Monthly Archives: September 2021

3D, Damien Hirst, Martina Topley Bird, Record cover art

New Cover Art by Damien Hirst & 3D

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Should I, Shouldn’t I? I always wonder if I should post information about new or future releases with cover art by graphic artists that I collect. But today I think I will.

First, a batch of new covers designed by Damien Hirst. Actually the first of them hasn’t yet been given a physical release, but is, at the time of writing, only available as a download.

This is DRAKE’s new album Certified Lover Boy with its cover art of pixelized pregnant dolls. So far, I’ve only managed to tear a couple of posters off walls to remind me of the cover art.

The DRAKE Certified Lover Boy poster.

So let’s see if a physical copy does arrive.

The next collection to get a Hirst cover is the The Problem of Leisure — Gang of Four & Andy Gill Celebration double LP/CD. Released in August 2021. There are several variations of the cover art of this one. All have Hirst’s not so cuddly toy dog on the cover, but in a variety of colours
– a limited, numbered version on red vinyl (red doggy)
– yellow vinyl edition (yellow doggy)
– black vinyl edition (green doggy)
– CD with blue doggy
– CD with brown doggy
– cassette with purple doggy

The three vinyl cover variations
Two CD cover variations and the cassette.


The third Hirst cover belongs to the forthcoming Ed Sheeran album to be released on 29th October 2021 and here Hirst reverts to his images of butterflies.

Ed Sheeran’s 2021 album cover.


That’s a lot of vinyl to add to my collection. I am still thinking whether or not to try to get all five colour variations of the The Problem of Leisure album.

I have a small collection of record cover art by Robert del Naja (a.k.a. 3D) and was intrigued to read that Martina Topley Bird is going to release an limited edition EP called Pure Heart in November 2021 with cover art by 3D. Bird has accompanied Massive Attack in concerts and so this collaboration seems entirely rational.

Martina Topley Bird’s Pure Heart EP.

It’s going to be an expensive autumn.

Peter Blake, Record cover art, The Fall

The Fall — I’m Frank. A Peter Blake Cover I Missed.

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Once again a record cover turns up to prove that my previously “complete” collection of an artist’s record cover art isn’t complete.

I’m trying to write a discography of Sir Peter Blake’s record cover art and had produced a first draft when it occurred to me to do a search of Discogs’s database. Discogs logs credits to many (most?) of the records, CDs and cassettes catalogued there and users can easily choose to search for individual musicians, record producers or, indeed, graphic artists. My rather belated search turned up a surprise:

The Fall’s I’m Frank promotional 12″.

I had never seen this cover before but it certainly looks like a Peter Blake painting and the rear cover gives Peter Blake the credit. So I sent an email to Sir Peter’s gallery, the Waddington Custot Gallery in London, to enquire about the source of the painting. Unfortunately they had not handled a painting like this but assured me they would ask Sir Peter if and when an opportunity arose. I’m still waiting for a possible reply to that. It turns out that this is painting by Blake called Nadia, oil on hardboard (29.2 x 21.6 cm / 11.5 x 8.5 inches), painted in 1981. It was exhibited in the Peter Blake retrospective at the Tate Liverpool in 2007 and there’s a full page picture of Nadia on page 120 of the exhibition catalogue Peter Blake : a Retrospective, published by the Tate.

Peter Blake’s Nadia. From the Peter Blake: a Retrospective catalogue.

The Nadia painting is in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., one of three paintings by Peter Blake in the museum’s collection. It was previously in the Richard Brown Baker collection of Postwar Art and was donated to the RISD in 1995 — thus after it was used on this record sleeve.

I just wonder how The Fall came to choose this as their record cover art. They do not credit the RISD Museum.

This U.S., 1990, four-track, promotional EP seems quite rare. I can’t quite understand how it managed to slip under my radar for so long, but I managed to find one on Discogs and it arrived this week (23 rd September) to “complete” my Peter Blake collection. I now eagerly await the next Peter Blake cover I have never seen. It’s bound to turn up soon.

Poster art

My Own Poster Art.

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In a previous post I described the posters I collected in the sixties and I promised I’d write about some of my own poster designs.

I started painting posters while at University, in the late sixties. My collecge, Guy’s Hospital had an active social club and somehow I got involved and someone had to produce adverts for dances, lectures, plays etc., and that someone turned out to be me. I can’t remember how I got elected to this honorary position but it resulted in the production of many posters over a period of two or three years and then, after a long hiatus, I started painting again in the nineties and started doing silkscreen courses in the past five or six years.

