It's feeling

There are a few things we have lost in the wake of the popularity of electronically downloading music: the release of a new album seems less profound if you can’t physically hold it, the special cabinets my parents had custom made for our records and CDs are now obsolete and less attention is paid to album artwork. In the past, album artwork had a profound effect on society, creating iconic images that, whether beautiful or of questionable taste, got a lot of attention. My dad talks about how he and his friends used to go searching through their parents' record collections for Herb Alpert’s “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” (1965), the cover of which sports a woman covered in frothy swaths of whipped cream, with a surprisingly unsexy dollop on top of her head, holding a rose. Every ten-year-old, lactose-tolerant boy’s dream.

The Beatles covered the spectrum of album artwork in a span of about two years. In 1967, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released with a cover reminiscent of a psychedelic "Where’s Waldo?" book. Then in 1968, they released “The White Album,” shocking everyone with the boldness of negative space. And speaking of boldness, so was Cheech and Chong’s “Big Bambú” (1972) album, equipped with rolling papers big enough to roll a joint the size of a baseball bat. Unfortunately, however, the CD no longer contains rolling papers of any size. Not to mention the Rolling Stone's crotch-centric “Sticky Fingers” album (1971), with its actual zipper, mock belt and boxer briefs -- another product of the aberrant mind of Andy Warhol.

My Argentine grandmother and Mexican grandfather used to own a record store in Los Angeles specializing in Spanish language music, catering to the homesick looking for familiar sounds or some advice from my opinionated grandmother who ran the place. My grandfather, a DJ and a musician, built all the furniture and squeezed as many speakers as he could into the small space. The walls were covered in records. But as my mom says,  “art had very little to do with it"-- almost every record featured a lady in a very tiny bikini who I doubt had anything to do with the actual making of the music.

Many past album covers have become iconic images. The Beatles in profile on “Abbey Road” (1969), the baby swimming towards the dollar bill on the cover of “Nevermind” (1991), the plain bricks of “The Wall” (1979) and Patti Smith looking fierce in suspenders on “Horses” (1975) are a few that come to mind. The Warhol banana on the "Velvet Underground & Nico" (1967) record is hung on dorm room walls everywhere.

One cover that has always stuck with me is the cover of “Tutu” (1986), a close up of Miles Davis’ face taking up the full frame, perfectly lit and stoic. Jazz album covers present some of the most passionate, unaffected and artistic examples of album artwork. Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk and others of that ilk had album covers that somehow captured the feeling of their music, emotions that are difficult to define. As Bill Evans said, "it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.” So I will leave it at that.

As a product of the transition from vinyl to CD, the frame for album artwork changed from a large canvas to a space the size of a postcard. Although there are some imaginative album covers today, we have become less focused on albums as a whole entity. The creation of album visuals used to be an art -- all in pursuit of that feeling.