Records.

12mo. (178 x 140 mm). [36 leaves]. Printed title with copyright and credits verso and illustrated with 60 monochrome photographs conceived as 30 spreads of record covers at left and vinyl record(s) at right. Original publisher's red faux leather embossed printed paper wrappers, title in black to front cover. An excellent copy of Ed Ruscha's 'Records'. From the edition limited to 2,000 copies. The photographs by Jerry McMillan depict 30 records - sleeve and vinyl - starting with '18 King Size Rhythm & Blues' and proceeding via the Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones and less well-known artists such as Merle Haggard and Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson to Linda Ronstadt's 'Hand Sown.'. ''Records' also appeared in 1971 . each spread has images of a record album cover on the left and the recor dit housed on the right. The effect is of paired squares and circles. It seems almost to be a blending of the two little books by Bruno Munari that appeared in English in 1962 and 1966 ('Discovery of the Square' and 'Discovery of the Circle'), but without the diverse visual content of those books - save, to an extent, in the imagery of the album covers. The only hiccup in the sequence of spreads in 'Records' comes two-thirds of the way through the book, when RUscha presents two discs from a double album. These rock, rhythm and blues and country records were 'randomly selected' from Ruscha's own collection . one of the albums is a recording by his friend Mason Williams. In its own way, this book, too, is concerned with signs and words, but the record covers present words on images, rather than documenting words in images, as the earlier books do.' (Clive Phillpott in 'Sixteen Books'). [Engberg & Phillpot B15].…