I'm not often overcome by waves of nostalgia regarding entertainment. OK, I miss Johnny Carson. However, I think most "classic" movies are garbage; I also love e-readers and don't miss the "feel" of a "real" book or newspaper. And I haven't gotten caught up in the vinyl craze, mostly because my ears work.
The packaging for those vinyl albums of yesteryear, however, was an art form that should not be forgotten.
I'm at my sister's house right now and was going through some of the many records that they still have and got lost for a little while. The pictures, the track listings, and the liner notes all transported me like a time machine back to the 1970s.
This was something we started to lose long before we were all on computers. I don't know if I ever bought any vinyl after 1979 (Cheap Trick at Budokan). The music industry went all-in on cassettes and the album cover's days were numbered. Sure, they tried to keep the vibe going with the cassette "covers," but that was like trying to keep renaissance art alive by painting everything on squares of toilet paper (I know I'm wildly mixing up eras there).
When I think about a lot of my favorite songs or comedy bits from my teenage years, there's an immediate visual association with the album cover that pops into my head. That's a powerful enhancement for trips down Memory Lane. For an all-too-brief while, MTV videos provided a similar association, but that was a cultural phenomenon that was not destined for a long run.
Sadly, I did not keep any of my record albums. If I had, I would probably dedicate an entire wall in my house to displaying the covers like the fine art that time has made them.
Then I'd enjoy the music they represented in a digital format, as God intended.
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