Obscure Cover Art-palooza 2020

I don't know about you guys, but there's something about building a new PC that makes me want everything on it to be tidy and clean and fresh: something that's had me side-eyeing the disaster area that was my music collection on several occasions, wondering if this was the time I finally tackled it: tidied everything up, fixed all the broken tags, and, most crucially, got hold of decent cover art for everything.

Well, having starting right after I built my current PC in 2018, only now have I finally finished doing exactly that. The stumbling block that made the whole process take so long: unsurprisingly the lack of good cover art for a large chunk of the VA compilations I've ripped over the years. With the only art available in many cases being some dark, crooked 200x200px photo someone took of the album in 2005, my only option was to scan, clean up and color correct everything myself. Yikes!

While I'm really happy with the end result, with over 90 compilations to take care of, this was definitely no small task. So, in the hopes of maybe saving some other obsessive, oddball music fans some time, I went ahead and uploaded the fruits of my labors. Let's take a look.

So, these are all imgur galleries that you can click into and download the art from in JPEG form, but for all my PNG aficionados out there, I've also put up a zip file with all of this cover art in PNG format. (Well, I say all of it. There were a small number I forgot to save as PNGs that are in there as JPEGs, so, you know, exercise caution.) You can download that here:

high-res cover scans.zip (403 MB)

Okay, to the galleries!

Hits Series High-res Scans

So, first up we have 23 entries in the Hits series - a longtime rival to the UK's Now That's What I Call Music that, despite numerous confusing relaunches, never quite managed to surpass it. Seriously, deciphering the chronology of this series makes the Wonder Boy lineage look like a walk in the park.

(For the purposes of Google searchability) The cover art here includes (and this is, I think, in chronological order): The Hits Album 7, The Hits Album 10, Snap it Up: Monster Hits 2, Hits 96, New Hits 96, Fresh Hits 96, Huge Hits 1996, Hits 97, New Hits 1997, Fresh Hits 1997, Huge Hits 1997, Big Hits, New Hits 98, Fresh Hits 98, Big Hits 98, Huge Hits 1998, Hits 99, New Hits 99, Fresh Hits 99, Big Hits 99, Huge Hits 99, Huge Hits 2000 and Christmas Hits (2007).

Shine Series High-Res Cover Art

Blissfully more straightforward is Telstar TV's Shine series which ran from 1995 to 1998, featuring the best, and, oh boy, the rest of the Britpop era, as well as branching into some alternative US stuff here and there. Not a bad little set of CDs, and always useful to be reminded that for every Pulp or Elastica there were at least two or three Menswears.

The cover art here includes Shine (1995), Shine Too (1995), Shine 3 (1995), Shine Four (1996), Shine 5 (1996), Shine 6 (1996), Shine 7 (1996), Shine 8 (1997), Shine 9 (1997), Shine: The Best of 97 and Shine 10 (1998)

The Album (Virgin)

The Album - a follow-up series of sorts to Virgin's The Best Album in the World ...Ever! series, which was their Shine equivalent as far as I can tell, this ran from 2001 to 2005. I think these albums encapsulate that start-of-the-00's post-Britpop era in UK rock music quite well: lots of downer-ey, middle-of-the-road dad rock from some real second-rate bands, with only the very occasional exception.

But they do also have the little rays of light that made listening to the radio at the time slightly more bearable (And boy, did I do a lot of that back then: this was prime homework-doing time for me.) from a resurgent Ash; to a revival in garage rock in the US and Europe; to innovative, interesting electronic music; even a little hip hop here and there.

Even so, listening to rock radio was still mostly a test of endurance back then: one, I guess, I do have some nostalgia for though. I don't know what's wrong with me. :D

DeviantArt Catch-up 29/02/20

I think it’s the combination of the lame, edgelordy idea here and the sheer amount of effort I’ve put into it over the last 2 (!!) years that make me feel a bit embarrassed to be finally posting this, but hey, if not now, when?



“Uh, what?”, you ask. Well, gentle DA enthusiast, this is collection of graphics from my ancient, original web site. It may have only lasted three years, but during that time it went through, well, probably not as many pointless revisions as any current piece of popular software, but definitely getting there.

Given the amount of work I poured into this generally pointless endeavor, I’ve been trying for a while to smoosh all these designs together into a single image. For posterity’s sake, I guess. Eventually, I came up with the idea of each redesign being like a a poster, that when torn would reveal the next redesign underneath. The logic of that gets a bit wobbly towards the bottom, but overall, I think it turned out okay.

For the adventurous out there, the web site in question is still preserved, fairly comprehensively, on archive.org. I really wouldn’t bother though.

Check out more on deviantart.com/jilik.

Return of the Fluffies

I don't know if its apparent by now, but I was kind of a strange kid. :D Sure, I had other toys, but when it was time to play, that play gravitated not around guns or cars, but instead around the collection of soft toys my brother and I had amassed over the years. This involved attributing names and personalities to a bunch of teddies, and eventually voices, as this activity finally culminated in afternoon-spanning 'TV broadcasts' that were just a tinch inspired by seeing Muppets Tonight on TV.

As much as I wish that there was footage of, what I seem to remember being called Fluffy TV, sadly all I have left is hazy memories of it at this point. The titular Fluffies themselves do still survive though. During a tidy-up of my parents' attic a few years ago, I smuggled them out. And, even though I don't really remember the specifics of each one at this point, I thought it'd be fun to take a look at them anyway.

Let's meet the Fluffies!



Now these guys, I do remember. Here we have Dada Fluffy on the left and Mama Fluffy on the right. So, obviously, they're both the same monkey toy. My brother and I both got one as very young children.



I'm guessing he wasn't old enough to play with his at the time, but I made full use of mine, sleeping on it all the time, and thus transforming it into the dumpy-looking Dada Fluffy: a kind of beaten-down, grumpy patriarch over the whole Fluffy clan, if memory serves.



Mama Fluffy I remember as being a nicer, but also kind of naggy figure. So you know, strong female characters on Fluffy TV.



These two though I don't remember the specifics of at all. The blue bear on the right would have been a slightly more recent addition to the cast than most here. I suspect it came from a gift shop at some point. The little panda on the left though was one of the OG Fluffies though. I remember having him even as a tiny kid.



I can only speculate that his name was some riff on 'panda' given his shirt here: monogrammed by me, I'm sure. You know, the more I look at him in that shirt though, the more he looks kind of like a movie mafioso here. If was doing a gritty Zack Snyder reboot, he'd definitely be some kind of mob boss this time.



Just look at that cold-ass motherfucker.