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Comment by jzl | Hacker News Reader

#TIL that this is the full photo on the cover of IV. Mind blown. I guess it would have been back + front of the LP?

https://www.wiltshiremuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/1...

Yup. LP covers we a genre of art for a time. Famously, the original vinyl issue of the Rolling Stones 1971 album "Sticky Fingers" included an Andy Warhol design of a picture of a man in tight jeans, and had a working zip that opened to reveal underwear fabric.

And in the Led Zeppelin category, we have III with the spinning wheel that would reveal various pictures through holes in the album cover, and Physical Graffiti where the windows on the building would open to reveal stuff. And finally, In Through the Out Door where you could wipe the inside cover with a wet cloth to reveal the color.

Many albums used the large area for some kind of physical interaction. Sadly we lost that starting with cassettes.

That’s astonishing.

It makes me sad when computers represent things with lossy abstractions, like “album art is a square image,” and those abstractions end up widely supplanting the essential idea of what the thing is.

That’s one reason why a lot of people collect vinyl.

Another reason is the physical act of playing vinyl necessarily requires a certain level of reverence (to protect from clumsiness causing scratches) a sentiment sorely missing from much of the rest of our lives.

Apple Music has support for animated album art, which is a nice middle ground. If everything is digital, why not take advantage of digital features?

I actually picked up an original of that album in a charity shop for 20p in about 1985. It was in mint condition, looked like it had never been played.

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