April 16, 2006
NYC Album Art: Physical Graffiti
With tapes, cd's and now digital music...the art of the album cover has sadly gone ignored. We used to have a small stack of albums, some of which had covers shot here in New York. Our favorite of those: Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album (at right, photographed by BP Fallon).
The cover shows two buildings, located at 97 St. Mark's Place. The original album jacket included die-cut windows in the building shown on the cover and inner sleeves with different variations of that, with objects and people in the windows. We think it would be pretty cool if the people who lived there would recreate the album cover by putting the photos (or the letters) in their windows. The buildings haven't changed much since the cover was shot 31 years ago. There is, however, now a thrift store located in one of them called, what else, Physical Graffiti.
If you head over there, you might get a little confused. The building is 5 stories high, but on the cover...the building has only 4 stories. The 4th floor was actually taken out to fit the square jacket.
We're gonna go buy some vinyl now...
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This photograph was taken by BP Fallon who runs a Rock night down @ The Delancey on Wed. nights. It would be cool if we could have him photograph this scene again.
Someone was watching "Love Monkey" today!
What is this thing called "vinyl"?
Darius, if he shot the scene again with all the changes in the east village, he'd be shooting scaffolding or a newer looking building without the cool architecture.
Whoa-never knew that was shot in NYC.
Thanks for the tip Gothamist.
Now load a bong and listen to Kashmir (as if!)
As a barely related fact, I recently figured out that the cover photo for The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday is at the intersection of Maspeth and Conselyea in East Williamsburg. Not as famous or recognizable as Zeppelin, but a fun discovery.
please answer if anyone knows the answer to this question. Is the cover art on physical graffiti the same building as the shoot out scene from the movie Taxi Driver?
It looks just like the same building to me except that they must have put new windows on the second floor and paved in the half ovals at the tops. You can still see on the second floor the half oval brick design and the different color bricks/mortar below showing they are newer. The movie was filmed after the album was released.