In my youth/young adulthood, I was known to purchase unknown artists because the cover art led me to believe I knew what the music would be like. Sometimes it worked for me (Fogelberg’s “Souvenirs,” the Talbot Brothers self-titled Warner Bros album that followed the demise of Mason Proffit, and the first Ozark Mountain Daredevils album) , and sometimes it didn’t (Michael Murphey’s very lightweight “Blue Sky Night Thunder”). Probably the only time I ever purchased just because I liked the art, with no regard to the music, was in '76 when I bought Uriah Heep’s “Magician’s Birthday.” That one didn’t stick around long (which of these things is not like the others?).
In the early 70’s I knew at least two people who would buy Olivia Newton John albums, consign the record to the back of a cupboard, and mount the album covers on their walls. In view of her music they may have had the right approach,
I went to a talk a few years ago by Kaupo Kikkas, an Estonian photographer, who has a very distinctive style for classical musicians and album covers. The last picture, of Avishai Cohen, is fabulous. Estonia is famous for forests.
I was always fond of the Boston covers with the guitar spaceship theme,
Candy-O is a given as it came out when I was a teen into girls…
And cars…
But the best cover has to be Moody Blues - Long Distance Voyager solely because I studied it for weeks (as we always did) before I spied the Voyager satellite in the sky in the 1840 Thomas Webster “Punch” painting - thus the album name… duh!
