Hopefully most of you know that today’s date is Feb. 1, 2012. Or 2.1.12. If you’re a Rush fan, there’s a good chance that you’re geeking out over the fact that it’s as close as you’re going to get to the year 2112 — barring any success achieving the same immortality already enjoyed by Rock Gods Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart.

“2112? is, of course, the conceptual title track of the veteran Canadian rock trio’s masterful prog rock epic and breakthrough album from 1976 that, when boiled down from it’s far-out, intergalactic plot, basically sets the idea of individual versus the state. More important: it freakin’ rocks!

If you don’t have your favorite Rush songs handy, you can listen to eleven fine selections at Reverb. Link -via Rush is a Band

Tastes change from decade to decade, but I can’t imagine that the album covers in this gallery were ever considered to be very cool. These are the album covers your Polka loving uncle might have owned in the 1970s, with covers cheesy lovable enough to overshadow whatever terrible music is pressed onto the record.

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We all recognize the artwork on the cover of The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Recognizing it and remembering who was in that image are two different things! Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss challenges your recall by giving you a celebrity, and you decide whether that person was included on the cover or not. I only got 8 out of 12 right -because I was in a hurry, of course. Link

Called Valleys of Neptune, it was remastered by Eddie Kramer, the same engineer who was there to record the (likely) bluesy, churning songs that are typical of Jimi’s style at the time.

Kramer says he spent a year remastering the old analog tapes, using state-of-the-art digital technology to clean up the sound. But not too clean: Kramer says he was trying to bring out the essence of Jimi Hendrix.

“This is Jimi, when he plays the guitar, and it jumps out of the track. The hair on the back of my neck just stands up,” he says. “It’s so raw and in your face.”

“He was the greatest guitarist I ever had the privilege of working with,” he says.

If it’s anything like his 1994 album, :Blues, it should be amazing.

Link.  (Photo: Creative Commons)

Remember the days before Nick Jr, Cartoon Network, video games, and iPods?  What did kids do for fun?  They listened to records! 

Here’s a bunch of interesting photos of kids music record covers.  Some of them have really neat cover art.  If you’re of the right age, they may bring back some memories… If not, just revel in the love of the 70s retro!

From Nancy Dorsner’s blog Dabbled:

Not long ago, my parents were cleaning out their attic, and sent me a bunch of old records (remember those things?) from when I and my brother were kids. I thought they were too cool not to share – some for the memories, some for the interesting album artwork.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Dot.

Someone came up with the brilliant idea of combining different music album covers. The result is a series of fun pieces of collage art.

Link – via Digg