Your Favorite Album Titles

rockdoctor

Well-Known Member
This might be a fun topic. What are some of your favorite titles for albums?
One of my favorites, just because it is so funny is Spooky Tooth's "You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw."
Even my dad laughed out loud when he saw that title in a record club catalog.
 
I like album titles that reflect the album but aren't necessarily song titles. I suppose my favorite TJB title would be Whipped Cream and Other Delights, which of course is partially a song title but reflects the concept of the album.

I also like Alan Parsons' Tales of Mystery and Imagination (which is based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.)

I also sometimes get a kick out of titles that have nothing whatsoever to do with the album or the music, but if you're a fan, you'll understand it. A good example is Fleetwood Mac's Penguin, which has no meaning as to the music, but is a tribute to John McVie who is a big fan of penguins. (There are lots of penguin references in FM album artwork over the years.)
 
This is still a recent favorite of mine: The Dissection And Reconstruction Of Music From The Past As Performed By The Inmates Of Lalo Schifrin's Demented Ensemble As A Tribute To The Memory Of The Marquis De Sade by Lalo Schifrin.

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Some of my favorite album titles are by way of Swiss jazz innovator Nik Bärtsch, as a couple of them relate to the martial arts. An earlier album Randori takes its name from the Aikido practice of free-style sparring or practicing (depending on which school of martial arts it applies to). His 2018 album Awase is an Aikido term for moving together/in sync/in phase or better described by one Aikido site: "The concept of AWASE is to merge into an opponent's attacking movement and take control" and thereby disabling their attack. (To use an example, think of how you might stop a moving train. You are not strong enough to stand on the tracks and stop the train with your strength. Instead, your tactic is to run along side the train, hop onto it, overcome the engineer and apply the brakes; you have "merged" with the train's motion to make your "attack" and disable the train's forward motion.) His album Holon is named after a Greek word meaning the whole that is simultaneously a part, and vice versa (and that is a very good description of the "Moduls" he composes).

I like album titles like that which require some thinking and how they apply to the music.

Not that I don't like others. And I'm sure I can find quite a few that have struck me over the years once I set my mind to it.
 
Sonny And Cher 1973 MCA album & song "Mama was a rock and roll singer, papa used to write all of her songs". (which was their last album as a duo) The late drummer Jeff Porcaro (Toto) wasn't pleased with that song when he performed it on the CBS TV show.
 
The Dissection And Reconstruction Of Music From The Past As Performed By The Inmates Of Lalo Schifrin's Demented Ensemble As A Tribute To The Memory Of The Marquis De Sade by Lalo Schifrin.
The AMG reviewer referred to this as a "crackpot title". I always saw this LP in the used bins in 'Amoeba-Berkeley in the '90s/'00s (for all I know it could've been the same LP that just wouldn't move).

As for titles, it's the notably memorable entries -- simply based on how it looks or sounds -- that come to mind:

Most Allison / Transfiguration of Hiram Brown ('60)
Albert Ayler / Witches & Devils ('64)
Gary Burton / Lofty Fake Anagram ('67)
Chick Corea / Tones For Joan's Bones ('66)
Miles Davis / Miles In The Sky ('68)
Tommy Flanagan / Over CCCCCCCC... ('57)
Freddie Hubbard / "Breaking Point!" ('64)
Keith Jarrett / Life Between the Exit Signs ('67)
Roland Kirk / Rip Rig & Panic ('65)
Jackie McLean / Destination...Out! ('63)
Sam Rivers / Dimensions & Extensions ('67)
Cecil Taylor / Jumpin' Punkins ('61)

Thanks, RockDoctor, that was a fun look-back!
 
'You Can't Tune a Piano but you can tuna fish" - REO Speedwagon
'A Nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse' - Faces
'What were vices are now habits' - Doobie Bros.
'Cosi Fan Tutti Fruitti' & 'Bablyon and On' - Squeeze

JB
 
Thank you all for the interest in the topic. Many of the titles I have not heard of, but I can see why they are favorites.

Here is one that I seem to remember as Firesign Theater-How can you be in two places at once when you really are nowhere at all?
 
The Cramps had a few good ones, like Gravest Hits and Songs The Lord Taught Us (which had the subtitle, "File under religious music").

Psychobilly group Th' Legendary Shack Shakers also have a couple good ones with Cockadoodledon't (featuring the not-so-smash-hit "CB Song" that was featured in a GEICO commercial) and Pandelirium.

