Anyone who fancies any A5 flyers for the Covered book let us know. We’re sending a wedge to the two main distributors but if any shops want some we’ve done extra. In the meantime, here are some worthy examples of people getting carried away by Saturday Night Fever.
This is the final cover spread for the Covered book. There is a page showing how the front cover developed from initial visual to the final design on the site, titled What’s In A Cover.
Easy On The Eye Books have designed a computer monitor desktop background pattern to be used on your Mac. It has 40 of the best copy covers, all based on famous rock and pop sleeves, and you can have fun seeing if your friends can spot them all.
The desktop image is optimised to work at a monitor resolution of 1280 X 1024 pixels, though it will work on smaller screens. You can download the image (file size 1.2MB) free using the link below (the image above is just a sample); once you’ve gone to the page, just drag the full-size image over to your existing desktop. Once it is on your hard-drive, use your System Preferences menu to go to the Desktop and Screensaver options and navigate to the saved image to use it. It’ll work on a PC but you’ll need to ask someone else how.
Note this is a desktop pattern which is there while your using your machine, NOT a screensaver. Once it’s up and running, feel free to send us a snapshot of it on site…
Click here for the file.
A really nice full page preview for Jan’s book Covered! appears in the October 2011 edition of the UK monthly Word Magazine, which covers music, books, film and other aspects of popular culture. The decided just to take two well known album sleeves and feature a load of covers which have gone on to borrow the original ideas. I’ve added a scan of the page which you can see on the site here. This is the first of what looks like being a number of articles on the book, and it’s great to see people picking up on the theme. The book itself is at last in production, and we’ll have details of the Easy Shop up any day now for people with a conscience who have to order online but don’t want to support the activities of high-street destroying giants. Still can’t figure those Word magazine covers though, they just miss the mark on so many levels for me. I appreciate what they’re trying for and it’s nice to avoid the generic look so many magazines sport these days, but if you want to do that go and see what titles like Little White Lies are coming up with for their covers.
Following up a lead from author Tim Joseph, we have been in contact with a photographer who actually worked on a few of the later Top Of The Pops sleeves. At our request Nigel, the photographer in question, filled us in on how the job was approached and delivered, but for us the real excitement was that he had kept all the out-takes from the sessions. Some of the images will appear in the book of course thanks to Nigel’s generosity but after some discussion he has also has agreed to license four limited edition photographs available to collectors exclusively through Easy On The Eye.
These eye-popping images are real photographs too, and suitable for framing. The quality is stunning as these are taken directly off the original large format slides, unseen for three decades. We will have more details very soon when the new Easy On The Eye store goes live. In the meantime here’s a sample to be going on with.
To anyone spotting the Top Of The Pops title being advertised by Amazon and others (even Sainsbury’s online!) as available to buy, ignore them. We’re sorry about this but these companies are now so big they can more or less do whatever they want. A lot of the big online retailers do this sort of trick to grab orders, rather than waiting until the book is actually out (I’ve seen CDs I’m working on being advertised as for sale when I haven’t even finished the cover artwork!). Personally I never buy new books online, but always order through a proper high street shop. If the big book companies had any sense they’d get together and organise their own online site, which doesn’t screw publishers, and then refuse to sell to Amazon and the like. J.K. Rowling has shown it can be done).
But if you haven’t got a local shop and want to pre-order, our own dedicated online store will be up and running very shortly. And the Easy shop will also have some exclusive material.
A few Top Of The Pops album collectors have noticed a full set of the albums being sold online, and Terry Wilson has been keeping an eye on it. Apparently the owner put the set up for sale as a complete set only, and asked a large sum for it (it may have been as high as £1500!).
It didn’t sell needless to say (there is a tendency these days for a few sellers to ‘try it on’ at first, just in case someone with more money than sense is surfing) and was readvertised shortly afterwards at a straight auction and reached the reserve of £150, and was sold for this. Which is a pretty good price really, considering the last few albums alone can spark bidding wars now from people keen to finish their set off.
Then the set reappeared for sale again, supposedly due to the earlier buyer backing out, and with a new price of £500 – buy it now. Which is a lot to shell out in one go, it works out at about a fiver a pop. I had a look at the auction, and was surprised to see the seller note that the set was actually missing one album which he’d mislaid. On the other hand he was throwing in a batch of related albums, Best Ifs, Tots etc.
We have added progress report on the forthcoming titles to keep people up to speed. In the meantime our sister site ST33, which looks at all aspects of record sleeve cover art, has had a bit of fun by imagining how the TOTPs covers might have looked if they had begun earlier, and ended later. The mock-up here is for a 1959 edition!
Easy On The Eye have curated a modest display of walking picture images and cards which opened at Easter 2011. The idea for this display arose after contacting East Riding of Yorkshire Council, and curators at Sewerby Hall and Gardens, who were helpful in furnishing me with information and images they held regarding the Snaps company and William Foster-Brigham, who operated in Bridlington, for the upcoming book. The exhibition is now confirmed as running until August 3rd 2011. The images on display are largely from the Easy On The Eye collection of Walking Pictures. Radio 4’s Making History programme did a piece about the exhibition and walking pictures in their May 31 broadcast. Check the Walking Pictures page on this site for more on the book. For more on the exhibition visit Snaps Walking Pictures.
The album sleeve art blog ST33 has recently had a bit of fun with the Top Of The Pops sleeves. As well as an ongoing gallery to show off all 92 of the album sleeves, they have also speculated what the cover might have looked like had the series both began back in the fifties, and continued through to recent times. A number of artist’s impressions have been posted on the site under their Top Of The Pops gallery section, along with appropriate track listings.
easy on the eye books 