I miss LPs in general and album covers especially. Their size was big enough to fill with some interesting art. The recording and its cover were part of a package of creative output. Can one truly get as much from "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" if they have that wonderfully busy album cover shrunk down to a CD, or even worse a cassette?
I used to sit in front of the record player and hold the album jackets and pore over them while the music played. I especially loved fold-out album covers such as "Let It Be" and "The Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl" (which is out of print I'm sorry to say). From a handful of still photographs or illustrations (such as the cartoons on the Beach Boys' "Spirit of America") my imagination got much fuel.
One the most clever LP covers I ever saw was that of the Monty Python recording "
Another Monty Python Record," which looked like a Beethoven LP over which the Monty Python info had been
childishly scribbled with a crayon. The effect was so realistic that I assumed they had truly copied an actual Beethoven record cover, down to the small print liner notes on the back. I didn't bother to read the liner notes on the back for years because they appeared to be a scholarly article on Beethoven -- what could be more boring?
One day I did happen to sit down to read the back of the record. I can't do it any justice but suffice to say it was very funny and clever, starting out like a serious essay on Beethoven and very gradually becoming more and more ridiculous as it kept inserting remarks about Beethoven's tennis career and his behavior on the court (which, apparently, was akin to John McEnroe's, naturally).
