With the layout finished, The Art of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve is now into final proof reading stage. This takes the form of a b/w laser print out, as we all spot things better on paper! Prior to this, Steve came over to the Easy On The Eye office so we could sit and talk through changes as well as swop a few sleeves about and discuss other odds and ends. It’s always easier to do this in person so you can look at the layouts on screen in real time.
For example the Vietnam Chain album on the desk in the photo here is one I had not even scanned first time around, yet Steve explained it was almost always in the top ten of people’s choice of worst sleeve at his exhibitions, so we needed to make room for that. Happily talking to the printers, we found we had an extra 4 pages to play with so did not have to part with any of our other particular favourites!
On the monitor here is one such, the amazing World of Joseph Cooper sleeve, which, with all the dead leaves on top of his piano, we always feel looks like Joseph has been embalmed and placed in the garden as a memento mori… and for those too young to know, wait until you read about his famous dummy keyboard.
It doesn’t take much to turn me back into a fan-boy and getting a lovely endorsement from guitarist Tony McPhee for the book of Brian Smith’s Blues Photos last year (after sending him a PDF proof) certainly did the trick. He was of course enthralled by the music of the musicians featured in the book and became so well versed in their records that his group The Groundhogs were often booked to back them on UK tours. They needed little rehearsal, they already knew the songs backwards. Here the band were caught by Brian outside their tour van with Jimmy Reed. I recognised some of the group (Tony is second from the left) but Tony kindly filled us in on the exact details. I’m a generation down from Brian, and The Groundhogs were the first live group I ever saw, setting me off on a love of their material and in particular his remarkable guitar work, which remains to this day. He will be very much missed here.
If all goes well and I can stay awake, I am chatting about record sleeves with other guests on BBC Radio 5’s Colin Murray show, May 29th midnight to 1.00 am (but playable on Sounds later). They wanted someone to chat about the Bizarre Record Sleeve book we’re publishing later this year. I will post a link afterwards if it goes OK. If I gabble too much I won’t!
Just a reminder that you can subscribe to mailing lists for titles which are getting closer to publication time. This way you will get news updates, page previews and pre-order information before it appears anywhere else.
Due to a screw up (we’re not sure who is to blame yet! Brexit?) the subscription button for our ART OF THE BIZARRE VINYL SLEEVE title failed to register anyone who tried to subscribe. So if you did just that anytime before the date of this post, please resubmit your request!
Details can be found on the links to the relevant pages. One of our other upcoming titles THE ART OF THE MEXICAN LOBBY CARD has also now got a subscription button for getting future news. It is part of our planned LANDSCAPE larger format series.
We recently met up with sleeve collector Steve Goldman to bring back 100 or so covers in connection with the Art Of The Bizarre Record Sleeve book project. The idea was to work on these to give us a good start on the book then make further selections. The sleeves will either be scanned, photographed (or both!). This batch needs to be done sharpish so we can get them back to Steve ready for him to start work on his next exhibition. Easy On The Eye Books are lucky to have a dedicated scanning workstation. This is not quite such an indulgence as it might seem as all the kit is reused! The scanner is the core of the system, an Epson large format machine made primarily for the American market as it exactly scans a single US tabloid sheet. This was purchased years ago when I was a partner at RPM Records and had got fed up of trying to splice together album sleeves for the many reissues we were doing. I realised the Epson could scan an album cover in one pass, so it is now brilliant for a project like Steve’s book.
The scanner is linked to an aging Macintosh G5 tower, a computer which was phased out in 2006! I picked this up second hand several years ago to supplement my older G4 machines. My last G4 has now had to be retired as it cannot run current software. Nor can the G5 really, but it doesn’t have to. Instead it just runs the Epson scanning software and my last pre-subscription version of Photoshop. This means the scans can be checked quickly on screen before I move on. For this I have another vintage item, the Apple studio display. This design dates back to 1998 and uses LCD technology but again it doesn’t need to be 100% colour accurate, just good enough to let me know if the scan is going to be OK or needs redoing to adjust any levels. I’d love to find the matching Apple Cinema display in working order but these seem to have quickly become prized design icon objects and priced accordingly!
Any work done on the scanner is copied over to my current workstation using a memory stick. I could use the cloud server in theory but the G5 has such vintage versions of the browsers now it’s too much hassle!
I have some of my own scan presets on the Epson system to give me a fairly good starting point for the sleeve scans. Sleeves do present a problem in that the scanner picks up all the original 4 colour screens from the printing process. I have found that using the descreening option on the Epson tends to blur the results more than I like, so instead I usually scan much larger than needed. This adds to the time for each scan but when done, the scan can be reduced a lot in Photoshop which usually eliminates any screen clashes.
