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or:
An Album of Albums
David Byrne, last month, wrote about the nostalgia for record packaging -- vinyl 33rpm LPs in particular, but even now CD covers and booklets -- as an absurd fetishization of a form of packaging generally supervised, if not created, by businessmen at a corporate level, designed solely as an advertising billboard to sell the product inside. No connection to the music. He sees greater possibilities in the future of bundled "packaging" with digitally-downloaded musical media in terms of a creative or artistic "statement" to be made by the creator of the work.
I see his point, and yet . . .
The album cover as it existed created a point in time that denoted a point in space, that is, created-encoded a "chapter stop," starting a new scene in a new location with a new soundtrack, to be easily accessed by the remote control of memory. An album cover brings back not just the music it contains, but -- sometimes even without the direct association of the music -- the place, time, and sense-memory of the important events that the album cover was present for.
Pull out an album . . . let's see . . . let's say . . . this one, here, Orchestra Luna. Had it a long time. Many things happened to me with this piece of cardboard present. What comes up first, looking at this cover? Mind flicks. Chapters skip back. Play is pressed.
Chapter 112: Boarding School. Dorm Room. First Girlfriend. 1984. Album on table. Cover face down, lyric sheet/sleeve covering half of it at an 45-degree angle. Table by stereo. Side 2 plays. Girl and I on her bed, kissing. 40-watt bulb bounces light off red bedspead, making orange glow across white walls. Trashcan in door as required by school rules for boy/girl "visitation." Door must be open at least six inches. Girls in the hallway giggle as they pass. Door to stairwell slamming open and shut, girls' voices echoing up and down the stairs. The guitar solo on "Doris Dreams" triangulates with the bounce of the light moving across the record jacket, shaking as the table the lamp is on shakes, the taste of her mouth, with the slam of the door and attendant echo, the feel of her sweater, with the smell of incense, all senses at once brought back . . .
Other record covers, other places, other times, real again, able to be replayed with the immediate aid of the physical object that contained songs -- air molecules pushed into certain discrete orders. The songs may bring back the feelings, that is, the EMOTIONS, but the object brings back the landscape, the feelings, that is, the SENSATIONS.
Long Playing Albums were called "albums" because the first multiple sets of 78rpm shellacs came in packaging like photo albums, to be opened and paged through. The packaging changed with the technology but the obsolete name lived on. Or maybe it wasn't so obsolete, and the record cover became, in conjuction with the music, a kind of photo album, a memory book. Pleaces we've been, captured.
"Do you remember that time we last visited Electric Warrior, dear?"
"Wasn't that right after we travelled through Are You Experienced? on our way to Trout Mask Replica? It was 1992, and we were doing that show at Soho Rep."
"Yes, when we were hanging out with Michael and Jesse and Angela and Rebecca and Bill and George and the rest of that group almost every night. The Blue and Gold. The Tile Bar. Phebe's. Nevermind."
"The place on Mulberry. Angela. That Leonard Cohen album she played. 'Camarillo Brillo'."
"Then it was all living in Into the Woods for the next year, writing that play with David on 10th Street."
I don't know that digital "packaging," confined to screen and un-"holdable," really, will have the same associative powers -- CDs never seemed to have quite the same power in that way as LPs (is it really just size?), but they still were an object that denoted a mark in space-time.
Below, 99 record covers that could be a life. That could be my life. That may have been a Summer, a Year, a Decade, Just One (Very Important) Day or Night, a Theatre, a Lover, a Friend or Friends, a One-Night-Stand, an Obsession, an Apartment, or My Whole Life In and Of Themselves. Some are albums I've owned as long as I can remember. Some are albums I've never owned, but I couldn't find a better image for that artist and this one is as good/iconic as any. For some artists, I could have put up 2, 5, even 20 albums that meant just as much to me, but I limited myself to one (artists who were the creative force behind a band, and then as a solo artist, got special dispensation). There are maybe 4-6 albums as important, or even more, as any here to me, but I couldn't get any kind of representative image for them, unfortunately. Still, I look at these and think, this is me, this is my life.
And I look and I wonder, what is this life?
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What does your life in music packaging look like?
