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Jul 05

You have the right to remain fabulous!Click for full image

Tat Wood Comments: Amazingly, this is about the most tasteful cover for this I’ve seen. The original hardback had a 90% return rate, which makes sense when you see what they put on it.
Published 1981

Actually, that cover IS a classical work of art!I would touch it without protective gloves.I've seen worse. Far, far, worse.Interesting, but I would still read it in public.Middlng: Neither awful nor awfully goodWould not like to be seen reading that!Awful... just awful...That belongs in a gold-lame picture frame!Gah... my eyes are burning! Feels so good!Good Show Sir! (Average: 8.06 out of 10)
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26 Responses to “On Wings of Song”

  1. THX 1138 Says:

    When Elton John met Robert Mapplethorpe: whoever wins, we lose.

  2. Phil Says:

    I think I prefer the hardback version, despite its early depiction of Alan Partridge.

  3. Rachel J Says:

    Both covers are horrid, actually. But to be fair, it must have been pretty hard for the artists to come up with anything that would go with an awful title like that. At least this version tries to bury it, instead of featuring it in huge curly lettering over the head of The Boy Who Could Fly.

  4. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    DAD????

  5. FeàrofMusiç Says:

    Hmmm. Apparently it actually IS a crime to wear an outfit like that. Unless the manacles and steel collar are accessories.

  6. Jaouad Says:

    Straight from the catwalk: the Spring 1981 Frontal Lobotomy Collection.

  7. Bibliomancer Says:

    I wish the font was much larger. And in front of the cover art.

  8. Tom Noir Says:

    When your body is 90% neck and wrists, you’ve got to dress pretty flamboyantly to distract people from it.

  9. Rags Says:

    This book is really pushing the “dont judge a book by its cover” saying…….having said that i refuse to read it.

    “A Time for Dragons” now THAT’S a friggin cover!! 🙂

  10. Rags Says:

    Judge Dredd meets Zoolander!

  11. David Cowie Says:

    I thought the “Alan Partridge” cover was mostly harmless. On the other hand, it has a blurb quote which describes the author as “flamboyant.” Nudge nudge, wink wink.

  12. fred Says:

    Beats the hell out of an orange jumpsuit in the prison garb conspicuosity department.

  13. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @Rachel J 3—the book was actually planned to be a learned monograph on McCartney’s post-Beatles band, and titled “On Songs of Wings,” but something, somewhere, went horribly wrong.

  14. Tat Wood Says:

    That link isn’t the one I would have used. This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Song is the original. The book is at least as good as Harold Bloom says, but the relevance of the Al Jolson picture is for you to fathom out when you’ve read it.
    And Rags…really you should give it a shot. In a discreet brown paper cover.

  15. Tat Wood Says:

    Oh, and thanks for not putting this up yesterday… it would have been a bit near the bone.

  16. Dead Stuff With Big Teeth Says:

    I thought this fellow was familiar.

  17. Jerk of all Trades Says:

    Daddy GaGa, I presume.

  18. A.R.Yngve Says:

    “Now be frank… is this outfit too much?”

  19. fred Says:

    His song.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_G_qJGruqQ

  20. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @fred: Judging by the outfit, I’d have guessed this was his song:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4fY4AqF_QU

  21. JJYoyo Says:

    Miami Vice meets Stargate

  22. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @JJYoyo: NGL, I’d watch one episode of that.

    But I’m still getting Drag Race vibes from this cover. Werk!

    Still beats the first American cover, which prominently features blackface.

  23. JJYoyo Says:

    @GSSxN: I got the same vibes, just didn’t wanna go there.
    That first US cover is awful. Not sure I would call it blackface or just ineptitude … but if that charge keeps it out of my field of vision forever, I’ll go with it.

  24. GSS ex-noob Says:

    @JJYoyo: Apparently this book never got a good cover. It might have been great, for all I know, but all the covers seem to have kept me from reading it over the decades. And I was buying a LOT of SF in the 80s.

    The F&SF cover for the first part of the serialized version is tolerable because Emsh. But that first US edition is for damn sure blackface; just look at that tiny Al Jolson at the bottom.

  25. JJYoyo Says:

    @GSSxN: went back to the first US cover and, oh my sweet jehovah you are right. Yikes.

  26. GSS ex-noob Says:

    As I read someone twitting the other day, “JESUS LUPITA NYONG’O CHRIST”.

    I mean, I remember 1979 pretty well, and blackface was already non trop then in the mass consumer market.

    So I don’t care if it was in the book as @Tat said; it’s still a terrible choice for the cover. This and the other ones are bad, but at least they weren’t insulting to an entire racial group with hundreds of years of trauma and embarrassing to others.

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