Updating you on Worst Record Covers events at the comedy festival in Leicester and the CURRENT EXHIBITION at Northampton NOW ON.
Steve’s Worst Record Covers In The World mini exhibition at the Leicester Comedy Festival in February well received. It was put on at The Big Difference, a club in the High Street. The festival organisers also arranged for comedian Stewart Lee to drop by and see it, which was a big treat for Steve, his PR guru Richard and ourselves, as he was our first choice for the Bizarre Sleeves book foreword. Stewart was as engaging as you might imagine and had a good study of all the sleeves. Steve presented a short recorded speech explaining about the origins of the collection and Stewart followed this by reading from his own foreword to the book, to much amusement. A few people had iPhones going so we will try and put some of it online with Stewart’s permission. After kindly signed a few copies of the Bizarre book (and one of his own books for Simon!) Stewart then headed off, as he had a proper gig later that evening at the De Montfort Hall. Our thanks to Fern, production manager for the festival, who organised this.
The exhibition managed to squeeze in around 100 or so covers and seems to have gone well according to staff at the venue (which is open as a bar and coffee place most evenings so lots of people got to see it). As always our first task when arriving at any of Steve’s exhibitions is to zip round and see what awful new covers he has managed to unearth and we weren’t disappointed. The J. J. Worthington cover in the display [next to the Riot sleeve in the photo above], an album titled If I Should Touch You, might have been designed with the exhibition in mind! One particular gem also new to me was an album [below] simply called I Am A Canadian. It is by The Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, who seemed to think we’d all love to listen to his experiences of public life. As far as I know it never troubled even the Canadian Billboard Top 100 (let's hope it doesn't inspire the orange furball Donald Trump to dd a similar album to his merchandise list!)
A week later we were booked at the same venue for a talk about the Bizarre Albums cover book, again as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival. This took place in the downstairs performance room which seats 120 people and was absolutely packed by start time. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves, laughing so loudly at times Simon had to pause before carrying on! We pottered through a selection of around 50 covers, then dashed to a close with Steve’s Top Ten Worst Covers as voted for by people going to a previous exhibition. As Stewart Lee had said the week before, “what a diverse comedy festival this is!” Our thanks to FOH people on the day Richard for the technical support (and putting plenty of Talking Heads into the pre-show playlist to calm Simon's nerves) and Scarlet.
Richard, above, chatting with Stewart. Richard is a crucial part of the Worst Sleeves exhibition team though we haven’t been able to snap him until now!
I have had a few emails since the event from local people who didn’t find out about the talk until it was too late (it was free but you had to book) asking about the next one...
Which leads us nicely into plugging the next full exhibition which is at Northampton Art Gallery from NOW (it opened last weekend - see photo above courtesy Nick Gordon) until 22nd June. The gallery is open every day except Mondays, and very easy to reach from the M1. I have not yet heard if there are any tie in events but will let you know if so. I’m sure it will be as popular as previous exhibitions. Do let us know what you think of it if you go! The accompanying book The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve will be available from their gift shop, or can be ordered from the Easy On The Eye Books shop - details below.
It’s always good when people suggest sleeves to Steve or myself at the talks, and having marvelled at the infamous Battleaxe art in Leicester, one guy did suggest to Simon that we check out an album by thrash metal outfit Virus as it was a cover he’d never been able to unsee. He wasn’t wrong, it is just terrible! Titled - albeit not on the front - Force Recon, this came out in the US in 1988. Even in a genre known for iffy cover art it manages to stand out! Clearly the musicians’ visual horizons had never extended beyond the Iron Maiden back catalogue. We also love the fact that the band leader tried to reform the outfit in 2008, but nobody else from the group could be bothered, so he had to recruit a whole new line-up. I have sent it on to Steve for his deliberations!
