Sadly, Can The Can doesn’t get a guernsey. Still, there are a number of other LPs that deploy the humble tin can on their covers. Here is a selection.
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The debut from Britain’s blues outfit came out in 1968 and reached #12 on the UK albums chart. The band were formed by Stan Webb but are mostly remembered for presenting the earliest recordings of Christine Perfect (later to marry John McVie and join Fleetwood Mac). The album cover is simple yet disturbing. Whose fingers were canned?
When CBS released a Chicken Shack retrospective in 1980 they referenced the cover of that first album but in a less digital manner.
Talking about disturbing images involving fingers, what about this Spanish cover for the Rolling Stones classic Sticky Fingers?
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Released on the back of their early chart success (particularly “Going up the country” and “On the road again”, both 1968) Vintage (1969) presents previously unreleased demos made by the US blues band prior to their debut LP. The live album came out the following year.
It is difficult not to see Canadian rockers Guess Who’s 1969 LP as a play on the name of the preceding band.
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There has been speculation that Can’s 1972 album pursued some kind of concept based around the unpalatable vegetable okra. This speculation arose from tracks entitled “Vitamin C” and “I’m so green.” Keyboard player Irmin Schmidt laid this fantasy to rest during an interview with Uncut magazine. “The can on the cover is not a silly concept idea. It was a can Jaki (Liebezeit) had found in a Turkish shop.” So there.
Finally, some no-name cans from J.J. Cale (1992). This rather pedestrian cover was jazzed up for a special CD version packed in a miniature wooden crate complete with shavings. I picked up a copy in London in 1993. I mean, who wouldn’t?
Here is a cover I stumbled across on a FB group. Cervello (Italian for ‘brain’) were a 70s progressive rock group. Free nuclear explosion with your tinned tomatoes, Mum?
Finally, another Beatlesploitation product, this one from 2021.
This CD/DVD mini-book set has both concerts from the Budokan Hall, Tokyo on 30 June and 1 July 1966. There is also some bonus footage, including an astonishing interchange at the 1966 Los Angeles press conference, transcribed below for your edification. Some rarely seen photos and a hand-numbered edition complete an exorbitantly priced package that only an idiot would shell out for.
Reporter
In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. It referred to “Day Tripper” being about a prostitute and “Norwegian Wood” as being about a lesbian. Now I’d like to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music being written today.
Paul McCartney
We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that’s all.
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Any more cans in your musical pantry?
vinylconnection.com.au 
That Spanish Sticky Fingers cover is going to give me nightmares!
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Even Hipgnosis might have baulked at that one!
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I’ll say!
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Answer to your question about can-covers in the collection:
Not a sausage.
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Can you get sausages in tins? I imagine so, though the concept is somewhat alarming.
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I’m sure I bought canned Plumrose sausages of some kind for a client some years back. Eating those would be the least of his worries.
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I believe in my very working class youth hot dogs came in cans very much like those fingers.
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwjZqpHThMiDAxXt1sIEHZr2Cn8YABAnGgJwdg&ae=2&gclid=CjwKCAiA7t6sBhAiEiwAsaieYrcG7shT-5zBXWWEBad2IKnJxu5r-LshNMBX7bdMYjXe6fM_IpGrYRoCC_kQAvD_BwE&sig=AOD64_0692W8me2xcmexXTc7Jo5-jBB-dw&adurl&ctype=5&ved=0CAYQz7YHKBNqFwoTCLDZ4eGEyIMDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD&nis=8
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Deedee remembered Plumrose too. I sort of recall hotdogs with a pink rubbery texture, but it may just be a nightmare.
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I remember them coming in the dreaded Christmas hamper but getting eaten sometime later as nobody liked them.
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Yeah. Like the dried figs in the discs of glacé fruit my Aunt used to give me for Christmas.
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“Vienna sausages” are still sold here — nasty parboiled miniature hotdogs packed in aspic. I once saw an old man sitting on a park bench eating them with his fingers straight out of the can, just a little tin o’ horrors.
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Bleh.
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It looks like the humble can was a symbol of consumerism and mass homogeneity back in the day. These days we’d probably see more plastic single use packaging as cans are seen as quite good in comparison. I have a Stranglers Greatest hits comp called simply Peaches which features a can on the cover. Of course there’s also The Who Sell Out. I seem to remember a Bee Gees album called Life In A Tin Can with an awful punny sleeve but I don’t own it
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Nice work, sir. I had thought of The Who Sell Out, but baulked at the size of the tin. (Just joking; I forgot it completely even though it’s on the shelf.) The Stranglers is a perfect fit and you are spot on with the Bee Gees, which would have made a fine ‘feature image’ for the post. Thank you!
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They are as they say ‘some big ole cans’ The Who have there.
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These are fun and, yes, some are a bit creepy. And no “Can the Can by Suzie Quatro? 🙂
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Because there is no can on the cover! 😉
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I know, I just couldn’t resist making the silly comment, since the Suzi Quatro song literally came to mind first when I read the first sentence of your post!😆
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Sure! 🙂 I couldn’t resist referencing Suzi in the first sentence either!
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Does a sardine tin count? Beastie Boys “Hello Nasty”
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That’s a tricky one.
Have sent it to the review committee who responded thusly: “It’s a tin but not a can”. Sorry Robert.
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So “Soundtracks from the Cannes Film Festival” is right out, too, I’m guessing.
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Well, if ‘Can the Can’ didn’t get it…
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you’re tough but fair
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😅
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Urm, disappointed by that. Cracker’s first album also featured an open *can* of sardines. BTW, I love okra.
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Ms Connection likes okra too. Can’t see it myself. 😉
Sorry about the sardines, too.
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All the references to legend-in-leather Suzi Quatro compel me to add a link to the ‘Can The Can’ piece. A little holiday reading?
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I like the Cervello one. Those tomatoes are luridly colored.
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A special crop, for sure. In fact, a tomato you can’t refuse.
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Love the Sticky Fingers one, do you own it on vinyl?
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Sadly, no. First saw it posted on IG. Pretty cool, eh?
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Top of my head ‘The Who Sell Out’ Does that count? Now you got Mr Lazy (that’s me) heading up to the music room to see if I have a few more. Exercise of the body and mind is good. I love these cover takes.
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