33 1/3 RPM

Something about old LP's -- had a great conversation with a dear friend about them last week that I wanted to write about here.

How to start. Okay. First of all, when we guys were growing up and our music came packaged in these big 33 1/3 RPM albums, you got a wonderful graphic with the music -- this large cardboard square to hold onto, as you sat in your bellbottoms, or spread out on your belly next to the turntable to listen -- there was a terrific piece of graphic art that accompanied the music. The tiny CD and jewel box just don't come close to the experience you had with the big album covers.

Often as not, there were two-part albums that opened up and you had very large gorgeous pictures of the artist, or other wonderful graphics, bigger and more impressive than any magazine -- ask a graphic artist who worked on album covers -- they know what a sad day it was when they stopped making 33 1/3 covers.

You really got turned on by the pictures or illustrations on those covers -- it was nearly 50% of the experience of the record. My friend was telling me how erotic this Carly Simon album was for him -- and I had to agree. Remember the artwork on the Santana cover? The fantasy drawings on Moody Blues albums? The montage of Beatles heads -- which album was it? -- with the unidentified Beatle who only showed the back of his head. We all spent a lot of time sucking up the images on those albums.

The White Album of the Beatles was shocking and avantgarde when it came out for precisely this reason -- cover art was getting so exquisite, there almost no place to go but WHITE. It was brilliant. And let me remind you again, it was BIG -- 12 square inches.

Also, the covers often showed the artists at nearly life-sized proportions. There's been a lot written about how we psychologically "befriend" a likeness that is the same size as our own head. I think this was at work with old LP's -- you didn't just add an album to your collection -- you invited a cool person into your house.

Here some links on the subject and just wanted to end this by thanking my friend for showing me his cool collection of LP albums. They were great to see, wonderful to touch, and sweet to remember.
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