#picturedisk

R. I. P. Neil Peart, drummer extraordinaire and lyricist for Rush. This is a UK import 7-inch single for “Subdivisions,” one of my faves by them. 


Huey Lewis and the News has a new, final album coming out called “Weather.” Given that their biggest album was Sports, you can see the logic: News, Sports and Weather. It’s a last album, though, because a few years back, Huey got Meniere’s Disease, which is a severe hearing loss-related issue. That’s a raw deal.
This picture disc is from back in the Sports era, circa 1984. It’s a US 12-inch single for “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” backed with “I Want A New Drug” and a live rendition of that harmony-infused showstopper, “Do You Believe In Love.”


A nice US picture disc for a change - Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Band On The Run,” pressed up in 1978.


A collection of Cars.


While out in California, I picked up a U.K. picture disk of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s nuanced treatise on global nuclear armament policy, “Two Tribes.” Records like this were a whole sub-genre in the eighties, and this one in particular was a massive hit; I guess we liked dancing to Armageddon. The picture, which depicts Ronald Reagan getting a wedgie from Mikhail Gorbachev, came from the accompanying music video which was an oh-so-subtly metaphoric wrestling match between the two world leaders. I was never a fan of Reagan’s politics, but one has to wonder what he’d think of today’s state of affairs between our governments, with our leaders appearing to be so buddy-buddy. If nothing else, Putin has disproven the chorus to “Two Tribes”—“When two tribes go to war/One is all that you can control.”

Happy birthday to Tina Turner, who turns 80 today. Here’s a UK shaped picture disc of her song from Mad Max :Beyond Thunderdome. 


I spotted this UK shaped picture disc in a shop and how could I resist? I mean, a record shaped like Styx’s Mr. Roboto himself? Ironically, it’s not for the song “Mr. Roboto” itself, but the drippy follow-up single, “Don’t Let It End.” Perhaps a bigger mistake than not having the character’s own song on this was the choice of B-side: the classic rock staple, “Rockin’ The Paradise,” from earlier in Styx’s career. Not only is it a better song, serving to highlight how mundane the A-side is, but listening to it for the first time in decades, I discovered something I never realized before: It owes a MASSIVE debt to Queen. The phrase “heavily influenced” definitely comes to mind here. On the other hand, if you’re going to draw from other sources for inspiration, borrow from the best—and that’s what they did.


Interesting one I found a week or two back—a UK 7” picture disc with a pop-up sleeve (How cool is that?!) of “Julia” from Eurythmics’ forgotten soundtrack to the forgotten mid-80s adaptation of “1984.” This was a whopping $1.99 and worth every penny. (Thanks, @infinityrecordsltd )