Rob Zombie had a few also. Hellbilly Deluxe, Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor, and with White Zombie, Astro-Creep: 2000. The subtitles? "13 tales of cadaverous cavorting inside the Spookshow International" for Hellbilly Deluxe, and Astro-Creep: 2000 promised us "Songs of love, destruction and other synthetic delusions of the Electric Head." Hellbilly Deluxe II explains itself as "Noble jackals, penny dreadfuls and the systematic dehumanization of cool."

Alice in Chain gifted us with The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (where, I might ask).
 
Thank you all for the interest in the topic. Many of the titles I have not heard of, but I can see why they are favorites.

Here is one that I seem to remember as Firesign Theater-How can you be in two places at once when you really are nowhere at all?
I Love the Firesigns "Everything You Know is Wrong!" Is another favorite title
 
My two favorites from my personal record collection are The Magic Garden by The 5th Dimension and Crystal Illusions by Sergio Mendes and Brasil'66.
Those are my favorite albums by the two artists and I felt that the titles and cover artwork truly blended so well together.
 
I forgot about Joe Walsh "The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get" (1973) & his worst album "Got Any Gum" (1987).
 
From The Classic "True smooth jazz era" 1986 The Rippingtons Stellar debut album "Moonlighting " as they were just a studio group led by Russ freeman for its first few albums the cover musician credits even declare "MOONLIGHTING AS THE RIPPINGTONS" favorite title of a favorite album
 
I like McLEMORE AVENUE (1970) by Booker T. & the M. G.' s because the title is a clever take-off on and tribute to ABBEY ROAD by the Beatles. It refers to the Memphis location of Stax Studios where the album, which consists entirely of material from the Beatles album, was recorded. The cover even depicts the four band members crossing the street in a line, just as the Fab Four did on their cover.

Charles
 
I think my favorite titles might be from two different compilations/box sets from Rupert Holmes. Back in the 70's Rupert Holmes did three albums for Epic Records that got a bit of attention and even a cult following, bit weren't massive-selling by any stretch of the imagination. When CDs were becoming a thing in the early 90s, Varese Sarabande licensed a bunch of tracks from these three Epic albums and called the compilation, THE EPOCH COLLECTION, a play on the old label Epic, and the fact that this represented a period of time, which one might consider as an epoch.

That first album on Epic was called WIDESCREEN, which was also the first track on the album, a gathering of word-images that conveyed the idea that the record might be an audio-movie, which is a great description of the way Rupert uses words to paint images in your mind. The first line of the record goes, "There are songs that sound like movies. There are themes that fill the screen." And that's the title of a recently released CD box set of those first three Epic albums - SONGS THAT SOUND LIKE MOVIES from Cherry Red Records.

Even the third album's title is a clever play on words - called SINGLES. One might think it's a compilation of single recordings, but it's not at all. It's about the phenomenon of dating - the getting together of "singles".
 
That reminds me...

Squeeze: Singles -- 45s and Under

Squeeze was always one for clever wordplay. This one made the album sound like a dating service. 😁
 
One I always thought was amusing is, New Riders of The Purple Sage-Adventures of Panama Red. We gave that nickname to a guy that was dating the lady in the music department at a store I was working at in the mid 70’s. He worked outside all day, irrigation for agriculture, and was always very sunburned, blue collar kind of guy. She thought it was funny. He wasn’t to amused. They married a year later.
 
One I always thought was amusing is, New Riders of The Purple Sage-Adventures of Panama Red. We gave that nickname to a guy that was dating the lady in the music department at a store I was working at in the mid 70’s. He worked outside all day, irrigation for agriculture, and was always very sunburned, blue collar kind of guy. She thought it was funny. He wasn’t to amused. They married a year later.
Some album titles we find that fit personal situations can be amusing. Some of them, of course, might not be printable here. 😁
 
Spirit “The Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus.”
Jefferson Airplane “Surrealistic Pillow.”
 
Couple more that I like:
Emmy Lou Harris “Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town,”
And the Statler Brothers (as their alter egos, Lester “Roadhog” Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys) “Alive at the Johnny Mack Brown High School.” That stupid thing came out in the 70s and it still makes me laugh.
 
Another good Firesign Theatre title - "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus"

I also like Cheech & Chong's third album title "Los Cochinos" which is Spanish for "The Pigs." I'm not sure what they meant by that (if anything) but the Spanish words have a cool sound to them.
 
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