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Cover Story: Bizarre Album Art
Edited by: The Staff of Wax Poetics
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Cover Story: Bizarre Album Art, the second installment in
the Cover Story series from Wax Poetics Books, continues a
graphic narration of the vibrant subculture of record collecting
through the art of the album cover. This volume focuses
specifically on strange and bizarre record covers, selected by
major figures from music’s avant-garde.
The Cover Story series vividly explores an element of music
culture that has withered with the advent of MP3s and
digital downloading. Vinyl records tell their stories visually
as much as they do aurally, and the record cover—eye
candy for the music lover—speaks a language rooted in
the environment and era of the music itself. Cover Story:
Bizarre Album Art celebrates the products of music’s most
eclectic and eccentric figures—those whose artistic visions
were so absurd and grandiose, they often extended beyond
the boundaries of the recording and onto the album covers
themselves.
First published in December 2001, Brooklyn-born Wax Poetics
hit newsstands with a new vision for music journalism, creating
a bridge between the past and present of hip-hop, jazz, funk,
soul, reggae, disco, and Latin music. Although originally
created for a concentrated market of music aficionados,
the magazine’s audience has grown exponentially, making
musical anthropologists out of average music listeners and
spawning a soul renaissance, complete with comeback tours
and sophomore efforts. Wax Poetics illuminates the dark
corners of our sonic past, while also striving to give new and
innovative artists the credit they truly deserve.
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