Some cool covers from the funk years!

One of the reasons I love music released on Vinyl is the cover art. There are two of Miles Davis’ album covers that really stand out to me from his other albums released during the 70′s, these are ‘Live Evil’ and ‘Bitches Brew’. After years looking at these, wondering who painted the original artwork, I decided to see if I could find out about the original paintings and to my surprise I discovered both covers were actually painted by the same artist – Mati Klarwein.
Taken from his website here: Mati Klarwein
Klarwein moved to New York in 1965. By then his work was considered to be inspired by surrealism and the so-called psychedelic movement of the time. However, it was more his extensive traveling and wide interests of non-Western deities and symbolism that inspired his art more than the use of psychedelic drugs. His friend Timothy Leary once stated, that judging the character of his paintings, “Mati didn’t need psychedelics!”
During his New York years he created paintings such as Bitches Brew, commissioned by Miles Davis for his landmark album of the same title. He also completed many portraits of people such as John F. Kennedy, his friend Jimmy Hendrix and other important characters of the time, and finished his large scale project, The Aleph Sanctuary, a cubic temple of all religions, featuring 68 paintings, representing some Biblical passages such as “Anunciation” (1961) (later used by Santana for the cover of his best selling album, Abraxas), “Crucifixion” (1963-1965) represented by a highly sexual tree of life which caused quite a turmoil within the puritan white establishment as well as with the black panthers, “Nativity”(1962), “Grain of Sand” (1963-1965), and many other of Mati’s best known paintings. Later, Klarwein was forced to dismantle his Chapel and sell the paintings individually for economical reasons. The chapel was rebuilt in 1992 using aluminum structures to hold Plexiglas reproductions lit by rows of fluorescent tubes.
As well as being commissioned to paint the two covers for Miles Davis he also painted the artwork featured on the Santana cover ‘Abraxus’. He’d planned to paint another album cover for a collaboration between Jimi Hendrix and Gil Evans but unfortunately this was left unfinished when Hendrix passed away. “Unfortunately Jimi died during the recordings and it was never released”.

Bitches Brew – Mati Klarwein – 1970
Original Painting used for Bitches Brew Gatefold Cover
Original painting used for the Miles Davis “Live” Cover.
Quote from Mati: “I hooked up with Miles the way I hooked up with everything else in life: through the women I’ve known. Be they friends or lovers, they are all mothers with excellent taste. Without them I’d be a dead spermatozoid in a dry puddle, and Miles saw that in my paintings. The only time he discussed subject matter was for Live-Evil. He asked me to paint a toad for the ‘Evil’ side. So I painted J Edgar Hoover as a toad in drag – which turned out to be another one of my prophetic insights.”

Annunciation – Mati Klarwein – 1961 – 128 x 88 cm
“Annunciation is the first painting I painted after my initial New York awakening. I was 28 years old and at the peak of my molecular bio-energy. You can feel the sudden burst of the Big Apple’s electric zap in the composition after all the early years of adolescent brooding over potatoes and eggs and the romantic nostalgia of the preceeding Flight to Egypt.In those days I had an obsessional passion for the female body that lasted deep into my thirties (to be replaced by rocks ‘n’ stones)..
Years later Carlos Santana saw a reproduction of the Annunciation in a magazine and wanted it for the cover of his all time best selling Abraxas album. It did me a world of good. I saw the album pinned to the wall in a shaman’s mud hut in Niger and inside a Rastafarian’s ganja hauling truck in Jamaica. I was in good global company, muchissimas gracias, Carlito!”

Jimi Hendrix – portrait by Mati Klarwein – 1970
New York Angel – Mati Klarwein – 1965
Henry Mancini’s – “The Cop Show Themes” LP 1976
A Nice little Mancini LP that pops up here and there and one you should grab if you dig cop show themes. Featuring Harvey Mason on drums, Abraham Laboriel on Bass and Lee Ritenour on Guitar, Mancini and co get pretty damn funky, covering classics like “Theme from Swat, Kojak, Police Woman” and “Baretta’s Theme”. And with Harvey Mason on the drums you know this albums probably going to have a few dope drum breaks on it too (and it doesn’t disappoint either)… Killer Cover design too!!

