Have you ever seen an album cover that looks eerily similar to a much older album cover? I’m not talking about a cover that’s paying homage or respect to an older album. I mean a flat out ripoff. Something with no relevance or background for a homage. Just a cheap imitation. That’s pretty much the story of jazz album covers. To be exact, jazz album covers from the 60s. The 60s were perhaps the most fertile time period for album covers thanks to Blue Note and Impulse. The ripoffs are not just limited to shamelessly imitating covers unfortunately. Everything stylistically is up for grabs. Most of the time with zero accountability or even accreditation for the work they brazenly took.
The extent to which jazz is appropriated and “borrowed” from knows no bounds. I find this ironic, as there are no shortages of articles saying jazz is dead (thanks Terry Teachout!). Since jazz is allegedly dead, does the wanton sacrilege, plunder and pillaging make it some sort of necrophiliac exercise? From uncredited sampling, to outright stealing, it’s a plague that continues to get worse. Sounds, images, fashions, styles, album covers, it’s all fair game for kleptomania. Many of the original musicians are dead or elderly, so a lot of this goes unnoticed, and many of the listeners of the kleptomaniac musicians are young, so they will not notice. What’s old is what’s new, not just with jazz, but with everything. It’s why Lady Gaga is fresh and exciting to a lot of young people, while older folks are yawning to death at the retread because they know Grace Jones, and Lady Gaga is no Grace Jones.
So here we are with the cover of the single The First Vietnamese War by The Black Angels. It’s not new or anything, it’s a few years old. Now, look at the cover next to the cover of Freddie Hubbard’s Hub-Tones from 1962. Look familiar? If Reid Miles had a dollar from all the people that imitated his work, his estate would be worth a lot of money. These copycats have no vision and obviously lack originality. What does it say about you when you have to “borrow” 50 year old album covers? It’s very lazy, not to mention boring. Has the dearth of creativity for some people reached such abysmal levels that they can’t even design their own record covers anymore? It’s all rather pathetic.
I’m also not buying most of the people saying these copied covers are homages either. They’re saying that to protect their slimy hides. Somewhere in the sewage of mediocrity where most of these copycats reside, they want to say they are invoking the ghosts of the musicians they continue to steal from I presume. Maybe it’s for the better that many of the jazz musicians are not alive to witness this nonsense.
Filed under: Jazz, Freddie Hubbard, The Black Angels
Blue Note covers has influenced countless of album covers but this is just criminal. No shame whatsoever. I think there is another album cover on the Prestige label that’s almost the same. I remember when my wife bought a vinyl copy of John mayer’s room for squares and immediately, I was like Hank Mobley’s no room for squares. You can plainly see the influence.