worst packaging ever?

My Spectrum gel-pack is still nice and gooey. Slayer put out a nice blood-gel pack once.

Now that I've finally got at the disc I feel more like playing Hüsker Dü than I do Múm.

My current buggabear is the metal Fabriclive cases.

bottleskup flenkenkenmike sucked... like the aluminum tunes packaging but worse... which, the LP copy of AT was ace. no sweat at all.

i hate all those cheap cases were the teeth break easily and cd shakes around inside. lame.

lot's of noise bands think it's just peachy to release stuff in weird packaging... it's a real scourge to deal with. i've got a whole shelf full of over-sized and oddly shaped cd packages. new faggot cunts put theirs in a cloth sleeve with a button. it's actually kind of nice, but still unweildy.

warp's use of book-style jackets is neat, but annoying to pay for. i remember the first one being gallo's record and it fit his 50s crooner thing and the old style LP jackets, but to see broadcast and boards of canada do it sort of lost the point to me.

was it aphex twin who had that odd 1.5-2 12" LPs wide monster lp thingy? it was like 12.5 x 25 inches or something. ugh.

odd shaped cds like the chinese stars annoy me too. if you don't have center-locked cd player, you have to hope you centered it in your computer's cd tray... and in general it's just gonna bitch and send it back out.

why don't bands go cheap and spend the extra on a dinner and a movie. really! treat yourself!
m.

DAMN YOU EDDIE VEDDER!!!!!! DAMN YOOOOOOU!!!

But it's the Fall! What are you expecting?

What pisses me off (while not a bad design) is Rykodisc's re-issues of the Mission of Burma back catalogue. It has a section saying 'The green tinted jewel case is trademarked' or something. How can you trademark colouring something green!?

Aesthetically, it's digipaks all the way. They're simply more gorgeous, almost every time. I have more problems with jewel cases breaking (those horrible tabs that hold the cover onto the bottom) than I do with any cardboard cases.

-- cutty (holler@thegod.com ), March 5th, 2004. (2 trackbacks)

cd or vinyl? i quite like the cd packaging... refried ectoplasm is pretty similar

This is one of the rarer times I got the Japanese version of a release by a band that's not Japanese. No unglued holes. No complaints! And I got "Freestyle Dumpling", the best damn cover of The Fall's "Slates, Slags, etc" ever! (though minus "Seeperbold")

I thought the point of those was that they did break the CDs. Was it not BC/CR being all precious about vinyl?

Still a fun lil album, though.

-- bill stevens (bscrubbin...), March 5th, 2004.

Ha ha. I actually went to school with the son of the guy who designed the hot side hot/cool side cool packaging and became a millionaire off of it. Son was an alcoholic, of course.

the same thing seems to have happened to most copies of john dowie's factory 45

Fucking shower caps stuck to the vinyl, leaving weird marks and making the record play shittily (that is, in a shit-like fashion).

But, you know, really excellent for keeping your weave together while bathing...

I have a new winner. Amarkord is some Italian publisher that's recently put out a bunch of "cosmic" compilations put together by Daniele Baldelli. The two volumes covering the Baia Degli Angeli club have been top-notch packaging-wise- hardback book with a DVD-style hub for the CD inside the back cover- but the Cosmic 2xCD/book compilation is fucking WRETCHED. The discs are in paper sleeves in pockets in the front and back covers. The sleeve for CD1 was stuck in its pocket and had to be forced out, ripping the paper and making part of the tracklisting illegible, but that's not the real problem- these are the tightest sleeves in the history of sleeves, or paper, or tightness. I had to reach in with my thumb and forefinger wrapped in one of those disc-cleaning wipes to keep from getting thumbprints all over and YANK, and after a good couple of minutes finally got them out (scratching them to fuck in the process). I'm left wondering how they got inside the sleeves in the first place- they're so flimsy that putting them back in wasn't even within the realm of physical possibility, let alone an option, so they're sitting in a couple of spare jewel cases next to the book on my shelf.

The music's nice and the book is gorgeous, but they make you fucking work for it.

My two most hated packages of the year thus far are Bjork's Volta (whose packaging woes are much storied) and Fulanito's Vacaneria! (In something like a mini-DVD case, with the liner notes on cardboard sheets glued to the case and the cd tends to come loose and float around the case).

i haven't had any problems with the volta packaging.

i've had more probs with the volta record...

Nah it's Volta. Just stupid. great if noone ever opens the fucking thing tho

The "Volta" sleeve/design is actually great. Which makes it even worse that you have to move the sticker to be able to open the CD box at all.

That... is... why... it... sucks.

I suspect that Geir doesn't consider physical materials to be 'design', only 2D images.

that primal scream dub thing in the cardboard packaging with the magnetic catch on the back, specifically for the bit of foam that was meant to keep the cd attached.

i never figured out the fabric live packaging. is the cd meant to be rattling around loose like that?