Monday, April 08, 2019

Record jackets with no right to exist



Really wretched, like bad high school art.  Of course, I just had to have it.  90 cents.

Custom, of course, was part of the Crown label family, on which a lot of excellent blues, R&B, and rock and roll showed up, such as two superb Howlin' Wolf LPs, early Neil Sedaka, and fine early John Lee Hooker, though the sound quality on some of the Hooker is hopeless.

This LP is designed to look like a soundtrack, or copy of same, but it's only the hit theme plus a bunch of wildly unrelated tracks.  On a rip-off scale of 1-10, this is about a 9.

Speaking of rips, I ripped the main title track, which sucks, and then I enhanced it with reverb to make it sound closer to the real thing.  As close as possible, anyway.  Custom forgot to add "pathetic" to "good," "bad," and "ugly."






LINK: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly






The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (enhanced)

Theme from the Motion Picture The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (Custom CS-1122)


Lee

9 comments:

Buster said...

Is Custom the worst cheap LP label ever? It has to be a contender.

Lee Hartsfeld said...

It my be. I was going to compare it to Design and Royale, but those put out some genuinely interesting and fun stuff.

Buster said...

Yeah, when Design was new, it did LPs with big-band era singers, etc., that were nicely done. Royale's classical stuff was poorly produced from questionable sources, but some items were interesting. Plymouth, on the other hand . . .

Scott1669 said...

You know I am going to ask for the whole thing.....is that something that can be done???

Scott1669

Lee Hartsfeld said...

I was going to respond that it's not worth the rip, since the music has nothing to do with anything, but that's part of the LP's cheapness--and charm, sort of. Sure, I can rip the whole thing. Should be up later nothing or tomorrow.

Garrido said...

Say Lee, my now deceased friend and employer for many years was taking night school classes at Hollywood High School and the fellow sitting next to him was a seventeen year old Clint Eastwood. During a break in the trade tech training he informed my friend that he had done a screen test and probably wouldn't be finishing the semester. He passed the screen test and didn't become a drill press operator.

Ernie said...

I didn't think the cover was that bad. Just a sort of redo of the actual soundtrack cover and some of the usual artists who always covered these sort of soundtrack events. I've seen worse. Far, far worse. :)

DonHo57 said...

I was gonna ask about the whole thing as well. Cheap and charming together are best when the whole meal is served. I appreciate the effort in advance, this is why I love recorded music from the 60s and early 70s.

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Garrido,

Cool!

Ernie,

I haven't even looked at the original soundtrack cover--just found the tracklist on Wikipedia. Not surprised to hear it's a steal. Yes, I've seen worse, too, but there's something about this one--it seems extra cheap or something. Yet, I bought it and I like it. For its badness, that is.

DonHo57,

Groovylounge identified the tracks as selections from Milt Raskin's Crown LP, "Exotic Percussion." Save for the quickly tossed together title theme. I've been considering putting up some of the awful Design LPs that put a recent hit or two on the jacket in big font, filling the rest of the disc with... whatever. This post opens the door for doing that.