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March 27th 2025–kent’s Final Concert.

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Is there anyone outside of Scandinavia who has heard of kent, the band from Eskilstuna, which, in my estimation, has probably sold as many–if not more–albums than ABBA in Sweden?

A little historical background. kent was formed in Eskilstuna in 1990. There were five members: Jocke Berg (vocals and occasional guitar), Martin Sköld (bass, keyboards), Markus Mustonen (drums, backing vocals, keyboards, piano), Sami Sirviö (lead guitar, keyboards), Harri Mänty (rhythm guitar, programming, percussion; 1996–2006), and
Martin Roos (rhythm guitar; 1992–1995).

I first heard about kent when I went to Skellefteå festival in June 1995. I pulled a festival poster (as per usual for me) off a wall hoping to get some autographs. The real reason I went to the festival was to see two other bands; Suede and the Ramones. Also the Wannadies (a Skellefteå band) were playing and I liked them. At that time kent had only released a first CD entitled simply kent. I had an early copy and I made an LP-sized enlargement of the booklet cover, which I hoped to get signed along with two Ramones LPs and three Suede albums.

My poster signed by kent, Ramones, Wannadies

kent were playing on the smallest stage and after their show I asked Jocke Berg to sign my CD and the LP-sized enlargement. He got excited and asked if their album had been released on vinyl (which wouldn’t happen until 2015!)

I have seen kent at least ten times to date:
— Skellefteå festival — 23rd June 1995
— Hultsfredsfestival — 1996, 1998,
— Roskilde festival — 1998*
— Pontushallen, Luleå — 25th February 2000
— Kalas2000, Umeå — 22nd July 2000
— Hultsfred festival –15 June 2001
— Kalas2002, Umeå — 31st July 2002
— Skellefteå travbana — 4th June 2005
— Piteå Dansar o Ler — 31st July 2010
— 3Arena, Stockholm — 27th March 2025.
*I was at Roskilde but I can’t swear I saw kent there.

kent autographs from Pontushallen, Luleå, February 2000.

I was part of the the security crew at the Piteå Dansar o Ler festivals from 1999 to 2010 and together with the festival organisers Jan Wimander and Anna Carin Johansson, I curated three exhibitions of record cover art. In 2008, with assistance from Guy Minnebach, I organised an exhibition of Andy Warhol‘s record cover art. The following year we put on an exhibiton of Peter Blake‘s record cover art and in 2010 we did a major exhibition of kent’s record and poster art called kent – på nära håll (kent close by). Here’s pictures of the catalogue, made to look like a record cover with a paper record inside. All my kent record and CD covers are pictured on the inner spread. The “record” describes the exhibition and kent’s discography and some additional works from a previous kent exhibition in Linköping.

Like everyone else, I thought we’d never see kent again. There were regular reissues of their albums but no one expected the band to reunite. But in August 2024 they announced a final set of three concerts scheduled for MArch 21 st, 22nd and 23rd March 2025. Tickets went on sale on October 26th and the three concerts sold out within hours so three more dates were added 25th, 26th and 27th March and I was lucky to get tickets for the final date. 3Arena in southern Stockholm has a capacity of 40,000 and each of kent’s six concerts was sold out, meaning that 240,000 tickets had been sold! Each ticket cost SEK 999 plus a service charge of SEK 200 and a basic fee of SEK 130. So my two tickets cost SEK 2318 (about €201 or GBP172)!

So the concert on March 27th, the last of the six, would (potentially) be kent‘s last stand. During the concert Jocke promised twice that this really would be kent’s final concert. Well, they are all in their mid fifties now. It’s not like they were still 20-somethings.
Now for some pictures from the concert.

And here’s the setlist from the final, final concert. 24 songs in two hours and seven minutes:
— Stenbrott
— Ingenting någonsin
— En timme en minut
— Om du var här
— Kevlarskäl
— Hjärta
— Socker
— Romeo återvänder ensam
— Pärlor
— Var är vi nu
— Utan dina antetag
— Musik Non Stop
— Kärleken väntar
— Ingenting
— Dom andra
— Stoppa mig juni (lilla ego)
— Innan alting tar slut
— Sundance kid
— La belle epoque
— Förlåtelsen
Encore1:
— Sverige
— 999
— 747
Encore 2:
— Mannen i den vita hatten (16 åe senare)

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Richard Prince Does It Again! His Dylan Paintings.

