Ep500: Ed Colver - The Eye of LA Punk - Crackpot Record Collector
The Vinyl Guide - Artist Interviews for Record Collectors and Music Nerds
Nate Goyer
4.7 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ed Colver discusses his iconic punk rock photography career, including shooting legendary album covers like Black Flag's "Damaged" and Circle Jerks' "Group Sex," as well as his passion for collecting strange "crackpot records".
Topics Include:
- Ed Colver known for punk photography, also collects strange records
- Calls his collection "crackpot records" - religious, political, spoken word
- Started buying records at 14 in 1964, Pretty Things album
- Always liked heavy underground psychedelic music growing up
- Collected antiques, spent time at flea markets and thrift stores
- Would hide good records behind Sean Cassidy albums
- Put Herb Alpert records in front to fool other collectors
- Music and art were everything to him growing up
- Exposed to avant-garde classical in 1967 by art teacher
- Learned Stockhausen, John Cage, Edgar Varèse, Toru Takamitsu
- Called electronic music "your grandfather's punk rock"
- George Antheil's Ballet Mechanique caused riots in 1923
- Hated high school, dropped out at 18 for junior college
- Studied all kinds of applied art classes and woodworking
- Made skateboard in 1963, year Kennedy was shot
- Beatles on Ed Sullivan made no impact on him
- Preferred Pretty Things over Beatles and Rolling Stones
- Never tried playing instruments, glad didn't buy drum kit
- Started photography in late 1978 at punk shows
- Took friend Robert Hill to shows, now works national security
- Couldn't afford much film, had to be selective
- Used manual focus with small flash, paid attention constantly
- Shot rhythm-timed photos, watched for dramatic moments
- Lost lens in right eye 30 years ago
- Famous Chuck Berk stage dive photo taken July 1981
- Met Chuck next night, never saw him again since
- Chuck gets paid when photo is licensed commercially
- Levi's and Vans perfect product placement in photo
- Circle Jerks "Group Sex" cover shot at Marina skate park
- Was there specifically to shoot album cover, not spontaneous
- Used color film, took more than one roll
- High contrast printing saved the mediocre color photo
- Black Flag "Damaged" cover concept was Ed's idea
- Shot near La Bianca murder house location coincidentally
- Made fake blood from ink, coffee, and dish soap
- Red-eyed Henry photos were rejected as "too demented"
- Original red-eye photos lost for 35 years
- Channel 3 Pure Life photo originally for Damaged insert
- Typeset layout ruined the backward gun photograph's power
- How to Overcome Discouragement record from early 1970s
- Played it as soundtrack at art walk event
- Has broken glass on cover, similar to Damaged
- Wild in Streets cover shot during San Francisco parade
- Circle Jerks crashed parade, Ed ran ahead shooting
- Parade doesn't show in final photo, just street
- Shot Darby Crash mohawk photo backstage at Starwood
- Darby died about two months after that photo
- Ice Cube portrait shot in one minute, ten frames
- Used medium format camera with professional lighting setup
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Vinyl Guide, the podcast for record collectors and music nerds. |
| 0:10.1 | Here's your host, the biggest record nerd of them all, Nate Goyer. |
| 0:13.4 | Ah, well, hey everyone, it's Nate. |
| 0:15.7 | Welcome to the final episode 500 of the Vinyl Guide, the podcast for record collectors and music nerds. |
| 0:24.4 | And if you're unfamiliar with the backstory, essentially we were looking for an artist to be featured on our 500th episode. |
| 0:32.5 | And we got a bunch of great artists that wanted to be part of the 500th episode. |
| 0:36.1 | So we now have several episode 500s. |
| 0:39.4 | It started earlier this month with Billy Corgan. We had an interview with Billy Corgan from |
| 0:44.3 | Smashing Pumpkins. That was really killer. He opened up quite a bit there. Then we went to an |
| 0:49.0 | interview with Billy F. Gibbons of Zizi Top. And man, what a cool guy. He spoke to us about his |
| 0:54.1 | rare records and music and, |
| 0:55.7 | of course, his collection of rare guitars. So you got to check out that one. The next episode |
| 1:00.1 | 500 was Epitaph founder and Bad Religion Emeritus Brett Gurowitz. We recorded that episode at |
| 1:08.1 | Epitaph offices in Los Angeles. He shares some great stories. |
| 1:11.0 | You definitely want to check that one out as well. Then the next episode 500 was Fred Schneider of the B-52s. |
| 1:17.4 | And we talked all about his amazing, incredible, massive record collection. And of course, |
| 1:22.9 | the rarities of the B-52s catalog. And of course, throughout this month, we were also celebrating by sending out records to listeners, |
| 1:30.6 | many of which have already landed. |
| 1:32.7 | So thank you to everyone who's been posting and sharing those online. |
| 1:36.4 | And so now, today, dear people, we are wrapping up the episode 500 series with another |
| 1:42.9 | absolute legend. You guys are going to love this. Ed Culver, |
| 1:47.3 | photographer and person more often than not responsible for the album cover of your favorite |
... |
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