An Album of Albums
David Byrne, last month, wrote about the nostalgia for record packaging -- vinyl 33rpm LPs in particular, but even now CD covers and booklets -- as an absurd fetishization of a form of packaging generally supervised, if not created, by businessmen at a corporate level, designed solely as an advertising billboard to sell the product inside. No connection to the music. He sees greater possibilities in the future of bundled "packaging" with digitally-downloaded musical media in terms of a creative or artistic "statement" to be made by the creator of the work.
I see his point, and yet . . .
The album cover as it existed created a point in time that denoted a point in space, that is, created-encoded a "chapter stop," starting a new scene in a new location with a new soundtrack, to be easily accessed by the remote control of memory. An album cover brings back not just the music it contains, but -- sometimes even without the direct association of the music -- the place, time, and sense-memory of the important events that the album cover was present for.
Pull out an album . . . let's see . . . let's say . . . this one, here, Orchestra Luna. Had it a long time. Many things happened to me with this piece of cardboard present. What comes up first, looking at this cover? Mind flicks. Chapters skip back. Play is pressed.
Chapter 112: Boarding School. Dorm Room. First Girlfriend. 1984. Album on table. Cover face down, lyric sheet/sleeve covering half of it at an 45-degree angle. Table by stereo. Side 2 plays. Girl and I on her bed, kissing. 40-watt bulb bounces light off red bedspead, making orange glow across white walls. Trashcan in door as required by school rules for boy/girl "visitation." Door must be open at least six inches. Girls in the hallway giggle as they pass. Door to stairwell slamming open and shut, girls' voices echoing up and down the stairs. The guitar solo on "Doris Dreams" triangulates with the bounce of the light moving across the record jacket, shaking as the table the lamp is on shakes, the taste of her mouth, with the slam of the door and attendant echo, the feel of her sweater, with the smell of incense, all senses at once brought back . . .
Other record covers, other places, other times, real again, able to be replayed with the immediate aid of the physical object that contained songs -- air molecules pushed into certain discrete orders. The songs may bring back the feelings, that is, the EMOTIONS, but the object brings back the landscape, the feelings, that is, the SENSATIONS.
Long Playing Albums were called "albums" because the first multiple sets of 78rpm shellacs came in packaging like photo albums, to be opened and paged through. The packaging changed with the technology but the obsolete name lived on. Or maybe it wasn't so obsolete, and the record cover became, in conjuction with the music, a kind of photo album, a memory book. Pleaces we've been, captured.
"Do you remember that time we last visited Electric Warrior, dear?"
"Wasn't that right after we travelled through Are You Experienced? on our way to Trout Mask Replica? It was 1992, and we were doing that show at Soho Rep."
"Yes, when we were hanging out with Michael and Jesse and Angela and Rebecca and Bill and George and the rest of that group almost every night. The Blue and Gold. The Tile Bar. Phebe's. Nevermind."
"The place on Mulberry. Angela. That Leonard Cohen album she played. 'Camarillo Brillo'."
"Then it was all living in Into the Woods for the next year, writing that play with David on 10th Street."
I don't know that digital "packaging," confined to screen and un-"holdable," really, will have the same associative powers -- CDs never seemed to have quite the same power in that way as LPs (is it really just size?), but they still were an object that denoted a mark in space-time.
Below, 99 record covers that could be a life. That could be my life. That may have been a Summer, a Year, a Decade, Just One (Very Important) Day or Night, a Theatre, a Lover, a Friend or Friends, a One-Night-Stand, an Obsession, an Apartment, or My Whole Life In and Of Themselves. Some are albums I've owned as long as I can remember. Some are albums I've never owned, but I couldn't find a better image for that artist and this one is as good/iconic as any. For some artists, I could have put up 2, 5, even 20 albums that meant just as much to me, but I limited myself to one (artists who were the creative force behind a band, and then as a solo artist, got special dispensation). There are maybe 4-6 albums as important, or even more, as any here to me, but I couldn't get any kind of representative image for them, unfortunately. Still, I look at these and think, this is me, this is my life.
And I look and I wonder, what is this life?
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What does your life in music packaging look like?
