A group of legendary musicians salute an all-time great

Yesterday heralded a landmark development where rock band Pink Floyd won an estimated settlement of $90,000 against EMI, who had been selling tracks off the band's concept albums individually on digital retailers like iTunes. The band basically argued that albums like The Wall are meant to be experienced as entire entities, not piecemeal. And their victory begs the question: What other celebrated bits of rock and pop should be sold as entire extravaganzas? To keep this manageable, let's look at it through the same rose-colored filter through which everyone's waxing nostalgic about the '90s. Mind you, these are in no way the best records of their time--although such an assessment wouldn't be untrue in any of these cases, either.

You would've thought having been approached by the evergreen musician Aimee Mann to do the art for her latest album, @#%&*! Smilers, would've given Gary Taxali a big head. On the contrary, the modest artist contends that you should go on and buy the album, "Not only because I did the artwork, but because it's a great album." Taxali also had a little time to present BlackBook with a revelatory glimpse behind the serendipitous synthesis of his inimitable vision with Mann's exacting sound, what it means to be a Chump, and how he came to create a limited range of toys for the Whitney Museum.

You want to be in pictures? Write a soundtrack with little bombast and no obvious hit singles. Below, a look at the musicians—from Aimee Mann to DeVotchKa!—who are changing the sound of movies.