because it's so iconic, I also wanted to include in this. And it's a compilation, but I'm going to include it anyway. But the compilation that has the skeleton. That's compilation number two. It's called Misfits Compilation Two. And it's the it's from. I don't recall what movie that's from. I did know once once upon a time. I'll look it up. All of the Misfits artwork. I mean, come on.

01:32:25Earth AD is amazing. Legacy of Brutality is really cool. And even like the single stuff like Die, Die, My Darling. Come on. You can't go wrong with Misfits artwork. The skeleton is from a movie called The Crimson Ghost. Oh, yeah. I confess I've never seen and I think I should see it sometime. But in any case, there's this, the second compilation is that one that's sort of copper colored and then it's got the Crimson Ghost. Yeah. But I just, their whole presentation I always loved and the 50s horror stuff.

01:32:55Resonates with me.

01:32:57Yeah.

01:32:58Good choice.

01:33:01All right.

01:33:02So my next one is Judas Priest, Sad Wings of Destiny.

01:33:11This 1976 album features a painting titled Fallen Angel by Patrick Woodruff.

01:33:18A winged angel sitting amidst flames and skulls and appearing burdened by it all.

01:33:24It's an iconic image and seemed to match the music very well. It's a very metal cover and metal covers like this really didn't exist at that time. So this kind of ended up being a blueprint. And, you know, Jay, when you mentioned that Nazareth cover, like that was not a common look for record albums at that time. And I think like, you know, the more that albums like this came out and Nazareth,

01:33:53Nazareth and like it was like oh yeah that that's really kind of saying what we want to say and that's really the imagery that we want to project and and then you know that kind of got built upon in the years following that um to to create that that kind of metal iconic metal style of of of image but like priests were one of the early early founders of that and i feel like you know

01:34:23this was just a really cool image. And it was, I felt like, uh, just, I think it really kind of made them stand out, at least to me. And I always, I always just really loved this image and the, and the art on this, on this cover. You know, both with the artwork and, um, and then really the move to the leather outfits and stuff. Priest is really kind of responsible for the metal aesthetic moving forward. You know what I mean? Like they were the ones who,

01:34:53who kind of brought that in, you know, and up to and including, again, I say the leather thing. Nobody else was doing that at that time.

01:35:01No, no. And it fit, man. Like, it just, it seems obvious now, but like back then, it wasn't, you know, like nobody was doing that, but they really, they claimed it, and it just worked.

01:35:19Yeah. Agreed.

01:35:23What was, let's see, Sideways of Destiny, the only thing before that was Rockarola, is that right? No, no, Sin After Sin was the album. That's after that. That's a little metal-esque too, but not quite along the lines of what you're saying. Well, yeah, I mean, Sin After Sin kind of had a cool cover too. Yeah, but not like what you're talking about. Well, this, yeah, this was really kind of fantastical, you know, like just this image of this guy with these angel wings.

01:35:53and sitting in hell and it's just like, okay, yeah, this is, what's going on here? Like, I mean, it really may, it provokes thought, right? Like it, and that's any good, any good image will provoke thought, right? And, and that's, that's what this does. And, and it's like, okay, what is this music going to sound like when you look at that and you're like, okay, this better deliver, right? And thankfully it's better deliver the goods. It delivered the goods, right? Yes. So yeah.

01:36:22And it did.

01:36:24And so, you know, that's always great when the album, like, you know, we talked about some of these records that it's just like, oh, you fooled me.

01:36:37But this one, nah, it's like, yep, that's exactly what I expected.

01:36:42And thankfully, you totally delivered what was, you know, what the image was selling here.

01:36:48You know, Priest has so many good covers, but I'm inclined to point one out just because trivia pops into my head. You guys know this, I'm sure. But if you look at Point of Entry, you know, just to just look at it and kind of look away, it's just, you know, you saw what you saw. But it's so interesting that if you look closely that what's going on in that cover is that's dot matrix printer paper moving on distance, which is such an odd, unexplainable, perhaps hypnosis,

01:37:18move. I don't know.

01:37:20But that's just always been kind of interesting to me.

01:37:22But they have so many.

01:37:23Well, actually, Point of Entry had two different covers.

01:37:25Yeah, that's not even that's not the original cover.

01:37:27That's yeah.

01:37:28Yeah, that was like, I guess, the US cover, right?

01:37:30US cover.

01:37:31Yeah.

01:37:32Actually, North America, Brazil.

01:37:33Yeah.

01:37:34Primarily North America, Brazil, and then on and on.

01:37:36But yeah.

01:37:37No, and I'm familiar with the other one, which I think the remaster came out as that

01:37:41too.

01:37:42It's just like an airplane.

01:37:43I think it did.

01:37:44Yeah.

01:37:46Anyway.

01:37:47Something like that.

01:37:48Yeah. But man, they had so many good covers. British Steel, I personally think is a great cover. Yeah. And Killing the Machine did that for you, John. That's a great cover. And then they got into the cartoon stuff, which is just epic. I think Screaming for Vengeance is killer. Defenders of the Faith is the greatest ever. Here comes this fight. Love you, Jay. Yeah.

01:38:18We all have our favorites. Yeah. All right. So for my next one, the artist to this album cover or the illustrator or whatever you want to call him was way more of a hall. Well, it's funny. He's a hall of famer as well as this band's a hall of famer. So it's kind of interesting that you see that. But this guy was also known for doing tons of film posters, which included Shawshank Redemption,

01:38:48Blade Runner, E.T.

01:38:50and also did the poster art for Indiana Jones,

01:38:53Harry Potter and Star Wars film series.

01:38:56But he also did an album cover.

01:39:00He did in pencil, by the way,

01:39:03for a little band called Black Sabbath.

01:39:09And that is the album Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath,

01:39:13Which has got the evil demonic cover of a guy being strangled by a snake on a bed with a bunch of naked men and women hovering over his body with the number 666 on the headboard. And you've got like this skull because every album cover with a skull on it is already a plus one. You know, it's been powered up, you know, and these evil hands coming over and this dude's being choked to death.

01:39:43And then you flip it over

01:39:45And the guy's now in his deathbed

01:39:47And it looks like this godly figure behind him

01:39:50You can't see the head

01:39:51And his whole family's, you know, almost like praying on the bed as he's passing away

01:39:56Front cover, evil, yellow, orange, red

01:40:00Back cover, blue, kind of icy green

01:40:04Always loved it

01:40:04I used to stare just like, should I be looking at this?

01:40:07666?

01:40:09What?

01:40:10Then you flip over like, no, it's cool

01:40:12because on the backside it's, you know, oh, he's going to heaven, man. But on the front side, you're like, man, that dude partied and he went to hell for it. And I always thought this was the first heaven and hell concept, even if it wasn't heaven and hell. No, no, I couldn't agree more. Totally feel that. Yeah. And the duality of the two, it could be anything. It could be your vices versus your virtues, whatever you want to call it, anything. And I was just was mesmerized. It's my favorite Sabbath.

01:40:42I was just like at first I was like look at there's naked people

01:40:47right then when I got past I was like look at the demon yes you know well and see you know to me like

01:40:54what that says is like the back cover is like what we on earth will see like this guy's just laying in bed and

01:41:02yeah he was such a great guy he's a great guy oh grandpa don't go and then like on the front it's like

01:41:08this is what he's seeing.

01:41:11He's dealing with, they're trying to pull him away

01:41:13and stuff, and it's like, yeah.

01:41:15Everyone thinks he's going,

01:41:17but then St. Peter says, uh-uh.

01:41:20You're going down, my friend.

01:41:22But I agree with you, though.

01:41:24The other cool thing about it, though,

01:41:25is that that's an apex record for them

01:41:29in terms of production, writing, everything.

01:41:32Oh, yeah.

01:41:32It deserved a special cover, and it got it,

01:41:34which is so great.

01:41:37That's one of those perfect packages. Yeah. You can say a lot about Sabbath. I haven't done a lot of cool things, but everything fell together right in that. Yeah. Then the album covers are questionable for the next three albums. Yeah. And then they get their act together again. Well, the thing I like about Sabbath, though. Technical ecstasy is pretty cool. It is. It represents the time, yes. And I agree with you there. Yeah. But Sabotage, though, I don't.

01:42:07I agree. I don't think it worked out so good, but there's a suit in a movie. Yeah, the frumpy butts on the back aren't really. But there's a Stephen King movie, and it's the one with Kathy Bates. Misery. Misery, yeah. The other one. The one where she throws her husband down the well. Dolores Claiborne. Oh, that's not her. I might have it wrong. Maybe it is, but she was in Misery, but Dolores

01:42:37is a different one but I don't I didn't see it so I don't know maybe she's in that one well I mentioned it purely because Jennifer Jason Lee is in it she was the abused child and she comes back and as an adult and I think she I don't remember exactly what happens but she leaves or something and it's like I'm out of here and she is on the ferry that goes back to the mainland and she goes to look in the mirror and she sees the back of her head and it's legitimately scary like that you know in a world of scary movies that shouldn't be as scary as it is but

01:43:07that's pretty scary. So I bring it up because I see what Sabbath was going for there. It just didn't quite work because of the tight red pants. Yeah, the fact that he wore his wife's clothing probably didn't help. Now, musically notwithstanding, you know. Yeah, it's a great record. Love that record. But anyway, yeah. Oh, and that artist was Drew Struzan, I believe is how you say his name, who passed away last year, but has just

01:43:37a massive catalog. I believe he is in a hall of fame of artists or whatever you want to call it.

