Album Covers with Trees

Today I was at my local antique store shopping for records. I was there to get the copy of John Lennon/The Plastic Ono Band that I knew they had (gotta love "Hold On") and I did. But while I was there I noticed how many album covers have trees on them. By that I mean a picture of the band in an outdoor setting with trees (and often a river) and no words or people on the top 1/3 or so of the cover (the top is usually the only part you can see when you are flipping through a box of albums - thus many covers have the name of the band at the top so you can easily spot them).

Not only does JL/TPOB (released in 1970) feature this kind of cover, but so does Wings' first album, Wild Life (released in 1971)! Here they are:

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

Wild Life

Notice how these two also have no names or titles (this plan kind of backfired, at least when it came to Wild Life sales). Not to be outdone, George Harrison's All Things Must Pass cover also features an outdoor scene with trees, but it has his name and the album title at the top. Plus it's not really in color, so it doesn't count.

Here are some of the other tree covers I discovered, I'm sure there are MANY more:

The Rolling Stones: Between the Buttons (1967)

Though not a perfect example, it does have no title/names.

I guess Caravan was a band.

CCR's Green River has the band name/title at the top, but it's really hard to read, so it's OK.

Also, one of them is holding a guitar, which is kind of cheating.

If Guitars are OK, then I might consider Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline.

I did a little research and found this website which features album covers with JUST trees (no people) which is not the same thing. It does feature on of my favorite albums, though, For Emma...

I also found this forum that has a post about outdoor covers, though not strictly of the variety I am talking about. It has pictures for a lot of them.

More covers to come!

Listening to Records

Today the record player I ordered onlne was delivered. I always wanted to "listen to records" but we didn't have a record player when I was a kid. I did sometimes hang out with my friends in their parent's basement, but they didn't really have a ton of records we were interested in (I do seem to recall listening to The Turtles). Anyway, after Coachella, I decided to go for it. I ordered my cool hipster record player from Urban Outfitters and scored some old Wings records on ebay.

The player arrived before the records, however, so after I got home from work, I went down the block to the (very) nearby antique store. The records were located in the back of the store in big boxes. I quickly picked out two, then spent some time looking through some of the other boxes.

The old Hispanic man who runs the shop did kind of give me a hard time about my selections. I believe his words were, "Do you LIKE this kind of music?"

I got Red Rose Speedway and Living in the Material World (which I haven't listened to yet). It took me all of one minute to get the player out of the box, plugged in and working. It wasn't hard to learn how to use and in no time I was listening to the end of "My Love" (having not been sure enough about where to drop the needle to start with the first song). It was pretty cool. However, I did learn that the awesome B-side medley (I say things like b-side now, because I am a vinyl person) is can be pleasantly sleep inducing.

One thing I have learned: Playing records + warm weather = sleepy me.

While the needle on my record player does seem to need to be dropped manually, so far I haven't had to experience the horrible scratching sound from the end of the record. I suspect this has more to do with the record than the player, though.

The charm of the whole thing, however, lies in its very manualness. If I wanted to listen to 500 songs in a row, shuffled, I could turn on my computer - I could even use the "remote" app on my iPhone to skip a song from across the room. If I wanted to listen to a particular song while sipping my iced latte in a cafe, I could plug the headphones into my ipod. To listen to records, however, I must be at home. After five or six songs I must get up, walk over to the player, and flip the record over myself - an actual piece of vinyl in my hands. If it's too quiet, I have to get up and turn it up. If it's too loud, my neighbors just have to put up with "this kind of music."

After all, it's only for five or so more songs.