Covers

My biggest complaint about CDs isn’t the sound quality. Nowadays, they’ve learned how to make very high-quality CDs, like this one.

My biggest complaint is the size of a standard CD case compared to a vinyl record. Looking at a 30 x 30 cm photo on a vinyl record cover is far more interesting than a photo that’s only 12 x 12 cm on a CD.  True, sometimes CDs are released in a vinyl-style sleeve, like this David Bowie CD, for example.

Once in Los Angeles, I visited the Covers exhibition, which takes place the day before the Grammy Awards at the Morrison Hotel Gallery, founded by Henry Diltz, the very same photographer who created the cover for The Doors’ album Morrison Hotel.

He named his gallery in honor of that album. The exhibition is wonderful—it features the original photographs that were later used to create album covers.

In addition to photos by Henry Diltz himself (who created over 250 album covers), there was an absolute icon for me—a photo of Jimi Hendrix from the spread of the double album Electric Ladyland, a photo of David Bowie from the cover of Aladdin Sane, and photos that later became album covers for Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, and many others.

The gallery itself is located not only in Los Angeles but also in New York, in the heart of SoHo on Prince Street. If you’re ever there, stop by the gallery.