01:43:43Gotcha.

01:43:45But I got to ask, why was Sabotage not spelled S-A-B-B-O-T-A-G-E?

01:43:54I mean, come on.

01:43:56Yeah.

01:43:57Sabotage.

01:43:58Kind of a missed opportunity there, I think.

01:44:01Yeah.

01:44:02They got Sabbath, bloody Sabbath.

01:44:03They're like S-A-B-B all over this thing.

01:44:06Yeah.

01:44:07Yeah. Sabotage, not so much. Every time I hear that title, I don't know if I should be singing Symptom of the Universe or I should be jumping over my Ford. Sabotage! My muscle car with my wig and my mustache, you know? Beastie Boys. I actually like that album a lot. Oh, I love Beastie Boys. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. You know, he's a loose cannon, that guy, you know? That's really funny when they do that.

01:44:37Speaking of wife's clothing, that's also somebody's wife's clothing. I don't know if you ever watch that documentary about them. It's really good. Yeah, yeah. Well, that was the whole point. Yeah, that's what I was saying. That's where you were coming from? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, he actually stole those outfits from his wife and put them on for that album. Oh, no, no, but I was saying the Beastie Boys. Oh, they did too. Those detective movie videos, the one John's talking about. Yeah.

01:45:07some 70s, they made a fair amount of money, went out to Los Angeles, lived in this old producer's house. He wasn't there. And his wife had a closet full of 70s clothing. And that is what influenced them to kind of the whole thing they did there. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I forgot about that. Documentary is totally worth your time. Oh, it's really good. And their book is really good. You know, he's a real lieutenant. Good stuff. Yeah.

01:45:38I think it's George, maybe? Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. Well, I figure I better get this one out of the way before somebody else does, because I am now down to no extra items on my list. Uh-oh. Thanks to Ken Kelly taking out two of mine and TR hitting the Iron Maiden hard. So this,

01:46:09is not an album that I particularly know very well, but I sure do love the album cover.

01:46:15This is Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery featuring the artwork of the iconic H.R. Giger.

01:46:24I knew you would bring it up and that's why I didn't put it on my list.

01:46:27I had it in my 20 albums I selected and I was like, I know George is going to bring this up.

01:46:33And why do you bring it up?

01:46:35What's the connection to what other band? Celtic Frost. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are those the only two covers that he had? Probably. No, he also did the Danzig Dirty Black Summer, didn't he? Yeah. Or not Dirty Black Summer, but Danzig 3, The Gods Kill. Sorry. Gotcha. But the Emerson, like, and Palmer one is the iconic one, though. That's the iconic one.

01:47:05Yeah. And I believe that opened, that's a little, not a gateful, but a, doesn't the front. Oh yeah. It had a whole, yeah, yeah. It opened up like, yeah, that's right. Cause the, the front two things opened up. Yeah. You're exactly right. Jay. It was like, you know the front cover, like you flipped those two sides out. Yeah. I don't know either because it was like, it was unlike any other real other album at that time. Which was kind of cool because it was like, you know,

01:47:36Somebody spent some time figuring out how is somebody going to open this and look at this.

01:47:40And, you know, yeah.

01:47:43So it's kind of a bizarre cover because, well, first of all, Giger.

01:47:49But it's like this skull of what appears to be a woman that's like in this metallic vice.

01:47:58And there's like stuff like going through the eye sockets and through the skull and coming up from the bottom.

01:48:04But then there's this reverse x-ray thing going on that shows... Oh, look at those luscious lips. It's like an x-ray thing that puts the flesh back on the skull. And so you just see the mouth and the neck, and there's skin and lips, but the rest of the skull is skull. There's no eyes in the eye socket. You can see the metal going through there.

01:48:34Pushing Up Through Into The Neck says ELP. This is what they're going to do to you. There's so many things like this that kind of get associated with rock bands and metal and stuff. And like I'm thinking of like Cthulhu and things, these kinds of things. And so you can kind of cheapen Geiger a little bit accidentally. And the truth is he had such a strange and interesting vision, man. I mean, to really just strip all of this, the popular stuff that's attached to him and just look at how he saw things.

01:49:03is so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's so cool that, you know, he was. Was it alien Ridley Scott is animated alien? Ridley Scott. Yeah. Which brings up a strange trivia question. But first off that Ridley Scott had the vision to go to that, you know, to him. So here's here's the here's the strange trivia question. What heavy metal album did Ridley Scott do the cover art for? And you never you might you probably won't get it if you've never heard me say it.

01:49:33What? When I tell you. I feel like you have told me this and I feel like I am old and I have forgotten. Saxon's Power and the Glory. For some reason Ridley Scott did the cover art for that. What? That's the album he did. Isn't that bizarre? So bizarre. I have no support. I mean that's a fact. You can look it up. I have no information as to why that came. Was he a graphic artist at one time or why and why in particular he did that record? I don't know. I don't know.

01:50:04I think he maybe did a little acid and just was like

01:50:08it's so strange

01:50:12wow that is wild

01:50:14isn't that bizarre

01:50:16my next one is the Roger Dean

01:50:18I mentioned I really

01:50:20did you know

01:50:22we can have the in-depth conversation

01:50:24sometime if you guys want to because I did go through

01:50:26a huge yes phase

01:50:28in my 20s and 30s and

01:50:30really fell in love

01:50:32with Yes. And it's hard for me to believe. When I mentioned the T-Rex, I was going to say this came out in 1971. And no, it's not Led Zeppelin for it. Which has an interesting cover, but whatever. But this came out in 1971. And I still can't believe this came out in 1971. Fragile. It's probably my favorite Yes record. In all honesty, I know it's not the Progues. It's so good. And I love the cover. I just love the cover to death. There wasn't anything like that at that time that I can think of.

01:51:03Well, that was his first one with the S, so. Correct. Yeah. And anyway, and I also think that cover suits that record very, very well. It's funny, too, because when we started talking about this and I was trying to decide I was going to do a Roger Dean and I put Fragile on for the first time in probably a couple of years and I was like, God, that's such a good record. Yeah. It's actually, I know George is not a John Anderson fan. Fair enough.

01:51:31But there's a little bit of a metal approach like on Heart of the Sunrise. Well, that's the one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's balls to the wall. I was watching something the other day and in the weirdest place, Heart of the Sunrise was part of it. What was it? Might have been the bear. I was watching a series. Here comes Heart of the Sunrise. And I was like, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Where'd that come from? I'll have to try to think of where it was. You know, the funny thing about that, like.

01:52:02John, you said it, like that was Roger Dean's first, you know, foray with Yes. And it's, to me, it kind of looks a little amateurish. It's different than all the other stuff. Yeah. And it's just figuring it out. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of like he's just starting to get the idea. Yeah. And it's good, but it's not like as good, like, you know, he totally refined his technique and how he did that stuff.

01:52:30And if you have the Fragile album, because there was like an insert that came with that album, and that also had some art that was kind of, you know, it was Roger Dean, but it wasn't like Roger Dean like yet, right? Like it was kind of like these little weird creatures and strange things that like he was doing. But he hadn't come into his own yet. And I kind of feel like, while it's cool and everything,

01:53:01I probably wouldn't pick that out of like... Well, I can elaborate on that a little bit. And it's because... I'm going to have a little trouble with it, but I'll do my best. And it's just that there was something about the curves of Roger Dean, the rounded edges, that took it a little bit past science fiction to me and put it in a weird hippie row. There was something about it that didn't...

01:53:30I loved it, but it wasn't exactly right for my aesthetic. And I think it's that, what I just said. It's the rough equivalent of how John Anderson used to dress off stage. The equivalent of his profound lyrics that he wrote. You know, Jay, you brought up a good point, not to digress too far, but his artwork kind of merges science fiction, this kind of hippie realm and fantasy all together.

01:53:59and you really can't tell which one's the dominant in that. Yeah. And that's fine. It's not an aesthetic I have a problem with at all. It's just, I don't know how to describe it. There's something about it and it might be like some kind of weird prejudice I have that was probably built up on me by like metal album covers. You know what I mean? Like literally a little edgier, a little sharper, a little something more I can grab onto than just a dreamscape, unpopulated dreamscape, by the way.

01:54:30Which was always interesting to me. Is that the first time? I think it's the first time that it carries forward. We see that flying apparatus or whatever that's shown up on albums throughout or like the it turns into like a little not a logo, but don't they have that throughout some of their albums in places? I think it's on that Elias of Sunhello record that I was telling that I I feel like that's like a calling card for him a little bit. Yeah, you know, but but it's been utilized that in other

01:54:59He flips it, doesn't he? He puts it more on a... He turns the image around a little bit. Yeah. No, it's cool. You knew Roger Dean was going to come up. He had a good run there with Yes. Did he do other bands? Oh, yeah. I think Uriah Heep, he did some of their stuff. There were a few different acts that he did. Even if he didn't do the album, sometimes he did the

01:55:31So he'd do like some of the graphic design

01:55:34sometimes as well. He reminds me of, and it's funny

01:55:38because you were talking about this kind of like the insert of fragile words

01:55:41this sort of like developmental stuff going on there.