COVER DESIGN AND ALTERNATE VERSION
Art work & design by Hipgnosis
Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, the design team known as Hipgnosis, were once roommates of Syd Barrett’s, the former leader of Pink Floyd; their professional relationship with the band, which began with Floyd’s second album (A Saucerful of Secrets), continues to the present day. “Pink Floyd’s music is very evocative,” says Thorgerson. “They conjure up very unusual atmospheres of feelings and spaces. When we’re doing the packaging, we’re trying in part to say this represents the music or the band in pictorial or graphic terms.”For the inside of the gatefold of Dark Side of the Moon, Thorgerson literally drew the sound wave of a hearbeat. “If the album is about any one thing, possibly it’s madness — dark side of the moon, irrationality, the other side of one’s normal life,” says Thorgerson. “They had people discussing these mad little bits about their lives, and they used the heartbeat as a rhythm underneath it.” The outside cover was a little more fanciful, with the front depicting a prism refracting white lite into the visual spectrum and the back illustrating the reverse. It was Thorgerson’s way of amplifying another aspect of the band, namely the light shows that were becoming a Pink Floyd hallmark.
“The Floyd developed something sophisticated in terms of trying to create an atmosphere with interesting lights to match what they were already creating with their sound,” Thorgerson says. “The prism was a way to talk about the fact that this band, preeminently among all bands, would do light. Light and sound.” The lavish package also included two posters — one comprising shots of the band in concert, the other featuring the Egyptian pyramids, photographed by Thorgerson under a full moon. The band, incidentally, took a cut in its royalty rate so that the posters could be included without raising the cost of the record. “This was in the days when packaging really meant something,” says Thorgerson. “It was a present to the fans.”
Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon 1973
cover art by hipgnosis


