This was the time of the Led Zeppelin III “info wheel” cover; Alice Cooper's School’s Out with the vinyl wrapped in a pair of lace panties and enclosed in a die-cut, unfolding desk, complete with legs; the Velvet Underground’s Andy Warhol “banana sticker” cover and the Stones’ zipper-enhanced Sticky Fingers. And it wasn’t just the cover; the Aussie group Split Enz laser-etched a shimmery geometric pattern into the vinyl of their True Colours album, similar to the big “S” emblem embedded in the grooves of the first Superman movie soundtrack. Chicago (arguably the most “logo-centric“ band of all time) had a live Carnegie Hall album featuring four individually sleeved records gathered in a slipcover box stuffed with a six-foot wall poster, a 11” x 11” booklet about the history of Carnegie Hall, individual photos and bios of the band members, and a voter registration pamphlet! You had to bring it home in a wheelbarrow.

(Anecdote: I worked for a company that did specialty limited-edition vinyl pressings -- clear green albums for a group called The Greenes, orange Halloween albums, albums with black and gray marbled streaks, etc. One summer while working overtime on his own, Earl the press operator got his thumb caught in the press, which automatically shut down with his hand still stuck in it, leaving him standing for hours waiting for someone to rescue him, and the grooves for ELO’s “Turn to Stone” permanently pressed into his thumb, but that’s another story).

In the late 70s, the cassette finally beat down the vinyl LP in sales. While everyone was inhaling their recording budgets via wake-up powder, punk came along and put a stake in the heart of album cover excess, at least for a little while. Then along came the CD. Most in-store music promotion went into a tailspin (remember, this was before MTV made video gods of everyone with a funny haircut). Record companies tried the awkward, instantly disposable “long box” (a silly exercise in unplanned obsolescence) and wall-sized posters to keep the artists larger than life.

The design community in the early-to-mid 80s complained endlessly about the advent of CDs (they were just getting over cassettes), and I'd have to say the visual “aura” that surrounded many performers was dimmed when the numbers tipped in favour of digital discs. There was even a scare that the whole industry would turn to DCC (digital cassettes), or worse, DATs (digital audio tapes), about the size of a matchbox. How’re you gonna fit Mick Jagger’s lips on that?

In a blog entitled “The Worst Record Covers of All Time,” Brent DiCrescenzo wrote:

“Mp3s and their cigarette pack-size players kill the record cover, if not the format and concept of “the album” itself. Once music is released solely in digital form, accompanying artwork will likely remain as a downloadable bonus for a while, but will eventually likely be replaced with short animations, a more interactive and fluid video, or nothing at all.

Critics and audiophiles can whine otherwise, but pop music is indelibly linked to visuals. Iconic artists not only realize this but revel in the marriage of sound and image. A musical world without Warhol’s banana, the Polaroid collage of the Talking Heads, or the Kangols and Adidas of Run-D.M.C. loses part of its flavor. It also abolishes at least 50% of the merchandising potential of bands. Pop, from bubblegum to rock to hip-hop, unifies style and substance.”

So here we are. I’ve got an iPod that I love, but, even though I like their music, I couldn't tell the members of Radiohead from Coldplay if one of them threw up on me, not even if Gwyneth and baby Apple threw up on me, too. I barely glance at booze-it-up reality-show-dominated MTV any more, and my music comes largely without pictures now. Have I lost something? I think I have. I notice I’m not as interested in the artist's lives anymore, except for the golden few the media decides to inflate beyond all recognition, and by then I’m bored stupid with the hype. I’m more prone to purchase a single song and ignore “albums” because they don’t seem to be as thematically or musically coherent as Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On or Sgt. Pepper or Pink Floyd’s The Wall or even XTC’s English Settlement. Not that most albums have to hang their music on a Big Theme, but it seems to me that recent music collections have generally had far more filler than thriller.