01:55:44And I confess I've never seen this, but I guess I probably should. But there was some artist

01:55:48who had a sort of obsessive take on Dune back in the

01:55:5270s or something. And he went,

01:55:55and he was going to make a film, the film.

01:55:57I think it was a director and he went through this excessive Roger Dean-esque development of the whole thing and it was never made there's a documentary about it and I mean to watch it but I mentioned it because to me that's kind of like what Roger if somebody had got a hold of Roger Dean like that there probably would have been a whole universe that we're that we'd be talking about now of films you know kind of thing nice did he actually design this set stuff or did they just like go let's grab some stuff off the album and have somebody put it no no he

01:56:27He designed it. He was involved. Yeah, definitely. Like, certainly, like, maybe not on that, not on the Fragile tour, but, like, later on, like, I think, like, on Relayer and, like, in that period, they actually, maybe mid-70s, I think, sometime in there, you know, they had these kind of pod things and other stuff that was, like, yeah, he created that. I actually have a couple of books that

01:56:57all of that.

01:57:00I think it's called Magnetic Storm.

01:57:04Those books that he did where it's like all his artwork.

01:57:08Gotcha.

01:57:08And to include the stage sets that he did for Yes in addition to the album covers and other stuff that he did.

01:57:21So I think there was like two Magnetic Storm books that he put out that had a lot of his art. And I think I've held them in my hands. I think I, because that was probably when I first became familiar with the set stuff. The stage stuff. Yeah, I've got both of those books upstairs somewhere, but. Okay, I guess I'm up. And.

01:57:51My next one is done by an artist who only painted two album covers in his painting career. And the cover artist is a guy named Matt Bazemore. And he did the album cover for Queensryche, The Warning. He also did The Warning. I swear to God I was going to do that. Sorry. No, I'm glad you did it because I didn't.

01:58:21Heirapparent called Graceful Inheritance.

01:58:24But the warning image is just so cool.

01:58:28A hand is flipping like a tarot-like card that has a picture of a ghostly creature with green light blasting out of its eyes, even coming off of the card.

01:58:39All of this is against a background of the earth and space, kind of implying someone or something that is calling the shots from above.

01:58:47I always felt like this was such a cool image for this album and the music again backed up the image I felt like the warning was such a good album by Queensryche and and the art you know it all came together and for me that was just a really awesome album cover and album really.

01:59:17For some reason, for the next year, I used as a punchline, that road leads to madness. But it would be, the punchline would be something like somebody would say, I'm going to ask her out and I'd be like, dude, that road leads to madness. It's just like, yeah, I need to use that more. It's awesome. I love it. All right. So I'm not sure how much, how many we're all going to do, but I want to get this one in, in case we start getting close.

01:59:49I will start this out and see if anyone gets this. Tiara, I would think you would be the person who would get it first. But when you go see this band live, it's always referred to. Are you familiar with our Red album? No. No Takers. Okay. That's not King Crimson then? No. Wait. Are you familiar with our Red album? Oh wait, I got it.

02:00:17The guys that were in a bus crash? Yeah, Baroness. No. Okay. They did have a red album. I know. And they had pretty cool album art by John Baisley. The guy in the band. The guy in the band. Right. No. So this red album is artwork from somebody called Travis Smith. Do we have a match? Yeah. Yeah. This is, I've talked about this.

02:00:47to death. I'm bringing it up again. We should have known. Yeah. The life. The red album, which is their only album that has these colors. And it's their album that came out in 1999. I think it's the first time they actually worked with Travis Smith. And now they've had this longstanding relationship with him for years. Is he still doing this? I believe so. Or he's doing stuff with them still. Like, did he do like, you know, Pale Communion?

02:01:17And all of those? What's the one with the house? Damn it. Incata of Ineanum? Is that it? Incata of Ineanum? I'd have to look, but I swear he's been involved with them ever since Still Life. Sweet. But he's been involved with a bazillion bands, and he's a modern artist, and I don't think he actually draws. I think he's all digital, isn't he? Based on

02:01:47with Temple of Void.

02:01:51Temple of Void.

02:01:52I think he's who he did their recent album, The Crawl, which is, that cover is amazing.

02:01:58I love it.

02:01:59Yeah.

02:02:00Any albums, quite good too.

02:02:04But I've always, I mean, this is my favorite album.

02:02:06I go on and on about this, but I'm not choosing the original.

02:02:11I'm choosing the remastered 2008 version, which is the one that's more red and less black border on it. And it's the image of Melinda, one of the main characters of the concept, weeping in front of a lake with a cross in the back. It's a concept album. You could go listen to Mike try to describe it, which is really funny because if you ever listen to him talk and then you read the text of how he tries to describe, you're like, that's exactly how I picture him describing this album.

02:02:42But yeah, went with that one. And that also is in the, albeit it's a blurb, it's in the Injustice for Art stories of heavy metal covers. It's in the first one. And in the last one, which is the definitive. So George, I want to say yes, he was involved with the Sorceress album. So I'd have to check further. I think he was. I don't know if he did The Last Moment of Testament, though.

02:03:11I'll check it while you guys are going on.

02:03:16Sure.

02:03:19That brings it back to me now, doesn't it?

02:03:22Mm-hmm.

02:03:23All right.

02:03:25This next one is something that was created by Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick.

02:03:34Do you think maybe he did an Irish band?

02:03:38Perhaps he did.

02:03:39That would be Thin Lizzy and their album Jailbreak. Ah. Nice, dude. Yeah, this is such a, I mean, honestly, kind of weird album cover, but also cool and extremely iconic. There's like some weird, like, I think this guy might have escaped from surfing with the alien somehow. Yeah.

02:04:09of the cover is silver and black or gray and black. And there's this dude who clearly has things plugged into his head and he's like got hands that are like. And there's a lot more wires and like electronic stuff going on. And there's this like video screen in front of him. And I think Thin Lizzie are escaping from some sort of explosion. They're like, we have to get to kiss destroyer.

02:04:39That's kind of what it looks like, isn't it? Yeah. Because it's a very comic book within this screen here. Yeah. Particularly just based, the colors alone, but definitely the artwork as well. And it doesn't remotely, to me, tell you what you're going to hear on this album. But it's still a cool, very cool cover. Yeah. So that's what I did.

02:05:09are my kind of honorable mentions, and they're mostly metal because, like I said, I avoided that for whatever reason. But it's a band that I love. But they fill in a lot of categories, and one of them is they're an I Lied to You band, so I'll get to that part. But I think they've had a lot of interesting covers. This one, aesthetically, to me, calls to mind the same color palette as Fair Warning, which I'm kind of glad we talked about that.

02:05:39And I think Fair Warning is actually probably my favorite Van Halen cover. To the point where I'd like to know where that came from. I don't know. Well, here's a spoiler alert. It's my next one. But if you like, I can get into it right now. I don't know. I'm very interested to hear the history of that. Well, let me tell you about it. It's a work titled The Maze by William Kuraleck. And if you see the original piece of art, the Van Halen cover album,

02:06:09The album cover for Van Halen actually takes portions of this piece of work and kind of enlarges them. So the actual piece of the art that that came from, it shows this guy's skull cut away and all these compartments within his skull with all these disturbing scenes in it.

02:06:38And I think when Van Halen saw that, they thought, wow, that's really cool. But we want to, instead of just showing you the whole picture of the art, they zoomed in on some of these compartments because those were, you know, there's a lot more detail that you can see. It's hard to see all that detail in the whole piece of art. So that's why they zoomed in on a few of these compartments. But this guy apparently had a really, really awful troubled childhood.

02:07:08And he eventually got treatment. And while he was receiving treatment, they saw that, you know, he was artistic and he got a lot of it out in his art. And that's when he did this piece of art called The Maze. Well, I have a question then. First of all, is the blow-up an actual section from the picture? Or did they cut pieces and move them? Is it all, that's the way?

02:07:38Well, I'd have to look at it closely, but I believe that it's like a blown-up section of the actual piece of art. Constructed as it was. And I'd also be curious to know if the word fair warning actually... No, that had nothing to do with that piece of art. Okay. Well, now look at the color palette of that, if you happen to be looking at that cover. And, John, you can picture it in your head if you're not looking at it, but what Jethro Tull,

02:08:08has that color palette.

02:08:11And a similar

02:08:14vibe, quite frankly.

02:08:17It would be...

02:08:18Okay, how about this?

02:08:20You're just some jerk on the street

02:08:22and I say name of Jethro Toll album.

02:08:24Aqualung.

02:08:27I was thinking hard.

02:08:28It can't be Aqualung.

02:08:29It's got to be something else

02:08:30with that color palette.

02:08:32But they're similar

02:08:34and I also...

02:08:35It's Origin, I've never looked it up, so I'm really glad you just shared that about Fair Warning, because Aqualung must exist as some other piece of artwork somewhere else, I don't know. But I think it's a very appropriate cover for the record, and I love it. And then the You Lied to Me version of this is, you will of course recall that they won over Metallica for Best Metal Album. And it was probably their most metal

02:09:05which is probably why the academy or whoever they are. Well, it's probably one of their heaviest albums. I mean, Crest of a Knave was a... Oh, it was Crest of a... I thought it was... No, it was Crest of a Knave. No, they won for Crest of a Knave. Yeah. My bad. 1987. But

02:09:35And that metal kid, but thankfully I went on to have a great love for Jethro Tull, but that record does not sound like that cover. No. What do you think the expression was when they're like, yes, here we go. What the hell is this crap? It sucks. I was skipping around on the television recently and I came by the Anchorman movie.

