rank the songs on nirvana's "nevermind"

Would be odd if this case goes in his favour and then they raid his house finding many copies of Nevermind

xp I got a fb post pulled down once for posting a youtube link to a song from 'Houses of the Holy.' I imagine the same has happened with many Nirvana posts.

The Houses of the Holy cover is suggestive—and gross—in a way that this cover isn’t.

That said, I see why he is annoyed that he has this notoriety he never asked for. I think the lawsuit is a stretch though. The dollar bill was a critique of consumerism and a commentary on the band itself “selling out.” Everyone knows that.

The Houses of the Holy cover is suggestive—and gross—in a way that this cover isn’t.

Never really saw it that way - what suggestiveness do you see there?

Background fwiw: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/houses_of_the_holy_the_backstory_to_the_famous_led_zeppelin_album_cover

But the algorithms or whatever don't really care if it's suggestive, gross or else, do they ?
It's not actual people from FB etc who pull down these things on line or is it ??

So bullet points 71-87 here seem to lay out their argument for why this is pornography: https://fr.scribd.com/document/521576572/Elden-v-Nirvana-L-L-C-et-al

Wrt this

74. To ensure the album cover would trigger a visceral sexual response
from the viewer, Weddle activated Spencer’s ‘gag reflex’ before throwing him
underwater in poses highlighting and emphasizing Spencer’s exposed genitals

and the references to the 'common strategy' of promoting rock albums with child-pornographic album covers, I'm wondering if the argument also rests on a premise that at least a significant number of the millions of people who bought the album or have seen the image are in fact deriving sexual titillation from it - if so, does that mean all of us should also be charged with possession of child pornography?

I guess points 106-111 also seem pertinent. Also

103. Spencer’s image created massive commercial success for Nirvana,
L.L.C. for which Spencer never received any compensation.

It seems curious to me that someone would raise this as an issue if they were also arguing that they were sexually exploited and an object of child pornography.

But obv IANAL and don't know Elden's experience

and the references to the 'common strategy' of promoting rock albums with child-pornographic album covers

one of the albums it references as a previous child porn album cover is Van Halen's Balance which was released after Nevermind and is maybe questionable but doesn't cross the line into 'child porn' at all? the others are notoriously gross ones which are absolutely deserving of the label child porn though and have received scrutiny for that in the past (though probably still not as much as they should have)

it seems like he's upset about not having gotten royalties or anything, and also now understandably feels weird about the cover, but the claims that it's deliberately sexually provocative & not just kinda in bad taste don't hold up at all

When do photoshoot models receive royalties from album sales?! It's only the producer that gets royalty points iirc (apart from Steve Albini obv).

Interestingly, the law firm which filed the complaint specializes in childhood sexual abuse claims.

My initial reaction was that the claim trivializes actual cases of CSA, but these guys must at least know what they’re doing…

Elden's lawyer, Robert Y. Lewis, argues that the inclusion of the dollar bill (which was superimposed after the photograph was taken) makes the minor seem "like a sex worker"

This particular point is completely asinine. But beyond that, even if Elden doesn't get anything or very much in the way of compensation, I could see this case establishing some kind of precedent that would make covers of this nature (satirical art that is not intended or generally interpreted as child pornography) more difficult to do in the future, with some kind of additional legal oversight being established.

it seems like he's upset about not having gotten royalties or anything

smells like mean spirit

(ok that was crap really sorry)

He’s pretty explicit about it:

Everyone thinks you’re making money from it. You’ll hook up with a hot chick, and then they figure out you’re not making any money from it and they’ll dump you.

jees this guy

it’s pretty easy to imagine feeling violated or exploited or having complicated feelings about being part of this, having your imagine used and reproduced so often for other people’s profit, wanting at least something for that. I don’t know enough about the law to know whether the pornography angle is likely to be the most effective approach for addressing this, it might well be, it seems like a bit of a risk

ok he seems like kind of a dickhead but regardless

Honestly fuck this guy.

And fuck whichever society thinks of naked babies as pornography. If this album cover ever gets censored it says more about those people censoring it than the album cover itself.

he could live his whole life without anyone ever even knowing it was him, but that's not what he wanted

Maybe no outlet asked him to recreate it for the 30th anniversary and he realized the cash is drying up.

How and why is Chad Channing tied up in this?

this is a very serious lawsuit. some are already calling it the "case of the century". channing may have key information on what happened with an infant's penis that day

ultimately it was a pretty shitty thing to put a photo of an actual baby on the album cover imo.

The particular language makes me wonder if he's fallen down a Q-hole and that was the impetus for this. Especially since he had no issues with the whole thing as recently as five years ago.

has "album covers with children on them" been done yet?

How and why is Chad Channing tied up in this?

I guess suing the guy who was fired and didn't get shit lends credibility that this is more than just the money?

It seems they just went scattershot w/the defendants. You would think that weakens the claim, but I dunno.

this is obviously a trauma causer. people saying well he's been milking this for years, fuck him, have a serious lack of empathy. that's all i'll say because fuck this revive and several of you assholes tbh.

he could live his whole life without anyone ever even knowing it was him, but that's not what he wanted

He was found out pretty quick. He'd been ID'd at least in the press as far back as when the album broke, and iirc there's a bit about him in Azzerad's Nirvana bio from '94.

