Maybe Stranger Things is a running feature in the Yorkshire Post newspaper’s Saturday 16th Magazine? Not sure how else to explain the heading! It was my Mum’s favourite paper, so a shame she is no longer around to see this and it is a well written article about The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve book (see below) and Steve’s collection. Just a shame they showed the back of the book not the front…! As for the author photo… Anyway we have put up the full article on this site.
Happy to announce that THE ART OF THE BIZARRE VINYL SLEEVE book is shipping NOW; indeed it will be landing this week for many people who placed a pre-order. Lots of folk picked up on it after a great discussion on Radio 4‘s arts programme Front Row this week – which you can listen to (or read the subtitles) on Steve Goldman’s Instagram feed https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0OrAKitAul/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
There is plenty of stock but If you are wanting to order in time for Christmas then the sooner the better so we can process your order in good time. Don’t forget there is a discount if you use our dedicated shop – the links are on the right. Thanks to everyone for their interest in this title.
We will be doing an update on our other upcoming books in the next couple of weeks.
Steve and Simon met up the other day to take careful delivery of the last sleeve needed for this next book. We didn’t trust the post as it had already been delivered to one wrong address. Quite what the people behind the counter in the cafe at Penistone thought we were all up to as we all marvelled at the insanity of it I have no idea. We will NOT say what it is just yet, except to reveal that Des O’Connor was involved, which is always the guarantee of a certain lack of quality as far as we’re concerned. Though it isn’t an actual Des O’Connor album (and if you don’t know who he was, think yourself very lucky. Or do a web-search. With audio off). It has also ended up being the most expensive disc in Steve’s collection. Anyhow, with that in place, our design intern at Easy Books has spent most of today trying to sort the final list of contents for page one, which has driven him mad…
Here it is – complete with tick marks, bleed marks, registration guides and colour bars (don’t say we never teach you anything). Simon at the publishers does add that this is one of his favourite covers, simply because it is a great photo technically and artistically, and then you see the barking album title!
Anyway if you have not yet caught up on the book, The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve, now is your chance.
We have put half a dozen preview pages from The Art Of Bizarre Record Sleeves on the site to mark the opening today of the worst album sleeves exhibition in Huddersfield (details below). This gives a good idea of the designs even as they continue to be worked on.
Just to mention collector Steve is returning to the scene of his first successful Worst Record Sleeves exhibition, this time at part of the Huddersfield Literature Festival.
The exhibition runs 10am til 4pm Thursday 23rd March – Sunday 2nd April at the Huddersfield Literature Festival Hub, Huddersfield Piazza, Princess Alexandra Walk HD1 2RS.
If you can get along a really good laugh is guaranteed, plus you can help visitors select the three most bizarre covers!
Easy On The Eye managed to spirit away the first 100 or so sleeves from the collection a couple of weeks ago to get these scanned at high resolution for the book, in time for them to be collected for the display. More details on the book at the publishers site.
Another of Brian Smith’s great images. But for once is NOT shown in the Brain Smith Blues Photo Book! Why you may ask? Well, when we first began investigating Brian’s material it quickly became clear that his archive fell into two distinct phases. There was the collection of black and white blues photographs made up to around 1966. Then there was his second phase of work which began after a period away from photography, when he moved into colour in the 1970s. This was also very extensive and covers a longer period as well. So we decided to tackle the mono work first and if there is enough interest, and we feel there might be, a follow up of the colour work might be on the cards. But in the meantime, Brian continues to work with blues labels on their reissues and this striking new CD sleeve is from JSP Records uses Brian’s colour photos on the front and back inlays, and the booklet inside. So we thought we’d show it off here anyway! It’s a scary thought that while we sort of looked upon this material as modern when deciding on the book contents, these shots are already over thirty years old. What was it Cher sang about turning back time? Thanks to Brian and JSP for the artwork scans.
Another of Brian Smith’s great images. This is an early appearance of Spencer Davis on the stage of The Twisted Wheel in 1965, with Stevie Winwood on the right. It has been used for the sleeve of a new collection of Spencer Davis BBC archive sessions by the 1960s Records lab and works quite well we think. They have used other shots from Brian in the past. The original shot is shown in the Brain Smith Blues Photo Book.
We recently sent out a Newsletter to subscribers of the Barry Plummer Deep Purple Photobook project with exclusive news and previews. While we use professional mailing list providers to keep this information secure, inevitably some people’s operating systems still shunt emails like this into junk folders. So if you have not seen it yet, do check there! Don’t forget you can subscribe to updates on most of our forthcoming titles on the relevant pages.
Just a teaser cover for a project which is some way away, likely 2023, but the book trade does work on very long lead times. It is a personal look at the art of the vinyl album from the collection of designer Simon Robinson. “I’ve been fascinated by album covers ever since I bought my first records as a school kid. Most people collect albums for the music but I also pick up interesting sleeves regardless of content. So this is a selection from the shelves, chosen from what I would consider to be well designed covers (with a few mad ones as well!). I am avoiding the well documented covers in the main and am aiming for a more eclectic selection…”
Our designer took a bit of a busman’s holiday over the Christmas period, and got to grips with Go Home On A Postcard, our delayed Walking Picture Photography title. This has been on hold for a time due to pressures of other projects but we did not want it slipping beyond 2022. The work involved him reconnecting with the page layouts and recent software updates, but went well. Although the work over-ran into early January, it does mean that the book is now completely laid out. All the captions have been added and checked, and we were able to make a few difficult picture choices (there are far more images than could possibly be included) and so arrive at a final page count. Once done, this meant all the pages could at last be numbered; this took three days, due to a design idea to base them on negative reference numbers from the old prints (instead of using the layout software option which would have done it in two minutes)!
The book now moves into the stage of preparing it technically for print after which we should be able to predict a likely publication date. We have also now update our first sample pages on this site and more will follow. The spread above gives a really good idea of the final look.
It is our intention to offer the title at a pre-publication price here so people can get this at a bit of a discount ahead of anyone else.
We will also be preparing a mailing list to try and update everyone who has contributed material to the project.
easy on the eye books 