✌ we never polled the steely dan album art ✌

http://www.popspotsnyc.com/pretzel_logic/

This is so cool. Just south of the entrance to the Met.

xposts: The '98-'00 ones. The notes from the Show Biz Kids set from the next year have an amusing postscript to the Aja notes.

― Sheela-Tubb-Mann, You Real Know-It-All (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, May 16, 2013 2:33 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sweet. They are fucking cheap on Amazon. I just ordered all 7 for 36 bucks.

Does Show Biz Kids mop up FM and Here at the Western World?

Yeah. No live b-side "Bodhisattva" tho.

um, sorry about that. frustration with bad day + boring ILX led to surf-by shooting. as NV said, it's the threads that don't exist, not those that do. who am I to quibble your choices. :(

It's like every one of those covers is the work of a different style of band - "Thrill" is some Westbound funk band, "Ecstasy" is a great Brit prog band, "Pretzel" is some American singer-songwriter, "Scam" is a crap Brit prog band.

"Katy Lied", just because I can never resist that sort of muddy-green palette.

yeah that makes sense -- and Aja is a creamy CTI fusion LP

yeah, it's strange how diverse they are.

this is pretty funny: "The [royal scam] cover was designed by Larry Zox and Charlie Ganse, and was originally created for Van Morrison's unreleased 1975 album, Mechanical Bliss" did they have no say over their artwork or they just didn't care or what?

I apparently am too enamored of terrible 70s fantasy/SF because I can't fathom disliking the cover to The Royal Scam

signed, a perplexed goth

I think it's great in a kitsch kind of way but I can see why people find it ugly. it's pretty murky and visually cluttered, and the fade into the photo at the bottom is awkward. it's like a poor man's giger.

this is pretty funny: "The [royal scam] cover was designed by Larry Zox and Charlie Ganse, and was originally created for Van Morrison's unreleased 1975 album, Mechanical Bliss" did they have no say over their artwork or they just didn't care or what?

― wk, Thursday, May 16, 2013 5:41 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they weren't on the same label, so my guess is the artist was contacted about doing the cover and was like 'well i have this perfectly good cover that was never used'

my favorites are Aja and Countdown, and i have no idea what's really going on in either.

it's pretty murky and visually cluttered, and the fade into the photo at the bottom is awkward. it's like a poor man's giger.

^^^ this. it's got a severe shift in perspective 2 inches from the bottom of the sleeve, its a mass of ugly dark blues/greys/blacks, etc.

DF said somewhere that the Royal Scam cover is the ugliest album art of the 70s, except maybe CBaT

two against nature

yeah that makes sense -- and Aja is a creamy CTI fusion LP

Exactly!

'70s was some kinda golden age for rock LP art imo

i've always really loved the CTE artwork.

i love the Dan like crazy, but these covers are all varying degrees of hideous. the Nightfly artwork really does outclass them all. it's true that Two Against Nature is the worst offender; looks super budget and that ridiculous ill-fitting "2" makes it seem like one of those 2 for the price of 1 schemes.

Aja isn't overly unflattering, i guess.

also, i don't really mind the IDEA behind the artwork for The Royal Scam. it's just wretchedly executed is all.

Aja isn't overly unflattering, i guess.

oh come on, that cover is utterly classic.

well, it's artistic and stylish (which i can't say about any of the others), but i still somehow don't enjoy looking at it.

So she's Asian but what's her nationality?

Israeli

voted for 'katy lied'. 'aja' and 'gaucho' have this sort of iconic feel about them, and i also like the 'countdown to ecstasy' one.

I think I rank them:

TRS
Aja
Gaucho
KL
CTE
PL
CBAT
TAN
EMG

The only one I really like is Pretzel Logic. Katy Lied & Aja are pretty good, & so is Gaucho, except for its fonts, ugh. Can't Buy A Thrill & The Royal Scam are awful.

I get seriously squicked out by mouths that are not attached to faces. So Can’t Buy A Thrill, the Rolling Stones logo, Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack, and certain models of fleshlight are just out.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

whoever upthread said "a great collection of '70s ugliness" is kind of onto it

amen. I like "Everything Must Go", it seems to sum up their aesthetic in a way I can't quite place my finger on. Aja and Gaucho are also v. good.

Everything Must Go is dope. especially the color scheme of the text.

EMG is basically an instagram post from anyone vacationing in DC

LOL

Argh, this band not only has a ton of bad cover art, but bad cover art that is ahead of its time -- Pretzel Logic is proto-90s radio-friendly alt rock, Countdown to Ecstasy looks like a Radiohead/Bjork collabo, etc.

Voted for Aja, find that one elegant and it suits the record. Can't Buy a Thrill and Royal Scam are just a mess. Gaucho is so bad I find it endearing.

gaucho because I remember seeing it as a kid and it was the first dan album I ever saw

Countdown To Ecstasy because here they come.

"Pretzel Logic is proto-90s radio-friendly alt rock"

ahah, so true.

Steel Daniel Pilots

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Surprised by Katy coming first. I know a lot of people like it, but I don't really dig it that much.

Good to see a big turnout though!

56 votes for boring, 36 votes for awesome, and 2 trolls.

http://www.popspotsnyc.com/pretzel_logic/

― sons of plutarchy (will), Thursday, May 16, 2013 1:07 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love this

it's remarkable that a band that were such perfectionists on the music end of things seemed to just not give a fuck - like, at ALL - about the album artwork. Liner notes, sure, but the art = "eh, who cares"

aja is a legitimately great album cover imo, and pretzel logic has its charms.

also think katy lied and gaucho are pretty charming

at this point i only think the reunion records have godawful covers

Countdown to Ecstasy is pretty bad

no

i love that one, it's pretty fuckin cracked

nearly all of this band's album artwork is shit. I like the Aja art, and I also like the Katy Lied art but that's also probably my least favorite Dan album. Gaucho is just incomprehensible to me as a cover, it's hard to think of album art that relates less in content or aesthetic to the music.

come on the gaucho painting would totally be hanging in luxury apartment of someone who's done so much coke they think the walls have eyes

https://i.imgur.com/0xfo8mM.jpg

Oh my god...

What a post to return to ilx for <3

gr8080, this isn't the cursed images thread

absolutely not

also coke will kill you before you ever start hallucinating