'Axis' Among Coolest Old Album Covers
axis in ladyland
Entertainment & the Arts: Friday, June 24, 2005
Spinning some vinyl memories: Colorful covers left their mark
By Kelly Kendall
The Indianapolis Star
The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The Rolling
Stones' "Sticky Fingers." Nirvana's "Nevermind."
If you laid eyes on those albums even once, you can probably still see
them: The Technicolor explosion of Sgt. Pepper, the zipper, the
floating baby. Maybe you even remember thumbing the liner notes and
staring into the photos as you played the music over and over again.
Which is why some people are greeting the digital revolution in music
with a touch of nostalgia. Not so long ago, buying an album meant going
down to the record store, looking over the goods, maybe discussing them
with clerks or other customers. Go back even further, and you could
spin Isaac Hayes' "Black Moses" right there in the store.
Now, iPods are everywhere. Buying new music is as easy as pointing and
clicking. Even as many rock fans agree that that's basically a good
thing for music, some mourn the passing of the Age of the Album -
others shrug that it's long gone.
Ryan Williams is on board the iTunes bandwagon, but a little
reluctantly. Five or six times a month, Williams, 30, downloads a
single or two off the Web. But he's still a "record geek," he says.
"I think you're losing a little bit," says Williams, a multimedia
development specialist at Indiana University School of Dentistry. "The
iPod, and digital music in general, really gives the listener control
over music. It takes away a lot of stuff we're familiar with - going
to record stores, holding the album. There's something lost there when
you don't have the liner notes."
Or jacket art, which can become as etched in the mind as that song
sequence chosen by the artist.
The album hasn't disappeared. Though downloads have shot way up in
recent years, so far, they seem to be supplementing album sales, not
replacing them.
"At this point, there's still obviously a place for physical music in
the market, and there will be for the foreseeable future," says Isaac
Josephson, who tracks music sales trends for the NPD Group, a market
research firm based in Port Washington, N.Y. "People are using digital
music more as a tool to sample."
But sales of "physical music," if not disappearing, have been
stagnating. Americans spent $8.98 billion on CDs in 2004, down from
$9.9 billion in 2002, according to the NPD Group. Meanwhile, the number
of people turning to iTunes and similar sites has more than doubled in
the last year.
For some people, MP3s will never be the same as albums. Warren Zanes, a
vice president at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in
Cleveland, has fond memories of spinning such albums as the Stones'
"Exile on Main Street."
"It was almost like you'd put the record on and you'd watch the album
cover," says Zanes. "It's so odd to see someone looking at a still
image the way people looked at album covers."
Some people still do. Dave Britts, a sales clerk at Missing Link
Records in Indianapolis, is surrounded by music the way he loves it -
on vinyl.
"When you look at the jacket, read the liner notes and the lyrics, it's
almost like the person's there talking to you," says Britts.
But as the numbers show, not everyone is quite so nostalgic.
Pointing and clicking your way to a music collection "might take a
little of the fun out of it," concedes Randy Albright, a rock lecturer
at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis School of
Music. But the shift to digital is good for music.
"Just on a visual, tactile level, you would want this" over CDs, he
says, holding up an album cover. "But it's not coming back. It's like
being nostalgic for the horse and buggy."
Some favorites
Albright weighs in on some milestone albums:
· "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (The Beatles, 1967): "It
changed the way people looked at music," Albright says. "Before that,
an album was an afterthought - once you had four or five singles, you
made it into an album. This showed the world that an album could be a
palette."
· "Axis: Bold as Love" (The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1967): The album
art was right in step with the late-'60s interest in Indian influences,
says Albright.
· "Sticky Fingers" (The Rolling Stones, 1971): "When this album was
in stores," says Albright, "you couldn't find one that didn't have the
cellophane torn. Everyone wanted to play with that zipper."
· "Billion Dollar Babies" (Alice Cooper, 1973): It featured a
"billion dollar bill" that slipped into a cardboard money clip. "Come
on! What 15-year-old boy wouldn't want that?" says Albright.
· "Dressed to Kill" (Kiss, 1975): "This one really didn't need to
have a record in it, as far as I'm concerned," says Albright.
The best - and the worst
>From the best album art to the most hideous:
· "100 Best Album Covers," by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell
(Dorling Kindersley Publishing, $40). Includes the story behind the
story on some of the best-known albums, like how Andy Warhol came to
design the "Sticky Fingers" cover and what Kurt Cobain really wanted on
the front of "Nevermind."
· "CD Art," by Charlotte Rivers (Rotovision, $30). A collection of
contemporary CD covers, from New Order to Pet Shop Boys.
· Blog: porktornado.diaryland.com/albumcover.html. For a look at some
of the most hilariously horrible album covers of all time.
axis in ladyland
http://rateyourmusic.com/lists/list_view/list_id_is_13556
...and some reviews of the music:
http://rateyourmusic.com/view_album_details/album_id_is_2325
axis in ladyland
covers of all time---
sluggo
Some favorites
Albright weighs in on some milestone albums:
· "Axis: Bold as Love" (The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1967): The album
art was right in step with the late-'60s interest in Indian influences,
says Albright.
....!!!!!the eggs..!!!!! the eggs !!!! ! don`t forget the hidden eggs !!!!
sorry..couldn`t resist....
sluggo