Man pictured as a baby grasping for a dollar, is grasping for a dollar. The album cover is so prescient. A work of genius. https://t.co/4fj3wy33Mn

— Paul Martin (@paulmartin2012) August 25, 2021

xp But if he hadn't done all the press over the years, would his name even show up in a Google search today? No way of knowing obviously, but he actively participated in keeping the association out there.

he was a fucking KID. there's no way you could grow up without knowing that you were on the cover of one of the most famous albums of all time, figure out early on that if you let your classmates know it would give you elite status, and then it would pretty much trap you for the rest of your life, unless you had the support and therapy to do some serious work on it. AS A FUCKING KID. this is not rocket science people. jesus. i can't do this. gotta avoid this thread for the day. suffice it to say there's some real ugly shit going down itt atm.

All of that would be true even if he had been clothed, this lawsuit might not be the best way to make his point or get the share he feels he deserves.

XPSI imagine his name would show up in Google searches even if he hadn't consented to all those later shoots because his family and/or the photographer put it out there at the time. It was a big part of the album narrative then.

How is it traumatic? The photoshoot itself? The self-imposed fame? If he was ID’d it was as simple as saying yeah that’s me but I don’t want to do any interviews or photoshoots and he would be a little piece of trivia noone really cares about. He decided to go the other way, got the press and the money and he has made it clear time and time again that his sole interest is getting money out of it. Someone put the idea that he should be making more money out of it by accusing everyone involved of child pornography. It’s super fucked up and I have no sympathy for him.

I hope he loses. This is a cash grab and I highly disagree with the scope of a naked baby being porn just because he’s naked. The fucking lawsuit describes the baby as being a “sex worker”. How can they do this with a straight face is unforgivable to me.

xp We're talking about old print articles from 1991. Anyway the point is you would think the claim may face an acquiescence problem or something similar, when you look at the history of his participation in publicly making the link (including as an adult).

(Not to mention the 2016 interview where he basically says he first got mad about it when the surviving band members wouldn't do his art show.)

One thing that's interesting is that DGC was worried about stores not carrying the album because of the cover (remember this was about a year after Ritual De Lo Habitual was blocked from many outlets before Perry Ferrell came up with alternate '1st Amendment' cover), and prepped an airbrushed version that ultimately didn't go out in favor of a strategically placed hype sticker.

Yeah, that's what confused me about the one article I read saying that he thought a sticker was going to be placed over it but wasn't, because I distinctly remember the racks of this at Best Buy with the hype sticker right in the center.

We're talking about old print articles from 1991

...in oft-cited (and archived online) publications like Rolling Stone and Spin, in addition to a best-selling authorized band biography published when he was a toddler.

So the theory would be that he suffered "loss of wages" b/c a prospective employer searched his name, found the same name in some old articles, concluded it's the same guy and refused to hire him for some reason?

there are plenty of people who were featured in super-iconic media properties when they were small children who are "known" in the sense that their names are associated with it online and maybe there are some articles here and there, but who live normal adult lives as relative unknowns just bc they dont engage with it, and people stop caring after a certain point (especially if you dont continue in showbiz.) it is possible to be in a situation like that and not make it part of your personal identity for life. i know people personally who have been/are in that exact situation, and who seem to find it very manageable to navigate how much or little they want it to impact their adult lives, largely by moving on, not giving interviews, and not trying to cash in. the idea that he was irreversibly doomed to a life of fame and ridicule from infancy is a delusion.

he has the right to have mixed feelings and feel confused about this. he never gave consent because he was an infant and incapable of it. it's not difficult to understand the personal turmoil of millions of people being able to see your penis forever anytime they want. this has nothing to do whether he publicly announced that he was the infant on the cover. plus, these things are documented, so i'm sure if you really wanted to know, and he hadn't said anything, you could've found out.

showing an infant's penis on the front cover adds no artistic value to the original artistic intent, except for playing with borderline shock antics. at the very least, they should remove his genitals from there. if they refuse, i agree with a lawsuit and compensation.

showing an infant's penis on the front cover adds no artistic value to the original artistic intent, except for playing with borderline shock antics

I can understand feeling uncomfortable that half the world has seen your naked baby picture but I don't agree with this. If the message is that greed and consumerism are taught to us as soon as we are born, like from a state of nature, I do think showing a naked baby chasing a dollar bill sends a different message than putting a diaper on him (or airbrushing out his penis).

showing an infant's penis on the front cover adds no artistic value to the original artistic intent, except for playing with borderline shock antics. at the very least, they should remove his genitals from there. if they refuse, i agree with a lawsuit and compensation.

What's shocking? That babies have genitalia?

I never thought of it as sexual or a shock tactic.

Maybe one thing that could come from this business is that parents won't be able to profit from the sale of the images of their children.

This seems like a legitimate complaint: A possibly new contention in the lawsuit is that Elden’s parents never even signed paperwork allowing any use of the image.

Everything else seems like a pretty far reach to me.

This seems like a legitimate complaint: A possibly new contention in the lawsuit is that Elden’s parents never even signed paperwork allowing any use of the image.

Yeah, that's the part that leaped out at me, and the part I cannot imagine a multinational corporation's legal department overlooked for 30 years.