There are hundreds of great album titles and there are thousands of great album art covers. Here are ten albums with both; some of them even have great music too...
We dusted off some of the old vinyl in the collection and pulled out a few random gems from the good old days when owning records was an essential passtime for any self-respecting gent.
If you have any personal favourites post them in the comments below.
1. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles 1967
Considered by many to be the greatest album of all time The Beatles hit genius in every way - the music was out of this world, the album art mesmerising and the title equally so. Bored with touring John Lennon commented: "We're fed up with making soft music for soft people, and we're fed up with playing for them too."
Stellar numbers such as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "With a Little Help from my Friends" coupled with new and futuristic production techniques culminated with the infinitely mind blowing "A Day in the Life".
"I read the news today oh, boy. Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all."
The album cover has been parodied hundreds of times most notably by Frank Zappa on "We're only in it for the Money". Zappa himself also coined great album titles such as "Weazels Ripped my Flesh", "Shut up 'n Play Your Guitar" and "Sheik Yerbouti".
2. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy - Elton John 1975
Back in the mists of time Elton John made incredible music and his live concerts were legendary. The stunning cover art was painted by Alan Aldridge and depicts the equally brilliant songs in a psychedelic pastiche of Hieronymus Bosch.
Inside Elton's pop genius blends with country and rock to create a moving emotional masterpiece from Taupin's lyrics.
"For there's weak winged young sparrows that starve in the winter,
Broken young children on the wheels of the winners,
And the sixty-eight summer festival wallflowers are thinning."
3. Trout Mask Replica - Captain Beefheart 1969
The Dali or Picasso of popular music Captain Beefheart took the blues and turned it inside out reinventing the form in ever more avant-garde ways. Trout Mask Replica was recorded in one take after The Magic Band spent several months rehearsing in a cult like atmosphere in a rented house in L.A..
Almost unlistenable to the uninitiated ear Trout Mask Replica is probably the greatest (anti) album ever recorded - Howling Wolf meets Miles Davis in zero gravity.
The Captain's other imaginatively titled albums include "Lick my Decals off Baby" and "Bat Chain Puller" - further avant-blues deconstructions into incandescent fragments of sound and complex rhythms.
"Fast and bulbous. that's right, the mascara snake. fast and bulbous. also a tinned teardrop. Bulbous also tapered. That's right."
4. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars 1972
Androgynous alien visits earth to deliver future Clockwork Orange nightmare vision with crystalline glam rock guitar hooks? Only one man could deliver a vision of such strangeitude and melodrama. Bowie.
Bizarrely the cover makes no real concession to the grandiose doom infused contents - the photograph was taken outside the furriers "K. West" at 23 Heddon Street, London.
"When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make them real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world.
And they tear him to pieces on stage during the song 'Rock 'n' roll suicide'. As soon as Ziggy dies on stage the infinites take his elements and make themselves visible." - D.Bowie
5. Ogden's Nut Gone Flake - Small Faces 1968
The vastly underrated Small Faces created an irresistable psychedelic opus in a departure from their mod-soul sound, a sound which heavily influenced the BritPop movement.
The first side featured muscular psychedelic rock while the B-side recounted the story of "Happiness Stan" in search of the waning moon propelled by the bizarre story telling gobbledegook of Stanley Unwin. The vinyl arrived in a large metal replica of a giant tobacco tin.
"And so, seaty comfortable on the back of this enormous buzzymost of the fly, voooop, they tooked off,
like an escaped velocy of the rocket floatin into orbit yeah."
6. Ege Bamyasi - Can 1972
The Gernan group Can pioneered a unique sound with future conscious propulsive beats and idiosyncratic guitar over Holger Czukay's keyboard and bizarre vocals from Damo Suzuki.
After the genius of "Tago Mago" Can retired rent free to a German castle to make Ege Bamyasi. Always able to create something different and fresh, Can sound like nothing else.
Can made idiosyncratic, strange yet highly listenable records and all of their cover art is exceptional. Their other titles include "Soon Over Babaluna", and "Tago Mago". "Ege Bamyası" means "Aegean Okra" in Turkish.
"Carrying my own in the afternoon, hiding a spoon she will be soon. Waiting fork weeds alive, spends me her joke, she slips me alive."
7. Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water - Limp Bizkit 2000
A bizarre name for a band and an album with insalubrious connotations - Limp Bizkit peddled a particularly superficial, platinum plated pseudo-filth - if music was W.W.E. wrestling this was it. The Single "Rollin'" was a cleverly constructed, paint by numbers, nu metal, whip-hop crossover radio friendly unit shifter.
Despite the universal derision of Fred Durst's gangsta cred he knew it was all one huge joke and laughed all the way to the bank. The remainder of the album was mediocre but it still sold 1.05 million copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling rock album ever. Smart.
"The chocolate starfish is my man Fred Durst".
8. In the Court of the Crimson King - King Crimson 1969
Art-prog group Crimson's first album was matched by a cover that took the Munch Scream painting and added lots of schizoid paranoia. Fusing symphonic, classical and jazz elements with rock Crimson created a sombre and harrowing masterpiece.
Robert Christgau one of the first "rock critics" described it as "ersatz shit" - he was wrong, the prog-rock wizards and gnomes were yet to come in the form of Genesis.
King Crimson continued to produce fantastic albums, notably Discipline, and featured reknowned musicians - tech guitarist Robert Fripp remained seated throughout while later Adrian Belew twisted his guitar sound into elephants, tables and chairs.
"21st Century schizoid man."
9. My life in the bush of ghosts - David Byrne and Brian Eno 1981
After leaving Roxy Music ambient pioneer Brian Eno flirted briefly with avant-pop "Here Come the Warm Jets" and continued to create a string of albums with titles like "Music for Airports".
Eno and Byrne had collaborated on Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings and Food".
M.L.I.T.B.O.G. showcased an intriguing mix of world, funk, early electronics and found objects, was recorded on entirely analogue equipment and pioneered the technique of "sampling" - although these were triggered manually.
Peter Saville created the artwork by creating televisual feedback - pointing cameras into monitor screens.
"Do you hear voices? You do. So you are possessed."
10. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols 1977
A record that changed everything and wanted to destroy everything. The terrifying Punk apocalypse arrived drenched in piss, blood and sweat.
Sneering, angry, confrontational and uncompromising, with the terrifying jack-boots of "Holiday in the Sun" punk marched into focus. The vile repulsion of "Bodies" took pure rock 'n' roll to an abbatoir while "Anarchy in the U.K." sensationalised the Punk anti-ethos perfectly.
Johnny Rotten's shocking venom and incendiary style made him the most dangerous and reviled frontman of all time. The albums scandalous closer "God Save the Queen" was the poisonous icing on a bitter cake force fed to to the establishment. They didn't like the taste.
"I'm not a discharge. I'm not a loss in protein. I'm not a throbbing squirm."
