most exquisite album cover art ever

stan the man wrote: wow thats beautyful.  but my favourite cover is FOX TROT and PAWN HEARTS

^^^^I dislike the cover art to pawn hearts. 

My favorite cover arts are  by prog bands

Brave-Marillion

Drama-Yes

Least We Could Do is Wave to Each Other-VDGG

Scheherezade and Other Stories-Renaissance

The Visitor-Arena

Deadwing-Porcupine Tree

Unfold the Fututre-Flower Kings

Mirage-Camel

Tarkus-ELP

Nursery Cryme-Genesis

Voyage of the Acolyte-Steve Hackett

among others...

My first post.

To date myself I am fast approaching the big five o. I have been an almost daily visitor to this site for the past year and I must say that it has resparked my musical exploration into the wonderful world of progressive rock. I have always loved the music I grew up with - all that great 70's progressive rock. What a decade it was for exploring new sounds! Of my collection of approximately 1500 albums, I would bet that 1000+ could be found on this web site. The other 500 would be a mix of rock and blues, with a handful of classical and jazz records and the odd bluegrass record thrown in - oh, and two Cheech and Chong records to round out the set - it was the 70's after all!

When I was a young man I used to decorate my walls with album covers. I would use scotch tape and paper clips and create holders for my 'wall art'. Using paper clips like this allowed me to regularily (sometimes daily) change my wall, putting up my newest covers, rearranging my favourites or just what I was into listening to that week. It was sooo cool.

That to me has always been the bane of the CD. It is, by it's very nature, too small.

But records?! Man I loved my records. I loved the tactile feel of the album cover and the record itself. I loved the size of the artwork. I loved the way many unique album covers were created. I loved putting the record on the turntable and the subtle art of being able to drop the needle gently into the groove between songs...

And I loved the artwork - it was all amazing to me. And not only was progressive rock the best music out there, it had by far the best artwork - IMHO.

(I still put album covers up in my office - my wife is convinced I'm more than a little crazy)

So before I pick I would like to thank progarchives for helping me discover the new progressive bands. My CD collection has recently past the 400 mark, and these are not copies of my albums, I still play those on my turntable and listen to my old TDK cassette recordings of those records in the car.

Perhaps it was because I was a hot-blooded teenager, or maybe it was when I learnt that there was a big difference in not only quality in 'imports', or maybe because the cover was so hard to find in Canada and it alway got comments from my friends (it hung on my wall quite a bit), but this and those racy Roxy Music imports got my young blood going!

Wow....

My favorite is Space Ritual, not for the obvious reason though its just a cool picture.