CD covers as an art form may be a trite way of looking for art when there is so much fine art available, yet many CD (and earlier LP) covers were designed specifically with an artistic bent, and must be acknowledged as such.
Here are a few nice ones:
Aoxomoxoa - Grateful Dead
Shaman - Santana
Rarities - Sarah Mclachan
Rough Guide To Bhangra
Houses Of The Holy - Led Zeppelin
Movement - New Order
Diamond Dogs - David Bowie
Best Of Bollywood
In The Wake Of Poseidon - King Crimson
Between Heaven And Earth
Country Life - Roxy Music
(there's your hands over breasts;))
Weasels Ripped My Flesh - Mothers Of Invention
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Eric Olsen
absolutely beauteous Aaman, I recoil in waves of nostalgia and aesthetic ecstasy! Super stuff - I have most of those, too
2 - Aaman
Thanks Eric - could you/Philip please verify the slightly freaky html and usage of yr amazon id.
I would've loved to add more, but seemed to recall a 20-item limit per post
3 - Eric Olsen
looks good to me! and yes, 20 is the limit, at 21 they ALL disappear
4 - Tom Johnson
Nothing to do with the article, but the layout with all the album-art pics: wow, this is a mess in Firefox. It's pretty bad in IE, too, but in Firefox the images float over one another to a pretty bad degree. This is one of those times when a good ol' table is in order for layout. Something to keep in mind . . .
5 - Aaman
Just the feedback I needed - ty - no firefox at work - I suspected something of the sort might be happening in firefox. Will fix once I'm home
6 - Douglas Mays
Aaman, love it! I am into the visual art co-inciding with the music inside. Nowadays, in the world of CD, the artist has only 36 square inches to work with. In album days the artist had 144 square inches to work with. With the rumor of CDs working their way out of the picture, I wonder what that will do to the crucial aspect of visual art's initial presentation for the music. MTV is merely an aspect of visual to go with the music. Album art was first. Well, dance and theatre before recorded material existed. Music and vision go hand in hand.
Oh, in regard to Vixens of Vinyl, I worked at a massive used record store in the late 70s, early 80s. It was amazing some of the girls on album covers of no-name instrumentals and such I would see. Huba-huba if you know what I mean.
Good subject, Aaman!
peaceloveguidance
7 - Stytzer
Fun (and good) to see that you included Bright Eyes: I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning as your very last album cover.
Not that old - is it? ;-)
8 - Rodney Welch
I'm now convinced that Roxy Music's Country Life should be elected the Official Rock Album of Blogcritics.
9 - Aaman
Tom,
The images look fine for me in Firefox - I'm not sure what to fix, html-wise
Thanks all - please post yr fav album covers - I'll try to incorporate some as images only, no more Amazon linkies possible
10 - Temple Stark
Well you had mentioned CD art before, not album art, which is completely different.
CD cover art is too small to be usefully art; though it is possible it just isn't done anymore.
11 - The Theory
good post, even though I disagree about what makes a good album cover. ;-)
12 - Temple Stark
oh and thanks for the hands over breasts thing :-)
13 - Douglas Mays
Aaman, I noticed the New Order album cover in your posted covers. That reminds me of their album "Power, Lies, Corruption". Nice classic artwork on that one.
Oh, the list could go on...
peaceloveguidance
14 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
great post aaman. although, i am saddened. Yet again the cover of Get Over It OST is shunned. It's Kirsten with a waterpistol for gods sakes!
And the Costello cover is one i never saw before. In the UK, i'm sure it's a load of elephants.
15 - Eric Olsen
and it's his best album too (Costello, that is)
16 - Aaman
Duke, have u seen the Amazon write up on the film? quite fiery. The cover looks like a real Bollywood flick, too
17 - copygodd
while i don't miss the hassles associated with vinyl, i sure do miss the artwork.
nice post.
btw, it looks fine in firefox.
18 - Tom Johnson
Aaman: the Roxy Music and whatever is next to it are floating over top of the King Crimson and whatever is next to it, offset to the left and down by about 15 pixels. How the images float over one another seems to depend on when and how the page loads, or how wide the browser window is at the time it loads. When I reloaded the page they came in fine one time, the next they didn't. Pretty weird.
Actual comment on album-art in general: I'm not stuck on the album-size of artwork. I didn't grow up with vinyl and while I understand that bigger artwork is nice, there's plenty of CD artwork that is intriguing and beautiful. The Sarah McLachlan artwork above is a good example - I don't even know if that was available on vinyl, but it worked beautifully as CD artwork. The problem I see is artwork that was designed to be bigger, and thus having more details, being resized to more than half of its original size and losing the resolution to see all those details. Artists who design specifically for CD-size are capable of making beautiful contributions too. One of my all-time favorites is King Crimson's Thrak, which is a Bill Smith Studios design. It is fittingly abstract and mysterious, but it's also indicative of my taste in art, too (which is typically abstract.) I guess the next step for artwork will simply be websites, when CDs eventually go the way of the 8-track and all we buy are files (sniff, thatt makes me more than a little sad . . . )
19 - Shark
I weighed in on this back in June here.
Thanks.
PS: See also here for some real beauties [you've probably never heard of...]
20 - Shark
Oh, and Eberhard Weber had a number of beautiful album covers done by his wife
here.
PS: And who can forget Mati Klarwein's cover art for Miles' BITCHES BREW?! Talk about memorable!
21 - Shark
Anyone posting names of the artists might be considered helpful and informative.
Neon Park did the Zappa cover, as well as some GREAT Little Feat covers, too.
And I believe the great RICK GRIFFIN (of Family Dog Poster fame) did the Dead cover.
Would look up the rest but I don't have time.
Anybody...?
xxoo
S
22 - Shark
More ways to kill time and see god
23 - Aaman
Those Crumb covers are fabulous
24 - SFC Ski
The cover of "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" by Herb Albert and the Tijuan brass, that's art!
25 - chickyraptor
Here's the inspiration for the Weasels Ripped My Flesh cover.
http://www.arf.ru/Misc/weasels.JPG