Worst record covers ever designed made collector's dreams come true
This week: Worst Record Covers at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands at The Lowry and Liverpool Empire, Manchester Unspun, Homotopia and The Borrowdale Banksy
The moment that record collector Steve Goldman describes as one of the happiest of his life was when he tracked down an album he’d spent years looking for. There was nothing musically significant about this album and it had little monetary value. It wasn’t, for example, the original US mono pressing of The Doors 1968 LP Waiting for the Sun, now worth £1,000, or the 1969 UK pressing of Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin, estimated at £1,500-£4,500.
The album Steve had spent years scouring charity shops and the internet for was the 1979 LP Roadstar by Peter Rabbitt. Know it? Unlikely. But once you’ve seen the cover you won’t forget it. It’ll haunt your nightmares. It’s there at the top of this page - yes, those really are human faces terrifyingly superimposed on a colony of rabbits spilling out of a top hat.
Steve, 57, says: “I bought it for 10p and subsequently I lost it. Then the internet came along and I thought I’d be able to find it on there but when I tried typing in ‘Peter Rabbitt’ it would just come up with Beatrix Potter. I thought I’d never see it again.”
But he persisted, Googling during dull moments at work until, about seven years ago, someone suggested he search Discogs.com.
“When it arrived was one of the happiest moments of my life,” says Steve. “That evening I said to my family ‘I think I’ll collect bad LP covers’.”
That was it - the bug had bitten. Steve now has around 600 terrible album covers on vinyl and CD, most of which he is showing in an exhibition at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead, Wirral, from this week.
His criteria? It simply has to make him laugh - which discounts anything “sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, disgusting or gory” because he thankfully doesn’t find those things funny.
Among Steve’s favourites are Jayson Hoover by Jayson Hoover, a Canadian soul singer: “It’s a cheapskate Adam and Eve so the Tree of Knowledge has no leaves, the evil serpent is a toy paper snake. Eve is a mannequin and poor Jayson, fully-clothed and looking faintly embarrassed, sits in the middle playing Adam.”
Also in Steve’s collection is Oil and Vinegar by Dave McKenna and The Wilbur Little Quartet, a swing music album from 1977: “There’s a couple kissing and they’re naked except their rude bits are hidden by cabbage, and indeed a piece of cabbage is being exchanged between their mouths.”
And Let’s Burn This Town by Shane Shu from 2010: “An incredibly amateurish painting of a man on a motorbike and a town ablaze behind him. The artist sent the record label the cover as a draft - ‘Is this the kind of thing you’re looking for?’ - and the label used it as the cover.”
How such terrible art ends up chosen and published, Steve describes as “one of the mysteries of life”.
Steve regularly reads worst record cover websites, then looks up those that make him laugh on Discogs. If the album is “sufficiently cheap” - a sum that changes depending on how much he wants it (Jayson Hoover was £40) - then he gives it a home in his collection.
Because his interest is in the cover art rather than the music, he separates the vinyl from its sleeve and stacks it up in a pile. He does often listen to it however, and reports that the quality of the album art doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of the record.
Steve, who lives in Huddersfield and works as a computer programmer, is using the exhibition to raise money for Different Strokes, a charity that supports younger stroke survivors, aged under-65, which helped him when he was struck down by a stroke himself three-and-a-half years ago.
He says: “It was covid times so my family couldn’t come in and when they rang and I tried to speak to them I was only capable of saying ‘yes’. Not only was I in a wheelchair but I needed a glorified trolley to get me into it.
“My old voice died with the stroke. This is my new one and I don’t know where it came from. My old voice was second nature and I have to concentrate to use this one.”
Steve is no longer in a wheelchair and his right leg has almost fully-recovered, although he is still unable to write with his right hand. But he hasn’t let that slow him down. Once his exhibition closes at the Williamson next year, it is fully booked for 2024, touring venues and festivals across the UK.
Worst Record Covers is at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead, until January 27, 2024. Next year it tours to the Bailiffgate Museum in Alnwick and Bradford Media Museum. You can see more of the covers on Instagram and in the new book Steve has put together with writer and publisher Simon Robinson: The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve.
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We’re Also Buzzing About…
Edward Scissorhands: Matthew Bourne’s beautiful, funny and moving dance version of the 1990 film is returning to The Lowry from November 28 to December 2 - and will be at the Liverpool Empire from February 20-24, 2024. I was unconvinced by this as a concept when it first toured to Liverpool some years ago, but I should have trusted Bourne’s brilliance as a storyteller because it’s simply stunning.
Manchester Unspun: Author Andy Spinoza is in conversation with tour guide and writer Jonathan Schofield about his new book, Manchester Unspun: How a City Got High on Music, at Castlefield Viaduct on Wednesday November 29. Tickets £10 from here.
Homotopia: Liverpool’s and the UK’s longest running LGBTQIA arts and culture festival is in full swing on the theme of Gods and Monsters. Running until December 2, the line-up is as fabulous as ever and includes everything from family cabaret to a vigil marking International Transgender Day of Remembrance. There are small numbers of free tickets reserved for each event for those on low/no income, available no questions asked by emailing hello@homotopia.net. Read the full programme here.
The Borrowdale Banksy: I’m only just catching up on this so it may be one you already know all about, but it’s too intriguing not to share just in case. An unknown artist dubbed ‘The Borrowdale Banksy’ has been creating sculptures off the beaten track in the Lake district. You can see one on Hike Britain’s Instagram, above, which is where I spotted it.
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Laura
