Frameworks (Cont.)

Album frameworks in the 50s and 60s by Sinatra and Dylan were the "containers" for groups of thoughts and events taking place in a chapter of their lives, and cultural chapters of American life.

From the excellent book "Love For Sale" by David Hajdu:

"Albums got people thinking of old music on recordings in new terms, as pieces in a portfolio of treasurable mementos, and a common repertoire of durable, adaptable songs--most of them originally written for the stage or movies, began to take form....The LP, in providing a format for anthologizing songs, brought with it the necessity of an anthologizing rationale. Sinatra took up broadly conceived themes has frameworks for his albums at Capitol....



Vinyl has turned out to be the best technology for making these frameworks. It is a perfectly logical extension of the paper book. I'm still not convinced that electronic formats can be natural extensions of books or albums because they don't have a physical container or package.