I’m not sure about the premise of this slideshow in the Guardian, that these are the album covers that should hang in an art gallery, but it is a good reminder that album covers were an important part of listening to music back in the day of albums.
The big art of an album cover was a message about the product, often a statement about intentions or aesthetic purpose. Or just a lark, but one that connected the artist with the fans.
We lost that when we moved to CDs, and while vinyl sales are up, the vinyl elpee is no longer the face of a musical artist. That image has fractured into many competing versions, each shaped and colored for its particular audience. Which is why I think looking at nice reproductions of these album covers feels so fresh.
I wanted to link to the Milli Vanilli version recorded live at Albert Hall, with Jeff Lynne and PJ Harvey, but it isn’t on YouTube.
This video is terrific, which I hadn’t seen before, and which warrants a listen again to a song we’ve all heard too many times. But the psychedelia and pop song craft I hear here is worlds apart from what came after. Get out of here XTC! The noises in this song are economical, the language plain and straight forward (which still leaves plenty of room for weird). I was glad to watch it, even if I would have preferred Milli Vanilli at this point.
I did not get to see The Upper Crust last night, but my life-long mate Stephen Clayton and I did venture across the bay to San Rafael, to Terrapin Crossroads (Phil Lesh’s place) to see Frisell and his band touring behind the guitar player’s latest disc, Guitar in the Space Age. (Note that I have wanted to see the guitarist for years.)
True, it ain’t rock, but, that does not mean the music doesn’t rock. These guys–for this video is the same band Stephen and I saw–were arguably the most talented collection of musicians I have ever seen playing live with one another. The interplay and musicianship and notes chosen by the collective was breathtaking (watch this and you will see what I mean).
But, in deference to my previous Edge v. Tekulve post, I have started thinking of guitarists in terms of ballplayers, and this time, I could only think of the great Cub and Brave, Greg Maddux as a parallel.
Both can clearly paint the corners, and are artists with a true craft within their respective profession. And, they don’t really look alike, but do sort of have the same look in their eye in the above pics, huh?
Stylish, smart, never overtly overpowering, yet always dominant, Maddux could make the perfect pitch just as Frisell squeezes out the perfect note. Both Hall of Famers!
Noah Wall has spent some time at the Guitar Center, using hyperdirectional mics to record people trying out their instruments. I haven’t listened to all of it, but what I have listened to has beens surprisingly listenable in an ambient kind of way.
OK, my love for Family Guy is widely known. I know, too much barf, too many farts, and sometimes there are routines and the producers simply cannot let go (Syrup of Ipecac barfing, Peter fighting the chicken, eg), but when they nail it, Family Guy nails it better than anyone. As in up there with Mad Magazine, The National Lampoon, Monty Python, SNL, you name it.
This particular selection is Stewie’s love video for Susie Swanson.
It’s awful (so is the song).
OTOH, these guys so nail sappy crappy MTV songs and videos in animated form, that what can I say?
Judge for yourself (keep the Syrup of Ipecac hand, however).
It accompanies a not-so-fun story about the death of Williamsburg Brooklyn that seems to be trading in the same weary cliches it is bemoaning (do something man!), but I had to share. (click for the large version). Photo is by Tod Seelie, who has many other excellent photos accompanying the story.
Patti Smith did an interview with Alan Light back in 2007, when she was promoting her album of covers, Twelve. For whatever reason (he wrote a news piece, not an interview at the time) the interview got filed, and has now emerged on Medium’s Cuepoint. It offers a quick and insightful overview by Smith of her career, which is worth reading, and it ends with this, which is excellent:
Alan Light: What do you think is the biggest misconception about you?
Patti Smith: The thing that bothered me the most was when I had to return to the public eye in ’95 or ’96 when my husband died. We lived a very simple lifestyle in a more reclusive way in which he was king of our domain. I don’t drive, I didn’t have much of an income, and without him, I had to find a way of making a living. