Jason Castro – s/t

It’s hard to say what about this album cover turns me off so completely.  Is it the dreads?  (Really, dude, floating in that pool the top of your head looks like something I pulled out of the shower drain earlier.)  The self-satisfied smirk?  The fine gold chain?  No, you know what?  For the most part this album cover is, objectively, not bad.  The photo is well composed, the color is great (The blue of the pool!  Those dreamy blue eyes!) – if you weren’t a judgmental dick like me, you wouldn’t leap right to making assumptions about the kind of person who would allow this album cover to be released with this photo of him on it, and you’d just think “Hm, nice photo.  Dreamy eyes.”

But!  Here’s the thing that makes this album terrible.

Those ‘o’s.  Those horrid ‘o’s in the stupid little green and blue boxes.  I ask you, what is the point of those awful ‘o’s?  Those ‘o’s are what Starbucks would use to communicate the fact that they’re really not like all the other international mega-corporations out there, they’re quirky and fun-loving, and have you tried their carbon-roasted Costa Rican?  But we don’t need a font to tell us this guy is an individual, a non-conformist: He’s floating in a pool, with a beatific smile and a head full of dreads; obviously he’s the free and easy type.  So again, what is the point of these ridiculous ‘o’s?  They’re just hammering home a point that is made within the first .05 seconds of viewing this photo.  Please, designers, can we have a bit more restraint with our fonts?

Straight No Chaser – With a Twist

So, there’s this band . . . I think they’re kinda jazzy?  (They’re named after a Monk tune, anyway.)  And there are eight of them. (Or are there any multiples in there?  Honestly, I can’t be bothered to figure it out.  They all look like the same person, even the black guy.)  And they’re just hanging out in these multi-colored pastel squares, chillin’ out, hands in pockets, or slightly swaying, and laughing, and having a grand old time, and OH MY GOD WHY WOULD ANYONE LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM WHEN JUST LOOKING AT THIS GIANT PILE OF JACKASS MAKES ME WANT TO PREEMPTIVELY JAM ICEPICKS IN MY EARS?????

All right, let me step back for a minute.  Sorry.

The interesting thing about this cover is that its problem is sort of the opposite of Jason Castro’s: The design – and even the font choices – is just fine.  The colors could be a little more interesting, but there’s nothing offensive about it.  Some fields of color, tied together with a black frame and a couple of tastefully chosen fonts.  But for some reason the band – or the designer, or the label, or someone’s blind friend – decided that what really needed to happen was for the band to cavort around in front of a green screen like frat boys crashing a wedding, and then for each of them to be on the cover, floating in their own little color-pods.  I would like to argue, however, that not only do these pictures not make the album cover better, they take the album cover from pleasant if somewhat boring to COMPLETELY SOUL-CRUSHINGLY AWFUL in one fell swoop.  In fact, if they could go back in time and take themselves out of the artwork, I’m pretty sure this would make the album approximately 25 billion times better.

Don’t believe me?  OK, here we are, then:

Straight No Chaser, I have just improved your album immeasurably.  You’re welcome.  I’ll send my bill to your label.

Here’s the thing, though.  I can pretty much guarantee, based on the original version of this album cover, that this particular record is a terrible, godawful piece of crap that I would never in my life want to subject my ears to.  The edited version manages to mask this fact; if I saw it somewhere, I might give a brief listen just to hear what this band that had the audacity to name itself after a piece of music by the genius Thelonius Monk might be all about.  The art as it stands, however, has saved me the experience, so I guess I should thank the designer for revealing this band of posturing dicks for what they are.

