Album Cover Hall of Fame News Update and Link Summary for January, 2024

Posted January 1, 2024 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Hello and Happy New Year 2024 to all of you – Hope that you all enjoyed your Holidays, however you chose to celebrate them. For those of you who, like me, used the time to think a lot about what’s yet to come this year and beyond, it gave me time to be grateful for the friends and acquaintances I’ve made over the years both here in the U.S. and overseas, as it is was your support that has kept me doing what I do and thinking of all the ways that I might better-deliver the stories that I know those friends and acquaintances would enjoy and most benefit from having ingested.

I also find these times both frightening and exhilarating, thinking about what might effect the quality of our lives (and those of our fellow citizens) going forward and what we might do to make the best of whatever might happen. It’s heavy stuff, I know, but it helps to keep things in perspective and my own thoughts focused on what’s truly important. Good health, peace (and peace of mind), strength of character, truth and justice and the comfort of others less-well-off than myself – those are the things that are truly important. Art and music (and how they’re combined) are important methods by which modern civilizations represent and express their best and worst aspects (and everything between) but, if you’re sick, or unsafe or living in fear and hunger, their importance pales, so it’s up to all of us to do all we can to take care of the basics before we enjoy the benefits of what the arts can deliver.

On that note, let’s start this month’s summary – the first of the New Year – with an overview of the categories featured in our regular updates – album art/artist-related exhibitions, interviews, sales/auctions and other miscellaneous (but still very interesting) bits and, at the end, a brief paragraph on a related topic that I found quite interesting and, therefore, motivated to share with you all.

Album Cover Hall of Fame News Update and Link Summary for December, 2023

Posted December 1, 2023 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Hello and Happy Holidays to all of you – this is the time of year that we’re all supposed to look back and reflect on all that’s happened over the past 12 months and use those thoughts to consider how the next 12 months might be better lived (and, perhaps, how we might all make the world a little better place for ourselves and our fellow citizens of the world). It has certainly been an interesting year for me, having had the opportunity to visit several places, meet up with old friends and correspondents and learn more about life and all its mysteries. It’s also been an interesting year in that it represented the 50^th anniversary of the release of many noteworthy albums – debut records from Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, Queen and Lynyrd Skynyrd, concept albums such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Alan Parsons’ Tubular Bells and Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and dozens of other memorable titles including several of my own faves such as Selling England By The Pound from Genesis, Bowie’s Pinups and Alladin Sane (a very busy boy that year), Frank Zappa and The Mothers’ Over-nite Sensation, Brothers & Sisters from the Allman Brothers band, The Who’s Quadrophenia, the creepy-yet-beautiful, HR Giger-illustrated Brain Salad Surgery for Emerson Lake & Palmer and Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, which features some amazing Drew Struzan-penned illustrations in the artwork gracing it’s package. For folks of a certain age group, these are mementos of truly a banner year in both music and music packaging.

Album Cover Hall of Fame News Update and Link Summary for February, 2023

Album Cover Hall of Fame’s News Update and Link Summary for February, 2023

Posted February 1, 2023 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

January was a busy month in the world of album cover art and artists and, to be honest with you, it was all a bit overwhelming as I’ve begun to do the work to re-organize ACHOF-related content into the various silos that will ultimately make up the two sites I’ll be maintaining going forward. I’ve spoken with several people whose experience and gut instincts I appreciate and have a pretty good idea as to how to best proceed so, with your support and patience, I think we’ll all be happy with the new/revised formats that will come out of these efforts.

February looks to be chock-full of exciting news to come, first with the announcement of the winners of this year’s Grammy Awards in the Packaging categories (to be posted here on February 5^th as soon as they’re announced), which closely follow the Best Art Vinyl Awards results that were posted in early January (click here to see the results, if you missed my original article) and which included some really great examples of human-generated art and design. Voting will also begin soon for another noted industry award – the Making Vinyl Packaging Awards and, as one of the judges on the panel tasked to review the hundreds of submissions received, I’m curious and eager to see what always turns out to me a fascinating cross-section of examples of album covers/packages coming in from all over the world.