Dark side of the moon take 3 – pink floyd
alternative cover art by hipgnosis

Dark side of the moon take 4 – pink floyd
alternative cover art by hipgnosis

Dark side of the moon take 5 – pink floyd
alternative cover art by hipgnosis

Rare Sitar/Rock Album from the early 70′s featuring a very funk cover design.
“The Rare Big Jim Sullivan Album “Sitar A Go Go” on Mercury Records. With versions on “Sunshine Superman, Whiter Shade Of Pale, She’s Leaving Home” and more. Groovy stuff and an amazing cover too!!”
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Throughout the 80s and 90′s Melbourne experienced a graffiti explosion which quickly cemented the city in the history books for it’s influence on style and development of the graffiti art culture. Bias takes us on a journey back to his days growing up on the train lines with the infamous Wild Child Art crew, to the days he calls the Aerosol Era.
Tracks that describe the often tumultuous life of a writer, like “Militant Mindstate,” “Another Day,” and “Racked That,” showcase the very personal and introspective nature of Aerosol Era through the eyes of one of Australian hip hop’s most influential poets. Featuring production by Jase, Bigfoot, Peril, Ransom, Ciecmate and Brothers Stoney and representing Melbourne’s most prolific graffiti crews DMA, WCA, USA, CTF, RDC, F1C, TSF, Hursty Boys and Brisbane’s DIE TBK and 750, Aerosol Era is an audio journal of the graffiti life as penned by Bias himself.
Tracks are: 1. Aersol Era / 2. Another Day / 3. Fresh Flavours / 4. Melbourne Memories / 5. Militant Mind State / 6. Line To Line / 7. Words Of The Wise / 8. Style / 9. In The Heart Of The Night / 10. Racked That / 11. 301 / 12. Tempera’s Rising
Artist: Downsyde
Album: When The Dust Settles 2xLP
Year: 2004
Label: Obese Records
Catalog #: OBR026
Number of Records: 2
Pressing Information: Original Australian Pressing
Downsyde’s 2004 Double Vinyl Album “WHEN THE DUST SETTLES” on Obese Records. Featuring classic’s like “Les Fortunate”, “Best Kept Secret” and “Anyone Can Do it” just to name a few. Cover artwork by Perth Graff king “Dash”. Limited Edition – Only 500 were pressed on vinyl and is now Impossible to find on wax!!!Rare Australian Hip Hop Vinyl on the Obese Record Label from Melbourne.
Track Listing:
| 1. Lesfortunate | ||
| 2. Anyone Can Do It | ||
| 3. Bring It All Back | ||
| 4. To Tha Stumps | ||
| 5. Ragga Dope | ||
| 6. Take It Off | ||
| 7. The Sooner The Better | ||
| 8. Coming Back For More | ||
| 9. Best Kept Secret | ||
| 10. I’m All I Can Be |
11. Around The Way
12. Don’t Cha Know
13. Verbal Diarrhoea
14. Lies Of Honesty
15. Arabian Knights
16. First Love
Year: 2000
Label: Mzee Records
Catalog #: MZEE 064
Country Of Origin: GERMANY
Check out the classic New York Subway Graffiti photo’s of early 80′s, Seen Panels plus the Handball court cover painted for the album in the Bronx by Can Two, Seen and Zebster. There is also an 27 minute interview with Seen where he talks about his 1st graffiti, the panel years, the early 80′s New York graff scene and more!! Cover Photo’s by Martha Cooper
Track Listing:
| A1 | Intro |
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| A2 | All City (Maxi Verison) | |||
| A3 | Jon One Skit 1 | |||
| A4 | All City (Instrumental) | |||
| A5 | Jon One Skit 2 | |||
| A6 | All City (Bonus Beats) | |||
| B1 | Quik Skit | |||
| B2 | Style Wars | |||
| B3 | Kase 2 Interlude | |||
| B4 | Style Wars (Instrumental) | |||
| B5 | It’s All Destroyed | |||
| C1 | First Train – Summer 73′ | |||
| C2 | Never Stop | |||
| C3 | First Train – Summer 73′ (Instrumental) | |||
| C4 | Never Stop (Instrumental) | |||
| D. Seen Interview |
The psychedelic age was in full swing by the late 60′s, crazy colors, swirls, and tripped out artwork (all heavily inspired by the use of drugs like LSD/Acid) marked a changing time. Groups like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, The Beatles and The Grateful Dead were pioneering a new sound and style that would influence and inspire generations of musicians and music lovers through out the world.
This was a time when the artwork used on album covers and the concert/gig posters played a very important role in promoting the movement and was considered to be instrumental in the success of an event or a band. Groups and music promoters took great pride when producing concert posters and album cover artwork. Artists like Griffin and Moscoso, John Meyers, Peter Bailey, Randy Tuten lead the way in Psychedelic inspired art and poster design. Some amazing music and artwork was produced during the psychedelic era that still holds its own today! Peace, love and enjoy a few examples bellow!
![[tangerine+dream.jpg]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_uqkJxLgpezs/SjcWOpgBBsI/AAAAAAAABm8/i6GGlKlt_CY/s1600/tangerine%2Bdream.jpg)
Psychedelic art is any kind of visual artwork inspired by psychedelic experiences induced by drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. The word “psychedelic” (coined by British psychologist Humphrey Osmond) means “mind manifesting”. By that definition all artistic efforts to depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered “psychedelic”. However, in common parlance “Psychedelic Art” refers above all to the art movement of the 1960s counterculture. Psychedelic visual arts were a counterpart to psychedelic rock music. Concert posters, album covers, lightshows, murals, comic books, underground newspapers and more reflected not only the kaleidoscopically swirling patterns of LSD hallucinations, but also revolutionary political, social and spiritual sentiments inspired by insights derived from these psychedelic states of consciousness.

