Sound & Vision: Featuring U-Roy

They sure don’t make them like they used to.

Album covers that is. In fact, they don’t even make albums. Indeed, is anyone besides me even buying compact discs anymore?

It’s never wrong to remember how incredible actual albums used to be.

Even a mediocre album could be salvaged by a cool cover. Like so:

Or the crappy album with the incredible cover:

Or the incredible album with the crappy cover:

Or the crappy album with the crappy cover:

And then the album where form meets content and all elements are in harmony:

All of which provides me with an excellent excuse to talk about U-Roy’s Dread in a Babylon. Now that summer is officially over (sigh), we need reggae more than ever.

This one features a fantastic cover, and is indeed a tremendous album (one that is –like the man who made it– overdue for reappraisal, and appreciation).

And as great as the front of the album is, it’s the back cover sequence where things get truly dread.

Extreme close-up on those awesome images:

Going…

Going…

Gone!