Customer Reviews

The Music Library

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Designed for mass consumption, library records often featured pastiches of the popular styles of the day. This resulted in bitter-drinking, suit-wearing pianists with a family to support making far-out psychedelic rock and big band jazzers laying down avant-garde electronic futurism.
As is often the case with pastiche, the library records ended up being far weirder and, paradoxically, more creative and original than the styles they were copying. With an invisable audience and none of the usual pressures like reviews and sales to worry about, top session men like Alan Hawkshaw, jazz-classical pioneer Basil Kirchin, and a pre-Led Zepplin Jimmy Page could let rip with music for a chase scene - usually under a pseudonym - before heading off to the pub for lunch.
As CDs took over from vinyl in the eighties music libraries cleared out their old stock, releasing them onto the private collectors' market and revealing a fact previously unknown to all bar a few musicians: these albums had fantastic covers.
With no famous names to go on a striking images was the only way of catching the attention of potential clients, hence such classics as `Musique Idiote' by Roger Roger and `Feelings' by Italian easy jazz maestro Stefano Terrosi.
`Ah yes, `Feelings'... good hip hop break on that one. Goes for £1,000 on eBay,' reflects Jonny Trunk, a hopeless library addict who has collaborated with the London design agency Fuel to produce `The Music Library', a collection of 325 of the greatest album covers never seen. `There's a big collecting cult around library records now. Some of it is simply down to it's rarity, but the beautiful covers and strangeness of the music has a lot to do with it too.'
Founder member of the Specials Jerry Dammers puts it's appeal down to the way it `seems to get every musical genre just wrong enough to make it sound twisted and different - ie, great.' Record library albums are pure pop art - and best of all, they're free from any pop stars that might let you down.

This book is full of beautiful psychedelic art. The CD that comes with it is awesome. Definitely something I'll hold onto for the rest of my life!!

This is quite a great book. I haven't been able to find a book dedicated to the "mood music" from the 60's, and this book fills the void! The CD that comes with the book is also excellent. If you are a Stereolab and/or Broadcast fan, you won't be disappointed, as a lot of the album designs for the two bands reference to these great record covers. Also, this book shows you a link between the past and present-day music that is influenced directy by the library music.