Question of the Day: Are Album Covers Dead?

As many of ye know from The Facebook®, Supadiscomama recently got me a turntable and I have been having a lot of fun with it, rediscovering some music that I haven't listened to in over a decade (by the way, I also hooked up my Tape Deck and have simultaneously begun a cassette-gathering endeavor, but that is a different story....). One thing I have noticed while going through all this vinyl is the vividity of the album cover art. The covers are just so very much bigger than what any of us are used to looking at any more. You take a record like Hendrix's Axis Bold as Love, and look at the 12 X 12 version and it really does seem to lay the CD cover in the shade.

As once again testified by my The Facebook® page, I have long been a huge fan of Album Cover Art anyway, and I have always said one of the reasons that I didn't want to give up on CD's and go totally digital (one of the many, many, many, many reasons), was that I would miss the physical object that also includes the Cover Art. Think about the cover to Nirvana's Nevermind. I mean, good God. That's a work of art right there. But what if the art form really did diminish to an irrevocable point wih the emergence of the CD, and the newest Digital formats are simply the final blow?

Now, I guess I don't have that sensitive of an ear, but in the end I have decided that I cannot REALLY tell that much of a difference between the sound put out by Vinyl and that by a CD or even in the digital format--not enough to justify some of the absolute scorn I see being heaped upon CDs on audio forums. But the album cover art is another issue.

So with all these ruminations out of the way, here is my Question of the Day: What do you guys think of this quote, which I have posted from an audio forum I have been reading around in lately?

LP covers were great. The art aspect of covers was really lost with CDs, which have less than 20% of the space of LPs to work with. The art and originality of the covers was often as important as the music, sometimes more so. Even covers that were "just" photographs, needed great photographs when they were blown up to 12" by 12" size. I have a Best of Mississippi John Hurt gatefold album that has two great photographs inside of Hurt smiling while playing, and gives you a wonderful perspective of his wizened, Buddha-like face and the sheer likability of the man. Something that cannot be achieved with the postage stamp sized photos in CD booklets. Not just sound quality has diminished with CDs, but the whole magic aura surrounding albums from the 60's and 70's. This was a time when music was more than just music, but entered and influenced your life. Album covers were a big part of this. Would the Beatles, and others, have had as big an impact on the world if their music had first been released on CDs rather than LPs (how many would spend time examining the Sgt. Pepper cover if its size was 5" by 5"—get out the magnifying glass)?

Tuesday Musical Tribute

Discovered this today. Makes Harrogate happy for a number of reasons. Wanted to share with friends here.

Friday Musical Tribute: The Greatness of "Porch" At This Point is an Established Rule of Physics

Chatting on the phone with oxymoron of many things under the sun, earlier today, the subject of Pearl Jam's first record came up, and what a splash it made on the culture at the time. This is still Harrogate's favorite song off of Ten. And the performance shows why, as great as their records are, Pearl Jam will always be known more as a live band than anything else. Sometimes listening to Pearl Jam live, Harrogate thinks that it may not get any better on the live guitar, than Mike McCready.

Tuesday Musical Tribute

Another wonderful cover that appeared in the movie American Beauty, a movie Harrogate has been thinking about a lot lately, for some reason. This takes Harrogate back to the momentous conversation last fall, that he and oxymoron and solon had while driving to the bar to celebrate solon's esteemed doctorhood, about Beatles covers. Harrogate remembers citing Elliot Smith's cover of "Because" as one of his five favorites.

Also, "Because" is one of Harrogate's favorite Beatles songs, period. To wit: "Because the sky is blue, it makes me cry." How distilled.

Happy Saturday Musical Tribute; or, as Seal once put it: "It's Loneliness That's The Killer"

Lazlo Bane.




Some Readers may not be aware of Harrogate's recently emergent obsession with Scrubs. But, as the show plunges into its final season Harrogate has been Nexflixing seasons in order, taking in each episode as though he never knew about the show until this summer.

But, the song is really great, regardless of what ye think of Braff and company. Who has never experienced the mood at stake in this song. The loneliness of it verging on despair, and yet somehow, the song manages to retain a fundamental faith that things will work out.

Yea, one might even say that thematically, the song hits the same chord as the Beatles' Masterpiece, "With a Little Help From My Friends," appropriately situated in their appropriately titled stroke of effervescent genius, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Enjoy.