02:10:05And you may remember he plays jazz flute in that. And I just love that at the, so he's impressing her on their date. He's popping up in all these weird places. But he ends that whole thing with, hey, and then he just, it's so good. I forgot about that part. I need to go back and watch that movie just for the planet of the Apes scene.

02:10:36Wow. Very good.

02:10:41So are you going to do yours?

02:10:43Are you done now?

02:10:44You want to keep on with it?

02:10:46Yeah.

02:10:46I mean, I'll just add a few more points.

02:10:48Fair warning cover.

02:10:52I felt like the art was a good pick for the grittier sound that fair warning had.

02:10:58I mean, it was it couldn't have matched what was on fair warning more.

02:11:03It was very disturbing scenes and just kind of matched this dark album that was talking about mean streets and getting your head crushed in and all that kind of stuff. So it really seemed to match. And John, as you mentioned, this cover was the first that did not feature pictures of the band or the VH logo prominently. So this was kind of their first foray into

02:11:33art versus a picture of the band or the logo of Van Halen itself.

02:11:40I will kind of finish up with William Kuralec, who eventually recovered and married and had a family and continued to create art.

02:11:51And one of his later pictures was a lot more kind of idyllic than the scenes in the art piece called The Maze that was used for Van Halen's Fair Warning cover. That's all I have to say about that. Still my favorite Van Halen album. I was halfway out of my mouth, John. It really is. It's just dirty. It's like it all came together. It's the best. Yeah. The solos are ridiculous.

02:12:23And they should have really taken a break for like three years after that.

02:12:27Yeah.

02:12:28Yeah.

02:12:28I do.

02:12:28I,

02:12:29I tell you,

02:12:30I like diaper down.

02:12:30I think it was the worst followup in the world,

02:12:32but where have all the good times gone?

02:12:34I mean,

02:12:34come on.

02:12:36Yeah.

02:12:36That's the problem with that album is all the covers on it.

02:12:38Yeah.

02:12:39Half of it's great.

02:12:40And half you're like,

02:12:42yeah,

02:12:42well,

02:12:43well,

02:12:43let's talk about it for a second.

02:12:44Cause I'd love to.

02:12:45And also,

02:12:46but I just,

02:12:47I mean,

02:12:48the full bug is so cool.

02:12:49Oh,

02:12:49that's true.

02:12:50Little Guitars is like one of my favorite Van Halen songs. All the original tracks on that album are awesome. I think the Dancing in the Streets cover is really cool, frankly. Yeah. Pretty Woman. Where have all the good times gone? What are the other non-covers on there? Is that it? No, Hang Em High. Yeah, Hang Em High, which was like... Oh, that's another riff, too. Yeah. Which, it's one of the songs pre...

02:13:20back. I think that's pre-Jim Simmons, I think. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Cathedral, Secrets. So I heard recently, and I didn't... Secrets was a great tune. I just heard... Where the hell did I see this? That... And I don't even know if this is true, but as I understood it, or saw recently, as mentioned, that Pretty Woman came out first. It was a hit, and the label rushed them to put it out.

02:13:50Were we talking about that? Is that why I know that? Yeah, I think so. Well, I don't know. But like, yeah, they kind of, yeah, the label was like, hey, you haven't done anything in a long time and we need to get Van Halen out there. It was literally one year. Yeah, right. Which in those days was a long time. It was a hit and then they wanted an album. Yeah, they forced it back in. Yeah. And then that was the days of, you know, MTV. Yeah. So they recorded the video, which was very different and got banned later.

02:14:20And that's when they put Intruder in the front of it because they needed more music to fill in for the video, which that was Intruder is just that sounds like that could have gone on fair warning because that's just dark and evil. Like Intruder is just freaking out. Okay. I'll I'll I have to look this up, but he was a Richie Blackmore fan. And there is a there is a deep purple song that is that.

02:14:50It is that exact sequence of notes. I'll find it and I'll tell you what it is and I'm gonna make you guys listen to it sometime. Because when I heard it, I was like, whoa, anybody stole that? Well, he would have admitted if he did too. That's entirely, yeah. Yeah. He may have been a bad drunk, but he would have admitted if he was borrowing from someone. He always did. All right. So my turn. I gotta go with this one because this is probably the most controversial.

02:15:20album cover any of us are going to mention. So this is actually the second version of this cover because the first cover was banned. It was so bad. So the original cover from this band they wanted to release featured a greased naked woman on all fours wearing a dog collar and a leash while a man held the leash and pushed a black glove in her face to sniff. The album was called

02:15:51Smell the Glove.

02:15:54I can't believe I didn't think of this.

02:15:57I did.

02:15:58And the band is Spinal Tap.

02:16:02Yes.

02:16:03Now, what ended up happening, because Olimar Records refused to release the record,

02:16:08deeming it highly offensive and sexist, especially in 1982.

02:16:12And Walmart said that they would not put it in their stores.

02:16:15Sears and Kmart.

02:16:17Sears and Kmart threatened to boycott.

02:16:21So the band was forced to compromise and release the album with a sleek all-black cover. The band attempted to defend this dismal cover for artistic choice. Bassist Derek Smalls claimed it looked like death. While Nigel Tufnell famously analyzed the color intensity, it's like, he quotes, it's like, how much more black

02:16:49could this be? And the answer is none. None more black. You don't wear this on your arm. You don't wear it. Put it on your turntable. Yeah. So I really feel like we needed to, because everyone talks about Metallica's black album long before Metallica's black album. Who did that first? Yes. Spinal Tap did. They didn't have a little snake on there. That is brilliant, dude. Like, I cannot believe I did not think of that.

02:17:19I can't either, honestly. And the funny thing is, the greatest line from that whole scene. What's wrong with being sexy? This is 1982. This is the 80s, baby. That's sexist. I don't find this sexist. I find it quite sexy. It's like, what's wrong with being sexy? What's wrong with being sexist? Sexist. Oh, yeah. See, he's the victim. Yeah. They're all knocking on him. Yeah. So, and do you,

02:17:49Have you seen Duke fame's latest album? And do you guys know who the record executive who was at that event, his name? Do you remember his name? Sir Eaton Hogg. Sir Dennis Eaton Hogg. I think I've come to this answer multiple times and I've been like, oh yeah, totally is. And then I forget. Is that Roger or is that...

02:18:19the band that they're going to play. Oh, Johnny Fever is his manager. He's like, oh yeah, he would play. And I think it's David Coverdale. No, no, it wasn't. I don't remember who the actor was, but it was not David Coverdale. But was he an artist, an actual singer? I don't think so, but they had a guy. So there was an unrelated kind of, well, there were a lot of kind of abandoned plot things.

02:18:48They shot four hours for that film. Okay. And they whittled it down to an hour and a half, which is extraordinary, really. And one of the plot lines was that they got somebody to replace Nigel, who ended up actually being way better. The guy could sing and play guitar. He was incredible. And basically, he kind of outshined the whole band. And they were like, well, we got to get rid of this guy because he's making us all look bad.

02:19:18a real artist, but I don't remember who he was. But yeah, that was one of the abandoned kind of plot lines that they didn't put in the film. But if you've watched the four-hour version like me... Yeah, I watched it. Oh, I didn't even know it was out there. Four-hour version, I must see this. Yeah, it's kind of hard to watch, though. And it's not nearly in the same quality as the rest of the film.

02:19:48film because they only made

02:19:51the like they took

02:19:53whatever they used for the film they

02:19:54made that really clean but the

02:19:56other stuff was just you know you

02:19:58really only want to see the hot tub

02:20:00scene that's hot tub scenes great

02:20:02and you want to see the Bruno the

02:20:03drunk Bruno Kirby scene

02:20:06singing naked yeah it's just that's

02:20:10and those sites believe those

02:20:11outtakes are are on you know some

02:20:14of the DVDs that you can actually

02:20:17Yeah, right. Whatever version. And so that stuff's readily available. And those are the best scenes, John. You're right. They picked kind of the best scenes. I mean, when he walks in naked with just his underwear on, singing to the chicken bun, and literally the whole room bursts out laughing, and it was real. Yeah, you could tell that they did not expect that. Yeah. It's quite a sexual thing with the boys.

02:20:46We got armadillos in our trousers. It's like, oh my god, where is this going? Anyway, I wanted to make sure I got that ink. That's brilliant. I really, I'm gutted that I didn't come up with that. I'm glad Jay dropped the Dr. Johnny Fever name drop some. Well, and I always mention this, but I'm still, it's my favorite joke, so I gotta tell. It's when Nigel leaves, and they're down to bare bones, and so they're forced to do jazz audits.

