Ampang Park was my family’s favourite hang out in the weekends when I was so much younger. After a meal at either Palong (now no more) or Cozy Corner, we’d drop by at this chap’s record store. In the late 70’s/early 80’s, it was ok to buy compilation / ripped cassette copies of original tapes / records (a more public version of Bittorrent – slower and more expensive). As a kid of ten, I’d check out the records available and I would gravitate towards the ones with the weird artwork, whilst my parents would be talking to the store owner and order compilations of Strauss’ waltzes. I’d take a look at one and tried to imagine what kind of music these groups/artiste played. It was bad enough that the repertoire of material I was exposed to were mostly ABBA and regular radio-friendly stuff like Donna Summer and Bee Gees. Don’t get me wrong, my folks were all right with us listening to anything but at that age it was difficult to find a classmate that’d go “check this new KC & the Sunshine Band tape, man!!!“.

Some (well, most actually) of these are obviously hard-rocking bands, but despite their cover artwork, the stuff on some of these are downright harmless by today’s standards. It was also commonplace to see covers of underaged girls in their birthday suits (blind faith and Scorpions’ Virgin Killer comes to mind) which would be really frowned upon in this day and age [note: Blind Faith still has the album cover unchanged to this day which may mean that the model was probably of an older age].

When I went to boarding school, I’d find graffiti on the dormitory walls of album covers. The best one was Rainbow’s Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll. If you had the talent to draw these stuff in school, the kutus will respect you big time. Something of the album covers of the past that intrigues me to this day. They were done by hand in those days – the airbrush was it, then, not flippin’ Adobe Photoshop CS2. They were both intimidating and beautiful at the same time. Just look at Queen’s News of the World. You wouldn’t have thought We Are The Champions was one of the tracks in it, would you? And forks gouging out one’s eyes? *shudder*

One of my personal favourites was Whitesnake’s Live in the Heart of the City. I’d imagine how bitchin’ the band would sound live (in the days when I had never listened to any of their stuff). Sadly, when I was privy to the ways of everything rawk at an older age, I found the album to be disappointing! To this day, I’ve still haven’t listened to some of these bands whose album cover I’d check out decades ago. Muat turun dengan wayar limau nipis, from the look of things then.

Trivia: Two of the bands in the album cover collage above had the same vocalist (at different times). Hazard a guess?