Because we need such a lot of images for the book, I am also using a Sony A5000 camera to photograph the less troublesome covers. This is on a tripod and speeds things up a lot. If I am not happy with the results, I add it to the scanning pile. Again the camera was second hand, bought of a woman who had only used it for Vlogging! It is my fourth Sony digital camera and I mainly went for it as it is much more portable, I like to have a camera handy at all times (if I had the cash I would be shopping for an A7C…).
And the Schweppes boxes? Well using the scanner I like to keep on my feet rather than sit, so I used three old wooden Schweppes delivery boxes to make a temporary stand for the monitor, keyboard and mouse, but quickly got so used to this that I have kept it going! If I run out of room for storing 45s it’s going to be a tough choice…
A new year and a new start, as we can finally put our health issues behind us and begin to clear the log jam of Easy book titles! First out of the blocks will be the Brain Smith Blues Photo Book, and that’s a couple of revised pages shown in the spread above. If you have not yet subscribed to the mailing list this is recommended as newsletters will be sent out there first with news of the project before being posted to the wider public here (a couple have already been sent) as well as some special merchandise. Blues fans will know, but that’s Willie Dixon on stage in 1962 in the spread, shot by Brian from the side of the stage at Manchester Free Trade Hall. It’s a great atmospheric image and shot under terrible lighting with a very modest camera and no flash. Brian had to wait for the big ABC TV cameras to move out of the way before he could grab the frame.
Brian himself has also been getting over some health issues after an operation and we wish him well. He has been sort out another of his images being loaned to a CD firm doing a collection of Long John Baldry material, we will post details when we are allowed. In the meantime a big thank you to just about everyone for their patience over this title’s long delay.
Here’s another nice spread from the Brain Smith Blues Photo Book, updating those posted here in earlier days. We don’t know the name of the lady in the centre, she worked for the promoters Harold Davison, and adds a little glamour to this great backstage shot of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at the Free Trade Hall in 1964.
Next to them in this spread is Alex Harvey, whom our designer was delighted to spot amongst Brian’s surviving negatives. “I am about a decade behind Brian, and Alex was actually one of the first live bands I ever saw in 1971.” This is the ONLY shot Brian took. As he explains, film and money were short and the venue was packed! But Alex was an important player in the UK soul and blues scene and we felt the shot was well worth including.
Easy Books are now gearing up again after another period where health issues have had a big impact, as Ann who handles all the office side of matters (from accounts to packaging!) has been waiting for a hip replacement for a couple of years through covid. She has at last had her operation done and is getting on well, so we can at last move this title forward to the print stage.
Just when you think all the photographs for Boom Boom Boom Boom have been laid out! This one turns up. In truth it was there all the time but an email from the Carlo Little website about Brian Smith’s Lord Sutch photographs then sparked a recollection. “Didn’t I once snap his backing band The Savages at The Twisted Wheel? Have you seen the photograph while you’ve been sorting all the images out?” Well in all honesty I didn’t recall it. “I think they were in the backstage DJ area chatting to Roger Eagle, when he asked them to turn round and make faces at me….”
Well, in that case I had better look through the folder where I’d put all the images of club members larking about. And sure enough there it was, hiding in plain view. I had assumed it to be four friends of Brian and Roger’s looning for the camera. It turns out to be a rare photograph of Lord Sutch’s backing band, with drummer Carlo Little in the centre at the back. I’ve spent a couple of hours cleaning it up and now we’re sending it off to Iris at the website to see if she can identify the rest of the group. And pin a date on it.
That was the easy part, now we have to get our designer to jiggle stuff around to fit it in to what is essentially a finished layout. Won’t he love doing that? And then we can start arguing about how “blues” was Lord Sutch!
There are another eight pages of previews from the Boom Boom Boom Boom book of Brian Smith’s Blues Photographs now on the site. We have been improving the quality of these previews so you get a much better idea of what the book will look like. The spread below gives you an idea, this shows Roosevelt Sykes backstage at the Free Trade Hall. Brian mostly shot black and white photographs, as much due to the cost of colour as anything. But once in a while he could afford to splash out! Some of this show was filmed by Granada TV.
Brian spent a whole afternoon with Millie, as she arrived early at the Twisted Wheel club for her show. So he got to take some great photographs in the offices as well as during the packed show.
While we are posting, our good wishes to Brian who has not been well for a time but is now back at home with his feet up. Literally!
We have sent out newsletters about both the Blues Photo Book (our second) and our Go Home On A Postcard Book (our first) today. These go ONLY to people who have subscribed for the updates. Although we use a professional mailing list service to deliver these, your computer MAY still filter them out into your junk mail folder (even our own email system does this despite us labelling them as NOT junk every time!). So do have a look in there if you think you should be on the mailing list.
easy on the eye books 