02:21:17We hope you like our new direction. Well, but

02:21:21my favorite part of that is that

02:21:27the singer

02:21:29David St. Hubbins

02:21:32and he says, and I always

02:21:34to this day, I think he's shifting blame more than he's

02:21:37trying to be nice. And he says, this

02:21:41was written by Derek Smalls

02:21:43Or this features Derek Smalls. He wrote this. He wrote this, yeah. I hope you like our new direction. But he says that they pan back to the, like, 14 people in the crowd. There's one guy like this. Yeah, one guy. Thumbs down, baby. I was watching The Bear the other day. I've mentioned this very good series that I highly recommend if you haven't watched it. And Rob Reiner popped up in it. It was just heartbreaking to see him. It could have been. That's the show's filmed the last couple years. It's just heartbreaking.

02:22:13that Rob Reiner lost him the way he did it.

02:22:16Yeah, it really was.

02:22:17But it's cool that the show stars Bruce Springsteen.

02:22:23The show stars Bruce Springsteen.

02:22:25Yeah, the bear.

02:22:26The main character is Bruce Springsteen.

02:22:28Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:22:30Wait, I thought it was the Springsteen thing.

02:22:33I thought it was Willy Wonka.

02:22:35Did you?

02:22:36He does look like him.

02:22:38Did you watch the Springsteen thing?

02:22:40I did.

02:22:40It was good.

02:22:42I thought it was pretty good, too.

02:22:44I have a list of honorable mentions or are we still doing some things? I've got one more but George still has his. I haven't done mine yet and then I have one more. Yeah I mean I have one more too. Cool. Right so. I'll come up with one more while you guys are talking. Okay. So this is this is an interesting one and I actually have this hanging the the vinyl for this hanging in the next room here. This was designed by

02:23:13by Peter Coriston with illustrations by Hubert Kretschmar. But you may know it as the Rolling Stones' Some Girls. You gotta turn off the mute, John. Oh, I'm not mute. Well, it sounded like you were saying something, but you didn't. I didn't yell out because it's getting late here at the house. So I just like, yes! Some Girls.

02:23:43This is album cover slash toy slash I don't know what to call it. It looks like some sort of like magazine advertisement. Almost like a Sears catalog. Like Sears catalog in the what 70s. And it's like an it's like I said it's an advertisement and it has a lot of song titles and the

02:24:13album title and there's a lot of faces on this thing and it includes the band members among a number of female models and you can move the stuff around so that the faces behind it there's like four levels of of images here and you can like move the stuff so the faces line up with different holes and uh it's just a bizarre and cool album cover

02:24:42Yeah, it's a cool album, too. And yeah, it's got some music on there, too. Shatter. Beast of Burden. It's respectable. Yeah, it's not bad. It's respectable. So. All right, since this is a last-minute poll, and it is from the heavy metal realm, but really more of the punk rock realm, really more of the loud rock realm, more of the loud amplifier rockabilly realm. So there's guitars involved, you're saying? Yes.

02:25:10You just quoted like about 15 different genres there. But you know what? You're going to understand why. Motorheads, Orgasmatron. Yeah! They, uh, I, you know, and I really, to me, this is a record that sounds like it's cover, and Animal Morehead had already made a bunch of records that sounded like Motorhead, but in particular, there's a song in this record called Riding with a Driver, and it's kind of a Casey Jones cocaine train thing, and it's so good. I like cocaine.

02:25:41I woke up with a clown's hands in my pants this morning. That's what I did. No, but to me it sounds like this song, Riding with the Driver, I can picture this guy driving that train on the front of that record. I just love it. And I kind of got to think about trains anyway. And that's also just a great cover. And Motorhead has a lot of good covers. That might be peak Motorhead.

02:26:10Fair. All right. So my last one before a couple of honorable mentions I have here is the Scorpions blackout. Right on. Art by Gottfried Helmwein. The cover is actually a self-portrait of the artist, but Rudolf Schenker later dressed up like this in the video for No One Like You. I remember seeing this cover and just thinking it was so cool. It's hard to say exactly what this is.

02:26:40is since it looks like somebody who's being experimented on bandaged up with forks over his eyes and he's screaming so loud that the glass is breaking and of course on the track blackout klaus screams at the end of at the end of the song and you hear the sounds of breaking glass so it all ties in uh helm helm vine works in all kinds of media for photography watercolor drawings and has also worked with uh ramstein on the zenzuxt cover

02:27:10So if you've seen that, that was another part of his work. Nope. Yeah. George, I don't believe you. Yeah, let me just let me just do has not seen it. Yeah. Do I think blackout is one of the great covers? Oh, absolutely. I love it to death and I love that record. And it's more legal than some of them. That's true. Yeah. You want to talk about band covers? I think that.

02:27:40The Scorpions probably have more band covers. We're not saying band B-A-N-D. Yeah, right. B-A-N-N-E-D. All those letters are in the word. There's a couple extra letters. You know, at the time, too, that was kind of cutting edge heavy, you know, like really to me. Well, yeah, it was like a disturbing image. Like a guy's got forks in his eyes. Like, you know, back then that was like, what in the heck? What is this? You know, it just looks so cool. Like, you know, and the fact that he's like shouting so loud,

02:28:10that the glass is blasting out in front of you. It's just so cool. Maybe he's shouting because the glass is blasting. Well, maybe. I love the shattering glass in the song, just like you mentioned. And I did not know that this was just coincidentally sort of looked like Rudolf Schenker. So that's cool. I mean, I knew it did, but I didn't know who it really was. Well, yeah, it was the artist. And actually, he had done that before the band, you know, picked it as their album cover. Like they saw it and said, oh, yeah, we want this.

02:28:39But they also must have been like, dude, it's Rudolph. Yeah, exactly. I'm sure they were like, oh, man, dude, this looks like you. Yeah, it's great. A great cover, great album, great package. That was another one that I had to draw. And I spent like, I don't know, four or five hours drawing that. And I just I remember like it was like 11 o'clock or something by the time I finished. And I was so excited that I completed this drawing. And it like turned out really well that I wanted to show my

02:29:09my parents, because they were the only ones in the house. And they looked at it like, uh. And so I was just like, yeah, it's this record, see? And I just did this. And they're like, oh, yeah, well, I don't know about the subject matter, but that's really good. Yeah. You know, I don't know if you've ever seen this. I'm just going to pass it along to you. It's in the chat when you get a chance to look at it. But it's this knuckle bones thing. And I don't have any of this stuff anymore, but I had a bunch of this stuff.

02:29:38Well, and I had the Diary of a Madman one. It's like a 3D version of the album cover. And they did a blackout one. It's pretty cool. Oh, wow. Yeah. They're neat. It's the size of a record, and they're pretty heavy. They're like ceramic. And the Diary of a Madman one was really cool. Like Ozzy's coming out of it and stuff. So what is this? It's literally just something you've, you know. Is it really like a 3D thing, or is it like sticking out and all that? I owned two of them, and I no longer have them.

02:30:08"Wistful Fates", "Don't Break the Oath", and I had Ozzy Osbourne, "Die Ever Man Man". And just because I do know how they work, like most of them they're like, first of all there's a big piece that is just 3D coming out and then there's usually some extras like the magnetic horns on the "Don't Break the Oath", you put them on. And Ozzy was the same way, he had to put his arm on and stuff but once it was together it was a 3D picture of them. Isn't that cool? That's wild dude, I just, yeah this is amazing. You might look around at their website because they do, they have a whole series of those 3D vinyls they're called.

02:30:38And like

02:30:40you'll see

02:30:41I'm just looking at it here

02:30:42They got Diary of a Man-Man

02:30:44They got

02:30:45some Misfit stuff

02:30:46There's a Megadeth one

02:30:48They got Hemispheres

02:30:49They did Hemispheres

02:30:50Yeah

02:30:50The naked dude from Rush

02:30:52Ooh bonded by blood

02:30:53I don't know

02:30:53I don't know if I need

02:30:54like a 3D thing of that

02:30:56Yeah

02:30:58Leprosy

02:31:00But it's

02:31:00But it's worth looking at

02:31:01Cause they're cool

02:31:02They've also got like

02:31:03Peace of Mind

02:31:04They did

02:31:05They got Blackout there

02:31:06The first Zeppelin record

02:31:07or the first Sabbath record they did.

02:31:09Oh, that Earth AD looks pretty awesome.

02:31:12What's that?

02:31:14Which one?

02:31:14The Candlemas one's awesome.

02:31:17Yeah, exactly.

02:31:18I mean, it's pretty cool stuff.

02:31:20Earth AD.

02:31:20It's pretty cool stuff, but in particular, like the Blackout one there is the actual album cover, and he's popping out of it.

02:31:30Isn't that cool?

02:31:31That's cool.

02:31:31Yeah, that is cool, dude.

02:31:33Thank you for sending that.

02:31:34I mean, I'm not going to drop 250 bucks on it.

02:31:37Exactly.

02:31:37But it is pretty cool

02:31:39Yeah, but it's a neat idea

02:31:41Yeah

02:31:45Where are we at?