As there were noticeboards in various locations about the Guy’s campus, three or four posters were needed for each event. That meant much work late at night. After a while Andrew Batch joined in and we worked together to produce our posters. A few were actually printed by a south London silkscreen firm, but mostly we hung our original paintings.

Turn off Your Mind, Relax and Float Downstream. Gouache on paper 56 x 72 cm.

This poster was not for any event, but was a sort of challenge between Andrew and me. We would each paint a poster with this girl’s face and this was my version. I was particularly proud of this and took it to Gear in Carnaby Street, and they offered me £25 for it! I thought that wasn’t enough and walked way (how stupid can you get? £25 was a lot of money in 1967!) I later paid for it to be printed and sold a few for £1 each. I didn’t make £25, though.

Various stages in the production of a poster.

Here are some posters for lectures.

Posters for lectures by the Physiology and Psychology Clubs.

And some posters for plays.

Three posters for plays and the LP cover and program for a furth play.

Now for some pure art posters:

Some art posters.


Finally some of the posters for parties, dances and balls:

Posters for INFLAM dances and other festivities.


All these posters are hand painted using gouache on paper.

Some of my later work includes paintings and silkscreens.

The Who. Indian ink on paper, 1990s.

Some other series:

Brushstrokes (after Lichtenstein).
Portraits of Andy Warhol (with diamond dust)


I have always been interested in record cover art and when a cover eiother doesn’t exist, or is so rare / expensive that I will never be able to get it, following in the tradition of other artists like Elaine Sturtevant, I can make my own version. thus far I have recreated Andy Warhol’s & Billy Klüver’s 1963 Giant Size $1.57 Each cover (2013 — the 50th anniversary of its original production)

Giant Size $1.57 Each. Silkscreen ink on acrylic on record covers.

Other warhol covers I have recreated include the
LP and EP, the extremely rare box sets Night Beat and Voices and Events.

My Progressive Piano, Night Beat and Voices and Events reproductions.


I hav also made some reproductions of record covers with cover art by Banksy. The most recent being the rare test pressing of Embalming Theatre / Tersanjung 13 split 7″ entitled Mommy Died – Mummified / Hellnoise.

Reproduction of Embalming Theatre / Tersanjung 13 split 7″ test pressing.

I have other artworks, too, but I think this is enough for this post. Perhaps I’ll return to the remainder later.

Rock Posters

An Inventory of My Sixties Posters.

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When at University in the sixties I used to paint posters for dances, balls and parties. Having limited imgination, however, I found inspiration from many sources. I bought Michael English’s posters of Coke bottletops, Fried eggs and, as one half of Hapshash & the Coloured Coat (with Nigel Weymouth) the third issue of English OZ magazine.

Unfortunately, I no longer have these two, but I do still have:

Tantric Love by Hapshash & The Coloured Coat.
OZ magazine #3, June 1967.

While still a student, I used to spend Saturdays walking down the King’s Road, Chelsea, bird-watching. I found a boutique somewhere near the Town Hall that sold psychedelic postcards/handbills by artists such as Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin, Mouse & Kelley and, probably my favourite, Victor Moscoso. These were for concerts at the legendary Fillmore West and Avalon Ballroom. I managed to find forty of these and, some time later, my brother sent me a further postcard from a concert at the Fillmore East, making forty-one in all. I’ve spent a happy hour or two cataloging them, and here’s the result.

  • Wes Wilson — BG-34
  • Wes wilson — BG-58
  • Rick Griffin
  • BG-56
  • Rick Griffin – AoR 2.24
My collection of Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom Postcards and handbills.


I have no idea if any of these are particularly rare — but I still think they are beautiful and many seved as inspirations for my own poster designs that I’ll show in a forthcoming post.

Banksy's art on Stamps, Postage Stamps

Banksy Has Made It onto Stamps.

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I used to collect stamps. I had a brilliant collection (I thought), but it just stayed in my cellar storage when I moved on to record collecting. Eventually I sold most of it, but I keep finding remnants — first day covers, or bits of sheets of stamps whenever I go through old boxes of books or such.

I saw that Madagascar (of all places) had released a set of stamps with Banksy’s art in 2018. They released two mini sheets — One with four Malagasy Ariary 18.00 postage stamps and the other with a single Malagasy Ariary 65.00 diamond-shaped stamp.

The Madagascan mini sheets.

