Wine, Women, Song and now Cigarettes!

Unfortunately, this blog host doesn’t accommodate subtitles. If it did, I’d subtitle this piece Watch Where You’re Flicking Those Ashes.

In all the years I’ve been buying, selling, collecting, and processing LP records, I’ve handled tens of thousands of them. But as I frequently say, everyday brings something new. Today I found something I’ve never seen before. This is an inner sleeve for a German import LP that is a full color advertisement for the Lord Extra brand of cigarettes.


In this unusual inner sleeve a progressive West German advertising firm has added “cigarettes” to the popular phrase “Wine, women and song.”

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We’ve all seen the inner sleeves that promote other artists on the same label. There are also sleeves that advertise artist and record company collectibles for sale such as posters, shirts, and other promotional items. But I can’t remember ever seeing an ad for merchandise unrelated to the artist or record company. Until today.

This sleeve came from a classical music record featuring the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Stolz. It is on the Sonic label and was pressed in West Germany in 1974. Looking at the picture of the smoker leaning over the record player, my only thought is to suggest that he watch where he's flicking those ashes. I did that once in my college dorm room and ruined a perfectly good copy of my Led Zeppelin Live on Blueberry Hill bootleg. Why couldn't it have happened to my roommate's copy of Leonard Warren's Operatic Arias and Sea Shanties instead?