Prog Albums You Bought Only Because of the Cover

[WytchCrypt]

List your top 10 favourite prog albums you bought only because of the cover art (I'm not sure that I've done this once since albums moved primarily to the CD format and artwork seems much less important - or certainly much less a part of the overall purchasing decision experience). Anyway, I'm including the albums I'd never heard a single second of music from before the cover just grabbed me and wouldn't let go. In no particular order:

1) ELP - Brain Salad Surgery (Wow! That Giger artwork just grabbed me by the throat and BSS became the 1st prog album I ever bought)
2) Rush - A Farewell to Kings (Had never heard of them but the cover just looked so cool)
3) Ethos - Open Up (not the front cover but the back which showed the band and their very prog instruments)
4) Camel - Mirage (the US release with the airbrushed camel art cover)
5) Yes - Relayer (probably my fave Roger Dean painting)
6) Fripp & Eno - No Pussyfooting (along with the cover photo, any album with a song called Swastika Girls just had to be heard)
7) Genesis - Genesis Live (when I saw what these guys looked like on stage, I just had to hear what kind of music they were making)
8) Crimso - ITCOTCK (what can I say, perhaps the ultimate disturbing cover art of all time)
9) Pulsar - Halloween (may be the cover art and title but the whole package just seemed so...well...creepy)
10) Tull - A Passion Play (what killed the ballet dancer???)

[Lopez]

Not quite prog, and I can only think of two right now:

1. The first Gun LP. That Roger Dean cover drew me in. The record turned out to be OK.
2. The first Womb LP. They were a San Francisco band that played an early form of fusion. I was not impressed at the time. Wish I still had it now.

[Adrian]

I can only think of one time I've done that: Mahavishnu Orchestra's Birds of Fire. The way the colors faded into each other like mist reminded me of the Close to the Edge cover, and so did the typeface. I saw that Jan Hammer was in the band and that the music was instrumental, and I liked the band name. So I bought it ... and played it to death for the next couple of months.

[miamiscot]

Nektar Remember The Future. I think I was eleven years old when this came out and already into the major prog acts. Had to give it a try (and it was awesome.)

A couple years later I was intrigued by The Ramones debut album cover (and the song lengths.) The complete opposite of what I usually listened to so I had to have it (and it too was awesome.)

XTC Drums And Wires a couple years after that. Best album cover ever and one of the best albums ever - purchased solely based on the cover.

I'm sure there have been many, many more but those three come to mind right away!!!

[klothos]

I have bought many albums because of the pictures of the bass guitars in the player's hands (if shown).....a great example was Ethos' "Open Up" album which I bought because Brad Stephenson is pictured with an Alembic "Hippy Sandwich" Bass.........come to think of it, I bought MANY albums because of pictures of Alembic basses on the covers, back, or sleeves. The funk band Slave is another.....................

[bill g]

Not too many, if I knew nothing about the band, but back in the day, 'Demons & Wizards' by Uriah Heep, which I was disappointed with (not what I was looking for) and 'Last Autumn's Dream', by Jade Warrior which I did like. Then I remember some band called Morning that turned out to be country music, which wasn't what I'd hoped for. And then, 'Ever Sense The Dawn' by Providence which I did enjoy. All of these were in the 70s of course. Now I try to at least hear something first.

[Digital_Man]

Possibly "relayer" but not much else I can think of.

[WytchCrypt]

I have bought many albums because of the pictures of the bass guitars in the player's hands (if shown).....a great example was Ethos' "Open Up" album which I bought because Brad Stephenson is pictured with an Alembic "Hippy Sandwich" Bass.........come to think of it, I bought MANY albums because of pictures of Alembic basses on the covers, back, or sleeves. The funk band Slave is another.....................

Ya, I bought Open Up because of the drummer's roto-tom kit & percussion cage (reminded me of Larks Tongue's era Bruford/Jamie Muir) and the keyboardist with the Chamberlain and Taurus bass pedals

[Oreb]

I did this a lot in the 70s when I was exploring my tastes for the first time and really had no idea that 'progressive rock' existed as a category. There were just bands I liked and they would often (not always) have covers that reminded me of the fantasy or science fiction books and movies I read by the barrow-load at the time.

Probably the best pick was a band I'd never heard of but had an album that looked like it had been done by the 'Yes guy': Gentle Giant's Octopus. That's one where the cover was decisive: I didn't know of them and the track times looked very boring (I was young - songs had to be long to be good). But that cover wouldn't take 'No' for an answer.

Not fool proof, of course: I thought I couldn't go wrong with The Pentateuch of the Cosmogony, which turned out to so bland it would provoke a strike among elevator operators...

[SteveSly]

I can only think of two that I bought completely blind:

MARILLION – SCRIPT FOR A JESTERS TEAR: Saw this in a record store, looked at the cover and looked at the song titles and thought this had to be something I might like. To be fair I think I may have read a concert review or something prior to seeing the album, so I probably had at least heard the name.

NEKTAR – THROUGH THE EARS (2 DISC COMPILATION): This one totally qualifies. I was thumbing through albums in a used record store on day and came upon this. I had never heard of Nektar, but the album cover along with the song titles convinced me to give it a try. This was a completely blind purchase, but I became an instant fan when I put it on my turntable.

