If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, This Album Cover Must Be a Warning.

      #29 Orleans: Waking and Dreaming  (and vomiting)

Please, Do Not Damage the Audio Equipment.

They decided the front wasn't bad enough, so they added this

one.

The Album cover, the all important gateway to the music that lies within. Album covers can be a lot of things and many approaches have been taken. You can do simple, so the music speaks on its own. You can go big, for that epic concept album. Maybe a simple band photo, so the fans can connect with the people making the music. Or, you can do this, and land in the history books with one of the worst album cover ever made. According to the Salami Tsunami blog (formerly Pork Tornado), this is the 5th worst album cover ever made, right between Millie Jackson's 'ESP' and the Minister's Quartet's 'Let Me Touch Him.'  This list has been circulating the internet for quite a while now. I'm gonna take a guess and say I first saw it around late 2004 courtesy of my friend Charlie. Since the list was first blogged, it has made the rounds among my friends and coworkers. I always knew that some day, in my endless digging through used record stores, I would find one of them.  Well, that didn't happen, but thanks to my friend Nathan, there it was, placed directly in my hands. Orleans, Waking and Dreaming. He found this assault on the eyes, God only knows where, for a whole $1.00. Personally I think I would've talked them down to 25 cents, but I guess because of the album's infamy, it does command a slightly higher price. He decided that the Summer of Vinyl blog needed this. Well I try not to disappoint, so here it is. If there's one lesson we all learned in kindergarten, its that you don't judge a book by its cover. I would like to point out at this time that when I snapped a picture of the back of the album, my camera actually asked me if someone blinked in the picture. Thanks Nikon, that's awfully nice of you, maybe if I take the picture again their eyes will be open...or the album will just burst into flames. Nope, its still there, I guess I have to play it. Let's give it a spin!

Side one starts off just the way we all imagined. Its like the Bee Gee's threw up on Air Supply. This is awful, how many songs are on this record? Sweet merciful crap! Ten songs?! You have to be kidding me? Okay, song one seems to be ending now. Wait, what? The song isn't over yet? Oh okay, now we're doing it in double time. Is crap worse when its coming at you twice as fast? More importantly, does it matter? Well this isn't getting any better with song two. Song three? Either this record has skips on it, or my turntable is being proactive and trying to destroy itself. Screw it, time to move along, is there anything on this album I know?

Side two starts with..."Still the One!" This one I've heard!  However, that doesn't make it any better than side one. I can just picture the band still performing this song at state fairs. I'm gonna fill in the band bio and guess the only remaining original members are the lead singer, bass player, and some extra studio musician who is a distant cousin of the original keyboard player. The guitarist was killed in a fire when his polyester pants burst into flames while living under a bridge and trying to make soup on a can of Sterno. The drummer was murdered by his conservative father when he saw this album cover, and the rhythm guitarist decided that $6.25 an hour at Dairy Queen beats the hell out of playing this song twice a day for the rest of his life at the Airport Ramada.

Well I can't take this anymore so I'm turning it off. Every era of music has this kind of crap. There's those who will make claims like 'the 90's were awesome, everything was so good.' No, they're out there, this kind of stuff has been made in every generation, we have just chosen to block it out of our memories as a way of coping with the pain.  By no means should you attempt to resurrect the memories of this terrible music or that of any other generation, please, just let sleeping dogs lie.

Strongest Song: Regular John, because its not on this album and is in fact a song by Queens of the Stone Age
Weakest Song: 5, 7, 3, 8, 2, 9, 1, 10, 4, 6
Song You Know: Still The One, yes, you've heard it.
Why You Might Hate It: You have ears that function properly
Buy It? No, for the love of GOD, no. I would imagine the only place to find it is a yard sale, or a bin of cassettes at a car wash.