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Written by Storm Thorgerson
(one of the founders of the design company Hipgnosis (they did many of
the Pink
Floyd covers) and Aubrey Powell (co-founder of Hipgnosis), "The Stories Behind
the Sleeves 100 Best Albums" is interesting. While
there's no way you're going to agree with all of their choices (Prince's "Lovesexy"
for goodness sakes ...), the book's full of intriguing material and
features some great covers I'd never seen or even heard of. Sure, the text
is a little busy and the narrative overly academic for my tastes, but for $20,
it's a great buy.
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A stagger
768 pages, Michael Ochs' "1000 Record Covers"
provides exactly what the title claims - photos of 1000 album covers; some seldom seen;
some fairly fascinating. On the other hand, you had to wonder
about Ochs' choices. For a man with a collection of over 100,000
LPs, some of these are pretty dull.
Moreover, other than being divided into different decades ('50s, '60s,
etc.) and grouped into similar artistic themes, there isn't much
in the way of text. Of course you're not buying it for that purpose.
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Written by
Eric Kohler, "In the Groove: Vintage Record
Graphics, 1940-1960" is fascinating. In addition to a
history of album covers, there are 250 cover photos, but you're not
going to find your favorite rock albums in this baby.
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Written by
Jennifer McKnight-Trontz (with a forward by musician Lenny Dee), "Exotquarium:
Album Art from the Space Age" serves as a nice companion
volume to the previous offering.
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I'm sure there are scores of genre
specific texts, but two I'm aware of are published by Austrian collector extraordinaire
Hans Pokora. "1001 Record
Collector Dreams" and the companion book "2001 Record
Collector Dreams" are nifty in that they include covers of some of the world's rarest (and costliest)
psychedelic, progressive and garage albums (the vast majority non-US
offerings). For most of us, this is the only
way we're ever going to get close to a copy of Khazad Doom's "Level 6
1/2". (Who ??? You'll have to keep reading ...).
There's also a recently published third volume "3001 Record
Collector Dreams".
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Pokora
also published "Rare Record Cover Book".
Focusing on The Beatles, The Kinks and other well known acts, the book
features some 450
color photos, including all kinds of obscure picture sleeves (geez did
you really need to know there was an Icelandic release of
"Help"?). All told it isn't quite as impressive as his other two offerings.
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Focusing
on the output of this noted jazz label, "Blue
Note: The Album Cover Art" is another genre offering, but
it's well worth looking at. Some of these covers are truly
stunning. Edited by Glyn Callingham, there's also a recently
published second volume.
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Interested in reggae? Checkout Christine Morrow's "Stir It Up: Reggae Album Cover Art".
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| In case you're interested, most of these selections are all available from Amazon.com. | |
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or on to search
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