Pese a que los textos y anotaciones son demasiado escasos, siempre es agradable revisar portadas de discos de las que nadie se acuerda. Seminal artwork, memorable cover-sleeves, and long-lost classics all jostle for space in this virtual shelf of music history. Many are works of art and have become as famous as the music they stand for Andy Warhol's covers, for example, including the banana he designed for The Velvet Underground. He had owned a number of the albums shown and we chatted about some of our favorite musicians from different time periods.

Michael Ochs has been an obsessive music since the 1950 and this book provides a sampling of the 100,000 or so albums that he owns. The Five Keys cover is rare because the thimb on the far left might have been misunderstood as an exposed penis. Both a trip down memory lane and a study in the evolution of cover art, this is a sweeping look at an under-appreciated art form. True, this hardbound version has fewer than a thousand record covers since it omits the 1950s covers found in the original softcover book, but it's still plenty of fun.Even when the book gets the bands right it often fails with the albums- despite including the Beatles' Hey Jude and Meet the Beatles, there's no White album, and artists such as Joy Division and Radiohead don't get a single cover printed. Although it does include a lot of great and controversial album covers (Blind Faith, Lennon and Ono's 'Two Virgins' to name a couple), a large amount of the book seems compiled with complete rubbish, notably the first 1/4 which appears to be more a collection of the cheesiest record sleeves that the author could find. There is good, bad and ugly (sexism, underage person(s)) covers, though that might sometimes depend on the reader's taste. He has also been a disc Jockey, taught a rock-history course for UCLA and written for such magazines as Rock, Melody Maker, Cashbox, and Crawdaddy.

I like the pictures a lot--especially the 50s and 60s--but thirst for a sentence on each one, not just an occasional note. of the best record covers of all time from the Michael Ochs Archives, one of the world's largest private collections" (from the cover).

Sometimes there's a further comment added (these and the introduction are also in German and French).

That said, the book is a nice one to have in the collection just for those who appreciate art and music and certainly doesn't fail completely- with 1000 separate covers there's certainly enough to make you pick it up once in a while, and the nice format and design of the book makes up for the strange omissions. They are roughly grouped by the decade (1960s, 1970s, and 1980s-early1990s: all getting a short introduction), some appearing in other decade than their own. This edition of Record Covers presents a selection of the best rock album covers of the 60s to 90s from music archivist, disc jockey, journalist, and former record-publicity executive Michael Ochs's enormous private collection.Scrutinising the cover of an LP record used to be a major part of the pleasure of acquiring and acquainting oneself with it. Cada portada está acompañada de una breve reseña que proporciona información sobre el álbum, la banda y el artista.