The hilariously bad LP covers have entertained fans at music festivals, galleries and museums and on Instagram since quirky collector Steve Goldman first shared his collection in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire in 2021.
Since then the exhibition has featured on BBC’s Have I Got News For You, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, BBC Breakfast, The Guardian, The Sun, Metro and the “i” newspaper. It was recently praised by renowned BBC Radio DJ Mark Radcliffe who visited the exhibition in Warrington in November 2024. His post on X (Twitter) sharing some of the covers and his praise for the exhibition went viral, with his original post receiving more than 268,000 views.
Describing the exhibition to his BBC 6 co presenter and long time collaborator Stuart Maconie, Mark said
“Honestly, it’s lovely because the room is full of people HOWLING with laughter. It’s great, it’s great... an unmissable exhibition of the world’s worst album covers”
An accompanying book “The Art of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve “, released in November 2023, features a foreword by stand-up comedian Stewart Lee, who described the excruciating experience of reviewing the covers selected for the book.
"I love records and I’m professionally obliged, as a stand-up comedian, to see the funny side of things, and so when they asked me to write a few hundred words introducing The Art Of The Bizarre Record Sleeve I thought it would be fun. But I was wrong. Very wrong.
…the relentless low quality and relentlessly poor aesthetic choices of the sleeves made me despair of humanity itself. I began to hate mankind for its ineffable and inexcusable shitness, its natural tendency towards ugliness and stupidity…
…Up to a point kitsch is funny, then it begins to speak of our collective failure to understand true beauty, and makes me feel sickened to my soul.
I began to hate this whole project, and specifically the men behind it, Steve Goldman, whose collection the book represents, and Simon Robinson, who has corralled it into some kind of shape."
Steve Goldman , a computer programmer from Huddersfield, explained how his collection started three decades ago when he bought Roadstar by Peter Rabbitt in a bargain bin for 10p.
“About 40 years ago I bought an album called Roadstar Peter Rabbit because it had such a strange album cover. I picked it up simply because it had such an extraordinarily bad cover – rabbits picked out of a hat, with the band's awkward faces amateurishly superimposed. Subsequently I lost it and had never been able to find another copy. Someone told me about Discogs, a website where you can pick up old and obscure vinyl records. To my delight I found it there. I searched for a couple of other albums I knew of and I was off… I remember the moment I said to my family, ‘I’m going to start collecting dreadful album covers.’ That was 9 years ago. Some people spend fortunes collecting fine art but no one collects dreadful LP covers. “
“To get in my collection the album covers have to be unintentionally funny. I want records where the designers have tried to do something that’s gone horribly wrong. It can’t just be a performer in bad clothes or with an ugly face- though there are a couple of those that have got in that were irresistible! And it all has to be good clean family fun- I don’t collect any album covers that are gory, violent, sexist, homophobic or racist. “
Steve’s collection has now reached 700 in size- 500 of the most popular covers from previous outings are on display in Northampton where visitors have the opportunity to vote for their favourite and listen to some tracks from the albums.
Steve, who had a stroke in 2020, aged 53, asks visitors to the free exhibition to make a donation to Different Strokes, a charity that supports young stroke survivors.
For more information about the book “The Art of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve” see: easyontheeyeshop.co.uk/product/the-art-of-the-bizarre-vinyl-sleeve/
The exhibition runs at Northampton Museum and Art Gallery until June 22nd. Opening hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm. Sunday 12-5pm.