The Alternative Ummagumma

I’ve been obsessively listening to Pink Floyd these past few days, prompted I suspect by the colossal Floyd boxset released earlier this week. Needless to say I could never afford such an luxury (and besides, the underwhelming packaging has nixed any such extravagant notions), so I’m making do with my modest collection of CDs. Speaking of CDs (and formats), last week I ripped my Ummagumma CD to mp3 and re-sequenced the entire double album to follow the 1971 8-Track Cartridge track-listing, which dispenses with the Live and Studio sides, and mixes the solo contributions with the songs recorded at Birmingham & Manchester - so Rick Wright’s "Sysyphus" flows into "Astronomy Domine" which is followed by Roger Waters’ Grantchester Meadows and so on. This is not so much a fan-edit on my part, more like an alternative Ummagumma experience and I find myself enjoying the album as a complete work – in the past I’ve been guilty of neglecting the Studio side, apart from "Grantchester Meadows" and Dave Gilmour’s "The Narrow Way" (which is one of the best things on any Floyd record), all too often skipping over the brooding and austere Sysyphus and Nick Mason’s treated drum track "The Grand Vizier's Garden Party". The jury remains out (for several years now) on "Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict", which I tend to lump in with Meddle’s "Seamus" as one of those Pink Floyd duck eggs, although with repeated listening to it these last few days, I’ve come to re-evaluate it as a sort of proto-Nurse With Wound piece. And interestingly, the bawling Scottish burr heard on the track is performed by Ron Geesin, who appears on the Nurse With Wound List…

C.H.U.D

Just reading Nathaniel Thompson’s Blu-Ray review of C.H.U.D over at Mondo Digital, and I’m pleased to see Arrow have turned in another fine job. I caught the film again a few weeks ago courtesy of the 2001 Anchor Bay DVD (which still looks pretty good!), and the film remains a smart, witty and fast-paced monster romp. Watching the film again, I was particular struck by one sequence which anticipates Aliens – when a search and destroy team descends into the sewers, complete with flame-throwers and helmet cameras relaying their progress back to a monitoring station. Inevitably the mission goes awry. I’m not suggesting James Cameron was taking notes, but it’s a nice bit of serendipity all the same. C.H.U.D is notable for being Kim Greist’s film debut and she’s very good too, landing one of the film’s most memorable moments and I had to wonder why such a talented actress didn’t become a big 80’s star – at least she’s in two of the decade’s finest films, Brazil and Manhunter.

If my Aliens connection seemed tenuous, my ear caught two music references spoken by Daniel Stern – at one point he shrugs off Christopher Curry’s police captain with “It's a Buck Dancer's Choice, my friend” (a line from The Grateful Dead’s song Uncle John’s Band) and later upon entering the sewers, Stern warns “This ain’t no disco” (a line from Talking Heads' Life During Wartime). I went back and listened to the commentary during these scenes but nothing was confirmed in the riotous chatter between the Stern, John Heard and director Douglas Cheek… Incidentally, the excellent UK quad poster above was sourced from the very impressive Film On Paper site which I stumbled across preparing this post. Be sure to pay it a visit.

Clive Barker's Hellraiser

I mentioned Clive Barker’s Hellbound Heart in my last post and at the weekend I took some time to reacquaint my myself with my collection of Hellraiser comics picked up in the early 90’s. The series ran for 20 issues from 1989 to 1993 and I was fortunate enough to pick up most installments (not so easy in the pre-Internet days). I was quite an avid reader of Clive Barker’s early excursions into the world of mature Horror comics (or graphic novels as I stringently referred to them back in the day). By the early 90’s Barker had relinquished control of Hellraiser and was inching ever closer to full blown fantasia with the epic novel Imajica and The Thief of Always, a book written for young adults. The dark and perverse horror of the Books of Blood and the two Hellraiser films seemed increasingly remote. Fortunately, Barker found an outlet for the darker side of his imagination with comics like Tapping the Vein (1989-1992), Son of Celluloid (1991), Revelations (1992), and Dread (1992). The Hellraiser series which Barker occasionally contributed to was not based on the films, but instead built upon the Hellraiser mythos, as characters in various time-lines and locations (the Middle Ages, Silent-era Hollywood, the Vietnam War) invoke the Cenobites by meddling with the Lament configurations.

