mosaic cover art

[ASNL77]

I'm thinking of buying my first mosaic set but I like Blue note cover art so much that I find it difficult to go for mosaic sets.Could some of you give me a flavour of what mosaic booklets look like? How are the inserts and is there a lot of information on the albums the sets cover? And how do they sound? Thanks for your help

Edited November 28, 2004 by ASNL77

[sjarrell]

You'll miss the BN design- with the exception of the Selects, there's no cover art reproduced. With the BN sets, though, you get a plethora of Wolff photos, in-depth essays and notes on each session. And tons of music- the Lou Donaldson set, for instance, has 10 lps worth of material in. Divide 10 into $96 and you've got alot of bang for your buck. And the bulk of the material's oop.

Buy a book full of Blue Note cover art here. And some Mosaics.

As for sound, they suit my ears and low-end system just fine. The other kids disagree sometimes. But I love every set I have. With all my heart

edit: the non-BN sets are pretty sweet too.

Edited November 28, 2004 by sjarrell

[DrJ]

To me, once you've seen the original cover art a couple times (you can do this with the cover art books if you haven't seen the LPs or CD reissues), it's burned into your head anyway and I don't miss it. The Mosaics are the best way to go with this stuff IMHO. Most are in very good sound and the booklets are usually far more useful than the liners from the original albums (some of these are actually included in the booklets). They are LP sized (except for the new Mosaic Selects which are slightly larger than usual CD size) and most are outstanding, with discographical info, essays, commentaries, etc. Don't limit yourself to the BN dates Mosaic has reissued either!

But if you're the type of person who really likes to hear the original album sequences etc and doesn't want to hassle with programming your CD player, then you might not like the Mosaics.

Edited November 28, 2004 by DrJ

[sidewinder]

Always a good idea to place a reference copy of the 'Cover Art of Blue Note' records paperback next to your stack of BN Mosaics. Works for me !

[mikeweil]

As much as I appreciate Mosaic's work, "cover art" is paying them too much of a compliment. A black & white photo on a black background with white print - that's so basic it could be done by any beginning design student. The music, sound and essays are all first rate, but the design is very basic.

Add a little color and lettering, and you get a much more attractive desgin, like this, which I love to look at much more than any Mosaic:

[Bright Moments]

your first mosaic?

abandon all hope ye who enter here!!!!!

[DrJ]

It's funny Mike, I guess everyone has their own taste. Personally I've always thought that Fantasy's boxed sets, like the Coltrane Prestige, are a low point in boxed set packaging excitement. They're only marginally more colorful than the Mosaics, but the discographical info is always hard to use (you have to flip back and forth to figure out what's what), the essays are usually far less revealing than with the Mosaics, and the photo repro quality is always a lot poorer than with Mosaics. The only strength I'd say is that they do include (very small) full color images of the original LP covers with most of their sets, that I do appreciate. Of all the Fantasy boxes, really only the Dolphy Prestige and Pepper Galaxy box booklets would I call excellent.