Two blaxploitation-influenced album sleeves from American hard funk group Chicago Gangsters, 1975 & 1976.      

The art we posted a while back for Giuseppe Scotesi’s film Acid got us thinking about bodypainted women. We knew we’d seen some other examples, and after just a bit of searching came up with a collection of album covers—including the killer sleeve above from Paul Mauriat. We found some bodypainted men as well. More below.

Various Bollywood soundtracks, circa 70s and 80s.

These may look like new Dashiell Hammett book covers, but they’re actually promotional posters painted by the brilliant Owen Smith for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art on Market Street 2008 Program. If you read our post on author Daniel Chavarría you know we love Smith’s work. When we see it we immediately think pulp, but we aren’t particularly reminded of any other pulp artist’s work. To be fair, we don’t know if Smith considers himself a pulp artist, but we do think his paintings are lurid and mysterious in way that make them a fit for the genre.

Moving on from the Hammett pieces, the painting chosen for the cover of Maureen Dowd’s Are Men Neccesary? is also great, though we don’t think it belongs on a collection of essays. Below that, The Forgotten Arm is an Aimee Mann album, and the pairing is also a bitsquare peg/round hole. If it has to be music, we’d rather see Smith’s work on a José James cd; if on a book, then where better than on the next James Ellroy? But the art remains brilliant regardless, and we look forward to Smith’s future creations. You can see more here, and the write-up we mentioned on Chavarría is here.

Here we have a lovely soundtrack sleeve from the 1971 film Bubù di Montparnasse, which is a drama starring Antonio Falsi as a man who forces his girlfriend Ottavia Piccolo into prostitution. Singer Giorgio Gaber is listed alone on the front cover, but there are actually three vocalists on the vinyl, performing what you might call lounge music, with that special Italian flair. As for the film, Bubù discovers it’s a boo-boo to pimp out his girl. Ché sorpresa! The art here is by Mario de Berardinis.

In addition to being a badass trombone player, salsa legend Willie Colón had a keen sense of drama. His album sleeves played on the Mafia obsession of the 1970s and portrayed him as the gangsta of the NYC salsa scene. The records had titles like El Malo, The Hustler and OG: Original Gangster. But Colón is a renaissance man, not a thug. Besides being one of the most influential salsa performers in history and releasing a giant stack of recordings, he acts, holds an honorary professorship from Yale University, and is one of the few musicians with a lifetime achievement Grammy who doesn’t blow. Well, he does blow, but only on his horn. His trombone, that is. Never mind. More sleeves below.

The folks at atomicplatters.com explain on their website that every art form had to deal with the arrival of the atomic age. As pulp developed a quick preoccupation with mutants, the space race, and nukes, music did the same, and the collection Cold War Music shows just how much. Five packed discs contain enough rare tunes by Doris Day, Teresa Brewer, and the Commodores to keep you partying at ground zero for a long while—or at least until your eyeballs melt out of their sockets. Of special note: Tony Bennett’s public service announcement for civil defense entitled “Nuclear Attack”. Right then—duck and cover in three, two, one…