Revisiting the comic again, I was a tad disappointed by the writing, which seems squarely aimed at teenagers looking for lashings of gore flavored with a little sex and nudity – which was fine by this 14 year old reader in search of illicit thrills upon graduating from 2000AD. The story artwork is rather variable at best (apart from exceptional work by John Bolton, Bill Koeb, John Van Fleet, and Scott Hampton) but my attention was drawn to the full page illustrations which bookended each of the 4 or 5 stories contained within each issue. I’ve gathered together some of the more striking illustrations that appeared throughout the series…

Issue 1 - Artwork by Kent Williams

Issue 1 - Artwork by Kent Williams

Issue 4 - Artwork by Bill Sienkiewicz

Issue 5 - Artwork by John Van Fleet

Issue 10 - Artwork by Mark Evans

Issue 11 - Artwork by John Van Fleet

Issue 19 - Artwork by Chris Titus

Issue 20 - Artwork by George Pratt

The 120 Days of Sodom

More p0rn to prise you away from your favourite dens of iniquity... Penguin's recently published edition of the 120 Days of Sodom is currently an Amazon UK bestseller, and I'm rather pleased that such an unhinged work of debauched imagination has joined the cannon of classics. I read the bulk of the 120 Days in my early teens, courtesy of  Arrow Books' 1990 edition, the novel, along with Naked Lunch, Crash and Last Exit to Brooklyn, was one of those transgressive works I was eager to investigate. But enthusiasm soon gave way to boredom, and the book’s wayward plotting, unrelenting repetition and Sade’s penchant for exhaustive detail eventually led to my abandoning the book after some 500 pages.

And yet… I find myself intrigued once again by the 120 Days. So much cultural water has passed under the bridge in the intervening years I feel much better placed now to tackle the novel which has been marinated with all sorts of interesting personal connections - I’ve seen the Pasolini film, Peter Brook’s 1966 film Marat/Sade, the Sade-influenced films of Jess Franco, and there are the odd stray references that I enjoy - Peter Cushing possessed by the spirit of the Marquis in the 1966 film The Skull, the cameo appearance of the 120 Days of Sodom in Clive Barker’s Hellbound Heart, as well as the titular reference of the 1981 Nurse With Wound/Whitehouse collaboration album 150 Murderous Passions.

Another interesting connection emerges with this latest edition of the novel, thanks to Penguin’s design team who have selected Man Ray’s 1933 photograph Monument à D.A.F. de Sade for the book cover. Ray’s photograph reflects two of Sade’s obsessions – the anti-Christian sentiment of the inverted crucifix, and Marquis’ predilection for anal sex. The photograph was re-staged for Coil’s 1984 debut album Scatology, which in turn reflected Coil’s interest in the occult and male sexuality. There’s a pleasing symmetry at work here: Coil sampled dialogue from Salò on the Scatology-era track Homage to Sewage, while the album itself contains some Sadean liner notes – a fictional sexual encounter between two men written to accompany the track The Sewage Worker's Birthday Party.

Exotic connections

I'm listening to the first two volumes of Martin Denny's Exotica series this morning, courtesy of Scamp's excellent 1996 twofer CD - required listening for any Throbbing Gristle devotee, though I tend to prefer Les Baxter's exotic excursions. This latest round of headphone tourism was inspired by TG's Greatest Hits album which I was poring over at the weekend in search of some elusive information. Greatest Hits was dedicated to Martin Denny (long before the lounge revival of the 90's rekindled interest in the composer) but it was the album's art direction which put Denny in mind, or rather, Liberty Records who issued Denny's early albums in some very attractive sleeves, starring Exotica Girl Sandy Warner. I can't help but think the alluring photograph of Cosey Fanni Tutti on the Greatest Hits album would have made a more effective cover for the 20 Jazz Funk Greats album (such was the propensity of record labels to use glamour girls to sell cut-price compilations) but either way it's an effective way of confounding expectations. TG also borrowed the typeface from the title of the second Exotica album for their own logo, and donned Hawaiian shirts (or in Gen's case, a Yellow Magic Orchestra shirt) for the group photo on the rear sleeve, complete with some amusing props - a mooring rope, a stray crab and Cosey's cornet.

