Finally delivered the work for my exhibition of album covers and singles this morning. As usual the whole process of preparation took much longer than expected. Assembling the work, making good some of the effects of age and a certain amount of neglect, the framing, writing the descriptions, all eating up the hours and days. But now it’s done I’m left with a feeling of something achieved. A reflective time too, looking back over some pieces that date back almost forty years.

As I said in the foreword to the exhibition, during that time I’ve seen recordings go from LP and 45 single, through cassette and cartridge, music video, CD, DAT, mini disc, to MP3 file and download. I can’t help feel that as far as cover designs go, I’ve seen the golden age come and go. Not that I regret the demise, I’m just grateful to have been around while it happened. It’s been a fantastic way to earn part of my living, first at Decca, then EMI, next as a freelancer, finally with my own company Clinic.

Fitting then, that the soundtrack playing along during much of the preparations was an album that was a favourite spin on the studio record deck while I was at EMI. It’s an album I’ve been promising myself as a missing part of my collection ever since those days and I finally ordered the CD from Amazon a few weeks ago. It’s by Todd Rundgren and it’s a double album (and CD) titled Something/Anything?

As soon as the first notes spilled from the speakers I was taken back 30 years or more. Now I’m not always that hot on nostalgia, agreeing with Dylan that it can be death. But this was not so much nostalgia, which requires wallowing, but more a rediscovery. Because music is cyclical these songs could have been recorded today by someone with a keen ear for retrieval, a generous word for rip-off. In terms of my trade, a healthy interest in all kinds of sources and styles has lead to some retrieval on my part, something which is acknowledged in the descriptions that accompany some pieces in my show.

On the album Todd himself has also found inspiration from the musical generation that preceded him. It’s divided into four parts. Part 1 described as ‘a bouquet of ear-catching melodies’. Part 2 continues, ‘this is the cerebral side. In fact is so cerebral it’s almost embarrassing’. Part 3 ‘the kid gets heavy’ and Part 4 ‘a pop operetta’, the whole thing adding up to many minutes of music, pretty much every second proving to be thoroughly fine entertainment.

The rear of the CD booklet pictures Todd, back view, standing barefoot on a debris strewn coffee table, guitar around neck, arms outstretched, fingers of both hands in Nixonesque two-fingered ‘peace’ salute, the sunlight streaming through the closed curtains of what appears to be an hotel room littered with recording equipment, the light falling in a diagonal beam across the concrete stippled ceiling. Kind of sums up the whole shebang really and the time I’ve spent listening to it: verging on chaotic in parts but somehow all falling into place in the mix.