To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the LP chart, this superb and visually awesome book brings you the very best rock, pop, rap, reggae, soul, and punk album covers ever created.
At a time when listeners increasingly download or upload songs, creating personal playlists on MP3 players and I-Pods, the art of packaging music seems to be fading away. But for the past 50 years, musicians have released their work inside brilliantly-designed packages that made an important statement about their music and style. Look at the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Band, for example--just one of the 500 memorable images in this amazing collection, all chosen by a panel of 50 experts and each accompanied by enlightening commentary. Among the choices: the brilliantly psychedelic and way-out art from the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request; Peter Tosh's fiery cover for Bush Doctor; and the somewhat demented-looking prom queen on Hole's Live Through This album. From rock to pop, jazz to blues, these are all artistically, stylistically, and culturally significant in their own way, and will undoubtedly spark a debate with fans around the world.
Hours of enjoyment What a great book. Could sit and look at it for hours. Makes a great gift.
Addictive to look at My fiance and I spent over an hour in the book store looking through this book. We were so impressed by the collection that we actually decided to use this as the guest book at our wedding. There is something in this book for everyone and we intend to let our guest flip to their favorite cover and leave us a message. The great thing about music is that is spans cultures and generations, and we will be able to learn more about our wedding guests through their choices in this book. We highly recommend it for music lovers fanatic to casual listener.
why aren't the art directors listed in the index????? My husband, John Berg, was the art director of many of the covers in this book. I looked in the index to find where they were and I was amazed that a book on the subject of the album COVERS would not have a listing for the people who created the album covers. Listing the albums by recording artist and listing by album name is fine but the subject of the book is the ART on the covers, and yet the art directors, while buried in the text under the pictures of the individual album covers within the body of the book, are not singled out in an index. A person researching the work of John Berg, or Bob Defrin or Paula Scher would have to KNOW the album title or the band in order to see the work. That's ok for a book about the bands, or the music or even the decade, but if it's about the cover art lets have it BE about the cover art- there should have been an index for the ART PEOPLE: the illustrators, the photographers and the art directors...so for someone interested in who did the covers rather than just what they look like this is not the best book, no matter how well it's printed.
For Fun or the Music Enthusiast I received this book for the holidays and wound up reading it cover to cover in 3 hours. The book does a great job of explaining the evolution of the album cover. It also gives great background into what the artist's was trying to portray with the cover. The book covers all genres, as well as, explains covers that were giving social commentary to covers that are just plain silly. Great purchase for anyone that loves not only the music but everything that goes into it.
Fun Book, brings back the memories If I had known, this would have been the last gift my husband opened. We could not get him away from this book on Christmas morning. It was fun to see him sit with our daughter and tell her about which titles he had and some of his memories to go along with the album covers. Neat book!
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
