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Beyond the Banana: 10 Other Great Album Covers Designed by Warhol

By Paul Laster on

Andy Warhol was at the height of his Pop Art fame when created the cover art for The Velvet Underground & Nico’s debut album in 1967. The first edition of the iconic cover had a yellow banana-skin sticker that peeled off to suggestively reveal a reddish banana. While his skill for crafting clever covers would be sought-after right up to his death in 1987, few people realize that he had been actively engaged in making record cover art since 1949. Employing the illustrative line technique of his early drawings to make covers for such jazz greats as Thelonius Monk and Count Basie and the splashy silkscreen style of his late portrait paintings on covers for Paul Anka, John Lennon, and The Rolling Stones, Warhol created some 60 amazing record covers over 40 years. Click though to view a selection our 10 favorites below. … Read More

Music

10 of Music’s Most Literature-Obsessed Songwriters

By Matthew Bower on

Good songwriting requires a lot of technical skill, artistic intuition, and, sometimes, literary genius. There’s something tremendously impressive about being able to create a song that’s not only poignant and moving, but also rich with historical or literary context. Leaving aside obvious one-off references to literature, such as The Police’s famous nod to Nabokov or Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic foray down the rabbit hole, musicians with a more encompassing, perhaps even obsessive, appreciation for literature are harder to come by. We’ve put together a list of ten of the most seemingly literature-obsessed musicians who have shown a certain bookish tendency throughout their careers. See if you can think of others. … Read More

Music

Watch Morrissey’s Epic ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance

By Judy Berman on

It was a meeting of the Stephens (or rather, a Stephen and a Steven) on The Colbert Report last night, when the show welcomed Morrissey on the eve of his much-anticipated Radio City Music Hall concert. The crankiest — and yet, sometimes, most wonderful — man in rock took issue with Colbert calling him a “living legend” (Morrissey defines “legend” as “something that might be true or might be false”), smack-talked the Queen of England, and explained his “militant” anti-meat stance (“If you stick your grandmother in an oven, she will probably be tasty. But is that any reason to eat your grandmother?”). “Not everybody is a fat old slag” was his reply to Colbert’s hilariously fannish interrogation about that Smiths reunion that’s never going to happen. Morrissey even found time to play “People Are the Same Everywhere.” Watch the interview and performance below. … Read More

Music

Confirmed! The Smiths Are NEVER, EVER Getting Back Together

By Judy Berman on

Sorry, Smiths fans who’ve spent the past week refreshing Pitchfork and Stereogum for reunion news — you’ve been punked again. Of course it’s not happening. And because we are all so foolish and gullible, Morrissey’s poor publicist, who clearly has a very difficult job to begin with, has stated it in terms we should all… Read More

Music

No Hope, No Harm: 10 of Rock’s Saddest Final Albums

By Emily Temple on

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Strangeways, Here We Come, the fourth and final studio album by The Smiths, which brought us gems like “Girlfriend in a Coma,” “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish,” “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” and “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before.” It’s also, in case you haven’t listened to The Smiths lately, irrepressibly sad, in the best of ways. To celebrate the anniversary of this great album’s release, and to mourn the fact that it marked the end of such a short and wonderful career, we’ve collected a few of of the saddest final albums in rock history. Have a listen after the jump, and let us know which we’ve missed in the comments. … Read More

Music

Read Morrissey’s Teenage Anti-Ramones Screed

By Judy Berman on

Before he ascended to the ranks of musicians known by only one name, Steven Patrick Morrissey was your archetypal British music geek. He was the president of the UK’s New York Dolls fan club and wrote letters in support of the band to the music press. But he wasn’t into every act from New York City. In 1976, 17-year-old Morrissey told Melody Maker how he really felt about the Ramones. “The Ramones are the latest bumptious band of degenerate no-talents whose most notable achievement to date is their ability to advance beyond the boundaries of New York City, and purely on the strength of a spate of convincing literature projecting the Ramones as God’s gift to rock music,” he began, later adding with the unquestionable authority of a teenager from a different country that the Dolls and Patti Smith were “the only acts which originated from the N.Y. club scene worthy of any praise.” See the entire screed, which apparently won Morrissey an LP, below. … Read More

Music

The Bizarre Reasons Behind 7 Famous Bands’ Breakups

By Judy Berman on

Creative differences. Alcoholism and drug abuse. Legal issues. The untimely death of a band member. These are the reasons we typically see cited for band breakups. But, as a recent piece about David Bowie’s legendary Ziggy Stardust-era band, the Spiders from Mars, has reminded us, sometimes far stranger and sillier things cause famous collaborators to go their separate ways. After the jump, we’ve rounded up some of the most bizarre examples, from a public prank to an insult in front of Mick Jagger. … Read More

Music

Pictures of Morrissey Looking Happy

By Tom Hawking on

“I can smile,” Morrissey once insisted to an interviewer from UK magazine Details. “I have mastered the art.” That’s as it may be, but over the years, Moz has cultivated the image of being one of music’s more morose characters, largely due to his often sullen public demeanor (and the fact that he has a penchant for penning songs with titles like “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” and “Trouble Loves Me”). However, we’ve got a feeling that he’d probably be a lot more fun than his image if you actually got to know him — so to celebrate the birthday of an artist who, for all his foibles and penchant for PR disasters, remains one of our favorites, here’s a selection of photos of the great man looking happy. Well, almost… Read More

Music

Music’s Greatest Lessons About Growing Up and How to Live Your Life

By Tom Hawking on

It’s graduation week, and we guess that means at least some of you are preparing to leave college behind for good. If you’ll allow us to get a little misty-eyed for a minute, we remember when we were in the same position, and it’s both exhilarating and frightening — suddenly the future is a big empty space, just waiting to be filled in. Happily, as ever, there’s at least some solace to be found in music, and there’ve been plenty of great songs written over the years about life and how to live it. So here’s a playlist of some of our favorite tracks with something to say on what life’s all about, and how you go about negotiating your way through it. Let us know if there are any lessons you’d like to share, too. … Read More

Books

Literary Mixtape: Lady Chatterley

By Emily Temple on

If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: D.H. Lawrence’s most controversial heroine, the lovely Lady Chatterley. … Read More