Yeah, badly dressed Christian bands from the '70s are always easy pickin's, but how could anyone forget this notorious Blind Faith album cover. Who was their target audience, hippie pedophiles?

These sleeves are taken from this highly recommended site: http://www.io.com/~dork/records/sleeve.html.

Thanks, Jonny. That blogger should've provided a link to that site.

Hilarious! :-)

Don't laugh, but I think I have that "12 TOP HITS" record. The rest are just plain BAD!!!!!

"That blogger should've provided a link to that site."

M*rc C*nedella, the guy at Stone who lifted all those images from Nick DiFonzo's website without attribution and reaped the subsequent referral bonanza, is now selling t-shirts and mugs with those album covers on it, again without a single acknowledgement to Dork's record cover site.

That's pretty lame. Dig the way there's no comments on his blog either!

I e-mailed Marc about it this morning and just received a very contrite reply. He asked me to have Nick contact him to talk about using those images on his merchandise, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

OK, who's gonna be the first with the 'behind the music'?

(let's kick it off with Devastatin Dave... I'm takin yo stuff...)

Wellll, it's been a couple of days since Mr.BaliHai's last post, and I see little improvement as far as the blogger coming clean. He says:

"Thanks to reader Brad B. for turning me on to the work of Nick D. who collected these priceless old album covers from the musical greats of the past."

but still provides no link to the site.

The updates at the bottom of the page are rather enlightening... a bunch of nervy tin-cup rattling. This morning there was still a link to the Cafepress merchandise, but it's gone for the moment, replaced with an Amazon paypal kind of thing.

The Cafepress page is actually still alive though.

The only thing you can say to this guy's credit is that at least he didn't hot-link to the images and steal bandwidth as well.

Still, the whole thing really pisses me off.

Yeah, I agree that credit's pretty lame, but I sent Nick DiFonzo a couple of e-mails, so he's fully aware of what's going on. Cenedella claimed to me that no one had ordered any of the merchandise and apparently he put the tip jar up to help pay for his bandwidth. I doubt that he'll get many donations, and bear in mind that he's probably going to start getting hassled by the record companies and artists who still own the copyrights on many of those images.

m.ace, I agree - the whole things pisses me off as well. This surprises me, since I normally stay out of this kind of thing, but it is super, super lame, and if this joker is geniunely now being stuck with huge bandwidth bills, then I don't feel too sorry for him.

As well as providing no link to the site, this comment:

"Thanks to reader Brad B. for turning me on to the work of Nick D. who collected these priceless old album covers from the musical greats of the past"

...is so inadequate as to be verging on deceitful. As well as collecting the records, Nick D scanned them and made a cool website, which Stoneboy conveniently neglects to mention. Why doesn't he just come clean?

(matt, sorry to be having this discussion on your site, but it's the best place I could find!)

Jonny, just to be clear, I wasn't defending Stoneboy in the slightest. I don't think he should get a dime from this, and it doesn't appear as if he will.

At this point, it's really up to Nick if he wants to take this further, but everyone here who feels upset about it can always post something on their own weblogs pointing out what a lamer Marc is, or e-mail him with the same message.

And Matt, ditto on the apologies for running this dialogue here. Maybe the Exotica or Outsider mailing lists would be a more appropriate place to have this discussion?

Discuss away. These are valid issues that, as the blogging community grows, aren't addressed often enough. Not crediting the site is one thing, but the fact that this guy was trying to make money off it is tacky!

Well, I'm a little bit bugged by this thread, especially by you, Mr. BaliHai, to whose emails I've replied withn an hour or so every single time.

For the record:
a) I received the photos in an email from Brad B. No attribution, no identifying information attached. I posted them on a lark, thinking, hey what fun. Stone, my blog, typically got 300 visits a day prior to this innocent post. Friend emailed them to friend, and before I knew it, wham!, I was pumping out 40 GB / day.
b) As soon as Mr BaliHai informed me, I was quite excited because I *knew* that somebody must have spent a lot of time scanning these and I wanted to credit the author.
c) Not only did I post a link to Nick D.'s site, but I spent considerable time trying to track Nick D. down in order to see exactly how much / how little attribution he wanted. This included emails and phone calls to him.
d) I had a national magazine (Esquire) call me to do a piece on "Worst Album Covers Ever" in their February 2004 issue and offered Nick D. a chunk of the earnings, if any, once I covered my bandwidth expense.
e) Here's what Nick himself has to say "So I guess my point is I don't mind you having the pictures on your site as long as you say where they came from and have a link to my site."
f) Now, let me step off my soapbox for a second. Assuming the worst about people on the internet is probably correct more often than any of us want to admit. But any single one of you could have e-mailed me to say "yo" and let me know your concerns. Mr. BaliHai did, though I'm disappointed in how he chose to be nice to me in email and slam me in this comments section. That's not fair.
g) I've posted 'Worster' album covers, and even though Nick D. did not submit any of the covers, I gave him top billing because I think some of the other readers may have "borrowed" from his site.
h) my e-mail's news At cenedella D0T com, I'mopen to any suggestions, thoughts, improvements.

Again, sorry for launching my little tirade to defend myself. I'm probably blowing this whole thing out of proportion, but it does hurt to see folks assuming the worst about you when you've really tried to be a good guy about it. I suppose I could just take the whole thing down, but that doesn't seem right in the spirit of the Web either.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Marc

Hi Everybody,

I've corresponded with everybody on this thread separately, and I appreciate how nice everybody's been about what is, after all, one of those easy-to-happen internet misunderstandings.

Now let's get back to enjoying horrible, awful, wretched album covers! :)

Thanks again,

Marc