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You all know I love appropriated art and apart from my own works, I really like Richard Prince’s stuff. I have a few of his record covers. His latest exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills shows three giant “paintings” of Bob Dylan culled from Jerry Schatzberg’s famous portrait used on the cover of Dylan’s 1966 Blonde on Blonde album cover. The Gagosian exhibition that opened on February 27th, 2025 was tied to the release of the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

Prince has cropped the original image and blown it up to ten feet by ten feet (3 x 3 m).

Prince says in the exhibition blurb that “sometimes, when I walk into a gallery and see someone’s work, I say “gee, I wish I’d done that.“” So, he must have admired Schatzberg’s cover picture. The works are titled “Untitled (Dylan)” 2014.

My reproductions of album covers are puny in relation to these Dylan portraits–only 45 x 45 cms but I draw/paint mine; Prince has used an inkjet printer to make his. Quite impressive, though, given the size of the portraits.

UFO-Strangers in the Night
Kraftwerk-Der Mensch Maschine
The Who-My Generation
The Ramones.
Led Zeppelin-I

But I sympathise with Richard Prince in that I also can walk into a gallery or museum and see someone’s work say “Gee, I wish I’d done that!”

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From Warhol to Banksy — A Trip Through Record Covers.

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Try to imagine a shy twenry-year-old, who is conviced he is ugly (his nose is bulbous and his hair is already thinning) who leaves art college in his home town of Pittsburgh and, in the summer of 1949, moves to New York to seek his fortune. Andy Warhola is determined to find work and hawks his portfolio to the offices of glossy magazines and record companies.

He goes to the offices of Columbia Rrecords, who the previous August, had begun reieasng long playing records and was in the process of reissuing many of their best selling classical albums previously available as 78 rpm sets in the new medium that allowed a whole symphony to fit on one side of a twelve-inch LP.

In 1938, the company hired a 21-year-old Alex Steinweiss as its art director. Steinweiss felt that the company’s record albums with their plain covers were dull and suggested adding pictures to the covers. His superiors were sceptical, but allowed him to make a few trial cover. These were successful, increasing sales. Steinweiss first cover was for an album of Smash Hits by Rodgers and Hart.

The young Warhol was commissioned to illustrate two covers.

Andy Warhol’s first cover for Columbia Records, 1949.

In 1951, Warhol was commissioned to illustrate a newspaper advertisement for radio programmes called The Nation’s Nightmare and Crime on the Waterfront to be broadcast by CBS Radio that autumn. CBS decied to release the programmes the following year on an LP.

Warhol won his first design award for the designs.

In the fifties, Warhol cooperated with Reid Miles, the legendary art director at Blue Note and Prestige Records, producing a numner of classic jazz covers. He also continued to get commissions from Columbia Records subsidiaries and designed several classical covers.

Other Pop artists would later design record covers: Robert Rauchenberg designed the limited edition cover for Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues (1983), Robert Indiana’s LOVE image appeared on a recording of Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony and Ed Ruscha, who has become Paul McCartney’s buddy, has designed several covers for the ex-Beatle as well as the cover for the Beatles’ last single Now and Then.

And England’s Pop artists were also designing record covers. Peter Blake together with his wife at the time, Jann Haworth came up with the famous cover for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and Blake has continued to design record covers — now over forty! Richard Hamilton was invited to design the Beatles next full album The Beatles (the white album) and chose a minimalitic cover to contrast with the Sgt. Pepper design.

Other British artists who have designed record covers include Damien Hirst, David Shrigley, Tracy Emin as well as design groups such as Hipgnosis.

Andy Warhol, announced in 1965 that he was giving up painting to concentrated on his other projects — film and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, featuring the Velvet Underground and performances and dancers including Gerard Malanga, who would assist Warhol in his printmaking. He took the Velvet Underground to Norman Dolph’s Scepter Studio in New York to record the band’s first album. Warhol insisting that Nico, a German singer, sing on three songs. Warhol offered the record to Columbia Records, who turned it down, suggesting it needed beter production and Warhol let Tom Wilson re-record the album, which Warhol then offered to Verve Records who released it in March 1967. Warhol designed the Banana cover and the front cover just had the banana (with ‘peel me and see’ beside the neck) and Andy Warhol’s name at the bottom.

