Coverscaping focuses on the semiotics, poetics, and rhetoric of album covers. Working from the assumption that record sleeves may represent a visual genre in its own right, the essays engage in various ways with what one might call the pictorial component of recorded music. The contributors run the whole gamut from close readings of individual covers to more theoretical or philosophical explorations of the aesthetic nature and artistic value of album covers. Coverscaping aims to carve out an analytical space from which to reappraise the ever mutable relation between the visual and the auditory, thus contributing to a keener appreciation of the challenges which define the art and craft of the genre.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Asbjørn Grønstad and Øyvind Vågnes
Bruce’s Butt: Masculinity, Patriotism, and Rock’s Ecstatic Body
Colleen J. Sheehy
Remediation of Album Art: Neil Young’s Greendale
Nicole R. Brown
Envisioning Music in the Digital Environment
Anne Galperin
Self-made CD: Texture and Narrative in Small-Run DIY CD Production
Eve Klein
Re-Presenting Mixed Tapes and CDs
Gavin Steingo
"How Near you Stand to Me": The Blues, Blacks and Whites of The Smiths’ Record Sleeves
Andrew Warnes
Frame or Be Framed: This is Not De La Soul
Jonathan Silverman
KISS: Alive! An Iconographical Approach
Ian Chapman
Stars as Human Beings—and Timeless Icons: Pennie Smith’s and Anton Corbijn’s Artist Portraits
Sigrid Lien
Profaning the Scared: Goth Iconography, Iconoclasm, and Subcultural Resistance
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Painting Sound, Playing Color: The Multiple Voices of Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and Jackson Pollock’s White Light
Hilary Moore
Interview with Dan Nadel
Asbjørn Grønstad and Øyvind Vågnes
Notes on Contributors
Select Bibliography
Introduction
Asbjørn Grønstad and Øyvind Vågnes
Bruce’s Butt: Masculinity, Patriotism, and Rock’s Ecstatic Body
Colleen J. Sheehy
Remediation of Album Art: Neil Young’s Greendale
Nicole R. Brown
Envisioning Music in the Digital Environment
Anne Galperin
Self-made CD: Texture and Narrative in Small-Run DIY CD Production
Eve Klein
Re-Presenting Mixed Tapes and CDs
Gavin Steingo
"How Near you Stand to Me": The Blues, Blacks and Whites of The Smiths’ Record Sleeves
Andrew Warnes
Frame or Be Framed: This is Not De La Soul
Jonathan Silverman
KISS: Alive! An Iconographical Approach
Ian Chapman
Stars as Human Beings—and Timeless Icons: Pennie Smith’s and Anton Corbijn’s Artist Portraits
Sigrid Lien
Profaning the Scared: Goth Iconography, Iconoclasm, and Subcultural Resistance
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Painting Sound, Playing Color: The Multiple Voices of Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and Jackson Pollock’s White Light
Hilary Moore
Interview with Dan Nadel
Asbjørn Grønstad and Øyvind Vågnes
Notes on Contributors
Select Bibliography