Perfect Tens Dept. - Strange Days

A Perfect Ten is awarded to albums with no weakness, including the cover and the title. Which disqualifies Pet Sounds! Crazy system, I know. I don't make the rules. Strange Days is note perfect, from the cover to the spindle hole.

 

THE COVER

Art directed by the great Harvey S. Williams, who was responsible for the Elektra house style, which included the use of the Rockwell font. There may have been a pun in there? The photograph, by the equally great Joel Brodsky, has some futzery happening - note building at end of alley, repetition and slicing and change of scale. What the actual? Don't think about this, because it will drive you nuts. I had to undergo weeks of counseling.

Sniffen Court, 36th St, between Lexington and Third, yesterday. No, you can't afford to live here. You can't afford to know anyone who can afford to live here. You can't even afford to look through the gates. G'wan, beat it, ya bum!

 

Jimbo didn't want his mugshot, or the band's, on the cover. Pretty extraordinary, really. If you were a sultry Dionysian sex god (that if is doing a lot of heavy lifting) you'd want your picture on the cover. Brodsky suggested Fellini-esque strangeness, and the band went for it. The Short People are twin actors, the juggler is Brodsky's assistant, the trumpet player a passing cab driver (hat - driver's own), the weightlifter a bouncer, and only the acrobats are professional performers. The hippie chick, I can reveal, is Velda Kowznofski, and her phone number is BIGELOW 472-1906.

 

DIEGETIC

You'd of thunk that would be enough to bestow significance on what is one of the greatest album covers, like, literally, ever, but there's more! It's very likely the first example of diegetic design on an album cover. And we're going to take a hinge at that word diegetic, because you don't know (or care much) about what it means. It's probably the first time it's been used in the context of rock music album cover analysis. You can look it up, practice it in front of a mirror, and casually drop it into the conversation with your lowlife pals at the dog track.

The name and photos of the band, and the title of the album, appear in posters on the walls. So - not on the cover at all! This, as well as being diegetic, is unprecedented awesomeness.

 

CHARIVARI

Your second Snob Vocab du jour! It behooves you to look the fucking word up, because if I tell you, it'll pass straight through like that Chipotle burrito you floated on a keg of Coors last nite.

Charivari, or the later US variant Shivaree, is exactly what's going on here, and it's perfect.

 

THE MUSIC

You know how highly this album is rated. You may even rate it highly yourself, although, fascinatingly, a little lower than YOUR FAVORITE HERE. It was recorded on a sumptuous 8-track console, like those in-car players [Eh? - Ed.], and unlike the live-in-the-studio approach of the debut, used the sophisticated production facilities available at LA's prestigious Sunset Sound to achieve a consistent, although shifting, mood of strangeness, like no other album before it. The cover and the music act in perfect symbiosisness. Symbioctivity. Whatever. Unlike The Soft Parade, the studio never gets in the way of the music. Everything is a whole, ya dig? It's like this, uh, whole thing, man. Beautiful. Oh wow.

 

 

This post funded in part by the Eschewal Of Obfuscation Society, Pork Bend, AK. My thanks to Zebedee Veeblefetzer.