Album Cover Hall of Fame’s Interview with artist/photographer Peter Wilkins

Pet Sounds from the New Grooves series by Peter Wilkins

By Mike Goldstein, Album Cover Hall of Fame.com

Posted March 23, 2023

In early 2023, I was reading a travel article in the FT about how some of the towns in Newfoundland were working hard to shift their economies from what they’ve relied on for ages – fishing the icy offshore waters – and learning to rely more on tourism as a source of income (if you’ve never been, you’ve got to go – it’s beautiful up there!). In the article, they introduced a local entrepreneur who was chasing two of his passions – fine art and distilling spirits – and as a fan of the products produced by both of those pursuits, it really caught my attention. What also caught my attention was that the person being featured – Peter Wilkins – had produced a series of art pieces that were based on his photographs of album covers spinning at high speed on turntables so that the resulting circular images showed only the relative positions of the graphics and their respective colors. For example, his image based on the Are You Experienced? LP cover for Jimi Hendrix shows circles of the psychedelic reds, yellows and blues (and all of the variations within) but, when you see it, you know immediately that it’s that record cover! I reached out to Peter and asked him whether he’d be up for an interview about his process and the inspiration behind this particular series (available for viewing and purchase on the website of his local gallery partner Christina Parker – https://christinaparkergallery.com/artist/peter-wilkins/). I also wanted to learn a lot more about the seaweed-flavored gin he manufactures (not yet available in the U.S., sadly, but all the more reason to venture on up there sometime soon, perhaps), but that’s for another article…

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

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

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

February might be a bit shorter than other months, but that doesn’t mean that we album art/artist fans were short-changed in the news department. Starting off with the Grammy Awards and continuing with new exhibitions, art and book releases and a lot of ancillary items, there’s plenty for us fans of album cover art/artistry to dig into, so let’s cut the chit-chat and take a look at what I’ve put together for you.

Preliminary judging has begun on the entries vying 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.

This month’s newsletter contains a human-curated (as opposed to an AI-generated – we’re old school here at the ACHOF) summary of the news in all of the main topic areas, with updates and info about several new museum and gallery exhibitions, new auctions and sales and a goodly number of art and artist-related articles. As always, I’d like to once again say “thanks” for your help and support, so  let’s get started with some updates on the award shows recently ended and currently in progress:

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

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

Greeting to you all – nice to see you all again!

Once again, I have to apologize for leaving you without an update for the month of November, but my wife and I decided to brave the travel scene to complete a vacation trip we’d started in late 2019 that had to be truncated a) by a death in the family and b) that crazy COVID-19 thing that shut things down a bit for a year or two. This journey, which took us to NYC and then over to the U.K. and Ireland, was quite restorative and, I must admit, was timed so that we’d be out of the country on November 8^th so we’d be able to have some distance between us and the pre-and-post-election media madness for a while. Of course, there was no escaping the news, but at least it was offset by all of the excitement that took place in the UK’s government while we were there, and we enjoyed the scenery/people/food there so much that it kept us in the right frame of mind, allowing us to return after a month with some degree of sanity and appreciation of life’s better things in tact.

Of course, during our travels we came across a number of album/music art-related things that added to the overall enjoyment of the experience, including a visit to the site of the new (set to open in its entirety in 2024) Universal Hip-Hop Museum in the Bronx Marketplace (NYC), with a tour provided by the museum’s director, Rocky Bucano; a visit to Liverpool, England (our first) that included an escorted overview provided by designer/author/all around great guy Andrew Dinely (of the Soft Octopus design studio there) that also included a stop at the British Music Experience – an “immersive exhibition” that takes attendees through an illustrated (via memorabilia, videos, etc.) review of the immense and diverse pop music scene in the U.K., from its beginnings in the 1950s through the most-recent BRIT Award-winning artists, and several other finds along the way (such as a memorial sculpture dedicated to the late Irish rock guitarist Rory Gallagher). I’ll be including brief articles about that as I unpack the info gathers and photos taken over the course of the next month or so.

Of course, while I was away, the first ACHOF Reader’s Poll took place, and the results of the voting will be shared a bit later in this newsletter. At the same time, another major album art-related poll – Art Vinyl’s Best Art Vinyl Awards – began gathering votes on its site (see more on this a little later as well) and the Recording Academy here in the U.S. released the names of the nominees for their upcoming Grammy Awards voting, with results to be announced early next year. Lots of great art and artistry on display, so it’ll be interesting to see how the voters/voting public responds to the announcements of the top vote-getters in all of these competitions.

Album Cover Hall of Fame’s News Update and Link Summary for October, 2022

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

Greetings to you all. I have to first warn you that this month’s edition of the ACHOF newsletter will be a truncated one as I’ve had to spend a lot of time and energy managing several things that have popped up and couldn’t be ignored. It will also force me to put off the publishing of the next summary until December 1^st.

Sorry about that.

In any case, there should be enough basic info now to get you the basics, but it’ll be up to you to click through to get “the rest of the story” (apologies to Mr. Harvey).

I’m also working feverishly to set up the voting for this year’s fan-driven voting for “the best of the best of” in all of the main ACHOF categories, so be on the lookout in a week or so for the official announcement and a link to the polling site. Voting will be open from October 10^th thru November 13^th, with the final tallies announced right before Thanksgiving here in the U.S.. It’ll be exciting to see who the fan favorites are in each category – tough choices must be made, but let’s do our best to honor all of those whose names will be on the lists.  