02:31:47John's up

02:31:48Alright, so I'll make this quick

02:31:49This band and this artist has already been mentioned

02:31:53But this is tied for my first favorite album cover

02:31:59And that is Iron Maiden Killers

02:32:02Oh yeah

02:32:03I just love how Eddie went from being like a junkie on the streets to now an evil supernatural being. You know, in the first album, he's like, I need a job. The second album, he's like, I'm taking your life. And I'll take yours too. Yeah. Right. Fire Musk is going to run you through. Not yet. Not yet. Maybe in a couple albums. Well, that's when they finally realize he's nuts. They take his brain. But on this one, you've got the blood-soaked axe in his hand. You've got the hands gripping his shirt for

02:32:33He just looks evil

02:32:35but he's also smarking at the same time

02:32:38just love it

02:32:39I mean

02:32:40this and Made in Japan are my two favorites

02:32:43but we'll go with this one

02:32:45everyone knows Derek Riggs

02:32:47if you're a metal fan

02:32:49and this is another one of those

02:32:50Maiden covers that's

02:32:52if you see it you know exactly who it is

02:32:55I mean you know that any Eddie cover

02:32:56but this to me is the one I always stood out the most

02:32:59because it's the first one where he's evil

02:33:01like I said on the first album cover

02:33:03Yeah, he's just kind of standing there, right? He's just kind of, yeah, like I got kicked out of my house because I'm a junkie. You know, so. So, uh, well, no, I'll save it. After we do the last ones. Yeah. I only have one more now. It's my normal mention, so. All right. Well, my last one is not metal, not even hard rock. This is 80s pop, baby.

02:33:34And I'm going to see if John recognizes it by, and maybe other people, by the artist's name. Illustrator Patrick Nagel. Nothing? Nothing? Nothing? This would be Duran Duran's Rio, baby. Oh. Yep. Because, I mean, what if not this album cover? Okay, I mean, other than Michael Jackson's Thriller, maybe Cyndi Lauper's, She's So In Yourself,

02:34:03and a million other albums define 80s pop rock than this album cover. I mean, this is just like, it's like kind of, I don't know what you would call it, the style of art. It's 80s pop culture. It's definitely 80s style. And it's basically just a woman with really metal earrings and a dress. And she's

02:34:35And yeah, I don't know. Her name is Rio. She dances on the shore. Yeah. It's just badass. Yeah. Not so much that it's badass, but it's definitely memorable. And like you see this and I'm like, boom, I'm in the 80s now. Totally, George. And you got it. Like, it's like, it's such an iconic 80s image. Like, and that style completely.

02:35:03Because that artist had done some other work as well. And I don't know if it was for album covers, but like, and it may have just been other singles or things that were associated with that Rio album. But like, after that, like that artist's work was everywhere, it seemed like. Yeah. Like movie posters and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, because it's, it calls to mind a lot. Yeah, it does. I'm going to run through my, I have a very short list of,

02:35:33honorable mentions and they are metal because I left and honestly I mean that well no it's not fair it's not I don't want to say metal has the best record covers but but metal has a certain stick and and it it's ripe territory for a cool cover and but these also happen to be some of my favorite records and stuff and just images that work for me and it's funny because you couldn't go a lot of different directions of these bands but with Judas Priest I'm say screaming for vengeance I just think

02:36:03that's an amazingly cool cover. My favorite Iron Maiden, hands down, Number of the Beast, that might be my favorite album cover of all time, Number of the Beast. Both of the early Merciful Fate records, Melissa and Don't Break the Oath are amazingly spooky covers, really cool. I also put British Steel on here. Sabbath's first record, I thought, kind of established something cool. Of course, I figured that was a given. Yeah, exactly. And then I'll jump forward to Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath in full.

02:36:34I mentioned Live Evil before, but Live Evil, I just love that cover. I love anything that's painted that well in an album cover setting, and then that just Sabbath just kind of did some clever things there for a few years. Namely, we talked about Heaven and Hell, but that was a really cool way to do that. And then I could go on and on, but I won't. I'm going to stop and just say that I also really, really, really, as far as a record sounding like the way it looks, I think Venom,

02:37:03Black Metal is like one of the coolest records. Oh yeah. Absolutely. And so is Welcome to Hell. I mean, but basically they took these classic images and stylized them. Cronus is the one who did them. But both of those images, Welcome to Hell and Black Metal, look like those records sound. And they're such cool images. Absolutely. Again, it was all metal stuff. I could think of a million things that have the right covers from Paul Simon's Graceland to I don't know what, but it's cool that there's such a sea of art out there. And I'll move on to

02:37:34Okay.

02:37:36So I've only got a couple more to do that are my honorable mentions.

02:37:42The first one is Michael Schenker group assault attack.

02:37:46Almost did it.

02:37:48It's a very simple but powerful image of Michael in silhouette holding his flying via loft in front of what looks like an erupting volcano spewing tons of lava before a blue sky.

02:37:58It's basic, but I really like it.

02:38:00It turns out that I say something about it really briefly.

02:38:03It's a buy-me image. When you were 13, if you liked hard rock and you walked in, you're like, well, I'm buying that. Oh, yeah. It's just so cool. Here's this guy holding his flying V up as he's taking the hill or whatever. It turns out the photography was done by Finn Costello, who you guys mentioned earlier. Surprise, surprise. Who has done numerous album covers and photographed numerous bands.

02:38:33from the 70s through the 2000s. I know him best for his live shots of Rush. He did a whole lot of work with Rush. But this album, I always thought was a really cool looking album cover. The other one is not actually an album cover, but was included with the album art. And that is Judas Priest's Nostradamus, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse picture.

02:39:24Nierfest, which is the Northeast Art Rock Fest that no longer happens, but back then it was going on.

02:39:30And I had met him in previous years there and purchased some of his artwork.

02:39:34So when that year came up and that album had been released, I was hoping he would have a Gicle print of that Four Horsemen scene. He did. And I bought it on the spot because it's just so cool.

02:39:50And it hangs proudly among my Judas Priest framed albums down in my basement.

02:39:56So that's my honorable mention. Again, it wasn't really the cover, but it was in the artwork of that album.

02:40:05It counts. I just looked it up too, and I have seen that image before, but you are not wrong. That is epic.

02:40:12Yeah, it's just such a cool image, and I was just blown away when I saw it.

02:40:16And, you know, the deluxe version had like this poster of it that you could unfold,

02:40:24And so it was much bigger than like a small image. And then of course the poster, the Gicle print that he did of it to sell was, you know, a large print. So it was really, really cool to see like that, you know, that level of detail and that size. And so, yeah, I love it. And so that, that's my. This concludes TR's list. Yeah. Except for the,

02:40:54coming up next and shows I've been to etc yeah we'll get there

02:41:00John you got more I had one and I added four real quickly so the one but I'm not going to spend much time so the the one on my list uh was a band that's come up temple avoid the world that was which is an Adam Berg picture and if you don't know it you should check it out the use of colors on it is great the image is great if you're not familiar

02:41:24Adam Burke, he is just all over metal everywhere. And his images are, are almost somewhat similar to some degree, but I like this one a lot, especially the colors. So before I add it real quick, Led Zeppelin's physical graffiti. I love the windows on the building. It's, you could pull it up and everything. And yeah, it's, it's real. Yeah. That's what I thought about when, when George mentioned some girls, because it's the same, like these little cutout things and you slide this stuff in there and yeah. Right.

02:41:56Right. Right to the top. This one's a gatefold you have to open. Genesis, the trick of the tale. Ooh. So simple. Yeah. Not much color, but really cool. Another hypnosis cover. Yep. Fate's warning. Awaken the guardian. Come on. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That is cool. And you mentioned Mark Wilkinson purchased from the man himself as I'm showing these guys. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.

02:42:24There it is.

02:42:25The other way.

02:42:27Yep.

02:42:28And this is Merlian's Assassin, which is a single that was released.

02:42:34He had that for sale.

02:42:36Two versions of it.

02:42:37I was like, I'm not dropping that cash, but I'll take that one.

02:42:41And it's just, if you don't know it, take a look.

02:42:44Assassin, it's just perfect.

02:42:46All his Merlian stuff is great, but this is the one to me that stands out the most because there's not, some of this stuff, there's just a lot going on.

02:42:54and the images, this one is so simple.

02:42:57Yeah.

02:42:57I loved being, I was like, that's Mark Wilkinson, oh my God.

02:43:00Yeah.

02:43:01That was so cool.

02:43:02Like when, you know, when he would show up at Nierfest, it was, and he was such

02:43:06a nice guy.

02:43:06Like he was just very cool and would talk to anybody.

02:43:09And it was just really such a great experience to, to, to meet him and talk with him.

02:43:15Super nice dude.

02:43:16Yeah.

02:43:18All right.

02:43:20All right.

02:43:22I don't have any honorable mentions, but I do have something that I would like to add if you will indulge me for a few minutes. Always. When we were talking about Iron Maiden earlier and there was discussion about is there any sort of like storyline for the album covers? There is not. However, there is now. I popped this into Google AI and I said, hey, Google AI. Here we go. If. Oh lordy.

02:43:51If you took all the Iron Maiden album covers and the images within them and created a storyline for Eddie, the mascot, what would it be? Oh boy. And this is what it came up with. I haven't read all of it yet, so we'll see what we get, but it incorporates all of the albums. So. The rain in London never stopped the night Edward was murdered. Reborn from the grave as a feral decaying zombie.

02:44:21He stalked the foggy alleys. Iron Maiden. Driven by a primal hunger. Soon, the confusion turns to malice. He grabs an axe and begins hunting those who wronged him. Killers. Cementing his status as a street legend. Is it really parenthetically telling you that or are you just like... It is. Okay. His earthly violence catches the attention of the underworld. Lucifer himself rises to claim Edward's soul.

