Controversial
3. Type O Negative: ‘The Origin’ – Brooklyn band Type O Negative were forced to change their album artwork to a green and black image of dancing skeletons after the close-up of a sphincter, reportedly that of lead singer Peter Steele, unsurprisingly caused controversy. Gee you think that an image of someone's ass is the best way to sell and promote your music? Assholes.
alternate cover
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Weird
3. Butthole Surfers: 'Double Live' – Oh, these wise guys again. They have certainly made the Gigwise list several times and I think that goofy album cover art (like this alien baby/alien dinosaur shaking hands while onstage) is just a precursoor to their weird music. This live album, released in 1989, was given an extremely limited run - 10,000 vinyl printings, 7,500 cassettes, and 4,750 CDs to be precise.
The band did not begin as the Butthole Surfers, although they did have a song of that title, possibly an early version of 1984's "Butthole Surfer". This changed at their first paid concert, when an announcer forgot what the band was called and used the song title for the group’s name. They decided to keep the moniker, and have largely been billed as such ever since. Prior to that, the Surfers performed under a different name at every live show. Early aliases included the Dick Clark Five, Nine Foot Worm Makes Own Food, the Vodka Family Winstons, and many others.
The name has long been a source of trouble for the band. Many clubs, newspapers, radio, and TV stations refuse to print or mention their full name, and instead opted to use "B.H. Surfers", or other abbreviations.
I'm not sure, but will we see them again on the Gigwise list?
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Worst
3. John Lennon & Yoko Ono – ‘Unfinished Music No 1: Two Virgins’: We have already seen this 'great' cover on the Gigwise list, someone must be obsessed with it.
Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins is a noise music album released by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1968. The result of an all-night session of musical experimentation in Lennon's home studio at Kenwood, John and Yoko's debut album is known not only for its avant garde content, but also for its cover. The album's title came from the couple's feeling that they were "two innocents, lost in a world gone mad", and because after making the recording, the two consummated their relationship for the first time.
The recording consists largely of tape loops, playing while Lennon tries out different instruments (piano, organ, drums) and sound effects (including reverb, delay and distortion), changes tapes and plays other recordings, and converses with Ono, who vocalises ad-lib in response to the sounds. Lennon's longtime friend Peter Shotton remembered later in his memoir (The Beatles, Lennon and Me) that many of the loops were made by Lennon and himself, in the days before the recording. Lennon recorded directly to two-track stereo, but much of the source material was monophonic.
The couple used a time-delay camera to take nude photographs of themselves, for the album's cover; the front showed them frontally nude, while the rear showed them from behind. (The photos were taken not at Kenwood, but at Ringo Starr's basement apartment at Montagu Square, where Lennon and Ono stayed later that year.) The cover provoked an outrage, prompting distributors to sell the album in a plain brown wrapper. Copies of the album were impounded as obscene in several jurisdictions (including 30,000 copies in New Jersey). Lennon wryly commented that the uproar seemed to have less to do with the explicit nudity, and more to do with the fact that the pair were rather unattractive (and the photo unflattering; Lennon described it later as a picture of "two slightly overweight ex-junkies." Nevertheless, the taboo-breaking album cover was perhaps the first time that a male celebrity of any consequence had exposed himself so thoroughly to the public.
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Best
3. The Sex Pistols: ‘Never Mind the Bollocks' - This cover shows up on many 'best of' lists and I cannot see why. It is the name of the group and the name of the album. Yes, I like the yellow and purple mix, but that is about it for me.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols is the first and only album recorded by the Sex Pistols, a highly influential and controversial English punk band. Fans and critics alike generally regard the album as an extremely important record in the history of rock music, citing the lasting influence it has had on subsequent punk musicians and other musical genres that were influenced by such punk rock artists.
The album was released on October 28, 1977 on the Virgin Records label, amid controversy arising from the use of the obscenity (in British English) "bollocks" in its title.
Ok, now that explains it, apparently "bullocks" is a dirty word.
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