Professor Elam

Tuesday May 4 2010

A new book suggests that record album covers often outlasted the art of the music on the album. 

Indeed, when records were a foot across, the album cover allowed for an artistic statement, that was what drew your attention in the store. There are indeed famous album covers. As albums became CDs, the chance for a big art statement was lost. 

The Sgt Pepper cover for example, released in June of 1967 featured a variety of pop icons standing behind the Beatles. Notice the Beatles themselves are standing looking at, well, themselves dressed as the Sgt Pepper band, well, at any rate, no one discusses album covers any more. 

The San Antonio Art Museum currently features a psychedelic art display. What is that you say, well

This 1967 Disraeli Gears album by Cream is about a psychedelic as they came. Tie dye and black lights were all the rage, hmm, long hair too, change was in the air. 

Changes like this in mainstream music and art were predicting massive social change at the time. 

The next year the Chicago Seven would disrupt the entire Democrat convention, protests would spill into the street of LA and across America over the Viet Nam War, the Tet Offensive broke US spirit in 1968, 

and the stock market topped in 1966 ushering in the same kind of era then that we are experiencing now.