Ok. Eyes down. Here is a sleeve notes quiz. All the following quotes and text excerpts have been taken from the back sleeves of vinyl albums. All the albums are well known...or even classic... imo. Some are bloody hard though I think.
Name the album. Good luck. (whoops, no.11 isn't an album, its a 12" :) )

1. The lyrics are startling juxtapostions of natural speech with formal metaphor. Pain, loss, fear, guilt, loneliness are unashamedly admitted; yet there is no trace either of self-pity or ironic posturing. The only politics are the politics of love. Ultimately the songs are religious, in the most profound and mystical sense of the word.
Songs of Leonard Cohen

2. ...would like to thank Evil Graham Lee.Elvis Presley.Nick Coler.Jesus loves you.Fleetwood Mac.Acker Bilk and all other communicators around the world who contributed to this album
KLF - Chill Out

3. charms. sweet angels--you have made me no longer afraid of death
Patti Smith - Horses

4. Black Hair 6' 3"
Blue Eyes 9st 6lbs
Wire - Pink Flag

5. Upon the centre stood a green a lazy floor that froze as it grew into our feet. And at this, somewhere up at the North Pole hung the tarantula of love[......]As soon as the time came to go, the dramatic sequence of obliteration took its toll on the landscape; the sky was immune. Gone.
John Cale & Terry Riley - Church of Anthrax

6. hollywood is a concept and as neon park ....put it visually....hollywood is a giant fruit salad with a twist of a cool whip like a mirage in your garage
Little Feat - The Last Record Album

7. I was onstage for just a few minutes with my folky songs. Then the strippers would come on. The crowd would yell for more stripping, but they went off, and I'd come bouncing back with my folky songs. As the night got longer, the air got heavier, the audience got drunker and nastier and I got sicker and finally I got fired
Bob Dylan - 1st LP

8. CB and the MB thank A to Z (you know who you are).
Album dedicated to all conservation and wildlife preservation organizations everywhere
Capt Beefheart - Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)

9. ...is a real person who lives in Hollywood, California. He used to be very shy. He didn't have any friends. One day he decided to be more aggressive. He would write his own songs and sing to people and tell them he wasn't shy anymore...
Wild Man Fischer - An Evening With...

10. Not everyone appreciated seeing their Beatle-Gods with fangs and cross-eyes - not to mention the erratic non-music music
The Residents - Third Reich n Roll

11. ....began to fester in a NYC apartment. Without fresh air of natural light, the group developed its uniquely mutant strain of rock n roll aided only by the sickly blue rays of late night TV
The Cramps - Gravest Hits

12. Enclosed please find the remains of the drum sticks you broke over my daughter's head last Friday night. Or was it a billiard cue? She is still a little uncertain. My solicitors will be in touch...
AC/DC - High Voltage

13. Much of the era relied on older ways of thinking - the emphasis on hit singles to make or break a group.[...]...but much clearly pointed forward: a fascination with feedback electronics, caged references to the drug experience along with more 'worldly' concerns, and a sense that, somehow, things were going to be different from this point on..[...]..I hope you have as much fun letting it spin as I had putting it together
Nuggets - sleeve notes by Lenny Kaye

14. I took one guy in to help me change tubes and he did alright, that is alright till he came out, then he spotted one of the burn nurses (pleasant smiling zombies) eating a can of chile-mac at the desk, and that did it: he flashed on the carpet. It is fucking insane is what it is
Throbbing Gristle - D.o.A Third & Final Report Liner notes on the track Hamburger Lady.

15. The first time I heard tell of....[..]...was when I saw their extraordinary first LP in its equally extraordinary sleeve and felt that, regardless of the music within, I had to acquire one...
The Faust Tapes

16. ...it's difficult to believe that most of the material on this album was patiently and uniquely recorded ....[..] on a 2 track machine...the distinction between rehearsal, recording and performance becomes academic - the music is made by the same process in all three. The consequence was that the band accumulated on tape an extraordinary amount of high-quality music...[...]...The music contains great diversity, but no sense of improvement...[they] launched themselves on a level where 'progress' was neither neccessary or meaningful.
Can - Unlimited Edition

17. ...instrument design engineer - creator of the DURRETT Electronic Music Synthesizer and Ring Modulator
Ephemera, Visual, Advisors
The United States of America - s/t

18. In the end the plague touched us all. It was not confined to the Oran of Camus. No, it turned up again in America, breeding in-a-compost of greed and uselessness and murder, in those places where statesmen and generals stash the bodies of the forever young
Bob Dylan - Blood On the Tracks

I'll put the answers in bold as we go along.