02:44:56The Number of the Beast. Terrified of this new cosmic threat, an ancient secret order captures Edward, chains him into a padded cell, and performs a brutal lobotomy to lock away his godlike powers. Peace of mind. The surgery fractures his mind across time. He wakes up millennia in the past, where the

02:45:21Ancient Egyptians worship his scarred, powerful form as a sun god, erecting massive monuments in his image. Power slave. Power slave. As the centuries roll on, Edward preserves his decaying body by fusing his flesh with machinery, transforming into a cybernetic bounty hunter, tracking targets through a neon dystopia. Somewhere in time. Somewhere in time.

02:45:51his cyborg shell mutating into a floating surreal spirit of pure prophecy holding the secrets of the universe in his hands seventh son of a seventh son but cosmic entities can fall strided back on earth edward's spirit is buried and forgotten until he violently bursts from a graveyard tomb to choke a grave robber no prayer for the dying

02:46:21That album's forgotten too. I like that one. Weakened and feral once more, he retreats into the wilderness, his essence merging with nature until it becomes a terrifying tree monster stalking the midnight woods. Say it for me. Fear of the dark. Humanity captures the beast. In a cold underground lab, scientists strap Edward to a table,

02:46:51to understand his immortality. The X Factor. They digitize his brainwaves, but Edward infects the network, transforming into a massive red-eyed digital demon that stalks the early internet. Virtual 11. He feeds on the global data network until he grows powerful enough to manifest in the physical world, in the physical sky, looming over a futuristic London as a god-like storm cloud.

02:47:22Now a master of life and death, Edward takes the mantle of the Grim Reaper, dancing through the underworld at a masquerade ball for the damned. Dance of Death. Can we just pause there for two seconds and say Iron Maiden had some bad covers? Yes. These are not all Derek Riggs, FYI. Yeah, exactly. Bored of the afterlife, he returns to the surface to command human history, leading a legion of skeletons atop

02:47:51Skeleton Soldiers atop a battlefield tank. A matter of life and death. When Earth can no longer contain him, Edward hitches a ride on humanity's exodus into the cosmos, mutating into a chitinous, terrifying alien apex predator that hunts astronauts in deep space. The final frontier. Seeking a way to final rest, he uses alien technology to warp into Earth's ancient past.

02:48:21Again, I might add.

02:48:24He embeds himself with the Mayans, painting his face for tribal rituals to guard the secrets of the human soul.

02:48:32The Book of Souls.

02:48:35Having conquered time, space, magic, and cybernetics, Edward enters his final quietest era.

02:48:41He retreats to feudal Japan, binds his immortal scarred flesh into the armor of a disciplined samurai, and draws his katana, Senjutsu. Ready to guard the timeline he spent eons tearing apart. I really wish that they would have worked in things like this, great as tits. You know, they are. A real dead one.

02:49:12Live in Rio.

02:49:15The parenthetic thing really reminds me of, for some reason, well, not for some reason, but of the Simpsons where he goes, they go to the high school reunion and the class clown is like the announcer guy.

02:49:26And he keeps doing like, I am not a crook.

02:49:27And Homer keeps leaning over to Marjorie and going, Richard Nixon.

02:49:31She goes like, I know who it is.

02:49:35Well, if you guys have ever watched any of the Star Wars, you know, the what's the guy's name?

02:49:43the Star Wars prequels. Have you guys seen any of that? Oh my God. It's the same thing. He goes through and he basically tears these movies apart. But it's brilliant. And he talks like this. He's like a guy that's talking like this. And he goes through it. He's like, here are all the problems with this film. Number one, the plot. And he goes through it.

02:50:10If you have not seen these, you have to look it up. Plinket Review, Episode 1, Star Wars Episode 1. You will wet yourself laughing because they are so funny. Okay. What are you talking about? Those movies were great. George Lucas destroyed my childhood. He was my childhood. And then Disney came and made it basically non-existent. Yeah.

02:50:40I've got to go see Mandalorian and Grogu. I've seen them all in the theater. I've got to see this one. It's very good. Is it? It's fun. All right. I've already seen it twice. It was really good. If you like the Mandalorian, like if you watch the show, you'll like it. It's pretty well done. Excellent. So I have a weird phenomenon that's been taking place in my house, and I'm going to text it to you guys later. I have a door. There's a million closets in this house for some reason, and there's this one. Whenever I open it,

02:51:10It makes this weird whistle sound and it sounds like the Mandalorian soundtrack. When I send it to you, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. You're going to be like, dude, that's the Mandalorian. So I'll send this to you. It's just like something from right when it, like maybe it's in between scenes or maybe it's at the beginning. I can't remember. When you hear it, it's so Mandalorian. I think I know what you mean. Yeah, I'll find it and then you'll hear it. Excellent. All right. So we have

02:51:40We finished this portion of the podcast and now we move on to things that TR has done. Oh, no, it's anybody's done. Like if you guys have seen any shows or done any stuff that, you know, has rock and roll. I haven't done anything this past week. Well, month, right? I mean, you know, it's been a month since I'm kidding because I did something this past week. Oh, OK. So I don't want to jump in front of you.

02:52:10in front of Jay, in case Jay's seen some shows or whatever.

02:52:13Actually, I'll say one thing, because I've mentioned it a couple of times, but there is something noteworthy about it. I'll be very brief.

02:52:19A friend of mine was like, you've got to watch The Bear. So I watched The Bear. It's this restaurant thing with Jeremy Allen White in it and everything.

02:52:27But one of the standout things about this is that the soundtrack to the show was outstanding.

02:52:31And I have heard so many cool songs on it, I didn't know. I'll just call out one, which is this beautiful song by the Decembrists, called a beginning song.

02:52:40I like what a cool song and and then there was like this one scene where like

02:52:48Eddie Vedder is doing a Joy Division song on an acoustic guitar stuff like that what is the weirdest

02:52:53it is the weirdest coolest soundtrack I've ever I've heard in a television show in a long time and

02:52:59there's music playing almost continuously on this show and they're always these weird kind of indie hits I don't know and I'm like man that's a cool song so so the bear is in and of itself worth watching

02:53:10But it also happens to have an amazing soundtrack. George, I will send you a link to the Eddie Vedder Joy Division thing. Nice. Yes, please. And I'm going to go out of order here just to piggyback on the whole TV show thing so that I can stay with that because I didn't have anything before. But this reminded me, and I'm betting John knows this as well, the show Detective Hooley has a lot of really good music on there. Hell yeah. And T-shirts. Yeah, and T-shirts.

02:53:38He's just wearing a mayhem shirt and Ramon stuff. Yeah. And yeah, very good stuff. But yeah, there's a band. It's a Norwegian band. It's a Norwegian show. So it kind of makes sense that they would have Norwegian bands in there. Madrigata is a band that I don't know if you've heard of. They were around in the like 90s, 2000s, maybe. I don't know.

02:54:08Very good stuff. I knew them going into this. But their singer has some solo albums and one of his songs made it onto the show. And I'm going to butcher this Norwegian name because it's not remotely English. I'm going to say his name is Syvert Hojum. And he does a song on the show and it is just fabulous. And so I went and listened to his solo stuff and it is also fabulous. He's got a

02:54:38He calls himself somewhere between Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. It's very Leonard Cohen, very Nick Cave-ish, deep, cool, kind of folky vocals. Very good stuff. Check it out. S-I-V-E-R-T-H-O-Y-E-M. Anyway. Okay. Well, since our last episode, I went to see

02:55:08Uli John Roth, former Scorpions guitarist, who did a couple of musical sets. One solo set that he came out and played just himself. And then they took a small break and then he came out with this band and played Virgin Killer in its entirety, along with other Scorpions tracks from that era. And the dude still is killing it.

02:55:36And he is just so good. I saw that at. In Annapolis at the Rams head on stage venue there. It was terrific. Then I went and saw John Anderson from yes, who is playing with a group called the band geeks. And they play, you know, yes classics, but he's made a couple of albums with them. And the new music sounds just like yes.

02:56:08And so the tour that they were on played a little bit of all of that. And for me, the highlights were close to the edge. And you and I awaken wondrous stories. Just really. And John Anderson has got to be pushing 80. I don't remember exactly how old he is, but the guy sounds great. I mean, he has not lost any high end or anything like the guy can still.

02:56:36You know, hit all the notes and do everything. He's 81. Okay, yeah. Unbelievable. And he still has plenty of energy. Now, he did, we were, our seats were kind of off to the side. So we were kind of looking kind of, I don't know, all the way over on what would be stage right. And so, you know, we were looking kind of over where, like, John, the stage kind of stuck out a little bit. So it was like a rounded stage, but we were kind of on the side of the stage.

02:57:06of the stage looking over.

02:57:09So you could see that he had a screen down below that had all his lyrics.

02:57:16And for all the classic Yes! songs, he didn't really have to look at it very much at all.

02:57:21But it was there in case he needed it.

02:57:23But for some of these new songs that I'm sure he's not as familiar with,

02:57:27because they recorded them and they haven't really played them live much,

02:57:31he was kind of keeping an eye on the screen there for that.