Alternative shot of the Greatest Hits group portrait, courtesy of the 2011 re-issue

The connections between Throbbing Gristle and Martin Denny run deeper than packaging homages. The influence of Denny on TG's music is felt on some of the group's most beautiful songs - 20 Jazz Funk Greats introduced vibes to the TG sound, on tracks like Tanith, Exotica, Hot on the Heels of Love, later reappearing on the final single Distant Dreams (Part 2). The group paid its most explicit tribute to Martin Denny with the Journey Through A Body track Exotic Functions, with its strange animal noises and polyrhythmic percussion. I mentioned the renewed interest in the 90's of vintage exotica, and interestingly there's an overlap here between TG and the belated lounge scene. When Tim Gane of Stereolab was tested for The Wire's Invisible Jukebox feature in issue 164 (October 1997), he recalled first hearing Martin Denny's music on a TG tape: "The first time I heard Martin Denny was on a Throbbing Gristle cassette back in 1979, and I always loved the track. I didn't even know what it was. It was in the middle of a load of stuff - it was a live gig they were playing".

Video Watchdog (1990 - 2016 - 20??)

The news that Tim and Donna Lucas' Video Watchdog is to cease activity as a print magazine has put me in melancholic humor this evening. Running a magazine of any kind is no easy task, and few last very long. It's a shame that esoteric interests are rarely catered for on the magazine racks, so all the more remarkable that Video Watchdog ran for a staggering 27 years. The magazine’s influence on the sell-through market and film-collecting culture is frankly immeasurable. Every publication, every website and blog which offers a word of advice to readers on the technical virtues (or shortcomings) of a DVD or Blu-Ray, has some of Video Watchdog in its DNA. Magazines frequently suffer dry spells and periods of low-voltage over their lifetime, but Video Watchdog remained consistently brilliant throughout its long run – two recent articles from 2015 on the films of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Walerian Borowczyk were among the finest the magazine ever produced. So much of the magazine’s success was down to its dogged independence, its refusal to compromise the content with incongruous advertising, or acquiesce to the kind of tacky commercial cul-de-sacs the magazine’s contemporaries pursued. Thankfully Video Watchdog never did stoop to heavy metal and video game reviews or dreary set reports of instantly missable sequels. Beware of false imitations.

No appraisal of Video Watchdog is complete without a word for Tim Lucas' most important collaborator, Donna Lucas, responsible for the magazine’s art direction. From its maiden voyage in 1990 the magazine employed a simple and economic design strategy within its attractive (and it must be said, fetishistic) A5 size. It's been a pleasure to watch the design of the magazine evolve over the years. Issue 100 marked the arrival of color (heralded by a lovely foldout cover of Dorothy Gale's first glimpse at the Technicolor land of Oz). If the stylish layout of text augmented by stills, posters and ad mats reflected the magazine’s serious investigative concerns, the covers were by contrast unashamedly playful, colorful and eye-catching with big ornate lettering accompanied by a well-chosen image related to the lead feature of that particular issue, and framed within the much loved round-cornered cathode ray tube. To borrow a line from an old Video Watchdog friend: "I think that even Pete ought to be able to sell the hell out of a classy campaign like that"

Video Watchdog's mission may have come to an end at least in the struggling print format but like the Voyager 1 probe that is hurtling across interstellar space, the magazine will continue to transmit data for years to come. For this reader, the magazine still fulfills one very important function - in times when my love of Cinema is flagging, when no film in my collection can stir my interest, I can reach for an issue of Video Watchdog and have my spirits restored. My heartfelt thanks to Tim and Donna and all the contributors over the years.

German Film Programs

Some German film paper for the memorabilia junkies out there... I recently re-discovered these two film programs for The Night Porter and The Exorcist toiling away in obscurity among my stash of Films and Filming magazines. A quick Google image search for both yielded no results so I thought I'd post them here for posterity. I picked both up some years ago at a flea market in Vienna, the best of a huge selection of programs for vintage German films and not terribly interesting Hollywood imports. My lo-fi photos don't do justice to both programs but production wise, The Exorcist program is the classier of the two, printed on good quality paper and more professionally designed. The Night Porter by comparison is rather flimsy and the slab serif typeface is dull and unimaginative. Still, I wish I could stretch my rudimentary German a little further to understand the text. Apart from showing Charlotte Rampling semi-naked on 3 of the 12 pages, how does one sell a film like The Night Porter to a German audience ?

