Given that this blog is all about the art, & design,
& has oft featured our enduring love of music as essential accompaniment
&, indeed, in its own right, & is also undeniably prone to nostalgia,
today marks the introduction of another little featurette within, intended to
celebrate the occasional acquisition of good old vinyl LPs to supplement the
collection (once considerable, then greatly reduced, now again expanding gently), beginning with a recent purchase, for a mere £10 winning bid on
ebay, in the perfect form of the 1980
limited edition release of John Cooper Clarke’s ‘Snap, Crackle (&) Bop’,
including as it did & does a book of the man’s poetry - appropriating the interior design of the
old ‘Yellow Pages’ telephone directory for its own, & lavishly illustrated with
fine photographs of our hero in various poses & locations - which was
slipped inside & contained within the fully-functioning cardboard breast
pocket of the jacket represented upon the record sleeve’s ingenious design (a
bona fide classic of the art form).
I desired this object, or these objects-as-set, profoundly, at the time, but was too slow off the mark & thus missed out, having to make do,
alas, with the ordinary release of the album which had neither book or even
pocket (& why would it need the latter without the former, indeed?).
As a schoolfriend, the legendary Mario Magri,
did actually own a copy of the limited edition, I was able to enjoy it
vicariously, but obviously this really wasn’t the same thing or experience at all:
only now, some 34 years later (indeed: blimey), has a copy finally come in to my
possession, to be a treasured feature of the record collection. It remains a
wonderful album, & the whole package serves as suitable portal to a particular
period of the past, personally & culturally.
Note too, the details of the artist & title represented in the form of badges pinned to the jacket pocket, a nice coincidence considering the recent promotion of the football club badge collection.
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