One of the things that I miss about the "old school" days of Vinyl albums are the album covers.
Oh, you still have cool artwork and interesting designs, but you no longer have that big 12 inch plus cover that could serve as a mini-poster of your favorite artist. It was even more of a treat when the artist produced a double album, because you would then have four sides of cover work.
Now I admit that it's great not having to dedicate large amounts of space to housing an album collection. But, I tend to feel about albums like I feel about having a library of books. There's something that seems right about looking at a bookshelf and seeing those books lined up on the shelf, just like there was something that felt good about seeing your array of albums lined up nice and neat, or even scattered about.
Ultimately, I guess you can argue that it's really about the music, and being able to listen to what you want to quickly and efficiently, and the current formats certainly deliver on that.
And I don't suppose too many people bought albums just based on the cover...unless it was some of those Ohio Players albums covers (you can figure that out for yourself).
My favorite group then and now is The Jackson Five / The Jacksons. When I was growing up, we didn't have much money, and early on, the only records I was able to get came from the back of cereal boxes. So there weren't any posters around either. And when you did get your hands on an album, you were pretty excited. Come to think of it, those cereal box records did have a picture on them.
The first Jackson Five album which I actually owned was "Dancing Machine". I traded some comic books with a friend of mine to get the album. Now the cover at this point had been roughed up a bit and the album had 1 or 2 scratches (for those of you that have never used a vinyl album, if an album has a scratch it causes the music to be interrupted, either repeating itself, or jumping the groove and moving to the next section of the song and generally interfering with the fidelity of the music), but that became my favorite album. Of course it was also my only album, but why quibble.
As I got a little older, and managed to have a few bucks in my pocket, I set about collecting the albums that I couldn't buy when I was younger. I spent plenty of time looking at what they used to call the "cut-out racks/bins" (this was where older albums were placed and a notch was physically cut-out on the album cover - marking it as damaged/non-returnable and enabling the retailer to sell at a reduced price). I also found a number of the albums at second-hand or re-sale stores. Eventually, I managed to gather nearly all of the early albums that I had missed.
My favorite Jackson album covers? Well, thanks for asking - they are the following:
#1 Maybe Tomorrow -
It's a double album cover, although it was not a double album. The boys are in a garden/park setting with lots of green background. Michael, Jackie and Tito are on the front cover and Jermaine and Marlon are on the back cover, it's a wide shot so to see all five you open the cover to view the front and back together. The inside cover has another wide shot of the boys and a few smaller photos.
#2 ABC -
I thought it really cool to have them around the big letters of one of their signature tunes on the cover, and the back cover collage used a lot of photos of them appearing in everyday life settings, playing ball, just hanging out, totally cool.
#3 Greatest Hits -
Probably the most iconic photo for me of the early 70's Jackson Five
#4 Going Back To Indiana -
This was from the TV special...need I say more?
#5 Skywriter -
Totally cool seeing them in old-time flight suits with the aviator goggles.
#6 Destiny -
Double album cover, artist rendition on the cover, wide shot of the group on the inside.
#7 Get It Together -
I never managed to get my hands on this one. The original cover had a cut out of the letters GIT through which you could see the picture beneath it, it was a cover within a cover. The boys were in the yellow and red costumes. I think later versions of the album just used the GIT letters on the cover without showing the picture underneath.
#8 Triumph -
I liked this cover because it was a tight group shot, head and shoulders of the brothers done in grey shade, not quite what they did on Third Album, but it reminded me of that.
And when you strip away all of the cool sounds and fancy beats, it's important that there's still a song there. A melody that can be sang, and words with meaning.
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