looking out? Nice to sit and chat with people about The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve at the Huddersfield Literary Festival tent on the 26th, and to meet vinyl fans after. Next time I will bring a torch as it was difficult at times to see my notes inside the tent despite the sunny day! Steve is now getting ready for a display of the sleeves at the Bearded Theory festival at Catton Hall, Derbyshire, 23 – 26 May 2024 [beardedtheory.co.uk] so we’re busy updating the flyers to get them ready in time, then back to work on the next book.
We see quite a few nice comments on social media but this one tickled us today. Somebody bought The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve for relatives in Australia, and got this nice message back! The only problem now is what can Mum find to top this next year?
And April 1st saw The Sun devote most a page to a selection of sleeves from the book, which given the date must really have confused readers who probably thought they were all spoofs! However we did have a smile at their headline, which went “Hex and Rugs and Rock and Roll” alongside appropriate covers. Happily we got a PDF sent, so didn’t actually have to part with money for a copy.
While we are now cracking on with our next title (stay tuned!), The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve continues to create a buzz, and the results of a poll at the last exhibition as to the worst sleeves on display has now produced a top ten chart. Gathered from over 600 votes at The Williamson Gallery before Christmas, it looks set to be a benchmark for strange sleeves for some time to come! Particularly amazing perhaps is the sleeve above; we still don’t know what prompted these Romanians to pose with nothing but a rabbit each for their comeback album back in 1995. We have made this and the rest of the ten worst covers into a special gallery at the vinyl sleeve art website run by Simon Robinson over at ST33, so – if you dare – go and take a peek! If you’re wondering exactly what the book is all about check it out on the site.
If you are in the North West, Steve’s Bizarre Vinyl display at The Williamson in Birkenhead finishes on Saturday this week (27th). It then moves across to Alnwick in the North East in early February. More details on that soon. In the meantime you can now see the older Bizarre Vinyl Newsletters at our online archive site. Current newsletters are exclusive to subscribers.
And before we all collectively try and get on with the new year here’s one of the festive sleeves which didn’t make Steve’s book The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve… is uptrousering a thing? And if so should it be make illegal?
Maybe Stranger Things is a running feature in the Yorkshire Post newspaper’s Saturday 16th Magazine? Not sure how else to explain the heading! It was my Mum’s favourite paper, so a shame she is no longer around to see this and it is a well written article about The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve book (see below) and Steve’s collection. Just a shame they showed the back of the book not the front…! As for the author photo… Anyway we have put up the full article on this site.
Happy to announce that THE ART OF THE BIZARRE VINYL SLEEVE book is shipping NOW; indeed it will be landing this week for many people who placed a pre-order. Lots of folk picked up on it after a great discussion on Radio 4‘s arts programme Front Row this week – which you can listen to (or read the subtitles) on Steve Goldman’s Instagram feed https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0OrAKitAul/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
There is plenty of stock but If you are wanting to order in time for Christmas then the sooner the better so we can process your order in good time. Don’t forget there is a discount if you use our dedicated shop – the links are on the right. Thanks to everyone for their interest in this title.
We will be doing an update on our other upcoming books in the next couple of weeks.
Steve and Simon met up the other day to take careful delivery of the last sleeve needed for this next book. We didn’t trust the post as it had already been delivered to one wrong address. Quite what the people behind the counter in the cafe at Penistone thought we were all up to as we all marvelled at the insanity of it I have no idea. We will NOT say what it is just yet, except to reveal that Des O’Connor was involved, which is always the guarantee of a certain lack of quality as far as we’re concerned. Though it isn’t an actual Des O’Connor album (and if you don’t know who he was, think yourself very lucky. Or do a web-search. With audio off). It has also ended up being the most expensive disc in Steve’s collection. Anyhow, with that in place, our design intern at Easy Books has spent most of today trying to sort the final list of contents for page one, which has driven him mad…
Here it is – complete with tick marks, bleed marks, registration guides and colour bars (don’t say we never teach you anything). Simon at the publishers does add that this is one of his favourite covers, simply because it is a great photo technically and artistically, and then you see the barking album title!
We have put half a dozen preview pages from The Art Of Bizarre Record Sleeves on the site to mark the opening today of the worst album sleeves exhibition in Huddersfield (details below). This gives a good idea of the designs even as they continue to be worked on.
Just to mention collector Steve is returning to the scene of his first successful Worst Record Sleeves exhibition, this time at part of the Huddersfield Literature Festival.
The exhibition runs 10am til 4pm Thursday 23rd March – Sunday 2nd April at the Huddersfield Literature Festival Hub, Huddersfield Piazza, Princess Alexandra Walk HD1 2RS.
If you can get along a really good laugh is guaranteed, plus you can help visitors select the three most bizarre covers!
Easy On The Eye managed to spirit away the first 100 or so sleeves from the collection a couple of weeks ago to get these scanned at high resolution for the book, in time for them to be collected for the display. More details on the book at the publishers site.
Another of Brian Smith’s great images. But for once is NOT shown in the Brain Smith Blues Photo Book! Why you may ask? Well, when we first began investigating Brian’s material it quickly became clear that his archive fell into two distinct phases. There was the collection of black and white blues photographs made up to around 1966. Then there was his second phase of work which began after a period away from photography, when he moved into colour in the 1970s. This was also very extensive and covers a longer period as well. So we decided to tackle the mono work first and if there is enough interest, and we feel there might be, a follow up of the colour work might be on the cards. But in the meantime, Brian continues to work with blues labels on their reissues and this striking new CD sleeve is from JSP Records uses Brian’s colour photos on the front and back inlays, and the booklet inside. So we thought we’d show it off here anyway! It’s a scary thought that while we sort of looked upon this material as modern when deciding on the book contents, these shots are already over thirty years old. What was it Cher sang about turning back time? Thanks to Brian and JSP for the artwork scans.
easy on the eye books 