NY Times Article on Bad Heavy-Metal Art

[JKL2000]

Kind of the usual stuff we've all seen, but it's pretty funny, and I haven't seen this kind of stuff in the NY Times before:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/ar...?smid=pl-share

[ThomasKDye]

Looking at those album covers reminded me...

When I first saw the Steve Vai album "Flex-able," I thought for sure he was some local guitarist who shelled out maybe ten grand to put out an album on a label run out of his father's home... the cover was just THAT amateurish.

When I found out who Vai actually WAS, the album cover's wretchedness made even less sense.

[rcarlberg]

Something phallic about a limp guitar...

[Baribrotzer]

When I found out who Vai actually WAS, the album cover's wretchedness made even less sense.

From what I understand, he was pretty broke at the time he put it out, and probably couldn't afford a better cover. He didn't have a band of his own, and the Flex-able material consisted of several years of home recordings he had done on an eight-track reel-to-reel, with contributions from various other Zappa sidemen he'd befriended. He credits its slow-but-steady sales with keeping his head above water financially.

[GuitarGeek]

Funny, I've always liked the Flex-Able cover. I like the idea of the rubber guitar. And I think it's a nice painting. Nothing at all amateurish about it to me.

When I think of an amateurish album covers, I think more of something like 90125 (though obviously that's not metal). It looks like it was main on somebody's home computer...which I believe is exactly how it was rendered.