Christian Scott – Sexy Magic Ride

Just to take us out on a light note, I had to share this with you.  There’s a young trumpet player named Christian Scott who’s been making waves lately.  I read a great interview with him where he verbally knocked around Wynton Marsalis for a while, which always makes me happy.  After reading him talk shit for a while, I figured I should hear his music, so I did what I pretty much always do in this situation and looked for him on lala.com.  I saw and listened to some of the albums mentioned in the article (which are fantastic, by the way), but then I found others with titles like Yo Let’s Party, Pump That Bass, and, of course, Sexy Magic Ride.  At first I just thought “wow, this Scott fellow really is an iconoclast.”  But on further examination it was revealed that the music world boasts two very different Christian Scotts – one of whom makes ground-breaking music jumping off from jazz roots, and one of whom makes (I’m assuming) moronic, simple-minded dance music for jerks.  He also, I would wager, has a friend with Photoshop who’s really into doing design and stuff, and has a vast library of clip art and shitty fonts.  There are a bunch of covers to choose from (he does a lot of singles), but this one, from the ludicrous title to the dancing musical notation to the glittering disco ball to the tough-guy-with-baseball-hat-under-a-bridge photo, pretty much has it all.

Of all the formats that comedians use to sell their wares, I personally love the somewhat anachronistic format of the audio CD. The comedy album trumps the Comedy Central special, which, at 30 minutes to an hour, is too structured and filled with bleeps and commercial breaks. It beats the video podcast, which can also be filled with unwanted sponsors. The album also beats the comedy podcast (two or three funny people having a chat like the Ricky Gervais podcast), which suffers from its unrehearsed quality. The CD beats the DVD because if you’re big enough of have a DVD made of your stadium tour (see Dane Cook or Jim Gaffigan), the chances of hearing a joke with any real edge are slim.

Yet, if you go to iTunes and try to find the comedy genre, it’s not easy. It’s buried beneath a dozen links and while music albums are usually reviewed by listeners, it’s hard to find a frequently and well-reviewed comedy album. Of the bestselling comedy albums of all time, Dane Cook is the only comic on the list from this century, proving that fans of the comedy album are a relatively small and aging group of people. But the comedy album, while perhaps not the most popular format, is where you’ll hear the best material, at its most raw, with the highest likelihood of the unexpected. It’s usually recorded at a club rather than a theater or arena, during a long stand-up set, without commercials. Because the comedy club heightens the interaction between crowd and comedian, in many cases, unexpected exchanges make a funny joke even funnier.

So here are a few picks of recent great comedy albums that you should go out and buy right now, for America’s sake:

Midlife Vices, by Greg Giraldo

Why Midlife Vices? Because no matter how outrageous and edgy the joke, the target usually somehow comes out unscathed. Perhaps best known for his roasts on Comedy Central, Giraldo’s just a guy you want to have a beer with. But you’ll probably want to let him go off and have his Tequila shots and Puerto Rican hookers on his own.

The Must Download: Divorce / Snacks / Kangaroo F******g

http://www.last.fm/music/Greg+Giraldo/_/Divorce_Snacks_Kangaroo+F%40%40k%40ng

Final Engagement, by Marc Maron

Best known as the host of WTF, the popular comedian-interviewing-comedians podcast, Maron gives intellectual honesty a good name. Final Engagement is a two-disc set and Maron gives you your money’s worth, killing topics that range from China’s superpower status to his career disappointments to the painful and wicked funny bits about divorcing his second wife.

The Must Download: Baby House

http://www.last.fm/music/Marc+Maron/_/Baby+House

From Across The Street, by Doug Stanhope

Stanhope is a stand-up comedy machine. From Across The Street is his 7^th album and he’s lost none of his edge. How good is Stanhope? Bill Maher allegedly plagiarized his FreeLevi.org website idea from Stanhope’s SavingBristol.com, a site devoted to raising money for a Bristol Palin abortion (don’t pull your punches, Doug).

The Must Download: Funny Thing About Child Porn

http://www.last.fm/music/Doug+Stanhope/_/Funny+Thing+About+Child+Porn

Face Full of Flour, by W. Kamau Bell

Bell hates Tyler Perry, Mad Men, and was disappointed when Obama won because he was looking forward to moving to Canada. Bell brings the racial into the interpersonal and is appreciative of the increasing complexity of black/white relations in America in a way that other black comedians aren’t.

The Must Download: Liberal Rapture to Canada

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/face-full-of-flour-live/id355594566