Customer Reviews

The Album Cover Album

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This valuable art and reference work contains a lengthy introduction by Dominy Hamilton exploring the history of vinyl record covers up to 1977 plus an appendix on how the job is done, from the design phase to the printing. It also includes short biographies on Storm Thorgerson, James Slattery, Roger Dean, Diana Korchien, Dominy Hamilton and Dave Howells.

The full colour reproductions of the record sleeves are divided into the following sections: 1. Jazz, 2. Psychedelia, 3. Recent Years (1967 - 1977), 4. Influence and Coincidence, 5. Miscellany - a section that includes examples of various packaging strategies, 6. Portfolios, which features the work of eight sleeve designers in the form of small individual portfolios and include Rick Griffin, John Kosh, John van Hamersveld, Pacific Eye and Ear, Rod Dyer, Hipgnosis, Roger Dean and John Pasche, and 7. Devices and Disguises, that deals with ingeneous alternatives from 1970 onwards and includes sleeves with extra flaps, covers imitating old singles, concert tickets, sleeves in the form of newspapers and covers with movable parts.

The index at the front of the book lists all the sleeve art inside, from Abba and Alice Cooper through Kansas and Three Dog Night to Neil Young, Frank Zappa and Zzebra. Some sleeves have a whole page for themselves, like Zappa's humorous Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Boz Scagg's Silk Degrees. My favorites, to list just a few, include Cheap Thrills by Big Brother And The Holding Company, Abraxas by Santana, Bowie's Pinups, Bowie's Aladdin Sane, Patti Smith's Horses, Lou Reed's Rock 'n Roll Animal, Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and Joni Mitchell's Blue.

This Album Cover Album is a fascinating look at art in music up to 1977, and also a valuable research and history guide.

This book is a must. If you only like music or if you love the covers more than the music inside or if you are learning to design covers...Well, this book has it all. The covers are show by elements in commom, so you can judge by yourself about the criativity of the designers. Roger Deam is a famous artist well know by his covers and stages for the rock group Yes. But this does not interfere with the overall result. The guys did a fantastic job compiling all the covers in this book. There are rock covers, jazz covers, latim, dance, disco, and so on. All possible covers are there. Don't hesitate. Buy it now!

Alex Sab

I have the first printing of this and it only goes to about 1977, and I am not sure if newer editions have added matertial.

But for what it is, the book is excellent. It is more interested in the cover art than the music itself. There is a page for Elvis and The Beatles and a section for classic jazz.

But there are also many interesting covers by little bands that you never heard of and probably will never hear. One cover of an album by a band named Fumble is a jar of handcream and a man's armpit. Who knows what the music sounds like, but the cover shows how 1970s sexuality made for interesting art. There are tons of illumminating covers like this.

And this can be helpful if you are looking for ideas to augment your collection: those strange unknown bands from the 70s that had a good track or two on albums that went straight to the cutout bin. If interested, records like this are availble somewhere. This book might be a good tool for DJs looking for obscure samples.

this is the first and still the best book of it`s kind. i own this and the follow-up,`the 2nd album cover album`. both feature roger dean`s involvement and both are excellent.enjoy!

Not enough full page spreads. Overall a good value but needs more info about the covers and where the concepts came from. Interviews with the artists and recording artists would have been great to add.

I bought this book thinking I was going to see a book full of Roger Dean paintings. There are some, but there's a lot of stuff that I didn't really care about (many of the album covers have nothing to do with Dean). If you like a history of album covers, this is a great book. I'm just interested in Dean's drawings.

First, The Cons:
For all it's touted redesign this book suffers slightly from it. The axiom "If it ain't broke don't fix it." applies aptly here as the original has larger images on pages with more than one cover displayed. The new editions images may seem sharper and the colors look to have been corrected (though a little too much contrast in some) but I'm at a loss as to why they were reduced in size by about 10%. The type redesign is "prettier" but less legible as the font is too light to stand out on the neutral gray background. It also baffles me that, as a book on design by designers, all the individual design credits are set so small and in an even lighter font as to render them insignificant.

And now, The Pros:
The biggest advantage this edition has over the original (which I also own, by the way) is the beautiful hardcover binding. With the old edition being a budget-minded paperbound with a glued-in spine it has long ago become separated from the cover. This new version is a sturdy sewn-in binding with matte finished board covers and a matte dust jacket with spot varnish on the images. The addition of a neutral gray background for all of the pages is an improvement as it allows the images to stand out more than the older layout with each chapter having different muted colors. There are also some additional full-bleed album images added though conspicuously absent is the original, highly controversial cover for the first Blind Faith album by Bob Seidemann of a nude teenaged girl holding an airplane model. It has been replaced with another controversial, though less so by today's standards, image from the Rolling Stones' "Sticky Fingers" LP depicting a close-up of Mick's denim clad crotch with a real zipper (closed, of course).

All said, this is worth more than the $0.99 that I paid for it on Amazon.com.

I really did enjoy spending hours browsing through its pages admiring the cover art compilation. The way the book is organized, cathegorizing the covers art themes is very helpful so you can view similar covers next to another.
This book also took me back to my teenage years when I used to raise me money for buying a few expensive LP's by selling some of me parents home unnoticed goods in the flea market.
The only complaint is the lousy packaging, the book arrived with the dust jacket as wrinkled as a parsley leaf. Cheers.

Me gustaría saber dónde puedo conseguir libros del autor, tales como "The Flights of Icarus" o "Views". Gracias, y espero que se reimpriman pronto. Un saludo

The book was in near perfect condition when arrived, however, it was not packed properly in a slightly oversized box, which caused movement during shipping that subsequently slightly damaged and creased the outside paper cover. The damage was not sufficient in my mind to warrant a return, but it was a slight nuisance.