hide loose cash

by Art Chantry:

here’s a classic “must have” item for every cheezy record collector. it’s not all that hard to find (although in condition this good is exceptionally rare). the title alone qualifies it as a classic in the field of really tacky marketing,
but that photo! OMG!! the lurid placement of those phallic balloons is NOT an accident. “ORGAN FANTASY”? oh dear, oh dear….

this is one of those bargain basement scraping-the-barrel labels (in this case, named “riviera”.) labels like this specialized in records produced so cheaply they could sell them directly to bargain bins and still turn a profit. often these labels existed as a tax dodge. back then, unsold inventory wasn’t taxed. so, they would produce a record like this – obtain a recording of something – ANYTHING! make a quickie cheapo cover and distribute it into bargain bins. the inventory would sit on a shelf for years and become a tax shelter. eventually, the records would all get sold somehow (or written off as a ‘loss’) and the investment returned (with massive imaginary ‘interest’ from ‘sales’ profits.) high salaries would get paid to everybody. (best of all) it became a great place to hide loose cash.

if you were an illegal organization making tons of raw cash (say from gambling or drugs sales or postitution or fencing stolen goods, for instance) you could hide your cash in businesses like this, the money would sit for a long time the books could get doctored and you get your previously unspendable illegal money back as fully taxed legal income to do with as you please. that’s why the mob backed so many record labels through the years. they laundered their cash through them.

one of the things i like about this record cover is it’s complete and utter cheapness. every penny that could be pinched WAS pinched here. this is a stock photo – probably taken from a commercial photographer’s old unused images that he sold really cheap. the ‘dirty joke’ of the image and the title were probably married by the cigar chomping a-hole who ran the label out of his back office. i can hear him chuckling to himself.

this is a paste-board sleeve. that means it’s a b&w record cover with all the info on the back – a catalog of other titles available from this label (cha-cha, polka, dance band, banjo, honky tonk, rock-n-roll and other tawdry popular genres, etc.). nothing custom (like a title or a track listing) is on the back. that’s why so many records from the old days have all the songs listed on the front cover – it was cheaper. that’s because it was immensely less expensive to make covers that were printed up as blank-faced generic b&w-backed sleeves (one ink color cost almost nothing) . the empty sleeves would just sit in the warehouse until they needed them along with those unsold records.

then they’d get a tape, cheaply press a lo-fi record, and then print up some really cheap stock image like this as a separate sheet of paper. they’d trim them out and literally GLUE them to the front (often off-kilter) of the otherwise blank pre-printed cover (withe the b&w generic info already waiting on the back). to point out exactly HOW cheaply they printed this stuff up, look closely at the printing of this cover. it’s not 4-colors (CMYK) like most ‘full’ color printing printing. it’s actually 3-COLORS (CMY – no “K”)! basically, there is NO black ink on this cover printing job in this image. removing a whole color allows it to be printed on a smaller cheaper press (with lousier registration) with less inks and labor thus saving a buttload of expense. i guess it ‘looks’ reasonably ok, right? who cares?

i know about this stuff. that’s because my very first record cover client was a label exactly like this. i did ‘el-cheapo” generic covers for a label that operated as a tax dodge for dicey investors (aka – crooks trying to launder their cash money). so, i had to work with systems chosen by the client that were this cheap and generic to produce. the resulting covers were terrible and cheezy. often, i was just given a tape and told to design a cover for the record by the next morning – and no other info at all. i basically MADE UP the name of the band and titled the LP and the made up song titles listed. sometimes i even made up the names of the ‘artists’ themselves. i even found fake photos of ‘the artists’ and wrote imaginary liner notes about them. i’d have an entire record cover designed and ready by morning and i got paid $100 cash (no questions asked).

but, HEY! i got to do record covers!!! every designer wants to do record covers, right? it’s how i got my start! by the time the IRS and the FBI moved in, i had lost all my artwotk, all my invoicing for the last few years (my entire income, actually) and a couple of the principals in the company went to prison. this little one-room company was actually releasing more records than any record company on earth at that moment. when the dust settled, $96 million had vanished in a puff of smoke. i lost every penny the company owed me (as well as all the record covers in my portfolio). and i was just a stupid little contractor trying to make rent and do some cool record covers.

i wonder what sor

human misery cash-financed my childish fantasy to ‘do’ record cover design?

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AC:a lot of the records i did for that cheap-o label were previously released on other cheap-o labels. they’d basically take them from themselves. nobody cared. bootlegging became a problem, too. but, the REAL problem arose when something actually SOLD WELL. then they’d have to produce more product to meet the demand. they weren’t used to that process, so, they’d produce it slowly and miss the opening for the massive sales a “hit’ provided (you have to be ready to supply the demand FAST). the result is a massive number of passé old ‘past hit’ records sitting in the warehouse gathering dust, too. that’s a lot harder to get rid of and the investment can ruin your book keeping. a ‘hit’ record destroyed a lot of these labels financially….

…too often we just assume the old world actually looked like this and that people actually listened to this stuff. nobody seems to understand this is a sort ‘fake’ record made to front a crooked industry. the reason so many of these things still survive is because nobody bought them. they eventually got literally DUMPED into goodwill bins as a write off. and that’s where we find them thinking they’re real records….

…like that ‘whipped cream’ by the tijuana brass. you usually find it next to that boz scaggs record and the striesand LP. great cover, uncool record. it happens….the record industry has never been about music. once you learn that little truth, you can survive in it a little better. not much better, tho….