Some further research, via that well-known research engine, Ebay, turned up an even earlier use of Banksy’s art on a mini sheet of stamps produced in a prestige stamp booklet by the Royal Mail on January 7th, 2010. This booklet was produced to celebrate famous record covers: Pink Floyd — The Division Bell, Coldplay — A Rush of Blood to the Head, Blur — Parklife, New Order — Power Corruption and Lies, The Rolling Stones — Let It Bleed, The Clash — London Calling, Mike Oldfield — Tubular Bells, Led Zeppelin — IV, Primal Scream — Screamadelica and David Bowie — The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

The ten stamps in the Classic Record Cover series.

However, also included in the booklet were two mini sheets of ordinary definitive stamps (i.e. standard stamps bearing only the Queen’s head). One of these had a Banksy connection.

The mini sheet from the Classic Record Covers booklet with Banksy’s Diver with Bird.

So I rekindlled my stamp-collecting and added these to my Banksy collection.


Banksy record covers

Monkeys With Car Keys — A Banksy Cover I’ve Been Looking For.

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There are rare records that can take some time to find. One such was an early LP by the Swedish band bob hund. It was called Omslag: Martin Kann and is (as far as I know) only the second LP to only have the designer’s, not the band’s, name on the cover. The first is, of course, The Velvet Underground & Nico with only Andy Warhol’s name on the front.) The bob hund LP took me seven years to find!

There is an LP with Andy Warhol’s art that I’ve been trying to find since 2008. That is the longest time I’ve been searching. But there’s another release that has taken ten years to find.

Sometime in 2010 I found, on a website, an illustrated list of records and CDs with cover art by Banksy. I had seen most, if not all, of the covers pictured except one — for a CD called Monkeys With Car Keys. It was a relatively poor quality thumbnail picture with an URL across it.

The thumbnail picture of the Monkeys With Car Keys CD cover.

Of course, I tried to reach THEBANKSYFORUM.COM but it lead to notbanksyforum and I couldn’t find any details about the CD. Thus began a longterm search for a CD I really wasn’t sure even existed.

Fast forward to late 2020. By this time I had been looking out for this CD for ten years without success. I mailed a photo of the thumbnail picture to a friend who had roots in Bristol and he confirmed that Banksy had painted this design as a mural in the late 90s

Banksy’s Bristol mural.

Sadly, the mural has since disappeared. However, a couple of months later my friend told me he had actually found the CD and sent me a copy!

The Monkeys With Car Keys CD.

So it does really does exist! I am thrilled that my ten-year search has finally ended and I have been able to add this desperately rare CD to my collection. My sincerest thanks are due to my friend who found it for me.

Peter Blake

Okay! I Give In — There’s No Such Thing as a Complete collection!

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Followers of this blog will remember how I have, on several occasions, noted (and not without a degree of smugness) that this or that collection now is complete, only to discover a short time later some new item I had missed. I’ve said it about my Warhol, Banksy, Kate Moss, Damien Hirst, Klaus Voormann and Peter Blake collections. The one I was most certain about was my collection of Peter Blake’s record covers. There just aren’t that many of them and so I thought I had it covered (pun intended).

Just imagine my chagrin earlier this week when I did a little search on Discogs that turned up not one, but FOUR covers that I had missed. Okay, so three of them were Paul Weller CD singles taken from his 1995 Stanley Road album that only incorporated small bits of Peter Blake art on their covers — I could sort of dismiss them as not really being Peter Blake covers. But there is one I can’t excuse: the cover to a 1990 U.S. 12″ promotional EP by The Fall called I’m Frank.

The Fall’s I’m Frank cover.

The track I’m Frank appeared on the Fall’s 1990 Extricate album and this 12″ includes two other tracks from the LP and a bonus track, Zandra. It was only released in the U.S. The EP isn’t included in The Fall’s discography on Rate Your Music.

The Paul Weller CD singles with Peter Blake art that I missed are:
– You Do Something To Me – Digipak CD,
– A French promo 2-track CD entitled Stanley Road,
– Broken Stones – Digipak CD

The 4 DVD set of the Live 8 Concert from July 2nd 2005 includes a picture of Peter Blake’s poster for the event.

Peter Blake’s poster for the Live8 Concert.

So now I have to add all these to my book manuscript on Peter Blake’s Record Cover Art. But, I really can’t be sure that I now have found all the covers with Peter Blake’s art. I expect more to turn up as soon as I close this post.