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

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

Greetings to you all. Now that June is upon us and thoughts of summertime fun and frolic begin to fill the empty (or is it “not yet filled”?) spaces of our minds, I know that it is up to me to work even harder to bring you things on the ACHOF site that have enough intrigue to grab your eyeballs and whatever attention span you have left to take a look at and, if I’ve done my job right, enjoy and pass on to your friends and others you think might enjoy them as well. This month’s summary, I believe, has enough examples of “who is doing what” in the world of album cover art and packaging that it may be worth your while to put down the barbeque tongs for a minute, grab your favorite beverage and scroll down the page a bit to see what’s on offer.

In this month’s summary, you’ll find updated reports about new and ongoing exhibitions, news about the ongoing efforts and output of some of the top talents working in music packaging, new items available for sale (including several new books and some interesting new prints) or at auction and scores of other items on our favorite topics. One item I’m hoping you’ll look at is the link in the Exhibitions section to a virtual display of the recent show of photographer Richard Beland’s works at the Brian Liss Gallery in Toronto as its really well-done and shows off how today’s technology can be used to transport us to places we might not see otherwise.

ACHOF Resources – Box Sets and Special/Limited-Edition Packages – An Overview (cont’d)

posted March 27th, 2022 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

3 Selections from the author’s personal collection – The Beatles (White Album), Voyager Box Set and Let It Bleed by the Rolling Stones

Part 4 – The biggest, best-selling, most-expensive, most-valuable box/limited-edition sets.

Now that you’ve been given a proper introduction to the history and ongoing development of these collectible record packages in the previous posting, I was thinking that it might be fun and interesting to see the extremes that musical acts and record labels might be willing to go to deliver anthologies to record buyers and fans. To do this, I set out to discover what are the biggest sets ever produced, simply measured by the number of discs included in each package, and then produce a by-no-means-definitive reference that will most certainly be added to in impressive fashion over time. Keeping my focus on albums (vinyl and CDs) and avoiding going off on a tangent that would include sets of 45RPM and CD singles(!), I’ve assembled a list that touches on a number of genres, led by classical music producers, with rock, jazz and pop represented was well. Note that, in many cases, the total number of discs included in a set might consist of a combination of different media, such as audio CDs, Blu-Ray audio CDs and DVDs. For example, King Crimson’s 1969 (Court of the Crimson King) is a 26-disc set consisting of 20 CDs, 4 Blu-Ray audio discs and 2 DVDs:

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

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

Posted right around April 1, 2021 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Spring Greetings to you all from Chicagoland. The weather has become rather consistently pleasant, allowing us to venture outside the house a bit, even sitting on outside patios at some of the local eating establishments (what a treat!). We’re still waiting for our turn at the local COVID vaccine center but, with any luck, we’ll get our shots in the next month or so and, if the rest of our fellow countrymen continue to do the right thing and help build our herd immunity, we might all be able to get out a bit more later this Spring/Summer. I’m not counting on everyone doing the right thing on behalf of the rest of the local citizenry – the loonies continue to proudly flout their warped notions of what “freedom” really means – so it’ll be quite some time before I think we’re “back to normal”, but let’s hope for the best.

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 Hall of Fame News Update and Summary for May, 2020

 

 

 

 

Album Cover Hall of Fame News Update and Summary – May, 2020

Posted May 1, 2020 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Greetings from my home office, a place where I’ve spent a good chunk of the last month sitting at my desk, reading emails and news stories and watching videos (both live and recorded) on a million different subjects. I’m trying so hard not to watch too much TV (I did, however, find a 9-show series produced in 2015 by Irish TV called Treyvaud’s Travels that left me longing to spend the rest of my life in SW Ireland – highly recommended) and I’ve read several books while stretched out in my comfy chair but, quite honestly, the one thing that’s perhaps made me the happiest – and something I did a lot less of when I was free to do whatever I wanted without catching the plague – has been staying in contact with some of the people I know around the world, getting their unique perspectives of how they’re living their lives and maintaining a positive lookout on life in spite of the hardships we’re all having.

Keeping this in mind, I still work hard to reserve time to continue typing like a madman to prep interviews, articles and news summaries for all my chums out there, most of who are, like me, stuck indoors. Accepting that my readers’ priorities are not so focused on what’s happening in the world of album cover art and packaging, I’m continuing to proffer a truncated-yet-informative summary document both to keep fans of album art informed and to prove that creative people are continuing to create and entertain while we ride this storm out together.

Album Cover Hall of Fame Breaking News Update for February 8, 2019

Album Cover Hall of Fame’s Breaking News Update for February 8, 2019

 

 

 

By Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Here are three album cover art and book-related stories, just in time for your weekend reading pleasure:

1) Just heard from rock photographer Glen Wexler today regarding the impressive consumer response to his upcoming new book Glen Wexler: The 80s Portrait Sessions. You may recall my earlier report about his super-successful Kickstarter project of late last year (which was fully-subscribed at the time), but now he’s worked it out with his publisher and will be offering 50 more first-run copies to his fans at the same pre-order price of $75, with the book shipping in about three weeks. He’s still accepting orders for the fine art prints, posters and deluxe-edition book box set (which includes a print of Michael Jackson), so if you hurry on over to   https://www.facebook.com/glen.wexler/timeline, you’ll be able to see/read more and snap up a copy before they’re gone.

2) Designer and author of one of my most-referenced album art books (Album Art: New Music Graphics) John Foster has launched a new “making of” series of album art articles on The Vinyl Factory site. After the success of his previous sequence of monthly album art summaries (“Judging A Cover By Its Cover”) on the same site, John’s new monthly column will feature one cover he selects for a deep-dive look/see, with the debut article built around artist Dave Thomas (AKA “DLT”) and his work on the package for It Won/t Be Like This All The Time by The Twilight Sad on Rock Action Records – https://thevinylfactory.com/features/twilight-sad-it-wont-be-like-this-record-sleeve-design/

3) I first became aware of the writing skills of author/heavy-metal music aficionado Ramon Oscuro back in 2015 after learning about his book And Justice For Art: Stories About Heavy Metal Album Covers and the regular series of “making of” articles on the topic of metal music album art that appears on the Metal Underground site. As I wrote at the time, the book included the stories behind over 50 memorable metal covers and explored the enormous range of styles and subject material featured in those images.  Now, for 2019, Ramon is prepping a new, limited-edition Volume 2 of his book – 252 illustrated pages of “exclusive interviews and comments by members of Judas Priest, Slayer, Soulfly, Amorphis, Testament, Carcass, Orphaned Land, Cannibal Corpse, Emperor, Candlemass, etc., and legendary visual artists like Costin Chioreanu, Eliran Kantor, Travis Smith, Dan Seagrave, Valnoir, and more.”

Whatever you might think of the subject material, there’s no denying the artistry often on display. There have been some beautifully-disturbing covers created in this genre, so it is nice to be able to better-understand – in the words of the people who produced these works – their underpinnings and back stories. Pre-orders for the 200 author-signed copies (sensibly priced at $58.97 each, to ship in March) that will be produced in this edition are now being accepted, so I’d suggest clicking on over to his order page at https://andjusticeforart.bigcartel.com/product/and-justice-for-art-stories-about-heavy-metal-album-covers-volume-2 to reserve one for your collection now.

If you’d like to take a quick video tour through the book in advance, he’s made that easy to do via this link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_eah8XwA9A