Click pics to read info on that cover
Websites like Sleevage, Banned Cover Art and many others are devoted to preserving the dying art form of cover art. While there are also sites devoted to the smaller CD and DVD covers, it just ain’t the same.
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WTA?
Where’s the art? I see violence, sex, candid calmness on a couch, and violence.
Popeye —
Maybe you don’t like the art on albums but some of it was really great art.
I might argue that album covers were the main vehicle for getting pop art to the masses in the ’60s and 70s.
As for me, I really miss album art. As a kid, I used to study nearly every detail on some albums — like the Sgt. Peppers album, for example.
It seems to me that the music companies don’t understand the value-added aspect of music art — or at least they haven’t figured out how to bring it back.
It seems to me that Flash animation (or similar) linked to and MP3 (or similar) files could be a super-good way to revive music art and even take it beyond the golden era of the album cover.
I just want to add a petty correction. According to several dictionaries, an “album” is a collection of something. American Heritage has even added the specific def, “A recording of different musical pieces”. Therefore, CDs and DVDs are still albums. They can also be referred to as “records”, since they are still recordings.
You are referring to LPs in this article, but since other formats are still “Long Play” as compared to so-called 78-RPM, they are now called “vinyl” (even tho 78s were vinyl). We almost had that size again, if the industry had adopted the early optical standard, the Laserdisc. It was abandoned for the smaller format, “Compact” Disc. I had to record my LPs onto cassettes (and on higher audio quality 8-track tapes for a short time) to take them in a car.
The artists are still drawing and posters are available, but the Record Industries own the copyright on album covers. The RIAA decided there is more money in lawsuits than in marketing, so the record companies won’t help us see them any better, except…
Check out what Tool did on their latest album, “10,000 Days”. It came with a lens system like a Stereoscope. It sure helped my old eyes to see the photos! Other covers have used 3-D in the past. There is even a set of clues to a puzzle in the photos.
#3 – You are a geek.
Keep up the good work 🙂
shouldn’t all those old people who run that site be getting around to dying soon?
I miss the cover art. It gave something to look at while listening to the music. It kinda let you get lost thinking about the music as you checked out some cool art ( at least the cool art was. I will admit there was some bad art out there )
#5 You first. I am sure no one will miss you.
Compact Discs, multiple song MP3 collections, heck, even Compact Cassette Tapes may be “albums” and may even be technically “records”.
But they ain’t reckerds!
Note also that:
1. Only very late 78s were vinyl. Most were shellac.
2. The term album, as applied to audio recordings dates back to the days of 78s, when several discs were sometimes sold as a set, housed in a book with envelope like pages that each held one disc, like a photo album. While not a whole lot of popular “top 40” music was sold that way, classical pieces and Broadway or film musical sets that required several discs were common. The advent of the LP permitted everything to go on one disc.
And, pardon the expression, for the record,
I play vinyl at least weekly for several reasons. Mostly, because I own the album as part of a vast collection acquired over 30 years, have a high quality turntable that I paid way too much for back in 1983, and in some instances, prefer the sound over the CD release of the same program, pops, clicks and all!
Oh, and LPs are a lot more fun.
When CDs were new, I realized right away that album art was dead. I had always wished that CDs could have been packaged like LPs with liner notes and art and all that… But I was young and idealistic and under the false impression that most people though music was as important to them as it was to me and my circle of artistic, idealistic friends…
But today, people don’t even care about CDs. It isn’t because modern music sucks because there are just as many, if not more, great artists creating music now as ever (though you’d never know it if Clearchannel owns your city).
As a society we line up at a media through like pigs and gobble up and shit out commodity art. We don’t savor it. We don’t let it into our lives. We don’t derive pleasure from it. We just consume it blindly like robots programmed to hear everything without listening to anything.
Music will never die for me… but media died a long time ago.
#7, I knew 78s pre-dated vinyl, but I couldn’t remember what they were made of. I almost wrote Bakelite, but it wasn’t worth a search for the answer when someone else knows it. (They pre-date me.) Still, I’m (easily) amused when cheap films show LPs shattering the 78s did, instead of bending. Or maybe I was too old to shoot at LPs to see if they would shatter…
All you need today is an electron scanning microscope to see the original album art of your old faves that have been re-issued to CDs.
I really miss those full-sized album covers. Heck, sometimes when the album made it to the 99 cent bin, the album covers made great posters. Jazz great Sun Ra, and his Arkestra used to sell his own records on his Saturn label while on tour. Each cover was an original, handmade work of art. No two were the same. You could buy five copies of the same record and get five different album covers! THAT, my friends was totally awesome!
Two “engineers” / marketers need to enter the all-time hall of shame — the moran who designed the jewel case for CDs, guaranteed to shatter and become useless on the first drop, and the bozo who came up with the F-barrel interconnect for coax cable.