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things

Yesterday I chanced upon some mixed reviews of VCI’s 2016 BR of Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, and I was sufficiently enthused to revisit the film last night courtesy of VCI’s ancient DVD edition from 2000. I remember well the disc's Amazon product page which advised customers to view the film in a darkened room due to the transfer’s shortcomings. Watching the VCI disc again, the picture frequently melts into a soupy mess (much more so in the film’s third act) but somehow the discoloration and unstable blacks render the film even more unnerving. The film’s debt to Night of the Living Dead goes without saying, but there are some interesting parallels to look out for with Zombie Flesh Eaters – one is tempted to imagine Dardano Sacchetti having the film in mind when writing the screenplay but perhaps not. I’m so familiar with the film at this point, I devoted much of my attention on this pass to Carl Zittrer’s terrific electronic score, and I particularly enjoy the synthesized howling and wailing which adds tremendous atmosphere to those long dialogue scenes in the graveyard. The score rises to truly Industrial proportions in the sequence where the dead worm their way out of the ground - it must have been something to experience this in a well-equipped theatre. A CD collecting Zittrer’s experimental scores for Children, Deathdream, Deranged and Black Christmas is long overdue.

All this talk about Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things has unearthed a memory of two VHS copies I had of the film in the early 90's. My introduction to the film was under less than auspicious circumstances courtesy of True World Video, one of those dubious labels that seemingly sprang up overnight on UK video market like a bad fungus. True World put out the film as Revenge of the Living Dead, and came in a hideous cut and paste sleeve with some zombie graphics lifted from a mask advert that frequently appeared in the pages of Fangoria, and augmented with two unrelated film stills on back cover. This was the kind of junk that would routinely snare me in those carefree VHS-collecting days.

My second encounter with the film was even more memorable, this time thanks to the tiny Screen In Doors label which issued the film, under its original title, but crucially with one of the most bizarre sleeves from the post-certificate era. Mike Worrall's wraparound painting suggests a certain Giger influence, no doubt the artist had the creature from xenomorph from Alien(s) in mind although oddly enough the monster anticipates the hybrid creature from Alien Resurrection. Screen In Doors were so pleased with Worrall's work that they chose, rather enigmatically I think, to relegate the title of the film to the spine and back sleeve. I've uploaded a larger scan of the sleeve here for the VHS art junkies - this one is a keeper.

Throbbing Gristle - At the I.C.A., London, 18th October, 1976

"You see, we couldn't get a gig so we thought we'd play at the I.C.A. The Marquee wouldn't have us" (Genesis P-Orridge, Melody Maker, November 20th, 1976)"

After two low key performances during the summer of 1976, Throbbing Gristle made their official debut on October 18th at the opening of COUM's Prostitution show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The exhibition catapulted COUM, from obscure performance art group to notorious cultural terrorists, when UK broadsheets and tabloids vented their disgust at COUM's display of used tampons, anal syringes, framed hardcore photos of Cosey Fanni Tutti (pages from adult magazines she posed for) and other scandalous objets d'art. The strategy to officially launch Throbbing Gristle at the Prostitution event was a spectacular bit of self-promotion, even attracting attention from one unlikely source, Scottish MP Nicholas Fairbairn who called for the Arts Council to be scrapped and deemed all involved "wreckers of civilisation", a headline grabbing quote which has since become a byword for the group. Another unsympathetic eyewitness was Tony Parsons who wrote a sneering sarcastic account of TG's performance for the NME. In fact, TG's set dubbed Music From The Death Factory is one of their great early performances, the band surging with creativity, confidence, and fearlessness.

The opening number Very Friendly had been previously recorded at Death Factory studios but the ICA version is the definitive reading of the song, a dramatic (but factual) account of the final hours of 17 year old Edward Evans before his brutal murder by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Genesis P-Orridge delivers a tour-de-force vocal, antagonistic, outraged, even a little theatrical ("There's been a mu...mu...mu...mu...murder") amid great tendrils of synth whipped up by Chris Carter, a clanging percussive rhythm track (which had appeared at the AIR Gallery and Winchester shows albeit in fragmentary form) bursts of improv noise and snatches of cut-up dialogue lifted from news programs. Very Friendly segues right into the toxic We Hate You (Little Girls), an exercise in deliberate bad taste but showing a humorous element of TG, something the later wave of Industrial groups could never quite master. Following the relative calm of an eerie instrumental passage, the group embark on Slug Bait, one of TG's most unnerving pieces, led by a weirdly accented vocal by Genesis acting out a Manson Family style slaying. Dead Head returns from the previous show but here is presented in much more lugubrious, sinister form. The final song of the evening, Zyklon B Zombie bears almost no relation, music or lyrics wise to the track found on the flipside of the United single, and after 38mins (and not 60mins as promised by Genesis in his introduction) the ICA concert ends with a high pitched alarm, and polite applause from, one imagines, a bewildered audience. Incidentally, right at the end of the Industrial tape (and at the 58:46 mark of the reissue CD) there's a short clip from BBC Radio's Newsbeat about the Prostitution show, which includes a soundbite by Genesis.

