Remember when album art mattered? My college band, Groove or Die, had the idea of one-upping the Rolling Stones by making our album jacket out of an actual pair of pants.
That idea, like most things Groove or Die-related — including actually recording music — never quite made it out of the dining hall.
This trip down memory lane was brought on by the Ditty Bops, whose efforts to create an album out of recycled materials and soy-based inks earned their album Summer Rains a Grammy nomination for “Best Recording Package” (that’s what they’re calling album art in this post-vinyl age). As I have seen them perform wearing nothing but recycled plastic bags, in a sense they one-upped Groove or Die by wearing album material instead of making album material out of what they wear.