I’ve never had a cardboard album cover shatter when dropped on a hardwood floor, and any connector that requires a 7/16″ wrench and 20 turns to dis/connect is a pox upon audiophiles.
I wonder if marketing CDs in full-size cardboard “album” covers would be as inexpensive as pressing all that non-biodegradable jewel case crap.
Not to mention… try rolling a big old fattie in a CD cover sometime. Not big enough, and the seeds get caught in the hinge. (Yeah, seeds. You kids and your newfangled sensemillia.)
Double vinyl albums were perfect.
Yeah, I really miss the LP album art, liner notes, etc. I also miss the $5.00 price. I DON’T miss the clicks, pops and hiss from vinyl. Even with a good quality turntable and cartridge and cleaning the records each time before you listened to them, you got micro debris in the grooves. When you play a vinyl record, when the stylus rides along the grooves, the top few layers of the vinyl molecules are heated, get almost liquid so that they lubricate the stylus as it travels. This also means any dust particles that are present are permanently glued in place when the vinyl cools immediately after the stylus passes. To keep them pristine, you’d have to play them in the equivalent of a microchip fab clean room. And yes, a fresh LP played the first time on a really good sound system usually sounds better than the same title on CD on the same system. Some of that is often due to the way CD’s are remastered nowadays, too much compression, processing to attempt to add ambiance, etc., but the CD will sound the same the 50th time it’s played, and the LP won’t. Unfortunately.
One of MY favorite album covers “Weasels ripped my flesh” Frank Zappa.
#13, GetSmart, There’s some good software available to remove that click pop stuff, but that means a bunch of A-D-A conversions which seem to defeat the whole purpose of vinyl anyway. I don’t go to “cleanroom” extremes, but most of my old vinyl (especially Deutsche Grammophone, Parlaphone, Apple and Atlantic) plays fine with a stylus pressure measured at 0.4 grams.
I can’t explain it – jazz / classical LPs just seem to sound better on all-analog rather than digital to speaker. Maybe if we had 256KHz per channel sampling… Main beef — isolation of turntable / cartridge from subwoofers to minimize feedback.
Ahh, who cares, in a few years I won’t be able to hear the difference anyway, but the artwork lasts a lifetime.
#16 – I hear ya’ BubbaRay, my hearing ain’t what it used to be. At one time I could tell if a record had been played on a crappy turntable ( ceramic cartridge – ecch!) prior to me playing it on my system. I’m lucky to hear the difference between a 192Kbit MP3 and the CD original these days.
My dad had a Herb Alpert collection and but I really studies this cover:
http://tinyurl.com/3bayoo
Sugar, peppy trumpets and a nude pregnant woman… what’s not to like?
#18: I can’t believe it! I remember that cover very well, but until I looked at your link I never realized she’s ‘wearing’ whipped or shaving cream!
But where did you get that she’s pregnant?
#11. I agree that jewel boxes are far too fragile, but I’m sure that an improved design could be developed (maybe using a less-hard plastic and a thicker hinge). But I don’t think that replacing the jewel box with cardboard would be an improvement.
One of the best things about the jewel box is that you can replace it without losing or damaging the artwork. With carboard, if you damage the cover you can’t replace it without losing it. Although the size of the LPs sleeve was great for artwork, it was also subject to damage just during regular use. To avoid this, I put each of my album covers in a plastic sleeve to protect them from damage.
I don’t think that jewel boxes don’t biodegrade is much of an issue. The only time I’ve had to dispose of a jewel box is when one breaks and must be replaced. A more durable jewel box would eliminate much of the need to replace damaged box. To me, the key is to keep them from having to be disposed of in the first place, and to provide a recycling option (much like with rechargeable batteries) when they do have to be disposed of.
Thanks for reading.
Those LP covers were great. Like mini posters. And they were just the right size to get autographed by their artists. I’ve got a few Barbi Benton albums signed by her. Naturally, as a guy, I prefer LP album art featuring women on the cover. As long as it’s tastefully done, a sexy young girl stretched out on a 12″x12″ cover is far better than a tiny little picture on a 5″ square CD insert. And try getting one of those signed. I particularly like LP album art that “wraps around” to the back. So opening it up, gave one a 24″x12″ poster. Like the Andre Kostelanetz cover of “Sounds of Love”. BTW, I’ve seen some neat 3-D DVD case sleeves. But not of music CDs. Proving that the industry just isn’t even trying.
#18 – Sugar, peppy trumpets and a nude pregnant woman… what’s not to like?
For starters, she’s pregnant…
#18 – But where did you get that she’s pregnant?
Yeah! Where?
Dude I only think she’s pregnant because three minutes ago I read that you said she was pregnant… which ruins a perfectly good album cover for me.
Now, tell me how you know she’s pregnant… or better yet, tell me she isn’t so I can go back to liking that cover.