Warhol was a “mover and shaker” in 60s and 70s New York travelling to parties and discos always with an entourage of beautiful people. He loved being with celbrities. He met Mick Jagger who asjed him to design the cover for the forst Rolling Stones album to be released on the Stones’ own label. Warhol came up with the zip cover for Sticky Fingers (released April 1971).

My signed “Sticky Fingers” LP.

There has been a debate about whose jeans Warhol photographed for the Stocky Fingers cover. It wasn’t Joe d’Allesandro, as many have suggesteds. It may have been Warhol’s parrtner Jed Johnson’s twin brother Jay who was the model.

Warhol was also asked to design the cover for the Stones’ Love You Live album. He had invited the band to hs Long Island home at Montauk wherer he photographed them biting themselves or each other. He selected a picture of Mick Jagger biting his daughter Jade’s hand for the cover. Warhol dis not want any writing on the cover but Mick Jagger added the band name and the record title, which annoyed Warhol. He would normally sign anything he was asked to sign but refused to sign the front cover of the Love You Live album, usually choosing instead to sign the inner spread.

The Front cover of “Love You Live” showing Mick biting a child’s hand (Jade Jagger). .

Later Warhol began a cooperation with Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York street artist turned fine artist. Basquiat would only outlive Warhol by little over a year, dying in 1968 of a drug overdose, but nor before he had managed to produce a few record covers.

That brings me to other street artists, including the enigmatic artist who calls himself Banksy. Banksy started as a street artist in his native Bristol in the late 90s and produced designs for record covers from then. His first major albel design was for Blur’s Think Tank album in 2003.

Bansky’s art has appeared on over two hundred records and CDs, the majority unofficially.

Other street artists have designed record covers. Mr. Brainwash designed Madonna’s Celebration compilation from 2009.

Hellstrom, a Swedish street artitst, designed a limited edition cover (40 copies) for his namesake Håkan Hellström’s Illusioner album (2019) with a silkscreened portrait of the artist.

Other Swedish designers and artists have designed interesting ecord covers. Martin Kann has designed the covers for bob hund’s records and CDs and — as far as I know — produced on the second cover to give the cover designer’s name on the front of a release: Omslag Martin Kann by bob hund.

The Swedish designer who has sold the most ercords in Swedden is probably Helen Sköld, who has desgne dthe covers for kent, Sweden’s biggest band since ABBA.

Karin Mamma Andersson is a Swedish artist who has made an international career. She has designed covers for the alternative poet and songwriterr Mattias Alkberg as well as providing paintings for three of Beck’s releases.

Cundy Sherman is another worrld renowned photographer who has used her photos on record covers. The latest is for her friend Jenni Muldaur’s (daughter of singer Maria Muldaur) and Teddy Thompson’s (son of Richard Thompson) Teddy & Jenni do George & Tammy EP.

Teddy & Jenni Do George & Tammy

There are other ways of collecting record cover art. Anyone remember bubble gum packaged in small copies of record covers? They are quite collectable. As we are at Spritmuseum, hoem of the Absolut Art Collection, I wold also mention the Absolut Cover adverts that use Bowie’s Aladin Sane image, Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew cover image and others in adverts.

Just recently, I discovered an invitation to an exhibition of the Absolut Vodka record cover adverts in New York in the form of a seven-inch single.

This article is a somewhat expanded version of a lecture given in Swedish on Sunday January 26th 2025 at Spritmuseum, Stockholm, as part of the Money on the Wall– Andy Warhol Exhibition that runs until September 14th 2025.

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A New David Shrigley Cover and Some Thoughts About Collecting Record Cover Art.

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I’m in a contemplative mood. I collect, I make lists, and recently people have been asking for copies. I try to help and get compliments. How unusual. I’m not really used to those.

DB wants a list of Cindy Sherman and David Shrigley covers, Felix wants a list of Damien Hirst covers and I send them with explanations. A friend casually asks “how many Banksy covers are there?” And I answer “Well, I have about two hundred.” I check my curent list, that doesn’t have them all.

DB gets back to me and wonders if I’ve missed one Shrigley cover and sends me a picture of the Velvet Undergrund & Nico album released by Castle Face Records with its Shrigley rendition of Warhol’s Banana on the cover and his portrait of Andy on the rear. I check my list and note number 37–listed as a Various Artists compilation. It’s the Castle Face album. I remember that I asked David Shrigley to sign it when he visited Spritmuseum in Stockholm a few years ago.

