Mercury Rev - "Yerself Is Steam" (Mint Films, 1991)

These dudes make me think of grunge and the moment when alternative became a genre and a section in music stores. Like college rock, alternative was suddenly popular rock and made dudes with flannels and white guy dreadlocks super cool. (ew, hippies...) These guys got over shadowed by the Flaming Lips... their guitar player went on to play on their albums, leaving Mercury Rev in the dust. "Chasing a Bee" is really rad when blasted from your Chevette's cassette player. I'm just sayin'.

Big Black - "Racer X" (Homestead Records, 1985)

Big Black is so big their name won't fit on both sides of the record... (and shit)

U-30599 (1991)

Crackerbash (Imp)

I was never crazy about indie bands appropriating corporate logos, a trend that got a bit out of control in the 90s, but there was something cool about Crackerbash borrowing from Oregon’s own Copeland Lumber. Kind of a formative band for me, though I’m apparently alone in loving the subsequent Jr. High even more. But a nice label for Halloween I think, and a perfectly satisfactory final post for me.

RR 6521-1 (2002)

Pentagram – First Daze Here (Relapse)

If your band was named Pentagram would you be able to resist filling a round label with this?

(Halloween just ahead…)

MR0139-7 (1996)

Fu Manchu "Asphalt Risin'" (Mammoth)

This one is so wonderfully direct, encapsulating Fu Manchu’s central preoccupation plainly: badass, tricked out vehicles. The b-side shown is a sludgy, low-gear version of Sammy Johns’ “Chevy Van.” This “three-on-the-tree” is totally rockin’.

CR-3075 (1959)

The Fabulous Wailers (Golden Crest)

Another colorful one. You'd think the "Golden Sound" of Golden Crest would favor the gold, no?

YV45013 (1967)

The Ugly Ducklings (Yorkville)

The great garage band makes an awkward attempt at blue-eyed soul. The a-side “Gaslight” is over-produced with horns and strings, and the instrumental b-side shown is a more stripped-down blues workout (which is to say, a total snore). I love the abstract swaths of pastel color on this Yorkville label, though confusingly their early singles and LP were released on “Yorktown” (?!).

OSR-LPM-5015 (1966)

(Turn On) The Music Machine (Original Sound)

The band’s gimmick of machine-like precision (wearing all-black outfits and no pauses between songs in their live set) carries over to the center label. The small white lines that form the circumference not only look cool, but apparently also aid in calibrating your turntable! If you can’t make out the fine print along the bottom, it says: “When lines appear to stand still record is revolving at exactly 33 1/3 RPM.” It sort of works, but I’m more won-over by the stark font and clean design. Musically, their second album is even better, and I think they are actually much more soulful than the image lets on.

Atco (1969)

I'm surprised that this blog has gone on for nearly a year without someone posting any Atco labels. Just a peek of this yellow circle coming out of a sleeve sends a thrill up my leg. Probably due to my deep and abiding love of the early Dr. John records that came out on Atco, Gris-Gris up through Gumbo. But I'll give anything on Atco a spin.

Vanilla Fudge don't seem to get much respect, but I think they had something going on. The self-titled first album is great, and most all of their records are a pretty good listen, especially when they're doing covers of soul classics (You Keep Me Hangin' On) or offbeat pop tunes (Some Velvet Morning) in their slowed-down heavy psych style. I feel like there should be a renewed interest in Vanilla Fudge right now, considering how "in" and "hip" screwed stuff has become recently with the kids. Maybe being what amounts to a cover band with a garage-y psychedelic hard rock flavor was an easy way to write these guys off once they faded from popular relevance, but it seems like a pretty damn cool idea nowadays.

Design-wise, it's not really that remarkable of a label layout. The logo makes me think of a stained-glass window. But I do have to say I really love that font used for the title text. It reminds me of the font on a self-inking date stamper.

Sympathy for the Record Industry (1994)

"Stop messing with my head with your half baked ragas, dull pseudo ethnic arcana, fake folk etc don't give me 'give and take' improv, and please no 'interesting', I want full-on universal electric blood or nothing (Nothing is pretty good too)…"
— Matthew Bower, from a March 31, 2005 text for Volcanic Tongue record shop.

Happy 4th! In honor of this holiday, I offer a record under the lead of Matthew Bower, one British individual who’d be able to convert us into loyal British subjects again single-handed with just one guitar, an amp and a howl. (As he has in his bands Mirag, Pure, Total, Sunroof! and some later versions of Skullflower.) Thankfully he wasn’t around in the 18th century. We'd be eating grilled tomatoes with fish cakes for breakfast. So I offer a 7” from the first glory days of Skullflower.

I could mention I met him once at the Empty Bottle. Saw him standing alone before a show. I walked up, thanked him for the years of music and pleasure. Bower looked up at me (he's rather short), beer in hand, and replied, in a cold yet somehow not mean or condescending manner, "How do you know who I am?" Didn't have an answer. Then an hour later, electric bliss.

