Album Covers

July 26th, 2007Blog0 comments

So a great thing that the iPhone does is display album covers of the song you’re listening to on its screen. The screen is large, colorful and has a high DPI so the image comes out crisp and neat.

I was a kid during the CD revolution — during that time album covers shrank and lost the prominence they had in the 70s. Vinyl gave a band a large canvas and a lot of room to play around with visuals. But by the time the 90s/21st century rolled around, covers were pretty much an afterthought. There were some iconic covers out there (Nirvana’s “Nevermind” for instance), but nothing you would want to stare at while listening to the music.

So I’ve been diligently collecting album cover art that my digital music collection is missing. Some of these covers are amazing — they complete the song. The two halves bring you back to specific times and places in your life. The whole thing becomes complete.

I spend a lot of time listening to music while doing something else — writing, walking somewhere, driving somewhere. I rarely just sit there and listen to the music, give it my full attention. I’ve got to start doing that more often. Just listen.

I made a recon tour of the Westwood Branch of the LA Library. The facility is brand new, has free wifi and power plugs everywhere, and is fairly cavernous inside.

I think this will be a good place to work this summer. The only caveat is that it closes at 8pm. But it should be fairly easy to move operations to Borders which is right down the street.