Then, in late November 2024, Paul emails that there is a new record being released with a cover designed by David Shrigley. Another to
a. add to my collection, and
b. add to my Shrigley list.
Paul says it’s a limited edition and I better hurry. By the time I get his mail I’ve already ordered it. Then the following week he emails me again about what I assume is the same release, only it isn’t. It’s a second version of the record, this time pressed on red vinyl. The first version came on yellow vinyl. I rush to order a copy but find it has already sold out. Ouch! I check Ebay. There’s a copy for sale there and I manage to grab it.

So now my Shrigley list has sixty-six titles, although that includes a few doubles.

And, another little compliment–Spritmuseum, in Stockholm, where their current exhibition Money on the Wall: Andy Warhol is a critically lauded success has eighteen of my Andy Warhol designed record sleeves on display, want me to give a talk about record cover art at the end of January 2025.

I’ve called it Record Cover Art from Warhol to Banksy. Now all I need to do is put it all together. I’m making a new list of important covers.

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Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Forty Years on. Peter Blake Returns.

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Band Aid’s single Do They Know It’s Christmas? was concieved on November 2nd 1984 by Bob Geldorf who contacted Midge Ure and together they wrote the song on the following day. The song was recorded at SARM West End studios on Sunday, November 25th by a collection of artists enlisted specially for this recording.

Peter Blake was approached to design the cover and was give one week to come up with the design. A classic Peter Blake collage:

The record was released on 7th December 1984 both on seven-inch and twelve-inch vinyl, and went on to sell millions of copies resulting in GBP 8 million for the charity. I went out and bought several copies to give to friends as Christmas presents.

The record was re-released in November 1985 with a new B-side One Year On (Feed the World), again as a seven-inch and a twelve inch.

Do They Know It’s Christmas? was first released on CD in 1989 together with a cassettee and new seven-inch versions. The cover was a disappointing black or green cover designed by David Howells.

The next release was for the record’s twentieth anniversary in 2004. Released only as CD single, the cover was initially to be designed by Damien Hirst but his design was rejected as being too harrowing and Mat Maitland made the cover image A Disney-ish winter scene with a superimposed image of the back of a starving child.

For the thirtieth anniversary in 2014, Tracy Emin was selected for the cover design and she produced one of her neon signs.

And now it’s 2024–forty years after the original release and Bob Geldorf has once more asked Sir Peter Blake for a new design. It was released on 29th November, this time, only available as a 12″ maxi EP and a CD. Trevor Horn, the producer of the original 1984 version of Do Thy Know It’s Christmas has produced a new remix for this fortieth anniversary release.

Blake has reused his red heart on a yellow background as the main image and selected a range of collagese placed along the top. Front cover design is, however, credited to Mark Cowne with layout and design by Darren Evans. I get a bit muddled by all these designers. All I know is the images on the front cover are by Peter Blake.

This isn’t the first time Blake’s red heart motif has appeared on a record cover. It turned up on the inner spread of Mark Knopfler’s Tracker LP in 2015.

Stay tuned for my report on the fiftieth anniversary version. I hope I’m still around then.

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Two New Klaus Voormann Titles Added to My Collection.

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I don’t need to work too hard to keep up to date with record releases that have cover art by Klaus Voormann. Thorsten Knublauch–expert on all things about the Beatles in Germany–is also an expert on KLaus Voormann’s art and has tipped me off about a couple of Voormann’s books as well as most of the Voormann covers I’ve collected in recent years. He tippped me off about Wolfgang Bernreuther’s 2023 Still a Fool album when it first appeared as a CD and a quick search of Discogs allerted me to a limited edition vinyl version that I finally got hold of this week.

The deluxe vinyl version includes a fourteen-track 180g LP, a bonus 12″ four-track maxi EP, a large poster of the cover art as well as a Klaus Voormann print. Apparently the deluxe album is limited to 1000 copies.

A couple of months ago Thorsten sent me a picture of a CD with Voormann art that I hadn’t seen before.

The CD was produced by the POP Akademie Baden-Würtemburg and released in 2014. It wasn’t listed on Discogs and I couldn’t find any information about it online. So, I googled the Pop Akademie and found their home page but no contact information. I asked Thorsten if he could try to contact them–my German is non-existent–so I reckoned he would have a better chance of finding a way to get in touch with them. Sure, enough, he not only contacted them but weedled a couple of CDs from them, too, and sent me one.

