Every Cover Tells A Story?

Presently in Toronto...busy busy meeting meeting for a new job...one that means coming at the biz from a slightly different direction (for me at least). All very interesting and exciting, but still digesting and absorbing and trying to sort what I can or can't (or should or shouldn't) blog about. More on that when I figure it out.

Caught up with some old pals and blogger friends, good times. And while many I know hate the Toronto, I personally love it. And so it was with some sadness I drove by the hole in the ground that was the Molson Brewery building on Lakeshore Blvd., once home to a TV series I did for several years. The times, they do a change.

So in the meantime, album covers. As in, those slim square cardboard sleeves that protected our vinyl records, and the artwork that decorated them. Records?...wonder the kids.

A few years ago I visited the home of a writing colleague and up on his living room wall he had the covers of his four favourite record album arranged in a square, then mounted and framed.




It was very cool. It was art.

Just staring at it brought on a flood of memories...you know, when music was good and meant something...and buying a record meant listening to it constantly while turning the cover over and over in your hands...studying, memorizing, interpreting, discovering.

But while he put up the record jackets of his fav albums, I just went with some of my fav album covers. He went for classics, I went for colour.



The website Sleevage has a nice collection of lp covers on display, Best Article Every Day has a good piece (and clever title: 'Wearing Your Art On Your Sleeve') about covers that changed everything, and David Byrne's blog/journal has a post with lot of interesting thoughts on some cover art and the artistry behind (or not behind) them.

I'm sure Byrne's right...how much an artist has to do with the artwork or how much the pictures actually mean is probably pretty negligible and really more about marketing.

But I still enjoy gazing upon my little creation, and it covers a little crack in the wall...what else do want from a piece of art anyway?