An Ending...

Just fresh from revisiting Steven Soderbergh's 2000 film Traffic (inspired by a screening last week of Sicario), and it's always a pleasure to see again one of my very favourite final scenes in Cinema, as Benicio del Toro enjoys a late evening children's baseball game. It's one of those endings that seems to have strayed from another film and it's given a majestic quality by Brian Eno's track An Ending (Ascent). That Eno piece, composed for the Apollo missions film For All Mankind seems at first an odd choice, such is its irrevocable association with space, but in fact it lends the baseball scene a nice cosmic touch, the weightlessness of the music echoes an earlier scene in the film where del Toro first mentions baseball whilst floating in a swimming pool. I like the end titles too, which appear to be influenced by Dan Perri's titles for All The Presidents Men, placed at the bottom of the screen in a simple yet elegant sans-serif font.

Watching this final scene of Traffic again, the surreal sulfuric light put in mind Seamus Heaney's poem Markings, in which the poet describes a children's game of football and that singular skill that children have to see their surroundings long after the light has faded...

Youngsters shouting their heads off in a field

As the light died and they kept on playing

Because by then they were playing in their heads

And the actual kicked ball came to them

Like a dream heaviness, and their own hard

Breathing in the dark and skids on grass

Sounded like effort in another world

First look at The Rolling Stones In Mono boxset

It seemed like the longest pre-order of my life, but The Rolling Stones In Mono CD box finally arrived this morning and I'm currently dipping in with the 1964 calling card The Rolling Stones. So far so good, the debut album sounds fantastic and has a real crunch (Tell Me is playing as I type this and always puts me in the mood for Mean Streets). As for the packaging, the 15 discs come in a sturdy cardboard box with a flip lid that is closed shut with a little magnet. Very nifty. I've only briefly flicked thru the 48-page book but it looks fine. I'm not so pleased though with the individual album sleeves, which are glossy cardboard facsimiles of the original covers but the images are sometimes cropped from the original LP covers and the printing is a little weak, a little too dark or contrast levels pushed too hard. The Let It Bleed album has a queasy pinkish hue instead of the familiar creamy color.

On the plus side, the box has each of the albums housed in their own plastic sleeve (plus an inner plastic sleeve for the disc - so no rubbing when sliding the disc out). I've heard reports that the US edition doesn't come with the protective plastics which is a little shabby for Stateside buyers. Worth mentioning the Japanese box which seems a far more lavish production, the albums have been upgraded to 7-inch cardboard sleeves and look much more professional than their EUR/UK counterparts. The Japanese box comes with all the usual fetishistic Japanese ephemera but you'll have to shell out over €500 for it.

The Last Waltz

I’ve been reconnecting with Music From Big Pink these last few days, the rootsy songs still sound astonishing timeless. At the weekend, I revisited the Dylan documentary Dont Look Back so last night the stage was set for a screening of The Last Waltz. Of all the concert films I’ve seen over the years this would be one to see in a theatre - the pre-credit title card: “This Film Should be Played Loud” for once seems wholly justified. The music is of course dazzling, and I’m always in awe of Levon Helm, singing those knotty lyrics to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down whilst keeping perfect time. Of the special guests, I think I liked Joni Mitchell performing "Coyote" the best. Ronnie Hawkins tears up the stage with some raucous bar room rhythm and blues and it's a rare treat to see Van Morrison in such exuberant form punching the air during a terrific rendition of "Caravan". I couldn't help but think during Lawrence Ferlinghetti's irreverent take on the Lord's Prayer what a born again Bob Dylan might have made of it, but Dylan was two still years away from his epiphany.