Now my collection of Klaus Voormann covers totals one hundred and one releases, of the largest of my cover collections–only my Andy Warhol cover collection is bigger.

One of the most common questions people ask me when talking about my record cover collection is “How many covers did so-and-so do?” When discussing Andy Warhol’s cover art, people generally know two covers–and are surprised to hear that he was responsible for almost eighty in his lifetime. Few know that Peter Blake has designed thirty seven covers–they might know Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and, perhaps, Paul Weller’s Stanley Road, but few others. And who knew that David Shrigley has been responsible for forty-one covers?

Anyway–Thank you Throrsten for keeping me up to date on Klaus Voormann’s recrd cover art! I’m truly grateful.

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Money on the Wall–Andy Warhol. Exhibition at Spritmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden.

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What a week last week turned out to be! The impressive Money on the Wall–Andy Warhol exhibition opened on Friday, 18th October at Stockholm’s Spritmuseum. The official opening was preceded by a preview and dinner for those involved in the production on the Tuesday and a massive party for fans of the museum on the Thursday before the opening.

Let me tell you something about Spritmuseum. Absolut Vodka was a Swedish vodka product owned by the Swedish Vin & Sprit company until it was bought by the Pernod Ricard Group in 2008. Absolut Vodka had since 1985 engaged artists to make artworks “celebrating” Absolut Vodka. The first artist to do this was none other than Andy Warhol, who painted two large canvasses featuring the classic Absolut bottle (more about these later.) Warhol suggested that Keith Haring do the following year’s work and the Absolut Art Collection was born. It now includes 850 works.

The Art Collection was not included in the sale of Absolut Vodka to the Pernod Ricard Group and a home was needed for it and the building on Djurgården, between the famous Vasa Museum and what has become the Viking Museum was chosen as the new Spritmuseum, not only housing the Absolut Art Collection but also a permanent exhibition of the hustory of alcohol drinking in Sweden.Spritmuseum’s artostoc director is Mia Sundberg, who has curated many exciting shows and I have been a regular visitor to exhibitions at Sprituseum that she has curated or organised. The Andy Warhol “portrait” of the Absolut Vodka bottle has been a regular feature in many of these exhibitions.

A couple of years ago Mia Sundberg and an associate found the second, “lost” Warhol version of the Absolut bottle in a garage. This find prompted the idea of a major exhibition of Andy Warhol’s art at Spritmuseum to show the new, blue version for the first time.

Mia Sundberg suggested that Blake Gopnik, author of the 2020 definitive Warhol biography curate the exhibition. He suggested “art as business” as a theme for the exhibition starting from Warhol’s expressed interest in money both as a subject for his art and as a business.

Mia Sundberg contaced me a few months ago and asked if the museum could borrow twelve of my Warhol record covers and I provided her with a list of possible covers to choose from. I promised to deliver the selected covers when the time came and three weeks before the opening I took the tram ot to Djurgården and delivered them.

A week or so later, I got an email from Mia asking for six more covers. That caused a problem–all my other Warhol covers are in Linköping, a town two hour’s drive from Stockholm, being stored before travelling to a new Warhol exhibition in Borås next year. So, I had to get on a train and collect the six covers and deliver them ASAP. Here are all the covers I have lent to Spritmuseum:

“Soul Vacation” by Rats and Star signed in 1983 in Japan when Andy Warhol met the band.
“Velvet Underground & Nico” 50th anniversary version.
“Aretha” CD booklet.
The “Rolling Stones” promotional single.
My signed “Sticky Fingers” LP.

In the end, the Rolling Stones promotional seve-inch and the RATFAB seven-inch were not included in the exhibiiton.

I had the honour/great good fortune to be seated beside Blake Gopnik at the preview dinner and we had a fascinating discussion. He kindly offfered to sign my copy of his Warhol biography.

I also asked him to sign the exhibition poster together with Mia Sundberg. Her signature, unfortunately, is difficult to see..

Money on the Wall is an impressive exhibition that runs until 27th April 2025. It’s really one of the better Warhol shows I’ve seen.

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Peter Blake’s Cover Art: A Complete List (So Far).

