I remember way back when,when album covers could be the whole selling point of a record.Album art was a whole art genre in and of itself.You had art studios like Hipgnosis who turned out so many of the beautiful and strange Pink Floyd albums and the brilliant master of the grotesque Roger Dean with his covers for Yes and a lot of avante garde groups.With the advent of CDs this whole genre was just about lost but I see lately with the resurgance in interest in vinyl album covers are starting to become more artistic again so maybe there is renewed hope for the abum cover-I hope so.BTW there was once a coffee table book called: The Album Cover Album that's a must have for anyone who collects ond/or appreciates old vinyl.I don't know if it's still in print but if so it's well worth picking up.

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I can't say I ever bought an album because of the cover. An album was a big purchase and we were too frugal with our money.

A couple weeks ago I put out 3 boxes by the recycle bins. About 140 or so albums. Got tired of the clutter. I like having 14,000 songs or so on my Ipod and especially being able to jam along with the tune of my choice. There may be a small market for album covers but in general static media is dead. There will be niche collectors but collecting albums will be akin to collecting teaspoons or depression glass.

My favorite album covers were the simplest...like Simon and Garfunkels's 'Sounds of Silence' or Bob Dylan's "The Free Wheelin Bob Dylan".

Very true. The artwork on many of those vinyl LPs was amazing and sometimes identified the artist almost as much as the music did. I loved the gatefolds on double LPs when I was a kid - so much to look at and dream of while listening to the music.
What I really lament though is - with the popularity of downloading - the loss of the CD booklet (formerly known as the LP liner notes). Maybe it's the musician in me, but I need to know who played what, who wrote what, etc. And I still enjoy a visual (ie, some photos) to go with the music.
SB

Man, 10-4 on the album covers... liner notes.. posters that came with albums... Yeah man.. Im with you 100%

Bill

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Hey, Boy Blue is back!

I often find myself reading the wikipedia article of an album I've downloaded whilst listening to it.

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Rated "M" for meaty.

I think we're skipping something here though: tapes. I could be wrong about all this but cassette tapes were rectangular little things that didn't require much art either, and they were before CDs. It seems to me that real album artwork has been suppressed for a long time. My band plays in a coffee shop every Saturday night, and the owner there decorates the walls with old vinyl cases. I would love to see some real album art return to becoming a big part of music. For now, the best I can do is try to get the pictures of all the different album covers on my ipod.

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Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.
-- Jimi Hendrix, quoted in: Charles Shaar Murray, Crosstown Traffic (1989)

Same here. I just google a song and get a ton of information. We can also often watch the original artist perform the number. When I was young I had no idea how some groups looked when they performed or played their instruments.

I guess you won't see this one again.

I still have over 500 of my old vinyl albums and most of the covers are in excellent shape. You can barely give the things away - Goodwill won't even take them around here. I did buy a USB turntable and spend a week transferring several dozen to my computer with excellent results, but I had to work at shooting the album covers with my digital camera so I could have the art on the computer with the songs.

Maybe in my next house I should decorate a wall of the Music Room with album covers... I could still hang my guitars over them.

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Dennis in CR
Rockin' since 1963

killed? gone for the most part but not completely forgotten. cool thread. CD covers have some groovy artwork but downloadable tunes are erasing that little by little. my lament would be that youngsters have one less exposure to an art form that stimulates expression and idea. the lobotomization continues.

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you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

I agree 100%. Album art did help me make decisions sometimes on whether to buy the album. For example, I remember buying the Guns N Roses Appetite for destruction album just because of how awesome the cover was. Remember, the first one was later replaced by a more conservative cover. For a new band, it was a key selling point.

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HaleAmano- House Of Sharks (Now On iTunes)
http://www.reverbnation.com/haleamano
http://www.haleamano.com

Are they still there? A couple of years ago I decided I was going to get rid of all of my vinyl. I changed my mind and put together a new stereo instead. I'm glad I did. I dig shuffling through the albums and reading the info. Most of my covers are dog eared from heavy use. I like 'em that way.

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Well believe it or not, vinyl 33 and 1/3rd vinyl LP's have made a comeback of sorts. Many prefer them due warmth of the sound. I agree the album art, posters, lyric sheets, gatefolds, etc....were a nice bonus to look at while playing music. Queen's BICYCLE GIRLS insert photo is one of my favorite inserts ever.

I'm with you all.

Much missed and lamented. The double fold out gate sleeve was in retrospect, a delight that I possibly didn't appreciate fully at the time. At least, not until it was gone.

There's something utterly disposable about downloads - a lack of physical presence. Perhaps you could argue that the actual music has been similarly 'reduced'. I've kept all my old albums and my wife kept hers. Those things meant so much to me as I grew up - I couldn't bring myself to just disposing of them, even though the laborious process of loading up those heavy, fragile, dusty plastic disks was always a trial. Or maybe it was part of the ritual..

The hours I spent staring into iconic bits of modern artwork: The grandiose pompousity of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow and then Rainbow Rising, the enigmatic mystery of the Pink Floyd sleeves, the fanatastic dream away qualities or Roger Dean, the endless journey through Elton's Captain Fantastic and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road..

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I loved Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti on LP: the windows are cutouts and the two inner sleeves are printed with different versions of the interiors so you can swap them round and change what's going on indoors.

My copy of the CD just has a photo of one version of the cover on it. Forum user Twelvebar told me he has a version of the CD that recreates the source artwork in miniature: that's cool but still only a substitute for the original:



Unlike some I liked the music on that album too. Even Jimmy Page later said he doesn't like his amp tone at that period - but I do!

BTW: never mind the artwork, it's a generation of kids that only know music is individual tracks divorced from the album context that I think is sad. And only in the degraded form of MP3 files. Man, it's different listening to music on a proper stereo to tinny little iPods!

Lord, I'm sounding old! Anyone remember portable, stackable autochanger record players? And never mind LPs - what about 45s? Colored vinyl, anyone? Picture discs?

Ah, happy days...

Cheers - C

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