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Author: Mark Wheeler, The Old Scribe - TNT UK
Published: February, 2025

Lusting After Lush Lifestyles

The vinyl LP demands a conscious approach to its packaging, due mainly to its size, a neat 305mm square being the perfect billboard on which to display a seductive invitation to treat. Its high street retail distribution model then further raises the importance of this front cover design. Thus the LP packaging is the epitome of advertising as capitalism realism (Schudson, 1984) in order to achieve its transit from retailer to turntable.

This book is an analysis of the dawn of the LP as consumer product and the role of its packaging in helping it achieve market penetration. That description is inadequate to communicate the importance of this book. It is also a jolly good read, excellently illustrated and beautifully produced in a square format perfectly matched to its subject matter.

The book includes a whole genre of vinyl addressed specifically to lubricate the wheels of aspiration. Your Old Scribe's takeaway from looking at the LP covers illustrated in this book is that these covers are an unthreatening invitation to treat, echoing the visual syntax of aspirational lifestyle advertising from the Admen era.

Context

There's a foreward by Daniel Miller who states,
“I mainly listen to Spotify; I do not bother to look at the cover art of whatever format this music otherwise may have come in, and often I have no idea what the musicians look like. I do not believe this has made the slightest difference to my relationship to music. I am addicted to modern music, mainly pop.”

Miller thus appears rapidly to disqualify himself from any meaningful relationship with the book's subject matter. He continues,
“Many classical music compositions have titles that claim to convey something such as a mountain, a stream, or an ethnic identity. But mostly I can't picture that scene when I hear the music.”

Contrarily Miller then suggests that these early LP covers imply the mood for the music in the context of cultural identity. This would be a very high level of context (Cronen and Pearce, 2025) in the act of choosing an LP at the time of purchase, or as one chooses which disc to play as one's friends arrive for that mid century icon, the cocktail party. High level contexts operate powerful contextual forces in phenomenology of the experience. Perhaps mine is a very European analysis. Miller is also author of 2009 'The Comfort of Things', also 2009 'Stuff' and earlier in 1998 'A Theory of Shopping' indicating a position oft referred to as 'cultural commentator'. However, he's also author of a thriller trilogy thriller described as peppered with riddles and cyphers. This Texas dwelling, née midwestern chap's own upbringing might well be both light source and lens for his view of the subject matter. That is his qualification for writing the preface which is vital for those of us who grew up in different countries and cultures.

Content

Many of the LP covers in this book will be familiar to Western European readers as rack fillers in charity shops and thrift stores. At least as many will be previously unseen by eyes outside of the 48 States of 1950. Miller helps those of us elsewhere understand the almost equal importance of the sleeve with the music in finding American acceptance of this long form format showcasing the music of the world in an era before the democratisation of global travel.

By the primary authors' own admission (pxii) that it was their colleagues at an academic conference, in 2013, who suggested that vinyl records of this genre "deserved more attention". This despite them having been long time record collectors together. It was the key theme that emerged, a capacity for surprise at what might seem the obvious explicit of any given cover or series of LP issues. One 1950s American theme is that of being seen to enjoy “Gracious Living”. Many LP's were issued by imprints of RCA and Columbia designed to help buyers demonstrate their sophistication at suppers, barbecues and Italian, Mexican, German and French themed dinner parties.

Exotic Promise

Every album cover illustration is decoded on the facing page along with quotations fftrom the LP cover blurb. Such LP sleeve notes are often incongruous with the musical content and cover photo, Claims such as “Dance music as modern as the Sputnik and accepted at the Debs' Ball... and Country Club” indicate as clearly as any semiotic deconstruction of the image the vendor's intentions and the buyers desires.

The exotic womanhood extensively depicted would imply that the admen expected purchasers to be predominantly the patriarchal hetero male of their time but the campness of some of the imagery might broaden appeal too. That few American buyers of the time held passports (as with most countries in the 1950s) indicates that these record makers were also offering a sophisticated taste for travel yet to be realised.

Conclusion

This is a jolly good read with great pictures. If you have any interest in the social and cultural role of the vinyl LP, this book is a must. If you like looking at old album cover designs this book is jolly entertaining.

References

W. Barnett Pearce & Vernon Pearce: Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) coordmgtmeaning.pdf (accessed 26-01-2025) see also Coordinated management of meaning

Schudson, Michael. Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. New York: Basic Books, 1984.

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Copyright © 2025 Mark Wheeler - mark@tnt-audio.com- www.tnt-audio.com

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