Alternate Universe Album Cover: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads

Once again, here's another album cover for Steve Lamacq's Grand ReDeisgn on BBC6. This time here's my take on Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads: For this one I started out with a picture of church I took on a trip through Southern Illinois a few years ago. I took several different pictures of the church, each one getting closer, but I liked this one for the big open sky to work with. I was happy with the finished product (above), but then I started fooling around with the photo distortion in CorelDraw and ended up with more sinister looking version below.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Django Django - Django Django

Over at BBC6 Steve Lamacq is doing something called Grand ReDesigns as part of his celebration of album artwork. He's asking listeners to redesign album covers as if the original never existed. Here's my take on Django Django's self titled debut.

Django Django - Django Django: I've liked word balloons on album covers ever since I first saw Mothers of Invention's Freak Out cover. The woman was originally on the right, but I flipped the image because for some reason in my head the dog just had to have the last word.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Adam and the Ants - Prince Charming

Over at BBC6 Steve Lamacq is doing something called Grand ReDesigns as part of his celebration of album artwork. He's asking listeners to redesign album covers as if the original never existed. Here's my take on Adam and the Ants' Prince Charming.

Adam and the Ants' Prince Charming: This is actually a reworking of a Velvet Underground best-of mixdisc cover I made many years ago. The image is from a bondage pulp novel, which was perfect for use on a Velvets mix. But it also lends itself quite well to Adam Ant.

Cheap Trick + Blackhawks = potential t-shirt

Not that the world needed another Cheap Trick logo parody, but here it is. I listened to a bunch of Cheap Trick this afternoon and while watching the Chicago Blackhawks beat St Louis tonight I thought this might be a cool combo. This was only intended to be a mock-up to see how it would look and to decide if I wanted to do it for real, but I was happy with how it turned out already. Looks wise it would have worked better with Blackhawks as two words, but I think the point still works.

Now I need to find a print-to-order t-shirt place because I want this on a shirt.

MP3 Shuffle-a-gogo

I did a shuffle for MetaChat and am cross posting it here.

1. ECHO & the BUNNYMEN - Lost On You (What Are You Going to Do With Your Life? 1997) The later Echo albums pale in comparison to the first four, but the songs still sound great coming up on a shuffle. 
2. the PRIMITIVES - Thru the Flowers (Lovely 1988) I played this album nonstop when it came out, Still sounds great.
3. KIM WILDE - Kids In America (Kim Wilde 1981) Another album I played nonstop when it came out. This is one of my favorite new wave songs, but rest of the album is quite good as well.
4. the KNACK - Good Girls Don't (Get the Knack 1979) Maybe the first power pop album I ever bought. Although at the time I think I liked the Alvin and the Chipmunks version from Chipmunk Punk better.
5. the DOVES - Black and White Town (Best of the Doves) Love the larger-than-life production on this song. Sounds like a Motown record with pounding drums and modern British vocals. Actually, I never thought about it before, but this sounds like later Jam.
 6. JASON and the SCORCHERS - Both Sides of the Line (Fervor 1983) A killer blast of American rock and roll. Live this song was an absolute monster (as the video linked shows).
 7. the SCREAMING TRIBESMEN - Igloo (Bones + Flowers 1987) For a few songs I was sure that Screaming Tribesmen were going to be my favorite band, but they lost steam pretty quickly. This song always reminds me a bit of Mitch Easter vocally.
8. the MABUSES - Cubicles (Mabuses 1993) Syd Barrett influenced psychedelic pop that came out on Kramer's Shimmy Disc.
9. DAVID BOWIE - Seven Years in Tibet (Earthling 1997) I really like Bowie's mid 90's forays into industrial and techno and I think they've held up quite well. Earthling and Outside have their share of filler, but both have enough strong songs to get me to return to them on a regular basis.
10. the DISTILLERS - Hall of Mirrors (Coral Fang 2003) 2003?!? I guess I can't refer to this as "one of my favorite punk albums of the past decade" anymore. I absolutely love Brody Dalle's shredded vocal style. Hadn't heard from her in a while so I looked her up and am glad to see she's making a new album with Alain Johannes (Spinerette) Michael Shuman (Queens of the Stone Age) and Shirley Manson.

A few more recent doodles from the Moleskine sketchbook

Here are a few more recent pages of doodles from the sketchbook. Even more doodles are over in my flickr  "Cartoons, Doodles, & Sketchbook pages" set.

[ CLICKA THE PICTCHA TO MAKE A BIGGA ]

the First Doodles of 2013 - a new sketchbook just itching to be filled.

Rather than keep doodling in the sketchbook I've been using on-and-off all last year I decided to start the year off with a new sketchbook. Below is a cover page (?!?!) featuring me and my three cats.

My favorite drawing pen (black medium tipped Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen) ran out of ink and apparently I forgot to restock backups, so I decided to give another try to brush tip markers. Below are two pages of doodles, really just trying to see if I can control the lines at all. Sort of digging the results, which means I might give the pen some more doodle time and see if we can become friends.