The seven RCA EP boxes Kevin sent arrived yeserday and I collected them from the Post Office at 5.15 pm. By 9.00 pm they had been transformed into –

So, the project moves closer to completion!

The Warhol Cover Collectors Club members are still waiting for their “Night Beat”, “Giant Size $1.57 Each” boxes and covers. Kevin has mailed that at least seven RCA 45 RPM EP boxes are on their way, but they have thus far not arrived.

I started my second silkscreen course last evening (5th November) by silkscreening T-shirts with the “Giant Size $1.57 Each” motif for all five members in sizes from S to XXL. I also plan to provide all with black T-shirts with the RATFAB cover image, but have run into difficulty in finding the right colours to use. As I will be screening on to black T-shirts I need inks with good covering ability. Most, however, are “transparent”, which means that the black of the t-shirt will show through the colour. There are, apparently, two ways to approach this problem. One is to pre-print the image in white and then print in transparent ink exactly over the previously screened white image. This is going to be almost impossible given the thin outlines of the design. The second way is to scour the market and try to find inks that are not transparent. And that is the solution I’m working on. Our next silkscreen meeting is on 12th November, so I have a week to find the new inks.

I hope the RCA boxes will have arrived by then, so that I will be able to dispatch all the packages in good time before the Christmas rush begins.

Like most collectors of Andy Warhol’s record cover art, I follow the covers advertised on Ebay. All too often sellers call their object “the rarest Warhol cover”. Niklas L challenged me to make a list of what I considered to be rarest covers. I thought I’d list the Top 20 rare covers. It is, of course impossible to rank them exactly, but here is my first attempt, keeping official releases and bootlegs apart. I hope publishing this list will stimulate readers to criticise and comment.

a. Official releases

Bootlegs

It has been a great week for my collection of Warhol covers. Forst I received the two CDs that Frank Edwards told me about. First, the Tobias Picker / Marc Bliztstein CD “Keys to the City / Piano Concerto”. This CD uses Warhol’s poster design for the Brooklyn Bridge centenary in 1983 as its cover image. Tobias Picker pianist and composer apparently has Tourette’s syndrome. But this doesn’t seem to affect his musicianship. He wrote the piano concerto “Keys to the City in 1982, when he was 28 years old, and it won the competition. Marc Bliztstein (born 1905-64) wrote his Piano Concerto in 1931. Bliztstein was murdered in Martinique in 1964.

Second, Karl Aage Rasmussen’s “Three Friends”, has Warhol’s picture “The Anunciation” on the cover. This image came from Warhol’s series of Renaissance Details published in 1984. Rasmussen (born 1947) wrote “Three Friends” in 1995 and this recording was made in Esbjerg, Denmark, in May 1998.

In addition, my copy of Prokofiev’s “Alexander Nevsky / Cantata #47” with the orange cover arrived today. It has the late pressed Columbia 6-eye labels with the word “unbreakable” to the left of the spindle hole indicating it to be a late pressing. As I have already stated in an earlier post, the 6-eye label was used on Columbia Materworks pressings between 1955 and 1962. The placing of “unbreakable” to the left of the spindle hole indicates that this LP was probably pressed nearer to 1962 than to 1955.

Other copies of this title with the same orange cover that have appeared on Ebay alla ppear to have the same 6-eye label. This supports my thesis that the various cover colour versions are probably later pressings than the original blue colour cover. I would be interested to know whether the green and pink cover versions have the 6-eye label or the original dark blue “masterworks” label. Perhaps readers could let me know.