L
l
The soundtrack of your life can easily be synchronized with the „covertrack“. There was a year when I listened to Desire, Zuma, and Yellow Fields in equal measure, and the covers became as unforgettable as the music while simply being there, „all the time“, in your room. Not that these covers were, on a regular basis, as stunning as the music, but, in case of Maja Weber, I have really liked most of her covers for ECM records.
I still remember the first time I ever saw one of her paintings, on Eberhard Weber’s debut, The Colours of Chloe. I saw that album, the name of the artist, the shocking cover, shocking in its own peculiar ways: a family picture, utterly naive, flowers beyond any San Francisco hippie cult, a fairytale family in pastel shade. I think for some jazz „conoisseurs“ that must have been like a personal insult: nothing cool, nothing rebellious – and knowing from where Eberhard grew up, you could instantly think of a „schwäbische Musterfamilie“.
In fact this album became a „jazz classic“ transporting the listener to a place beyond any trained fantasy of what a jazz record should be and look like. Wonderful, never losing its spell. And the second one was Yellow Fields, another stunner. Funny, most people who apparently know that cover very well simply oversee that one of the trees looks like a flower. And then came The Following Morning, highly addictve, ask Pat Metheny! Three masterpieces in a row. From time to time, Kate Bush is taking one of these records from the shelves and plays it. And there they are again, the good old vinyl covers.