I’d second that - accompanies the music in its own right without trying to illustrate it.
I’ve also got the book Visceral Pleasures
Or the all too prophetic Peter Saville cover of Closer orignally due to be released the same month Ian Curtis died.
Rrose Selavy mentioned Peter Saville, and I’d nominate his album covers for Joy Division and New Order. It made the band seem like they were from outer space rather than Salford/Manchester.
I think you can find some of the covers here: http://www.btinternet.com/~comme6/saville/
but it’s a bit hard to navigate.
One of my all-time favorites is The Police’s Ghost in the Machine. I owned this album for years and just thought it was some cool Japanese characters on the cover, until someone pointed out to me that it was a digital portrait of Andy Summers, Sting, and Stewart Copeland.
Check it out here: http://ifmomsaysok.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/blog_ghost.jpg
That made me laugh. Oh boy does that bring back memories! They came in handy for other things too, some not so good. The one dumb bitch, a girlfriend of a friend’s roommate, ruined a beloved copy of Yes’s Fragile at the friend’s house because she wanted to make popcorn and couldn’t find a lid. Yeah, she used the album. We all wanted to beat her senseless but she was gone by the time we found out. She didn’t come back, and the roommate had to buy my friend a new LP.
Speaking of, Yes, Genesis and Kate Bush were responsible for many of my favorite album covers. I especially like The Dreaming by Kate. The cover goes along with her song “Houdini.” (here’s the color version, which I love even more)
The “Holy Grail” of album covers is the Jon Anderson (of Yes) solo album “Olias of Sunhillow”, it’s a double, triple gatefold and it’s ALL hand illustrated, it is positively breathtaking!
Unclviny
Iron maidenhad amazing album art.
Floyd’s art has been mentioned a few times in the thread. If you’ve never had an “ah ha!” moment with their album Meddle, go get it and take a look (even if all you have is the CD). Unfold it and take a look … what is it?
It’s worth looking at it in hard copy if you can (orientation makes a difference), but if not here’s the art.
It’s an ear.
A Wizard, A True Star - Todd Rundgren
Deja Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
Lizard - King Crimson
Cheap Thrills - Big Brother and the Holding Company (art by R. Crumb)
Pyramid - The Alan Parsons Project
Singles covers [a little NSFW], however, leave something to be desired.
The *biggest * (and also one of the best) album cover I know is Santana’s Lotus that you have to keep on and keep on unfolding.
My favourite cover is Hipgnosis’s first: Pink Floyd’s Saucerful of Secrets.
The best CD cover has to be Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space, which is constructed as a prescription medicine, complete with a blister packed ‘tablet’ (the CD), and dosage instructions. Absolutely brilliant!
King of album inserts:
In seriousness, a shout out to Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, a gatefold double album with an 8-page pullout booklet of glorious late-70s airbrush sci-fi (of varying quality).
Pretty decent site for large album cover scans here.
Warning: it’s in German and has a few annoying popups, but worth it for the art.
OMG, I lament about this all the time to my kids as they are downloading their itunes… le sigh. They are missing out on the whole tactile experience of a new album.
Getting a new album was an event in my life. I grew up in very small town in South Georgia, and first we had to travel about 15 - 20 miles to the closest place that sold records, and just getting a new one in your hands was nirvana. Oh the anticipation! Then riding home in the car and pulling out all the stickers, mini posters, and inserts, and of course reading through the lyric booklet to see what you misheard on the radio. Then finally getting it home to listen to it on the stereo in the den if your dad wasn’t in there watching the ball game, and being told continually to “Turn it down!” by your mother.
The hours spent lying on the floor gazing at the album covers are some of the things I remember the most vividly from my teenage years. I listened to bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, AC/DC and Queen without even knowing too much what they looked like because unless their picture was on the album…and sometimes it wasn’t…you had no idea. The music made me love them. Or if it was just one really grainy b&w picture, you still couldn’t tell too much, and it gave it a mystique. The mystery was all part of the appeal. Can you imagine any of the current “entertainers” today being able to sell their music based on it’s own like that? Meh, we know TOO MUCH about them now.
I don’t have specific covers to name like everyone else, but I do have a few of my albums framed and hanging in my home because I just like the artwork.