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By my reckoning Sir Peter Blake, now in his 93rd year, has so far designed thirty-one record covers, not including the covers of the covers included in four singles box sets: Eric Clapton’s promotional 24 Nights single box, Paul Weller’s Stanley Road box, The Who’s Who box set, and Paul Weller’s recent 66 singles set, between 1967 and 2024. In addition two albums have featured Peter Blake’s art on their covers, though without Blake’s direct involvment. These are House of Love’s Babe Rainbow album (1992) that featured Pete Townshend’s framed Babe Rainbow print on the cover, and Mark Knopfler’s Tracker album (2015) that had Peter Blake’s Love Heart print on the inner spread..

I didn’t start out to collect Peter Blake’s record covers, it sort of happened organically. Having bought the Beatles’ Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP on the day it came out in June 1967 and bought the Pentangle’s Sweet Child double album after seeing them at the Royal Albert Hall in November 1968. Roger McGough’s Summer With Monika was probably the next album with Peter Blake art that I got as I had read some of McGough’s poetry. Next came the Who’s Face Dances as I was (and am) a major fan of the Who. I can’t remember exactly when, or why, I bought Chris Jagger’s second album The Adventures of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist, but I have always been intrigued by the cover that seems to epitomise Peter Blake’s whimsy.

Like millions of others, I rushed out to buy the Band Aid single Do They Know Its Christmas? single when it came out in December 1984 and even bought the reissue the following Christmas.

I realised that I had the beginning of a collection of Peter Blake’s record covers and continued to buy other covers over the ensuing years. My late friend and gallery owner Daniel Brandt was organising an exhibition of Peter Blake’s London and Recycling prints at his A and D Gallery in July 2010 and invited me to show my collection of Peter Blake covers along side the new prints. I had previously send a bundle of my Peter Blake covers to the man himself asking him to kindly sign them, which he graciously did, attaching a letter congratulating me on having so many covers, so these were the ones I showed at the Gallery. Peter and Chrissy Blake came to the opening and I gave him a copy of my catalogue from the exhibition of his record covers at Piteå Museum in 2009.

The Catalogue from Piteå Museum’s exhibiton of Peter Blake’s record covers.

Last week, I got a second parcel of Peter Blake covers back after a four-month period of uncertainty. As I wrote in my previous post, I had sent six covers to Sir Peter i March 2024 and heard nothing until early July when Chrissy Blake left them at the Waddington Custot Gallery and I could arrange for them to be sent on to me.

The arrival of the new signed covers made me think to make a list of all the Peter Blake covers I have managed to get signed. Of the thirty different vinyl and CD covers Peter Blake has designed or illustrated, I have no less than twenty-eight signed!

Here they are in chronological order:

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Pentangle – Sweet Child
Chris Jagger – The Adventures of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist.
Roger McGough – Summer With Monika
The Who – Face Dances
Landscape – Manhattan boogie Woogie
Band Aid – Do They Know It’s Christmas?
David Sylvain – A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil
Ian Dury – Apples
The Fall – i’m Frsnk
Eric Clapton – 24 Nights
Paul Weller- Stanley Road
A Stranger Shadow – Colours
Various Artists – Brand New Boots and Panties
Brian Wilson – Gettin’ in Over My Hread
Eric Cla-ton – Me & Mr Johnson
Oasis – Stop the Clocks
Oasis – Champagne Supernova
Various Artists – John Peel; Right Time, Wrong Speed
The Blockheads – Staring Down the Barrel
Eric Clapton –
I Still Do
The Who – Who
Mark Knopfler’s Guitar Heroes – Leaving Home
Paul Weller – 66

However, there are still three Peter Blake covers that I haven’t managed to get signed. These are Madness Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da album, John Cooper Clarke’s CD The Luckiest Man Alive, and Eric Clapton’s box set of The Definitive 24 Hours.

In addition, my collection includes both the Genesis Publications limited edition book sets: Eric Clapton & Peter Blake 24 Nights the Limited Edition and the Brian Wilson — Peter Blake set That Lucky Old Sun that includes twelve Peter Blake prints.

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Peter Blake Signed Album Covers and Unsolved Mysteries.

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You all know I collect Peter Blake album cover art and I’ve been lucky, over the years, to get many covers signed by Sir Peter. However, as I live in Sweden, it has not been easy to get covers signed.