Back to the matter at hand. One of many of the best things about Bower, is his nonchalance about being tough. He came up with a great band name, everything else is malleable. Look at the label. Flies? Gnats? Drooling bumblebees? Ok, maybe a rabid wasp. Not too scared regardless.

And the song titles. You know you aren’t worried about image when you can use these titles for your heavy brutal stomp. If it is gonna pummel you, the title can have a little fun, no? Who needs bluster? I’m skittish just considering encountering any of the fully-grown horses of this “Ponyland.” Only Bower would dream to make a “Fake Revolt” more menacing than a real one. This is the stuff electricity was invented for, to mangle and buzz over paleolithic drums. When other opportunities fall through, sometimes to get the heart racing one must stick out your thumb and hold high that cardboard sign: “Nihilism or Bust!”

Shrug Records (2007)

I bring my stint at Collector Not Completist to a close with a plug for my band Roommate's vinyl label Shrug Records and a few associated friends... This soundtrack to Jim Finn's breakthrough film Interkosmos features a gorgeous matchbook sleeve designed by Dean Rank and printed by Jeff Mueller at Dexterity Press. Dean designed the artwork for two Roommate releases, and the LP label was as important to him as any other element of the artwork. He really outdid himself with this one here.

Thank you Alexander for inviting me to post to this most excellent blog!

Columbia (1993)

Mercury Rev's Yerself Is Steam is one of my favorite albums of the 1990s, and I'm a big fan of the 10" vinyl format, so I was excited to find this relic at Encore Recordings in Ann Arbor. I was curious to know how faithful this faux-vintage design is to actual Columbia Grafonola Symphony Series LPs of the early 20th century, and some googling took me to this page--I'd say this 1993 10" is a decent but perhaps not quite satisfying facsimile of the original?

Victor (1967)

My mom went to a Yukio Hashi concert during her 1967 Tokyo trip and bought a few of his 45s, including this morsel. This and a couple of her other Japanese 45s include an unusual physical design feature: the 45 RPM adaptor is built into the 45. When I briefed Alexander on this one he asked "I wonder if people were supposed to snap that thing out to use an adaptor?" Upon close examination I concluded that it's a permanent feature--you'd need a serious blade or tool to remove the thing.

This A-side ("Koi No Mexican Rock") is by far my least favorite song of these Japanese 45s, but I sure love its sleeve:

Kemado (2007)

It seems like it's hard to go wrong with things that just look plain cool as they're spinning around.

GDR (1974)

I tried very, very hard to get rid of the moiré pattern in this scan. I even followed the instructions in an online tutorial called "Moiré Go Away." But apparently the fine white concentric circles on this label are no match for the square pixels of a digital scanner. In some ways the moiré gives this image some extra razzle-dazzle, but if you can imagine the uniform white circles without the messy, swirly patterns overlaying them, you will imagine a deliciously sublime and elegant label. Moiré and circles aside, dig that fantastic 3D GDR logo!

Parrot (1964)

I love the yellow and green on black color combo and the font.

The sassy parrot speaks for himself.

Virgo (1972)

Great font layout here. The flower and text combo works really nicely, and I like the Virgo symbols around the border. Crisp color scheme.

Mega (1971)

I really like the drawing of the building on this Mega label. It seems like the headquarters for something, probably a cabal of plotting businessmen in a superhero comic. Meanwhile, at the headquarters of M.E.G.A....

The label was based in Memphis, and put out lots of country stuff. A lot of it looks silly, but there are a few great cover designs (check out Mack Vickery Live at the Alabama Women's Prison). There are a couple of heavy-hitters that mysteriously ended up in their catalog through some association with Flying Dutchman, including Bernard Purdie, Leon Thomas, and Eddie Cleanhead Vinson. This Apollo 100 record is by a British group who did rock renditions of classical music, which was a genre I tried collecting for a while. The track "Joy" is pretty well known.

Stiff, 1980

An excellent custom label from Stiff Records, accentuating the nerdy look of the Feelies with a highly stylized illustration, from their classic debut Crazy Rhythms. I had a few songs from this record on a tape compilation I got through the brother of a girl I had about two dates with--meaning, I hung out at her house once and she came to my house once (ahem, our parent's homes, really). The cassette contained zero information, but eventually I heard one of the Feelies tracks on WPRB, the Princeton University radio station that was one of my formative influences. Another of my all time favorites, the early look of these Hoboken, NJ greats played up their bookish dorkiness long before such an image was cool.

Roaratorio

3D glasses embedded in the label for use with the crazy 3D artwork on the sleeve (artwork includes: corn on the cob, one dildo, two plastic alligators, three barbie dolls and an egg sunny side up).