I like the band interviews as well. Rick Danko and Robbie Robertson are like hip, streetwise guys from one of Scorsese’s films, while Garth Hudson and Levon Helm look like they strayed from a Peckinpah western. It’s a shame the group later descended into bitter acrimony because the camaraderie at Winterland and the Shangri-La rehearsal space is a joy to watch. I had one minor complaint about Scorsese’s coverage - Richard Manuel doesn’t get a close-up during his vocal on I Shall Be Released, but after watching the short feature that comes with the DVD which reveals what a Herculean task it was to capture the concert, I can let this one go. Still, Scorsese’s abrupt exit out of the studio rendition of The Weight (which has a fantastic arrangement here) is the one sour note in this otherwise exemplary concert film.

Skeleton Tree

Currently listening to album number 16 from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds... I'd normally grumble about Skeleton Tree's minimalist packaging - the CD comes in a sturdy, spot varnished mini LP card sleeve complete with an insert featuring the album credits and a photo of Nick in a recording studio, writing notes on a copy book, but this is an album draped in mourning clothes and the music within follows suit - dark, austere, stripped back, apart from Warren Ellis' loops and soundscapes, the Bad Seeds feel absent, the album sounds like a man alone in a room wrestling with unimaginable pain and loss. I haven't delved into the lyrics (none are featured on the CD sleeve) but Arthur Cave's passing is never mentioned directly, the lyrics are often oblique, even hallucinatory. I've listened to the album perhaps half a dozen times now (it runs just under 40mins) and I can safely say it's one of Nick Cave's finest albums, the penultimate son Distant Sky, featuring Theatre of Voices soprano singer Else Torp is one of Cave's most beautiful songs. Essential listening, but you knew that already.

Werewolves on Wheels

Singer songwriter Barry McGuire contemplatin' the eve of destruction in the 1971 film Werewolves on Wheels... I've been seeing enthusiastic word for Psychomania ahead of the forthcoming BFI Blu-Ray, and with that in mind, I grabbed some time last night to revisit Werewolves on Wheels, the only other occult biker pic I can think of in that micro-genre of genres. Howling director Joe Dante didn't have much good to say about the film when he reviewed it for Film Bulletin in the early 70's ("an incoherent, nearly plotless jumble of repulsive cycle-bum viciousness and humorless vulgarity that seems seriously and squarely aimed at imbeciles"), and yet, I remain quite fond of the film, for its wacky premise, fleeting drive-in gore, occasional detours into metaphysical weirdness and some spirited performances - there's one particularly great Godardian moment when the Angels search for one of their missing brethren (nicknamed "Movie") and spend the scene scrambling around a desert landscape which has become a dump for wrecked cars, shouting "Moooovie !"

Watching the film again, my interest was less focused on Barry McGuire (who turned to Christianity after making the film) than that of lead actor Stephen Oliver. Not a particularly distinguished actor - his filmography offers only one other interesting title, Russ Meyer's 1965 biker pic Motorpsycho!, but watching him in Werewolves on Wheels, one could readily imagine him playing Charles Manson, the similarity in looks and voice are quite striking, certainly more convincing than Steve Railsback…

Under Hipgnosis

My last post included a link to the Hipgnosiscovers website, an incredible resource of album packaging by the great design house. Well worth a visit. Combing thru the archive earlier, a few designs caught my eye (although not necessarily for the same reason).

The first of these is the eponymous 1971 album by the Edgar Broughton Band, which originally came in one of those wraparound gatefold sleeves. This one would be shocking enough even if it didn’t include a morbid detail that slowly reveals itself within the shot…

My second choice is another great gatefold landscape, designed for British rock outfit Quatermass whose single solitary 1970 album features one of Hipgnosis’ most striking disjunctive photomontages - a squadron of pterodactyls swooping between two skyscrapers, anticipating Larry Cohen’s Q The Winged Serpent by a decade…

The next two album covers, I selected purely for the sheer weirdness of their concepts - one wonders what the bands were thinking when they approved them. The first, featured on 1978's Misplaced Ideals by UK band Sad Cafe looks like a dry run for Hipgnosis' subsequent cover for Peter Gabriel's "Melt" album, but such a far out (and rather grotesque) design feels at odds with the band's innocuous pop soul, and a world away from the soft-porn Roxy Music style cover of their first LP.

The second of these head-scratchers is one of the most bizarre album covers I've seen in quite a while - hard rock band Toe Fat's second album from 1970 which features miniature band members in a landscape of rotting chicken carcass and other decomposing food. Perhaps Hipgnosis had an idea to replicate one of Max Ernst's landscapes (Europe After the Rain or The Eye of Silence) but it's rather nauseating...