bummer! I know nothing about this guy but I did recognize some of his work the rock band Yes.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2014/aug/31/artist-roger-dean-at-70-in-pictures

That's the reason I know of him, because of the Yes album concepts. It was strongly adapted for the stage look when they toured to support albums like Tales From Topographic Oceans. RIP Roger Dean, your art is as much a part of my Yes experience as their music, and that's saying a lot for me being a huge Yes fan.

RIP to both Dean and to album cover art.

RIP Roger, you and Derek Riggs created some of the most mind-blowing stuff I've ever seen. (Iron Maiden "Somewhere in Time" on vinyl, in particular.)

Rick Griffin has always been my favourite,
the Anton Kelly Stanley Mouse team being
second.

RIP,
loved his surreal pictures, from album covers to SciFi novel covers.

I've always liked this one, from the inside of Yes' "Fragile" album.

Yes, back when that meant something.

Can anyone a name a meaningful album cover for a 21st century release?



The Jedi Master

Meaningful as in the album cover conveyed some kind of artistic message? None.

There are though some memorable album covers like the one for "American Idiot".

It doesn't help that CD cases just don't give an artist much room to indulge himself. It's like comparing the detail in a 1:32 scale airplane model to a 1:144 scale model. For most bands the album cover as art for art's sake has gone the way of the floor-model TV or stereo, and with Roger Dean and Storm Thorgerson (from Hipgnosis) gone 2 distinct styles are gone as well.

My 16 year old nephew has recently become fascinated by vinyl records and by extension album cover art. Gone are the days when listeners would lay on their bed with a pair of Koss headphones and examine the beauty of cover art and liner notes. He's discovering that now with classics like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Tom Petty and Aerosmith. I'm trying to get him to try YES. I don't think he has the patience for YES just yet since he plays guitar and likes to play those other band's songs. Give him some time. I'll get him hooked.

Now a days everything is digital. Sadly, the demise of cover art started with 8-Track and rolled out of control with cassette and CD. Who remembers going into the local Music Land to browse albums? It was either go to the arcade or the record store. Now both are relics of our past, with most arcades being at summer attraction locations instead of every mall in the U.S. like when we were young. Ahhhhhhhhhh..... Girls with bell bottomed tight fit pants, cowl neck sweaters and Farrah Faucette hair. But that's another topic.

RiP Roger Dean.

What's funny is that in the 1980's and 1990's I would always go to the book stores and the PC game stores whenever I went to the mall and even those two are now relics of the past.

Egghead
Babbages
B. Dalton's
Waldenbooks


All of them long gone!

Yep, my favorite mall destinations, too.

Arcades began to fade first, where I was. Arcade games lost out on the "wow" experience factor. So many were just a TV and joystick, there was nothing special there anymore compared to home.

I always wondered why the arcade makers didn't go back to the old EM style presentations to recover their play value. There is no reason that the old mirrors, strobes, and such can't integrate with a few video displays/projectors and 2D/3D graphics. That creates an experience that simply can't be had on a 2D monitor alone.

Some of what I mean, back in the electro-mechanical days. Two videos, one shows better the play, the other the cabinet, etc. Imagine this done with modern game tech on multi-screen "smoke-and-mirrors" hardware in the cabinets.






And this, just intriguing how some of those EM arcades worked:

Aw, come on, who here hasn't curled up with a magnifying glass to scan that little postage stamp on your MP3 player?



The Jedi Master

You really are out of touch with music in the last 14 (at least) years Jedi







of course though... album covers and art was only meaningful pre 2000's ....

Considering I have never seen those before, and frankly that second one is just an ink blot someone passed off as art (I hate those pretentious artists who think the idea trumps the execution), my statement stands.

If almost no one sees them, they can't be meaningful as a piece of art. It has to be communicated, and album covers in the 21st century is probably the worst possible way to communicate art that now exists.

Hey, I have the greatest novel ever written...but I'm not letting anyone read it. In fact, I'll burn it so no one does! But it's still the best ever.



The Jedi Master

Your statement may stand, but i disagree As you know art is a personal thing/taste, like music, books and film. Someone could look at the covers in this topic and see a very boring text YES that anyone could whip up in a paint program in ten seconds or a lizardy mother creature looking out for her scared young and go..oh..i get it fragile and think no more of it unless they listen to the album and click and feel it. I would pick it up and look at it, but i wouldn't buy it.

Same with the pics i have posted, the Sarah Blasko arty farty one you don't like as it does nothing for you, because you don't know her style or music. To me, that cover speaks Sarah Blasko and also what she is feeling musically at that point, same with the Megadeth cover and their political/war songs. Both would stand out to me in a music shop as they would catch my eye and i would more than likely pick them up, and leaf through the inside at least.

Well, considering that almost everyone who releases music still releases it on CD, and when you buy digital music the cover art IS there on both the download site and on whatever you use for a music player, I don't think it's a matter of nobody being ABLE to see them (like your novel) but rather nobody BOTHERING to look at them. Which, I believe, is a direct result of most likely never having bought an album and opened the cover up to its full coffee table book size and LOOKING at 2 square feet of artwork (plus whatever was on the inside.)

In addition to the space limitations I mentioned earlier, the "album" format slowly giving way to buying individual songs isn't helping matters any. I can see a day when songs are only released digitally, and artists will adjust by just not recording an album's worth of material.

A brief exposition of 40+ years of album cover art, some with a message, some just for art's sake.


















[img]http://ironmaiden-bg.com/en/images/stories/covers/sit1/cover1.jpg?width=300&height=100[/img]




And some from the 21st century! (In addition to Ajay's Megadeth cover, which I was going to use. Great album, BTW!)

A question, Jedi Master. You said:



How many people do you think saw the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel before it became a popular tourist attraction? No, I have to disagree with you; the conception and creation are what make art, mot how many people see it.