[WytchCrypt]

Probably the best pick was a band I'd never heard of but had an album that looked like it had been done by the 'Yes guy': Gentle Giant's Octopus. That's one where the cover was decisive: I didn't know of them and the track times looked very boring (I was young - songs had to be long to be good). But that cover wouldn't take 'No' for an answer.

That's funny because I only saw the US cover (the octopus in a jar) and never would have taken a chance on it based on that artwork...now if I had seen the Dean octopus cover it might have changed prog history for me

[Bake 1]

bullfrog-1.jpgbudgie.jpgpatto.jpg

Bought lots based primarily on the cover... of the above:
-Thought Bullfrog was a dud musically.
-Thought Budgie / Squawk w/ the SR-71 and bird skull front end had some great heavy stuff on it.
-Thought Patto / 1st w/ the teeth at the top of window was cool...love the record and can in no way give a remotely objective assessment of it.

[Bake 1]

colombo_01.jpg
One more... there probably were clues on the back that helped me buy this one. Anyway, if you dig Picchio dal Pozzo and FZ Waka Jawaka or Grand Wazoo, this is a $%#@!!*** superlative record!! (really buzzed to have just got a CD of it from Steve F., unfortunately the vinyl got ditched many years ago).

[Progbear]

Novalis: Vielleicht bist Du ein Clown? (weird cover art by Hipgnosis for a German-speaking band? My first foreign-language prog, and I still have a soft spot for it.)
Harmonium: Les cinq saisons (probably one of the times when buying blind just because of a cool cover payed off the best. Still one of my favourites!)
Jane: Lady (bought because of the cover and the label. I hated it and took it back, but wound up regretting it. I rebought this the next time I saw it. I really love the Hammond tone on this album, but Gottfried Janko’s vocals are pretty damn hard to take)
Edition Spéciale: Aliquante (really bought for the back cover; the track lengths and female keyboardist playing lots of ARPs had me intrigued. I turned out to really like this one!)
McKendree Spring: Tracks (sort of proggy-looking art, plus violin and synths among the instrumentation and a long track based on Vivaldi. I thought it was a sure thing. Man, did this album suck, though!)

[ThomasKDye]

Stratovarius - Infinite.

And that was the last time i ever did that.

[GuitarGeek]

There have been a few I've bought that way, not necessarily because of cover art, but sometimes you flip the record over, and on the back cover you see the band is a trio, including a keyboardist who has a Mini-Moog sitting on top of his Hammaond and a Rickenbacker toting bassist, and there's like 7 tracks listed on the album, with two or three exceeding 7 or 8 minutes, and you're thinking "This might be worth a gamble". That's literally the logic that led to me buying my first Le Orme record, a best of called Beyond Leng.

My first Gryphon album was the last one, Treason, but I bought it because it had that great green gryphon on the front cover, and then I flipped it over and saw the bassoon player on the back cover and that there were only three songs on side one, that was another one that I took a gamble on.

And my first Finch album, Beyond Expression, I think I bought because on the back cover there was a photo of the band playing before a psychedelic backdrop light show, and there were only three tracks on the LP.

There have been a few others like that, but those are the ones where I know how to spell the names.

[hippypants]

Freak Out--FZ & Mothers, course he had a lot of great one.

[Digital_Man]

There was an experimental indie kind of band in the nineties called Space Needle who put out an album called "Moray Eels eat the Space Needle." I think I bought that because it had a cover done by Roger Dean. I was a bit disappointed even though there were a couple of ok tracks on it.

[hippypants]

No Pussingfooting as well, & Little Feat's Sailin' Shoes (Neon Park)

[Mister Triscuits]

a0104054_5100b83c12cde.jpg

I had never heard of Tantra, but I figured this had to be pretty proggy. I was right!

[hippypants]

^^Tantra looks like a buncha psych mushrooms on that baby.

[rcarlberg]

Dave Greenslade & Patrick Woodroffe - The Pentateuch of the Cosmogony

I bought it for the cover & book even *knowing* the music sucked.

[spacefreak]

Dave Greenslade & Patrick Woodroffe - The Pentateuch of the Cosmogony

I bought it for the cover & book even *knowing* the music sucked.

My case as well, back at the times. And I resist the urge to sell it, eventhough I will never listen to it again.

[klothos]

I have bought many albums because of the pictures of the bass guitars in the player's hands (if shown).....a great example was Ethos' "Open Up" album which I bought because Brad Stephenson is pictured with an Alembic "Hippy Sandwich" Bass.........come to think of it, I bought MANY albums because of pictures of Alembic basses on the covers, back, or sleeves. The funk band Slave is another.....................

Ya, I bought Open Up because of the drummer's roto-tom kit & percussion cage (reminded me of Larks Tongue's era Bruford/Jamie Muir) and the keyboardist with the Chamberlain and Taurus bass pedals

wasnt there a kitchen sink somewhere in that pic? I remember he had a monkey w cymbal hands

[Mythos]

Back in the early 70's I bought Can: Future Days and Amon Duul II: Tanz Der Lemmings because of their Covers, never heard of either of them prior..