Worst looking CD/LP artwork

[Peter Power Pop]

Hmmm. Birth, fecundity, beauty springing forth from the seed...sprouting potato? Something not quite working here.

I want to call Bach "Spud Boy" from now on.

[SimonNZ]

perhaps I should repost my current listening here:

a curious cover not just for a DHM disc but for one subtitled "The English Consort In Two Parts 1640-1680"

I think it really has more of a Frank Zappa vibe to it

[Mookalafalas]

I want to call Bach "Spud Boy" from now on.

Thanks for the laugh.

[Peter Power Pop]

1972

Oh dear.

Bernstein's 1958 recording with the New York Philharmonic was superior-- plus it had a better jacket illustration:

Yep.

[Jo498]

I prefer the one with Stravinsky's head!

[71 dB]

I think this is good. Definitely not something I would call "worst looking artwork"...

[JBS]

Well, the LSO cover does make it seem as if the sacrifice is being made to the Great God Igor!

There's also the oddity that the line of elders emerging from the forest on the right look like a group of Chasidic rabbis.

[j winter]

I think this is good. Definitely not something I would call "worst looking artwork"...

Yeah, it's more odd than bad.  Some of those 70's LP covers were very odd... I was recently ripping a Leopold Stokowski set to mp3, and came across the cover art for his (awesome) Mahler 2:



It doesn't offend me or anything, but I am a bit confused....


Edit:  Here's another picture, apologies, they're both pretty poor quality...

[Madiel]

I think this is good. Definitely not something I would call "worst looking artwork"...

To me it would be far better without the head. I can only think it was done in an era where Stravinsky was sufficiently famous and recognisable that they thought having an image of Stravinsky would enhance sales.

[Peter Power Pop]

Try this (from Discogs):

[JBS]

Try this (from Discogs):

The figures from Michelangelo's Last Judgment fit. But I have no idea of what that sculpted head is supposed to mean. It may be one of Michelangelo's unfinished statues...there are several of them, after all. And I have no idea of what that thing in front of the sculpted head is.  A misshaped banana?

[KevinP]

I think this is good. Definitely not something I would call "worst looking artwork"...

It's intriguing. I don't dislike it.
Two thoughts:
(1) Although the art style is very different, what popped immediately into my mind was the Yellow Submarine movie.
(2) I actually thought that was Gandhi.

[71 dB]

To me it would be far better without the head. I can only think it was done in an era where Stravinsky was sufficiently famous and recognisable that they thought having an image of Stravinsky would enhance sales.

[Ken B]

Rousseau paintings have been used the ROS frequently. Just an extra head. Pedestrian IMO but not bad.

[Madiel]

Yep, I like that.

[Todd]

[JBS]

It actually is not a bad concept...but didn't anyone remember that because of the, er, surgical operation Signor Farinelli underwent as a youth, he would have been unable to grow a beard?

[Ken B]

It actually is not a bad concept...but didn't anyone remember that because of the, er, surgical operation Signor Farinelli underwent as a youth, he would have been unable to grow a beard?

It's really very strange. It certainly is an ugly cover. And as you say objectively a beard is *exactly* wrong. And yet it somehow fits Farinelli, and I understood the concept instantly.

[geralmar]

Although it is hardly a "worst" cover, I never liked the 1960 album cover for the Ormandy Carmina Burana.  It looked to me like the artist arbitrarily clipped pictures from various magazines then sloppily glued them to a canvas:




Nevertheless it was infinitely superior to the 1981 reissue, when the recording was relegated to just another in Columbia's line of hideous "newspaper" themed bargain records:



I had (and still have) a number of these L.P.s and it was very difficult to distinguish one record from another without studying the jacket cover.  Very annoying when attempting to quickly locate a particular album in the series.

[Ken B]

Except that is NOT Cecilia Bartoli.

Then human cloning is more advanced than I knew! Or are you suggesting it is really Farinelli?