Jimi Hendrix Experience
Buddy Miles Express
Dino Valenti
10/10-12/1968
Artist: Griffin and Moscoso

Yardbirds
Country Joe and the Fish
10/23/1966
Artist: John Meyers

Howlin’ Wolf
Country Joe and the Fish
Loading Zone
4/14-16/1967
Artist: Peter Bailey

8/13-25/1968
Artist: Kelley and Griffin

Steve Miller Band
James Cotton Blues Band
Keef Hartley
9/11-14/1969
Artist: Randy Tuten

Country Joe and the Fish
Albert King
Blodwyn Pig
10/9-12/1969
Artist: Randy Tuten

Dark Side of the Moon is the sixth studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd. Released in March 1973, the concept built on the ideas that the band had explored in their live shows and previous recordings, but it lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterised their work following the departure in 1968 of founding member, principal composer and lyricist, Syd Barrett. The album’s themes include conflict, greed, ageing, and mental illness, the latter partly inspired by Barrett’s deteriorating mental state.
The album was developed as part of a forthcoming tour of live performances, and premièred several months before studio recording began. The new material was further refined during the tour, and was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road Studios in London. Pink Floyd used some of the most advanced recording techniques of the time, including multitrack recording and tape loops. Analogue synthesisers were given prominence in several tracks, and a series of recorded interviews with staff and band personnel provided the source material for a range of philosophical quotations used throughout. Engineer Alan Parsons was directly responsible for some of the most notable sonic aspects of the album, including the non-lexical performance of Clare Torry.
The Dark Side of the Moon was an immediate success, topping the Billboard 200 for one week. It subsequently remained on the charts for 741 weeks (fourteen years), the longest duration of any album in history. With an estimated 45 million units sold, it is Pink Floyd’s most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums worldwide. It has twice been remastered and re-released, and has been covered by several other acts. It spawned two singles, “Money” and “Us and Them”. In addition to its commercial success, The Dark Side of the Moon is one of Pink Floyd’s most popular albums among fans and critics, and is frequently ranked as one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION VINYL
Original packaging including stickers and posters
Heavyweight 180 gram Virgin vinyl plus 3 posters
30th Anniversary cover and stickers
TRACK LISTING
1. Speak to Me/Breathe in the Air (Gilmour/Mason/Waters/Wright) – 4:00
2. On the Run (Gilmour/Waters) – 3:33
3. Time (Gilmour/Mason/Waters/Wright) – 7:06
4. The Great Gig in the Sky (Wright) – 4:44
5. Money (Waters) – 6:32
6. Us and Them (Waters/Wright) – 7:40
7. Any Colour You Like (Gilmour/Mason/Wright) – 3:25
8. Brain Damage (Waters) – 3:50
9. Eclipse (Waters) – 2:04
The Dark Side of The Moon was released on March 24 1973, and since, has become one of the most successful albums of all time, selling in excess of 35 million copies worldwide. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of this classic and groundbreaking album, The Dark Side of The Moon will be re-issued on March 31 2003 as a Hybrid SACD combining a remastered stereo version, and, for the first time ever, a mindblowing 5.1 Surround Sound mix. Also re-issued to celebrate the anniversary of this classic record will be the vinyl version in its original packaging.
Hybrid SACD plays in stereo on CD players and in 5.1 surround sound and stereo on all SACD and SACD compatible players.
This album has sold over 35 million copies during its history, and now set for a new lease of life with the release of the Hybrid SACD format.
The SACD format will also feature updated artwork of this classic album sleeve from original designer Storm Thorgerson.
30 Facts (( Taken from Pink Floyd’s official website))
1. Dark Side has sold approximately 34 million copies worldwide.
2. The album hit number one on the US charts for one week in 1973. David Gilmour had had a bet with manager Steve O’Rourke that the album wouldn’t crack the US top 10.
3. In the UK the album made it to the number two spot. When it was re-mastered and re-released for the 20th anniversary in 1993 with special packaging it made it to number 4.
4. In Belgium and France it was No. 1, No. 2 in Austria, No. 3 in Australia, and No. 4 in Holland; it was No. 5 in Spain, Finland and Germany but not at the same time, and made it to No. 8 in Brazil in August 1973.
