ALBUM ART - the good stuff

Sorry if you thought this was going to be about the best album artwork out there, although, that would be a cool thing to get into after I let everyone know about my new hobby. This post is to brag about my new hobby.

I was taking a couple of weeks off from music and needed something to fill in that time. So, since I have been unemployed as an after-school/pre-school/substitute teacher AND as a graphic designer, I decided that I should make sure that I still know what I'm doing, in case I finally get that phone call. I am around kids all day, so I am already covered for the teacher position. Graphics, on the other hand, I figured that I needed to be tested. So, I am a HUGE iTunes and iPod fanatic. I input the lyrics, artwork, date of release on every tune I have. I'll seek out the info like some stalker. I've even contacted musicians and have asked them for some of the info. Insane stuff, right? HAHAHA!

Anyways, I have always been bothered by most of the album artwork being displayed while I use Apple's discontinued presentation program, Front Row. I was crazed about that too - I LOVE THAT PROGRAM - use a remote to play iTunes and the display is the album artwork of the song being played along with the info of that song. I upgraded my system software and Apple removed it. I searched the internet and found out some ways to hack the system, iTunes, and the older Front Row application. It works like a charm! But when the display enlarges many of the album covers I have in iTunes, many are pixelated, or just plain bad copies. So, there was my 2 week project right there - locating and/or fixing up all of my iTunes album artwork!

Starting with Abe Lincoln Story, I did a Google search to look for the highest resolution picture I could work with. EXACTLY!!! WHO THE FU#% IS "ABE LINCOLN STORY!" It wasn't easy, but I located some stuff, fixed it up, and moved on to AC/DC. Those were a lot easier to find. There was a lot of good artwork, and a lot of bad artwork, but that went as smooth as I had hoped. Next, Aerosmith. I ONLY like 70's Aerosmith, and 4 out of 5 of their albums had the worst album art out there! I couldn't believe that! So, I fixed some of the bad pieces out there and realized that others would really appreciate having these versions rather than the other junk out there. As I was finding artwork, I kept finding that I was going to the same web site for about half of my findings. So, I ended up joining them and I'm now putting a lot of the work that I did on the album artwork on their site for all to download. I only upload what they need, or if it improves what someone else has already done, so I left all of the U2, Oasis, Black Sabbath - you know, superstars - I left those for the masses. I figured I'd specialize on what is needed and what is rare (out of my collection.) Anyways, I finally finished almost exactly 2 weeks later, and I am still uploading new stuff once in a while, so feel free to grab what you need, like, or whatever.

These are my uploads:
edjgraphix | Music-images | fanart.tv

And here is the Browse List - I started you out on the A's:
Music | fanart.tv

But, it really is nice to have the album covers pop up on the screen looking nice. My favorite album covers that I uploaded are the more colorful ones: KISS, Infectious Grooves, Iron Maiden (#1), Electric Love Hogs
And there are a lot of really bad ones: Bonk's "Western Soul" LMAO!!

I will be making a page some time with ALL of my albums on it - again, my page only includes the site's artwork deficiency.

So, go visit and download whatever you like! If you have your own album that you want included, send me the artwork (it is your album - you should have a decent piece of artwork somewhere,) and I'll see what I can do to add you.

Erik