6.

Little Feat - The Last Record Album


another great (and hard) quiz by the Plattenhändler :applaud:

Great quiz!

I "recognise" a few but I can't place a single one. Fuck!

#3 in particular is really bugging me.

Is the deadly earnestness of #16 Chris Cutler writing? Or Robert Fripp?

6. yes well done - Little Feat - The last Record Album

16. the notes aren't actually credited on the sleeve. Its def in Cutlers area though

#17 feels like it ought to be the first Roxy Music LP - but I can feel in my bones that it's not.

Is #10 Third Reich'n'Roll?

Tne Faust Tapes?

Nooo..close ;)

10 - The Residents - Third Reich n Roll. Good one

17. Not Roxy

Is #13 Nuggets?

IT IS! Great notes by Lenny Kaye of course. A wise man (and a prophet)

17. The United States of America - s/t ?

YES! A tough one..but you did it.

11 is the Cramps' Gravest Hits. 8 is clearly Beefheart, but I don't know which album.

4 seems familiar - it's not Pink Flag is it?

#3 is the World's Greatest Living Performing Artist, Patti Smith, from Horses and #18 is Blood On The Tracks.

I'm sure Steve H is right about Pink Flag. It's definitely Wire.

11. and 4. Both correct! I salute you sir. The Wire one was tricky I thought (not much to go on)

8. aha...its the LP I'm after here :)

3. Yes Horses.
18. Yes...notes by Peter Hamill (not VDGG)...who won a Grammy for the notes...but they only appeared on the 1st pressing of BOTT...After he won his award...they were removed from subsequent pressings :wacko:

well done!!

They're on my CD copy, so I win memory points rather than record collector points. :blink:

I think the Beefheart one (#8) is from my fave, Ice Cream for Crow.

Yes - its odd. I have 2 copies of BOTT on vinyl...an original...and a much later one...and there is just an abstract painting on the more recent sleeve reverse. Fancy winning an award for sleeve notes and then being taken off the sleeve.

I can imagine Dylan being behind that. I'm sure he could see it as being embarrassing to have "award-winning sleeve notes" on one of his LPs. Imagine if someone bought a copy for that reason. :unsure:

No...Ice Cream doesn't have sleeve notes....erm let me check...
well it has credits and track listing etc...but no dedication like that one...

Is this the John Cale album?

'Tarantula of love' indeed!

...but then if they are on the cd still...it doesn't really make sense :huh:

its a Cale album...yes...which one though??

This thread is like an episode of Mastermind where the contestants are asked questions on their specialist subjects....

i.e. I have no idea what anyone is talking about

:lol:

Sleeve notes on them old fangled album covers dear boy....come on...you remember...albums...with sleeves...and picures of pop groups...

Is 9 Zappa-related?

(Brilliant quiz, by the way.)

:)

YES! How did you get that??? Very good...what album though??

If it's not IC4C, I'm sure the Beefheart one is Doc at The Radar Station. It's definitely a late one.

A guess. It has a Zappa feel about it. No idea which album.

from a Dylan forum

Gettin closer :)

I'm sure I don't have a bootleg version. :blink: :huh:

...of Blood On The Tracks that is.

Yes I am aware of the concept, but don't recognise any at all.

Then again I never did pay much attention to them.

Its the most obscure album in my quiz. Its Zappa related yes. Its a pretty wild album.

Really? I love sleeve notes. Corny ones...slick ones...silly ones...pretentious ones...its something to look at while the record goes round.

...the mystery deepens...

An Evening With Wild Man Fischer.

I actually have that – but it's a bootleg with no sleevenotes.