Album Cover Hall of Fame News Update and Link Summary for April, 2022

Posted April 1, 2022 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

It’s been a busy month of March here in the sprawling ACHOF editorial offices, with your editorial team (me, myself and Mike G.) working hard to deliver the best and most up-to-date info and research/writing available on the subject of album cover artists and their work. I’m happy to report that Part 2 of the 2-part series on box sets/limited-edition packages has been posted – https://albumcoverhalloffame.wordpress.com/2022/03/27/achof-resources-box-sets-and-special-limited-edition-packages-an-overview-contd/ – and so now you can spend even more time boning up on the latest information, presented along with the opinions and experiences expressed by some of the best-equipped people in the business to offer these priceless items.

Album Cover Hall of Fame News Update and Link Summary for March, 2022

Posted March 1, 2022 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com (updated 3/4/22)

After nearly forgetting that February is a short month and that I had 3-4 fewer days to prep this monthly summary, something sparked inside my head and I realized that I had to get things together, so what you’re reading today comes as the result of a couple of self-inflicted bonks to the sides of my head. As a result, I’m hoping that everything is in order and makes sense since, after reviewing all of the materials I’d gathered, there seems to be a lot going on world-wide that should be of interest to fans of album cover art and the people that make it, so get ready for a fairly-lengthy summary article.

Album Cover Hall of Fame News Update and Link Summary for July 2021

Posted July 1, 2021 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Early Summer greetings to you all from Chicagoland – where it’s not 115 degrees in the shade, thank goodness – and welcome to this month’s edition of the ACHOF News Update and Summary. As we approach the Independence Day weekend break, where many of us will be experiencing our first in-person get-togethers in over a year (us with a pre-cleared group, just to be safe), I thought that I’d cobble together a quick-and-to-the-point monthly news summary for you all to read in case you get a moment or two to yourselves and want to escape a bit into the fantasy world that surrounds the lives and work of our favorite album cover artists.

I know that I’ve been promising the imminent publication of my article on box sets and limited-edition packages and my interview with Dave and Frank from Sony Music, so while I’m late with those, I can report that I’ve finished the transcription and should have the interview up for your review very soon. In prepping that interview, I also found an interview that I’d never published with the talented team (also from Sony) who had put together the Grammy-winning package for Weird Al Yankovic a couple of years back, so I’ll be able to reward you for your patience with some nice bonus content as well.

Album Cover Hall of Fame News Update and Link Summary for March 2021

 

 

 

 

Posted March 1, 2021 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Hello again from Chicagoland, where we’ve finally seemed to throw off the worst of Winter and can stop referring to where we live as “the frozen tundra”. While my wife and I are still avoiding having to go out for anything other than food, we have been able to take some walks around the neighborhood and, even better for our senses, our birds (cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches and the occasional woodpecker or two) have returned to our feeder. It’s calming to see that the parts of nature that Man hasn’t yet totally mucked up are still out there and free to travel and interact to their heart’s content. Maybe some day we’ll figure out how to do that as well.

Album Cover Art and Artist News Summary for the Month of February, 2017

ALBUM COVER HALL OF FAME’S ALBUM COVER NEWS RECAP FOR THE MONTH OF FEBRUary, 2017

by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Greetings from Chicagoland. It’s “awards season”, what with the Grammy Awards, BAFTAs, Writer’s Guild and Independent Spirit Awards and, to end the month with a bang,  the Oscars (followed, in a few months, by another flurry including the Billboard, Tony and BET Awards shows). I don’t know about you, but I’m growing a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of these shows and am somewhat confused as regards their relevance beyond the steady stream of production-related income enjoyed by the folks that stage them…Of course, people should be proud of what they do and want to praise the best examples of work within their respective fields of artistic endeavor, but I find it somewhat sad that some of the most-talented people – those working behinds the scenes, with their credits listed well-down from the top (you know, the part that’s sped through at an impossible-to-read pace during on-screen credit rolls) – are only mentioned in passing or, as we saw during the Oscar telecast, relegated to their own sparsely-attended and covered award ceremonies. Trust me, I understand why this is the case. I mean, who wouldn’t rather see a popular musician’s acceptance speech than hear from the recording engineer or the music video director (or the team that created the group’s logo and album cover), so that’s what sponsors and fans expect to see during an award show telecast. I guess that we fans of cover art can only take solace in the fact that you’ll probably see many more people wearing Dark Side of the Moon t-shirts than clothing emblazoned with a photo of Katy Perry thanking her fans, the label, her manager and her accountant for their support…