Some time in March 2024, my friend — and Beatles expert — Ken Orth wondered if I cuold help him try to solve a mystery. There is a shadowy figure from the Sgt. Pepper photo shoot that has not been identified and Ken has asked just about everybody, including Jann Haworth, if they could identify the person.

Peter Blake – Mystery figure

The only person Ken hadn’t asked was Peter Blake and so Ken asked mwe if I could pass the picture on to him to see if he knew who the person was. I wondered how this would work and decided to ask Sir Peter to sign some album covers for me and I would enclose the picture of the mystery person in the hope that he mighty remember.

So — at the end of March I assembled a package of six record covers and one CD booklet and printed a large copy of the mystery person. I wrote a long letter asking several questions about the covers and posted the package by registered mail. I received notice that the package had been delivered on April 4th and the waiting started.

One month went by. And then another… And I began to give up hope. I reckoned that I had lost the covers and managed to find replacements. Then, at the beginning of July I received and email from Blake’s gallery saying that Chrissy Blake had delivered a parcel addressed to me for the gallery to forward. I confirmed my address and the gallery sent the package off only for it to be returned after a couple of days as being “undeliverable”. The gallery director emailed my telling me the package was once again at the gallery but for some reason this email didn’t arrive until the 26th July. So I arranged a new shipment where Royal Mail would collect the package and send it registered to me. They tried to collect the parcel on August 1st but the person on the gallery’s front desk didn’t know about the collection, so had to reshedule collection for the following day. That worked and the package was on its way.

It arrived at the Swedish customs on August 12th and I collected it yesterday. In the parcel were my six record covers, on CD booklet and the poster of the Mystery person, now with an inskription by Peter Blake.

So the Mystery person is still a mystery.

Sir Peter had signed all four album covers and the CD booklet but had not commented on my questions.

I would still like to know how The Fall came to use Peter Blake’s Nadia painting on the cover of their promotional EP, and I still wonder where the original painting for the Gershwin cover is now? And how did A Stranger Shadow get their Colours CD cover designed by Peter Blake? The final mystery is why Landscape (or their record company) rejected Peter Blake’s cover for their Manhattan Boogie Woogie album?
These mysteries, too, remain unsolved.

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Blur’s Think Tank — UK Editions and Promos

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I lost my original copy of Blur’s Think Tank poster in 2010 when it got lost after an exhibition of Banksy’s record covers in Stockholm. At last I’ve found a replacement — though it was considerably more expensive than the one I lost. This new acquisition made me review my collection of Think Tank albums, promos and such.

I saw Blur at Hultsfreds Festival in Sweden in 1996 and got a couple of album covers signed. So it was quite logical that I also bought Think Tank on vinyl when it first came out, and I suppose this was the first Banksy designed cover in my collection. I also bought the Observer five-track promo soon after. I soon found the large Think Tank poster to add to the collection.

My collection of Banksy covers started in 2005-6 after I missed seeing a streeet art exhibiiton at which several Banksy prints were on sale. I found most early covers at standard issue prices with only a couple costing more than that — the Laugh Now / Keep It Real twelve-inchers cost £6.99 each back then! My next buys were the Think Tank promo CD with the petrolhead stamp and the promo twelve-inch white label.

Think Tank promo CD and 12-inch vinyl.

In addition to the double vinyl, I bought the ‘limited edition’ CD in the red book cover so I didn’t buy a standard Think Tank CD until the reissue box set with bonus CD and the four prints when it came out in 2012.

ThinkTank 2012 box set.

I had seen that a number of the Think Tank promo CDs had been found without the Petrolhead stamp and a good friend sold me a second copy of the CD with the stamp and one without. I had also read about a version with a pink baby’s hand stamped instead of the Petrolhead figure and when one came up on Ebay I nabbed it! So my collection of promo CDs has grown.

Three promotional CDs for Blur’s Think Tank album.

I wondered why no one had come up with one of these promos with a foot instead of the baby’s hand. So I went to Photoshop and created my own, though I haven’t printed it yet.

I ‘m a sucker and gave in to temptation and bought the reissue Think Tank double LP in 2023.

More recently, I read about the Blur stencil that appeared on adverts for the Think Tank album when it was released and found a nice mint stencil as well as a magazine ad for the album showing the stencil.

I know there are interesting versions of Think Tank available from other countries but I’m limiting my collection to U.K./Europe issues. I wonder what other additions may turn up in future.