5. The album is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for being on the charts longer than any other album in history, namely 591 consecutive weeks or 11.4 years in Billboard top 200! A total of approx 14 whole years (741 weeks) in and back in top 200, and a staggering 26 years in some Billboard chart or rather.
6. SoundScan, the chart tabulators in the US, recently listed the top 200 selling albums of the year 2002. Dark Side was again on that list. It sold roughly 417,000 copies in the US last year, making it the 200th top selling album. It is by far the oldest album on the list.
7. The original title for the album was Eclipse (A Piece for Assorted Lunatics). The band were upset to find out that the progressive folk rock act Medicine Head had released an album with the title of “Dark Side of the Moon” as recently as 1972 on John Peel’s Dandelion label. Since the release was less than successful sales-wise, the band decided go ahead with their plans.
8. The music and lyrics for the entire album were written during a seven week period in which the band were preparing for a tour in which they desperately wanted to premier new material.
9. Cue Cards with generic questions were written up by Roger and given to roadies, anyone at Abbey Road, doormen, and members of Wings including Paul and Linda McCartney. Approximately 20 questions were asked along the lines of, “Are you afraid of dying?”. “When was the last time you were violent and were you in the right?”, and “What does the phrase ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ mean to you?”. The most spontaneous answers to these questions appeared on the album. Paul and Linda didn’t make the cut but Wings’ guitarist Henry McColluch did providing the “I don’t know I was really drunk at the time” response to the question regarding violent behaviour used at the fade out of Money.
10. The “stoned” laughter used in the background of Speak to Me and Brain Damage is from Peter Watts, a road manager for the Floyd pictured on the back of the Ummagumma sleeve.
11. Studio time would be typically interrupted for one of two reasons, either soccer or Monty Python television broadcasts. In fact, Pink Floyd were such Python fans that they used some of the money they made from the initial success of the album to help fund Monty Python’s The Holy Grail film.
12. The album was recorded at Abbey Road on then state of the art 16-track equipment. Roger created the tape loops necessary to achieve the rhythmic chiming of the sound effects for Money. Due to the technology of the time, this meant physically cutting and mending bits of tape together in precise measurements using a ruler and feeding these manually into a tape machine for duplication.
13. The slide guitar heard on Breathe was a pedal steel that David Gilmour purchased in a pawnshop in Seattle back in 1968.
14. Alan Parsons recommended Claire Torry for vocal duties on The Great Gig in the Sky. At the time Torry was an EMI staff songwriter who wanted to branch into vocals. Torry was paid double the standard session wage at the time for this particular session since it was on a Sunday. At the time, she was very happy with what she received. No one could foresee the impact and longevity the resulting album would have.
15. Australian radio listeners voted the album the best album to have sex to in 1990.
16. The album marked the first time that Roger Waters wrote all of the lyrics. He has stated that he made a conscious effort to employ words that were very straightforward and easy to understand.
17. The album was first performed live at the Dome in Brighton, England on the 20th of January 1972. Due to a tape malfunction, the concert only made it as far as ‘Money’ that evening, but the band continued to perform the suite at almost every show after that date right up until a performance at Knebworth on the 5th of July 1975.
18. Hipgnosis studio suggested the album be issued as a gatefold with inserts of two posters, one for fans (photos of the band) and one for art (photo of pyramids), and two stickers, day and night, which refer to the touring aspect in the lyrics . All this was to be housed in a card box. EMI agreed to everything except the box. Hipgnosis provided the outer cover design, the prism against black, which referred to the band’s inventive use of lights on stage, the triangularity symbolising mad ambition, and the cool graphic in answer to a request from Richard Wright for something less pictorial and more iconic.
19. The design of the inner spread of the gatefold, featuring the spectrum heartbeat, echoing the audio heartbeat at the beginning of the album, was an idea from Roger Waters.