02:57:35But I can't fault him because he's 81. I don't know that I'd be able to do it without a screen. And then I went to see the Iron Maiden movie called Burning Ambition, which was in theaters very, very quickly. Just one night. I think it was May 7th or something. And it was basically a documentary about, you know, Iron Maiden from the beginning to all the way up till now. And it covered all the different elements of the band and, you know, how they came up.

02:58:05up. And it was a really cool film. They had a lot more early footage than I would have expected to see. And so that was really cool to see like early performances with Paul D'Anno and just like the band at that time. Photographs of them from like, you know, basically the mid 70s. It was just it was well done and it really covered everything that I would have wanted to see.

02:58:34And then after that, I went and saw Paul Gilbert play at, also in Annapolis at the Rams Head on stage. He just released his album, Washington's Rules of Civility, which he took the rules from that book that Washington wrote that was really based on rules that were developed sometime in the 15th or 16th century, but Washington wrote it all up.

02:59:02Anyway, that was the basis for his lyrics for this album. And so, of course, if you guys have followed him, for those that you view that don't know, Paul Gilbert is a guitarist that was in Mr. Big. He was also in a band called Racer X. He's an incredible shredder. He's an amazing guitarist. And then he's a solo artist. And so he put this album out called Washington's Rules of

02:59:32or WROC or ROC. And that was a great show. And then coming up this week, I've got Satch Vi show where Joe Satriani and Steve Vi are playing together on tour with Animals as Leaders opening up. And then Triumph is on tour, which I'm pretty excited to see because I never got to see them back in the day. And April Wine is opening for them.

03:00:02And then when we get into June, I'll see Devo. And I'll see my first Rush show down in Mexico City, which I'm really excited about. You're going to Mexico City for that. Good for you, dude. Yeah, man. I actually have friends there. So I'm going to be staying with friends that live there. So I'm going to hang out there for a couple of weeks. It'll be nice. Have you been down there before? Yes. Yeah. A few times, actually. I asked, I went for the first time a year ago or something. I loved it.

03:00:32It's such a European city, really, but with Mexican charm. Yes, absolutely. Good for you, dude. That sounds fun. In the presence of others, sing not to yourself with a humming noise, nor drum with your fingers or feet. You've got it, George. I just googled the rules of civility and decent behavior in a company in conversation. And actually, those rules are in some of his songs.

03:01:02Yeah, that's one of them, too. I guess I'll sit down. You gotta check it out. It's a lot of fun. The songs are really, they're like, there's some upbeat ones, and there's some really rocking ones, and it's just, it's a really cool album. I really like Paul Gilbert. I always have, and just, it's a fun album. Now, sometimes his lyrics can be a little goofy. I like that he picked these rules of

03:01:32to use on this because it's like when he makes up his own lyrics they're just a little goofy and silly and the music is always more epic than that so i feel like it's letting you know the lyrics are letting down the music but this time it was fun and if you look at the videos that he did with this album he's wearing a tri-corner hat and you know it's just a lot of fun and he's got some really good people on like his the musicians that he has on this album are terrific my take on him too and i think what you're saying

03:02:03He doesn't seem like he takes himself too seriously.

03:02:05No, absolutely not.

03:02:09Is he a winery dog?

03:02:11No.

03:02:13That's Richie.

03:02:16What was the question?

03:02:18Is he in winery dogs?

03:02:20Oh, is he in winery dogs?

03:02:21Yeah.

03:02:24Have you guys ever heard of winery dogs?

03:02:26Yeah.

03:02:27I have it.

03:02:28It's a Portnoy thing.

03:02:31It's a little bluesy for me. I'm not as much into blues rock as much. Okay. No. Bad DR. Bad. What? Blues is good. Blues is all good. I don't know. A lot of times I just, you know, I kind of, I don't know. It gets old quick for me. I'm off the podcast. It's nice knowing all you listeners.

03:03:02Well, that was the rough equivalent of I'll let myself out. No, no. I'll see myself to the door. It's all right. You can whiz all over the things that I love. Do what you will. Yeah. John? I don't crap on Rush enough. Me? I love Rush. I ain't got no problem on Rush. Oh, wait. But no, it's the Prague stuff. That's what it is. I like a lot of Prague stuff, too. All right.

03:03:31Anyway, John, what you got? Anything? Anything? I got two. One show I went to and one show coming up. All right. So just recently went and saw Between the Buried and Me with Imperial Triumphant and a band called The World is a Beautiful Place and I am no longer afraid to die. I'm not going to talk anymore about that band. It did nothing for me. Sounds cheery.

03:04:02Anyway, Imperial Triumphant, never really a fan, never disliked them, but their last time I do like a lot, which is... That's an interesting pairing with BT Bam. That is a super interesting pairing. Yeah, and I will say, whether you like Imperial Triumphant or not, they do bring a stage presence and aesthetic with the Art Deco style masks that they wear, and it's very... This was way more dissident death than it was

03:04:31kind of that dissident,

03:04:32avant,

03:04:33black jazz stuff they do.

03:04:34So it was cool.

03:04:36And then this I've seen between the barrier to me.

03:04:38I can't even tell you how many times this is the first time I actually went,

03:04:41cause I wanted to go see them.

03:04:45They've always been the opening act somehow.

03:04:47Yeah.

03:04:47You know,

03:04:48and,

03:04:48and I've the switch flicked for me.

03:04:52It turned on a few years ago and they were great.

03:04:55Yeah.

03:04:56The nice thing is they only play for about an hour and 20 minutes.

03:04:58They don't push it.

03:05:00I was like,

03:05:00that's enough.

03:05:01That's all I need. Because they go nonstop. They hardly stop. And it's pretty intense. Yeah. And they're all great musicians. Two things that were interesting is that since they parted ways with their last guitarist, the guy who's playing with them now is not a band member, but he's in a live setting for them. Is this band, was it TR sometime in July? Sometime in February. Sometime in February. We saw them at Prague Power and he looks like he's 10.

03:05:31But he's not. He looks much older than that. But he was filling in. So he was good. And I did not know that Paul Wagoneer from Between the Buried and Me lived in Springfield, Virginia for a while. Oh, wow. Because he brought that up. He says, I don't know how many of you traveled all the way from Springfield. I'm like, oh, it's not that far. But it's like 10 miles. Were you like, woo, yeah. I was like one of the few guys like, yeah, Jacks, baby. Yeah. But they were cool. And I, I,

03:06:01The Last Two Albums is what got me into them. And now I've been digging through all their stuff. And I kind of bummed I missed out all these years of seeing them and actually wanting to see them as opposed to... Yeah, just kind of standing there like, oh, are these guys on again? Yeah. So, but yeah, it was cool. And then at the end of June, Jen and I are flying to Fort Worth to see Rush. Yes. So that's going to be starting this.

03:06:31I'm doing all over for them.

03:06:34So.

03:06:36And there might be something in early July too.

03:06:41Perhaps,

03:06:42you know,

03:06:43um,

03:06:45we'll see.

03:06:46It might be different for some people.

03:06:48It will be different for us.

03:06:50I try to come up with a bad pun for it's different for girls.

03:06:53It's different for girls.

03:06:53I was gonna say,

03:06:54yeah.

03:06:55Have you listened to the new album?

03:06:57A little bit.

03:06:58It's,

03:06:59it starts off pretty good.

03:07:00It ends,

03:07:01It's a little less, but it's not terrible. It's all right. Most of his more recent outputs like that. We're going to, George and I are going to see Joe Jackson. Oh, okay. Yeah. You know, just, I, I, I'm sorry. Things always prompt things in my head and it, there's this great, I hope I can tell you guys this story because I tell too many things over and over, but this is great because you're going to Fort Worth. Um, and I saw this back footage of, uh, the High Women tour. Remember that?

03:07:33and they're all sitting around talking and somebody has the presence of mind to film them talking and Chris Christopherson is seeing Paris I think is most beautiful place in the world you know and Waylon Jennings who's like a notorious you know Texan is sort of like why man I hate Paris and he goes you hate Paris he goes you can get beautiful women great wine 400 kinds of cheese and

03:08:01And Jennings says, I can get all that in Fort Worth, man. That's awesome. Yeah. Indeedy. All right. Well, are we now at the end? I think we are. It was fun, though. This was a good conversation. I like hearing everybody's takes and stuff and why things stand out to people.

03:08:32Yeah, and you guys mentioned a lot of albums I didn't even think of. And I kind of feel like dumb because it's like, oh, man, that is good. It's easy to do. There's so many cool albums. Yeah, we all. Yeah, I know. I spaced on that and freaking Spinal Tap, man. We could literally. That hurts you so bad. You're just like. The look on your face when I said featured a greased naked woman.

03:09:01I was like I knew where he's going

03:09:03I'm like oh man

03:09:05I can't believe it

03:09:06I wanted to put Twisted Sister Stay Hungry on there

03:09:09just because I mean come on

03:09:11yeah you gotta have like a big bone

03:09:14yeah

03:09:15if that's not iconic I don't know what is

03:09:20yeah that

03:09:21that didn't fool anybody

03:09:25whatever was on that album was exactly

03:09:27what that sounded like

03:09:30exactly

03:09:33All right. Well, I guess we'll wrap this up then and we'll talk to you next time. See you on down the road. Peace. See you later. Bye.