Rolling Stone Magazine recently put out a beautiful, hard cover book containing the best album covers of all time. It apparently encompasses Rock, Pop, Rap, Reggae, Soul and Punk as well as some sub-categories. I purposely have not read it because, as an audiophile myself, I do not want to be influenced by the choices of others.
That, and it was damned expensive!
Oh how ancient I feel when I say that teenagers now will never know the joy of record collecting. There are no more record collections, because there is no longer anything to collect except computer files.
Gather round children, whilst I tell a tale of days gone by when acquaintances would visit your home,look at your record collection and learn something about who you were. A little insight could be gained into what moves you by viewing your records or books. The only difference being that even an illiterate would have records.
I recall once breaking up with a girl after noticing her record collection. It had no soul and no sense of identity. She had exposed herself as a person of little substance. Not eclectic, rather of "no particular taste." Plus, she had poor personal hygiene, and that was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
As we approach the 100th anniversary of the turntable, I thought it might be fun to look back at all of the brilliantly-designed packages that adorn the shelves of my music library (and hopefully yours). These 'packages' once made an important statement about the artist's music and style.
Say what you want about the short-lived psychedelic era of music, but these guys had something to say, and it wasn't always as simple as "Give Peace a Chance". Those were complicated times that I wish I had experienced.
The collective conceptual creations of the time are staggering. Works of art that introduce the visual to an otherwise exclusively auditory experience, so that the consumer was taken on a Magical Mystery Tour of perception.
This article is clearly designed to generate arguments among LP aficionados everywhere. especially since my area of expertise is music, while the visual arts are an area with which I am unfamiliar, or should I say, ungifted. So it comes down to taste, which is subjective as a result of personal experiences and comprehension. There are things we just "get" that others don't and vice-versa. Consequently, it will be interesting to see if there is any commonality between myself and the kind folks at Rolling Stone.
I begin from a perspective of total genius in marketing simplicity, having narrowed it down to the following top 3 albums in no particular order:
1.Dark Side Of The Moon: Pink Floyd
2.The White Album: Beatles
3.In Through The Out Door: Led Zeppelin
These covers promised nothing, and outrageously over-delivered!
In Through The Out Door was wrapped in a brown paper bag, the White Album was all white and then there's Dark Side of the Moon. This album has the distinction of spending more weeks on the charts than any other album ever!! It remained on the Billboard 200 for a whopping.....wait for it.........
741 weeks!!
For you mathematicians out there, that's over 14 yrs!! Go tell someone. They won't believe you.
The gate folded album cover, usually reserved for records with too much content to fit on the back of the sleeve, is simply black with a Prism refracting a simple beam of light into all the colours of the Rainbow.
I know hippies who can have an 8 hour discussion based on that detail alone!
Now I share with you the artwork that touched, aroused, haunted and intrigued me over the years. You may agree or disagree depending on whether or not you care, but ultimately, enjoy them now, for they may soon be fully extinct.
The inside gatefold of Ohio Players'classic 'Sweet Sticky Thang' album.
The woman on the Herb Alpert cover is swathed in whipped cream, a level of risque that was touchy at the time.
Also, Kansas' Point of No Return. The picture and the title work so well conceptually, as do the songs. It wasn't until 20 yrs. old that I thought about what that meant, and how we strive to know things that we may want to un-know, but can't. I love it!
The image of angels performing harmless, but characteristically unangelic acts, is amusingly cheeky.I have nothing to say about the Rainbow cover other than to urge you to look at it for a while.
Def Leppard? Again, just look.
Zeppelin IV - Once unfolded, you saw that the enigmatic picture of "old man carrying sticks" hung upon a wall of a condemned house in the middle of a slum. Yet this strange image remained.
As for Nirvana, they were just pure genius and vision from day one till day last. Many still speculate whether Courtney Love's curious one-album success after Kurt Cobain's death was a coincidence.
As I do this, I realize why the good people at Rolling Stone chose to print a book. There are waaay too many to display, and much to debate.
Here are some random works for you all to enjoy. Click on photos to enlarge.
Please note that I do not in any way endorse this image, but since everyone already knows that Ted Nugent is crazy, it's just awfully telling. Who thinks of something like this? I am framing it to send to his daughter as a wedding gift?
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