By the way mark, what is everyone's favorite album cover art?

Is London Calling too cliche an answer? If so, I always found the shoddily thrown together record covers enticing. From Nevermind the Bollocks to Slanted & Enchanted (stopping at Remain In Light, of course), but they're adimeadozen.

- ROAD TO RUIN by the Ramones: Just a perfect caricature of the band in all their brooding, silly glory. - BEYOND THE VALLEY OF 1984 by the Plasmatics: So willfully in-your- face, over the top and basically stupid (the duct-tape, the mohawks, the tuxedo, the grimaces, the defiant arms raised...all on horseback). - DESTROYER by Kiss: Same aesthetic as both above...only sillier. - DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE by Devo: Very much of its time. It looked like the music contained within; bizarre. - DAMAGED by Black Flag: Mirror-punching skinhead with furious stare...aptly complementing the equally angry and bleak content of the album. - KILLING JOKE by Killing Joke: An enigmatic re-touching of Don McCullin's photograph of a gas attack in Norther Ireland. - TO MEGA THERION by Celtic Frost: A surreal portrait of Satan by H.R. "Alien" Giger, featuring the horned one using a crucifix as a slingshot...an album cover that proved so devisive that I actually broke up with someone over it (I thought it was hilarious, she thought it was unspeakably horrific).

Could never single out one, but The Beta Band's "Three EPs" has probably been my favourite design of the last 5 years or so.

I know this is so of-the-moment since we've been talking about him, but Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" has always been a source of wonder to me for some unknown reason. Not so interestingly, I also like "Thing Fish" by Zappa and "Uncle Meat" is a really nice piece of collage stuff. Pixies' "Doolittle" with the monkey is so nice with the bronze ink. The inside is neat, too. "Beggar's Banquet" has a really nice toilet scene. "Sticky Fingers" has a really nice zipper. But, I think my all time favorite, if I have to have a favorite... would be, uh... Black Sabbath's "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" with the kid tripping out under his demonic bedroom surroundings. That cover is severely fucked up and not completely unlike some of my acid trips. I also like the totally stupid Black Sabbath "Paranoid" cover for reasons I can't understand. A dude in the woods with a motorcycle helmet in pink tights weilding a sword? Bad trip. No, wait, I really like just "Black Sabbath" with that creepy looking photo/painting of the witch. No wait!!!! I like the one where the reflection in the mirror is them facing the same way they're standing, facing forward, and therefore totally incorrect. Nah, my favorite is the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath cover.

P.S. Mega Therion by Celtic Frost! Good choice! And they're best album, too!

Layla and The Who Sell Out

Great album/great cover - 1st Stooges album. Neu! Vincebus Eruptum by Blue Cheer. Never Been Caught by the Mummies. The Band That Would Be King by Half Japanese. The Bo Diddly album where they're all wearing plaid jackets.Weasels Ripped My Flesh.
Stinko album/great cover tho - Atom Heart Mother. 1st Uriah Heep. Tarkus.

I'll second Atom Heart Mother (good album also), Another Green World is very nice, Funhouse (took a while before i discovered it features Iggy in there), all Kraftwerk covers, Screamadelica's fried sun cover, Boredoms' Vision Creation Newsum, Autechre's Amber, best of all though Augustus Pablo's East of the River Nile (Pablo sitting on a rock in a river playing his melodica..cool!).

Hang on, Luptune was asking ME what all yr favourite covers are. Or Mark Pitchfork or Mark Morris, anyway. Stop answering till we've found out.

Big Black's "Songs About Fucking".

The cover to the Slint s/t EP -- the body, the snow, the gun. Mission of Burma's "Signals Calls and Marches" EP. I think I like reductive futurist looking cover art. The Who -- Live at Leeds. NOW, That's What I Call Music has a great cover ethos -- pop art for pop. Mariah Carey -- Rainbow, which is just dripping pure sex. Elvis Costello -- Trust, which is great and clever and yeah. Most stuff from No Limit. The Mystikal 3D version of his latest album. "Off White" from James White and the Blacks. Let It Be by the Replacements. "At the Golden Circle in Stokholm (live)" by Ornette Coleman. N***A Please by ODB. Playing With Fire by Spacemen 3. Bend Sinister by The Fall. Green Onions by Booker T. and the MGs. Second Edition by PiL. 154 by Wire. The Academy in Peril and Guts by John Cale.

Father Moo and te Black Sheep.

I forgot my favorite of course: Horses - Patti Smith.

What was the cover of that Queen album where this giant robot is crushing people with his fists? That used to give me nightmares when I was a nipper. Anyone know what it is?

And 1970s Grace Jones albun covers. Mugler. You know. Statuesque. Oily. Coke.

