Digging in the MVE in Berwick St. yesterday I came across this in the mid-price section. It appears to be a test pressing of The The‘s classic ‘Infected’ LP with uncut / glued cover and inner sleeve plus Epic credit sheet. This album (by Matt Johnson – who I worked with on ‘The Search Engine’ – and collaborators) is one of my all time favourite records EVER. Serious Desert Island Disc stuff which will stay with me until I die.
I already own the original vinyl, CD, remastered CD and limited ‘Torture’ cover with poster versions. I even had a signed proof cover of another, largely unknown sleeve design with a cow skull on it that I bought from Andy Dog (the cover artist and Matt’s brother) years ago but it was mistakenly thrown out in a house move as it was stored inside a 12″ mailer! Gutted…
That yellow cow skull cover is as rare as hens teeth. I would have kept that under lock and key. A very interesting piece of Andy Dog/THE THE history. Andrew Johnson mentions in an interview that he only had one piece of sleeve art rejected by Matt, I’ve often wondered if it was your lost cover and maybe that’s why the Torture sleeve was released while Andrew was painting the cover we (I) now know and love. I feel gutted too.
That’s the one, full sleeve, printed back and front but not widely circulated
‘largely unknown sleeve design with a cow skull on it’
This one.
https://www.discogs.com/release/8505786-The-The-Infected
“Infected” is my all time favourite album and The The and Matt Johnsons albums has gone through my life beside me since 1986…
Thanks a lot for your life’s work, Matt!
Good memories: watching the Infected video movie on late night telly with my (very traditional) father when I was a kid, and him loving it nearly as much as I did.
Bad memories: listening to Soul Mining and writing terrible poetry as an angsty teenager!!
Thanks for all the great stuff on the site – I can’t believe I didn’t know about ‘hip hop family tree comics’ – incredible!
Big fave of mine at the time too. I had the Tortue sleeve of the LP and the rather amusing original cover of the single:
http://www.discogs.com/The-The-Infected/release/1687323
Cheers,
Jim.
Beauty, fave album too… one of the first vids I ever saw was the VHS containing the whole album’s vids, and it blew me away. Must have been around ’86-’87. Follow Matt and have always followed his music.
What a find!