Bad Album Covers - The Real Dirt

Today I heard from Paul, the man behind the original Museum of Bad Album Covers

According to him, AM NY isn't the first person to piggy back of his vinyl fanaticism, it happens all the time, all over the world. Who knew there was such an interest?

"We spend ages sifting through bargain bins, ebay and record dealers all over the world, paying money, making images, writing about the albums and generally doing all the hard work"

True. True.

So, if you want to support the REAL zany collectors check out these ORIGINAL sites:

Museum of Bad Album Covers
Show and Tell
Bizarre Records

and forget all the phoneys!

Update Update: (further clarification from Paul)
"While we all cross over quite alot, I'm more pure bad album cover designs, Nick Di Fonzio (Bizarre Records) tends to be more bizarre old kitch, and Ron Dante's best ones can be completely mindbending in all kinds of ways! While he has plenty of unbelievably awful covers, he's more into weird and wonderful music and bizarre album concepts such as old corporate records, home made "vanity" albums and that kind of thing. He has a huge collection of jaw dropping American weirdness at it's very finest! He still sells stuff on ebay from time to time."

why are we vinyl people so misunderstood?

Worst Album Covers = Laziest Journalism ?

Hoping to evade the boredom of my commute, I picked up a free AM NY newspaper at the entrance to the subway. On the top right corner there was a feature that caught my eye: "The Worst Album Covers of All Time." The 3/4 page feature on page 24 was credited to staff writer Emily Hulme.



That's funny, cause I've been aware of a website for at least 4 years called the Museum of Bad Album Cover Art.

And guess what, 4 of the album covers in the printed feature were lifted straight off this site with no reference or credit to the website. You can see in certain cases where it's the exact same image, with the same creases and price stickers.

The Frivolous Five
The Many Facets of Roger
Alla Pugaljova - Superman
Ken - By Request Only

And then I found a couple other sites:

www.worstalbumcovers.org
www.coverbrowser.com/covers/worst-album-covers

That accounted for almost all the other album covers in the story and in the online article.

Oh yeah, one more funny twist: One of the album covers (Cody Matherson) is probably phony and most likely a Simpson's homage.



The feature also ran in AM NY's sister papers, the Chicago Tribune and the Sun - Sentinal

It bothers me that the whole concept was taken whole-hog off the internet and hacked into space-filler for a profitable newspaper with out any reference or credit to the sources. Its enough that these papers regurgitate the AP feeds, why do they have to steal our own dorky web content?

Bloggers take stuff from everywhere too, but at least we're honest about where we take it from.

lame.