Album Cover Art - The Lost Art

Check this out. I easily recognized most of these covers. Remember when album art was almost as important as the music? When I was first old enough to go my own way at the malls in the late 70's or even earlier when I stayed with my parents - my favorite thing to do was to go to National Record Mart and just stand there flipping through every album looking at the covers. Think about it - the internet didn't exist! There was no easy way to find out what albums someone had out. I liked KISS at the time so I would stop at every chance and look through the bins to see if there was an album that I didn't have. Two very distinct smells from my childhood are the bubble gum smell from Topps baseball cards and tearing the plastic off of a brand new album. I know this will date me and make me sound like an old fogey at the young age of 37, even though I'm staring down 38, but today's CD covers have no soul. Before you could hop online and view 1,000s of pictures or see your favorite bands on Mtv - your best bet for seeing them if you weren't into magazines was going to the "record store" and flipping through both the albums and the posters. I would literally start with AC/DC and The Allman Brothers and flip through everyone down to ZZ Top. It was a way for me to pass the time at the mall. I was also clued in to the cool bands by my neighbor who was much older than me. I always got turned on to a band by someone older than me. My neighbor Nick got me into KISS and Ted Nugent. I'll never forget the look of horror on Mrs. Moyer's face (my 3rd grade teacher) when on music day I brought in the double-live KISS Alive II when most other kids were still bringing in kiddy music. How can anyone my age forget the sweaty, blood covered image of Gene Simmons on the back of that album? It's from holding those albums in my hands and taking in every detail that I can tell you that Acoin Management ran the group in those days. Information like this would only serve me well on some useless triva gameshow, but I have a ton of it stored in my slanted little mind and it's weird that I kept it and not replaced it. My older cousins Mark and Gary turned me on to Rush and AC/DC respectively. My older out-of-state cousin Jeff brought me Van Halen, Aerosmith, Meat Loaf, Molly Hatchet and Billy Joel. Thank God I had older male cousins! Had I been left to pickup music off of my sister...It would have been Sean Cassidy, The Bay City Rollers and Leif Garrett. The main topic of this site might have been how to tie your belt, shoe and sock colors together instead of football. Anyway - watching that short clip brought back memories of sitting on the couch in my childhood living room holding an album cover in my hands, reading every word on the back or in the liner notes while listening to the music. That's a far cry from downloading the 1 song I like off of a CD now. I used to anticipate going to the mall to look through the KISS albums to see if they put a new one out. I haven't really been excited about an album release since purchasing the second Pearl Jam CD on the day it dropped. That was what, 13 years ago? Man do things change in a hurry. Don't get me wrong, I still listen to current rock music and new bands...I just rarely buy entire CDs. The last CD I purchased was the soundtrack to Braveheart! I would tell you the last CD I purchased from a band.....if I could remember it.

I am guessing Still A Dog could give us 10,000 words on album art as he has the most extensive music collection I've ever seen.