Thanks in advance for your help and your patience while I get my world back in order. Now, on with the newsletter.

Mike G

Album Cover Hall of Fame’s News Update and Link Summary for September, 2022

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

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

A late-Summer greeting to you all.

For the past 10 years, the ACHOF has worked to recognize and promote the talents of the people who’ve brought music fans and art collectors (and hybrids of both activities) the best in retail and online music packaging, graphics and photography. Helped each year by asking a panel of curators, gallerists, music marketing execs and writers/researchers who cover the topic, I’ve been able to deliver these details to my readers and, once a year in November, present the top vote-getters in our annual poll as inductees into the hallowed (virtual) halls of the ACHOF. What I haven’t been able to do is ask this site’s visitors and fans about their favorite album art-makers, and so to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the launch of the ACHOF, I’m going to do just that.

Later next month, I will be posting a poll that will allow you to review the past winners in each of the active categories and then ask you to select your most-admired art directors, illustrators, designers and photographers, who’ll then be placed in special categories that will be called…well, what will we call them? We don’t want to call them “the best”, nor do we want to repurpose some of the popular names that the awards industry has used over time – “People’s Choice”, “Fan Favorites”, “Vox Populi”, “Diamond/Platinum/Gold Medal Winning”, etc. A quick trip to the thesaurus presents words and phrases like “title holder”, “prize winner” and “top dog”, among others, along with some that I think are a bit over the top, such as “conquering hero”, “vanquisher” and “numero uno”, so while I know that it must be something memorable and appropriate, I don’t think I’m quite ready to commit to anything. Now that I think about it, perhaps we should also rely on our readers to present their ideas for this project, keeping this year’s efforts all about YOUR notions for what’s good and right, so I’ll be adding a poll question for this task as well. Eager to see what you come up with – we have a LOT of creative types reading this newsletter, so I’m sure something great will show up.

Thanks in advance for your help. Now, back to the matters at hand.

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

Album Cover Hall of Fame’s News Update and Link Summary for July, 2022, posted July 1, 2022 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

Happy pre-Independence Day greetings to you all. We here in Chicagoland have gone through several days of nearly 100-degree heat as we passed from Spring into Summer, so we can only hope that things moderate a bit soon so we can leave our air-conditioned cocoons and enjoy the outdoors a bit. Wish us luck, and we’ll return the favor.

The month of June did include the conclusion of another auction featuring a rare item of original album art – the cover painting for one of the late rapper Tupac Shakur’s albums – which hit a fairly-impressive sales number when all of the bidding was done, the release of some fine art books featuring the works of some of the music business’ best-known designers and photographers and the passing of one of rock music’s (and the comic book/fantasy publishing world’s) better-known illustrators, Ken Kelly, along with a lot of interesting editorial work about album cover images and the people that make them so, with all that to consider, I’m suggesting that you take a moment away from the summertime activities you might typically enjoy and take a few moments to review and absorb all of the items and links I’ve shared with you this month.

 

ACHOF Interview with Adnan Lotia about his LEGO-ized album cover art project

Three examples of Adnan’s work – Innervisions (Stevie Wonder). Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd) and Abbey Road (The Beatles)

Posted April 27^th, 2022 by Mike Goldstein, AlbumCoverHallofFame.com

I’d written about a Brooklyn, NY-based artist named Adnan Lotia and his album cover-inspired works – made using LEGO products – last November, but friend of the ACHOF Lyle Waisman (www.icongallery.com) recently sent me a link to an updated article he found on the Moss & Fog art and design site that contains a lot of nice photos of Lotia’s efforts, which you can read at https://mossandfog.com/impressively-detailed-album-covers-recreated-entirely-using-legos/.

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

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

Entering the second full month of Summer, I find myself a bit perplexed as to how I’m supposed to approach living Life each day. While my wife and I have enjoyed getting out a bit more, we’re still very wary about spending time around our fellow human beings – particularly, the ones who are insisting that “everything’s back to normal” and, as such, looking at those of us still wearing masks as people who are holding back progress in some way. Having recently graduated into “senior citizenry”, I’m now free to become the COF (crotchety old fart) that I prefer to be so, you do your thing and I’ll do mine and, as part of what I’m choosing to do, I’m going to continue to search out items of interest to album cover art fans and share them with you all in my monthly news summaries, regardless of your vaccination status.

This month’s edition of the ACHOF News Update and Summary includes a nice crop of album cover artist/art updates and not one but two examples of ACHOF original content, those being the two interviews I’ve posted with two pairs of creative execs working for Sony Music Entertainment – Frank and Dave and Meghan and Annie – who were kind enough to share their takes on how they have gone about producing several award-winning box sets and special-edition packages. You’ll find links to both of those articles in the “Artist News and Interviews” section of this month’s summary.

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.

ACHOF Breaking News Update for February 12, 2021

 

Album Cover Hall of Fame’s Breaking News Update for Valentine’s Day weekend, 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted 2/12/2021 by Mike Goldstein, Album Cover Hall of Fame.com

My gift to you – a special mid-month Valentine’s Day weekend update – some things just can’t wait! Here are some timely examples that represent my efforts to show my readers just how much their happiness means to me: