In days gone by our fore fathers and even the elders of TLOBF would delight in the joys of coloured vinyl, picture discs, gatefold sleeves and all manner of collectable music formats. As music formats by their very nature have got smaller and entered the digital age are we set to lose the optical delights that have often gone into the packaging?

For many music fans as much joy was taken thumbing through the shelves of their local record store as in actually listening to the recordings themselves. Often an LP would jump out at you just because of its fantastic or slighlty quirky artwork. Artists have since been forced to downsize their Da Vinchi-like ambitions with the dawn of the Compact Disc era. Now as more and more music is downloaded are we in danger of losing what some consider to be an extension of the music itself? Cover artwork.

Some artists put more effort into the design of their packaging than others. Its always a disappointment to see your favourite artist resort to a moody shot of the band for the cover of their latest studio offering. Given free reign you would expect them to come up with something more original. That said on occassion a band shot can be the perfect epitome of the music contained within. For example Skunk Anansies debut was a band portrait with Skin to the fore looking bloody hard and her anger was what the band were all about. However when their second and thrid albums also had band portraits for cover artwork you wondered if that was as far as their imagination ran.

Some bands have used their covers to further promote their skills. The Stone Roses used paintings by the creative genius John Squire. As they frequently churned out twelve inch singles in their hey day you could make a nice collection of his paintings reportedly based on the work of Jason Pollock.

The heavy metal genre is famous for its, at times gruesome, collection of cover artworks. Most notably Iron Maiden wowed fans with the ubiquitous Eddie (and often slipping in the odd reference to their beloved West Ham). A halfman/half monster Eddie was found in a variety of poses and he proved so popular that the band would often take him on tour in the form of a 60ft giant Eddie!
The heavy metal Genre have also cleverly utilised type faces for band names which then provide the customer with instant b(r)and recognition; Maiden, Slayer, Megadeth and Metallica spring immediately to mind. The use of iconic band type faces have spread around the music world and it works a treat to sell T-shirts and posters for the likes of Oasis and The Strokes.

Back to the covers…often artists will go further than just interesting artwork and come up with a novel packaging idea. Super Furry Animals collection of B-sides Outspaced came in what can only be described as a nipple shaped sleeve. The disc itself was gold on both sides which was annoying when you found that it was in your CD player upside down. Likewise Spiritualized released Let it Come Down in a jelly mould of a girls head. DJ Shadow harked back to his Vinyl roots with Entroducing being sold in Cardboard sleeves with a nice cotton dust sleeve inside.
And on the subject of Cardboard sleeves, even the humble CD feels a bit more special when it is housed in Cardboard as oppoosed to the awful jewel cases.

As for my favourite artwork, well several criteria are preferable, the cover picture/painting/photo says something about the music or the band themselves, the sleeve or booklet has the lyrics and some kind of a theme is always nice. So after a mispent youth dissecting the artwork in my entire music collection I came up with a winner many years ago and to this day I think it holds its own. And the winner was Blur’s Parklife. The Greyhounds seemed to capture the essence of the cheeky cockernee repartee that Blur had perfected on that record. The lyrics were there and the back cover had the tracklisting in the form of a racecard. Genius indeed.

Enough of my mindless drivel, let me know what makes the ideal album packaging and what your favourites are…….And if you like a bit of controversy check out an interesting list of banned covers here.