20. Us and Them was originally written by Richard Wright in 1969 as an instrumental piano solo intended for use in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point film which the band had been commissioned to score. The piece, then known as The Violent Sequence, was to be used over slow-motion scenes of student / police riots at UCLA. It was rejected for the film and resurrected for Dark Side after Waters penned the lyrics. Tapes exist of the band performing it as The Violent Sequence early in 1970.
21. The Great Gig in The Sky was originally known as The Mortality Sequence. It featured a similar piano introduction but no female vocals. Instead, taped readings from the Book of Ephesians, a recital of The Lord’s Prayer, and a narrative from Malcolm Muggeridge, a controversial host of a religious program on the BBC, were used.
22. A rough version of Brain Damage was written around the time of Meddle and was actually known as “The Dark Side of the Moon”.
23. The inspiration for Breathe was from a song Roger Waters had written and recorded in 1970 as part of the soundtrack for a film about human biology called “The Body”. The opening lyric is the same in both songs. The original song was a protest of man’s destruction of nature for profit, a theme that has appeared on more than a few Waters’ compositions.
24. Although the band made a point of not releasing any singles in Great Britain for ten years after 1969′s Point Me at The Sky failed to make an impression, two singles from the album were issued in the States. An edited version of Money was issued in May of ’73 backed with Any Colour You Like. This peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Top 40. An edited Us and Them backed with Time (“severely” edited with the rotatoms spliced unnaturally onto the end of the song in place of the Breathe reprise) was also issued in February of ’74. Despite heavy FM airplay, the track wasn’t AM radio friendly enough and the record only made it to 101 on the chart.
25. The album has been released in various audiophile pressings and limited collector’s editions including coloured vinyl editions. Colour completists would need to find a German pressing on white vinyl from 1977, both blue and clear vinyl versions from France also pressed in the late 70′s, an Australian pink vinyl version (of the quad mix!) from 1988, and another white one from Holland also from 1977. In addition, there are two official picture discs of the vinyl version still circulating the collector’s markets, one from the US on Capitol, and one from the UK only briefly available as part of a box set “The First XI” that was released in 1979 (only 1000 were made available to the public).
26. EMI organized a launch of the album for the press at the London Planetarium. An interesting choice since at this time the band was trying hard to shed their image as a space-rock band. The quadraphonic mix, supervised by Alan Parsons, was to be used for this reception but instead the band learned that the record would be played back in stereo and through an inferior sound system. Only Richard Wright showed up. Life size cardboard cut-outs of the other band members were used in their absence.
27. Pink Floyd were excited to be able to develop new material on the road but were horrified to learn of a bootleg album that was released of a complete performance of the piece recorded in February of 1972 at the Rainbow Theatre. The bootleg was issued a mere six weeks after the concert, about a full year prior to an official release. Professionally packaged, the unit reportedly sold in excess of 100,000 copies, many thinking it was the real thing.
28. Throughout the 1990′s rumours persisted that the album was intended to be played back while watching The Wizard of Oz. Many similarities were depicted between the music, lyrics, and the film. The band have denied that the classic film made an impression on them while recording the album, but if you want to judge for yourself be sure to start the CD at the third roar of the MGM lion at the start of the film!
29. The album was initially released on EMI’s Harvest label, an operation set up in 1969 as an outlet for more progressive bands. The label forged on through the mid 1980′s before it was abandoned leaving the Floyd on EMI Records in the UK and Capitol in the US.
30. The supporting tour featured an almost life size model spitfire airplane which “flew” across the top of the arena and crashed into flames on the stage during the climax of On the Run.
PINK FLOYD DISCOGRAPHY
Soundtrack From The Film ‘More’ – 2003
Compilations
Guests