January Notions

Album Covers: As a lifelong student and payer-attention-to-the-arts—everything around me, including music, paintings, brand logos, store displays, and anything else with letters and graphics, I’m constantly pulled back to the ever-present album covers of yore. By yore, I mostly refer to the 1970s and 1980s when we’d stare for “an untold number of hours” (to quote my friend Kathleen Collins) while we listened to the tracks—the crickle, crackle of the record needle, or the perfect boom bouncing off the loud four-foot speakers in our brown carpeted family rooms.

Album art and photos may have been the first tremor of my love for the visual representation—the first experience that set fire to my eyes (and limbs) as a weird kid. This was the “thing” the artist and their team chose to show billions of people–the visual to make you want to listen to their collection. Not at all different from a book cover. There are amazing ones and terrible ones.

Some remain so special, including Leo Sayer, Lipps, Inc., Beach Boys, and most of Billy Joel’s covers. I also was completely enamored by Barbra’s and the reliable Hall and Oates. let me John Cougar let us know he was just a regular guy. Boy George, quite the contrary, but I loved him just the same.

Email me with your favorite album covers (writinginthewinter77@gmail.com), and I will feature it as the photo each month. Tell me why you love it. Example: I love the cover of Paradise Theatre—featured above– because it made me think of going out somewhere that I was too young to go at age six. Somewhere alive and exciting.

Preorder Link #1: I have not yet released this link elsewhere, so you are the first to be able to PREORDER my memoir collection, Chomp, Press, Pull out in April. Just give it a click and it will be on your doorstep around mid-end of April. I cannot emphasize how grateful I am for the support, and it’s not about the sales—it’s about the reach and the ability to find my readers. To connect, entertain, inform, and comfort. Plus, isn’t it so nice to be there for each other in purposeful ways that involve art and culture? I’m the first one to buy your art, attend your show, boost your story, whatever you need. We all do our best! Thank you in advance from the bottom of my callused former-dancer feet.

Book Recommendation: I recently read a book that gut-punched me, to say the least. If you love that kind of raw power in a book, check out my proper review of Baby Darlin’ by Alycia Vreeland here.

Wishing you all good health and peace.
Elaina