A 'totally cool' book consisting of little more than photo-facsimiles of album art showcasing the development of popular music (and thus cultural styles) in recent decades. Leafing through these pages brings a lot to mind.

General and well known Albums of well known Artists. Knowing Michael Ochs has an extensive album collection this book just brushes the surface of what's there.

From the famous to the obscure, this presents 1000 record covers, just like the title says. In a neat touch, some are paired by design elements. And it was fascinating to see how many black artists were shoved off their own record jackets to appeal to whites.

Michael Ochs shares with the reader various records from his personal collection, and it is both fun and nostalgic to see the evolution of album cover art and styles through the decades. I would have appreciated more insight from Ochs about the different trends and techniques of album artists and why he was drawn to these albums. As is, the book is mostly page after page of admittedly pretty pictures. Good to leave on the coffee table and breeze through.

Mmmmm... Design Food....

There's not a lot to actually *read* in this 50-year survey of LP record-cover design, but the absence of text is more than compensated for by high-quality photo reproductions of a huge representative sample of what was a thriving art-form until the demise of vinyl records in the 1990s - and may yet become so again now the format has regained popularity.

The pictures are arranged first by decade, then thematically by image, rather than by more detailed chronology, by musician, or by designer. This gives the advantage of enabling one to see correspondences, similarities, visual echoes between individual designs that can be fruitfully mined for their contemporary social and psychological significance. Perhaps here some additional text might have been of use, but on the other hand its absence ensures the observer must use his or her wit, perception and knowledge to establish connections and draw conclusions about the Zeitgeist. Some of the 1970s images, implying rape or other sexual exploitation, are highly disturbing to the contemporary sensibility, and it's telling to speculate on how they could not have been so when originally produced.

Scrutinising the cover of an LP record used to be a major part of the pleasure of acquiring and acquainting oneself with it. The form - a basic 12" x 12" framework - lent itself to as much detail as the artist cared to put in or to leave out, to instant impact, to portability, to duplication or triplication via the gatefold format, and presented itself as an artefact as solid as the record it contained. The miniature versions encasing tape cassettes or CDs were never quite the same. This book - this album, indeed- reminds us of how vivid and powerful a medium it was, and still is.

A really fun book but then I'm a sucker for both album covers and these type of books.

You may be interested in my blog if my favourite jazz album sleeves of the last 15 years.

http://philbrett.me/2015/07/03/my-fav...

Which follows blogs on the previous decades.

It is better this book exists than not.

An interesting book, though this particular edition has text in three different languages, which is a tad annoying. There are some great pictures of a nearly-lost art form here ... though quite a few iconic covers are NOT in the book. It also might've worked better as a full-sized coffee table book, rather than a near-digest sized format. Still worth a good paging through.

A coffee table book, 'read' as part of my master plan to read ALL the books front to back in my collection. :) Literally just pics of 1000 record covers, with the occasional blurb.

A nice enough coffee table book but I wish it included more explanations or backstories to each album chosen. I get more enjoyment out of the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list.

These record covers "cover" the 1960 s through the 1990s. I "covered" the entire book, but recognized more from the 60s than any recent time. I guess I'm just not paying as much attention as I used to.