Dramarama's record with Edie S. Neneh Cherry's Raw Like Sushi Smog's Ex Con EP Neutral Milk Hotel's ITAOTS No New York compilation Mag Fields' Charm of the Highwaystrip PopGroup's We Are All Prostitutes Modest Mouse's This Is A Long Drive

Oh god, here I go again, but The Holy Bible - I know it's a bit "inspired" by another cover but Richey did it better. I even have the font on my computer, though I've yet to think of a good use for it.

I also always really liked the cover of Erotica.

it would be pointless to list all the cool ones. one that's really cool that's not a cliched answer would be can's "monster movie."

Anything with chunky computer graphics around 1985 for Miami bass records. Cover photos should also include cocaine, champagne and money. Nowadays they just release stuff like that quietly on Rephlex.

The Cure's covers for _17 Seconds_, _Faith_ and _Pornography_ make for one heck of a trio, as do the albums as well. V. nice.

I would say _Loveless_ as well, but some would accuse me of being monomaniacal on that point for some reason.

Most of my favourite album covers are left overs from when I was a kid, and it was almost more fun to play with the sleeves than it was to listen to the records. My dad's quadruple Yes live album with all the sci-fi airbrush paintings on it was my favourite thing in the world when I was about seven. There were pictures of Welsh people with capes dressed up like minor characters from Lord of the Rings in it and everything.

Before that, it was all my mum's psychedelic stuff. I liked anything that featured people with flowers growing out of their heads, like Cream's Disrali Gears or whatever that is, and the Byrds greatest hits. We had Peter Max wallpaper that featured people with flowers growing out their heads in my nursery. It made an impression, I guess.

I'm partial to covers that collide the concept "pictures of women" with "outstanding perversion in the use of". Ohio Players and Roxy Music spring to mind. 'Course, there are exceptions. And too many to list. Here goes then, five per decade:

70s Montrose JUMP ON IT Funkadelic FREE YOUR MIND... Iggy & the Stooges RAW POWER (surprised people voted above for the first two Stooges covers; they seem generic, RAW POWER is a classic image) Blowfly ZODIAC BLOWFLY Dictators GO GIRL CRAZY! Also (so much for five) Scorpions LOVEDRIVE, Parliament THE CLONES OF DR FUNKENSTEIN, Heart LITTLE QUEEN, Ted Nugent DOUBLE LIVE GONZO (striking RAW POWER-like image, enhanced by cool album title), Eagles HOTEL CALIFORNIA (not great art, but captures essence-of-artist, benign surface cloaking rampant cocaine pig debauchery/turmoil).

80s PURPLE RAIN, LIKE A VIRGIN, ELIMINATOR, RIO, 1984, BORN IN THE USA, GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN, STOP MAKING SENSE - these cover images are indelibly etched on my brain as being the 80s. Favourite actual covers, though: Ratt INVASION OF YOUR PRIVACY Cramps SMELL OF FEMALE Various LIKE A GIRL, I WANT YOU TO KEEP COMING (woeful comp LP with career lows from Debbie Harry, David Byrne, and I forget who else, but cool Rbt Wllms cover art, see also Divine Horsemen SNAKE HANDLER, which eclipses various Pettibon stuff as coolest SST cover ever) Spinal Tap THIS IS SPINAL TAP Boss Hog BOSS HOG (shite design, logo's crap, photo's positioned wrong, just really fucking bad in a wholly bad way... except, uhh, you can see her pussy)

90s Slaughter STICK IT TO YA Wildside UNDER THE INFLUENCE Black Crowes AMORICA McQueen Street MCQUEEN STREET Warrant CHERRY PIE (clever positioning of the pie slice)

WE HAVE A WINNER Jimi Hendrix Experience ELECTRIC LADYLAND (the gatefold all-nude version, obviously; decadence taken to choke-on-vomit extremes)

Deborah Harry's "Papa Legba", off LIKE A GIRL..., is a career high.

Is that Mark Morris from the bleedin' Bluetones?

My vote would go to the Afghan Whig's Gentlemen. The photograph of a boy's suspicious sideways glare to the innocent girl on the bed behind him puts an interesting spin on all the lust and dysfunction the album contains.

THE SMITHS - THE QUEEN IS DEAD - pure melancholy - you can't describe it better - picture tells 1000 words

Voivod, Pushead, Frank Kozik all do good ones.

I can't believe no one has mentioned the Linda Rondstadt rollerskating cover. Extremely blushy.

Ride - Nowhere.Honourable mentions to Loveless,Meddle by Pink Floyd.

Whipped cReam and other delights.

Guns'n'Roses, 'Use Your Illusion', purely for being a product of the Mark Kostabi factory. "They work in a cage for the minimum wage!"

Cool covers anything from Janes Addiction goes ok Dinosaur jr Youre Living all over me (by Maura Jasper) no code Pearl Jam new adventures... REM rage against the machine Jimi Hendrix the Ultimate experience Neil Young- Silver and Gold Nevermind