Randomized Internet Album Cover Weblog Meme Thursday / 01.10.08 / 12:46AM / Joe / comments: 1
I don't generally go in for teh memes, but this album cover one noted over at Dubious Quality is a beaut. Quoted:
Basically, what you do is get a band name, album, and album cover from the following sources: 1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band. 2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album. 3. The third picture in Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days is your album cover.
I clicked his links just to see what I would roll, and it was so funny/appropriate that I had to 'Shop it up and try again. I told myself I would stop when they ceased to be funny, but they never did. (The only results I rejected was when the Wiki page was the name of an actual band!) Randomized fiction follows.
"Lousano" is in fact the last name of the two brothers who formed this grunge band in a mutual girlfriend's basement in 1996. Neither brother knew the other was dating the same girl, and when they both showed up at her place one late Friday night, the whole situation was so ridiculous that they dissolved into laughter after only a few punches. This, although their sophomore effort, actually contains some tracks written during those first months when their songs were all about that girl who was cheating on them. Title song "Divided Between the Sexes" tells that specific tale, but a good third of the entire song list falls under the "can you believe that crazy bitch" category of lyrics.
While this album cover became a schoolyard favorite for obvious reasons, Afrin SC's true message was directed towards burned out corporate salarymen. With sort of a John Tesh-meets-Yanni-for-buttsex vibe, "You and Be Happy" is relentlessly relaxing. References to giving up, quitting, selling the house, and moving to a cave abound, but delivered with a straight-forward sheen that makes a lack of running water seem palatable. Apparently the cover girl is intended for those lonely nights.
This is not an album. This is the long-running tourism campaign for Tioga County in northern Pennsylvania. (Tioga County Commissioners still do not realize that it was intended to be read sarcastically.) Sorry for the mix-up.
After seven major releases in three years, critics were starting to worry that slash-speed-death-throttle-metal band Tangvayosaurus was beginning to overplay their hand. But shrewd management surprised the world with "Cover Up What's Inside" - a soulful, plodding investigation into the masks we wear in everyday life - by finally entering the rock ballad phase of their metal arc. No one predicted it. No one expected it. No one wanted it. All fourteen band members of Tangvayosaurus, including one-legged cellist Vin Shicklegruber, committed ritual suicide after it was revealed that "Cover Up" only sold thirteen copies. Which meant that somebody in the band didn't buy one.
Not to be outdone, competitor metalheads Plastic Surgery also went the departure album route... albeit with greater success. A similar look at the deep truths of mankind, "What Makes Us Human" was given away for free in the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, granting it instant Gold Record status. Front man Jack Cymbal, once famous for demanding lightning rods installed on every house he played, would later joke that this album was witness to "more adolescent masturbation than anything Zep ever dreamed of."
NQT - the controversial rapper entourage led by M.C. Nerf-herda - signed their first contract with only one stipulation: that every album would prominently feature some dog's junk. Studio execs, desperate to land any rap group with initials in the wake of so many other rap groups with initials, were only too happy to agree. In fact, that's a Sony-BMG vice president's Labrador on the "One Link at a Time" cover. NQT proved to be a hitmaker for eleven years, until they finally pushed the Canine Cock Clause too far and tried to field a CD entitled "Little Pink Lipstick." |
These are fun. I messed around with random-band-name making a few years ago and the project grew into random-record-reviews and reading this made me revisit it and tweak it a bit.
It's certainly not perfect and would benefit from more variables and some picture/album covers, but I assure you that any grammatical errors are meant to intentionally simulate online/zine record review writing-style and do not reflect mere lazy coding. ;)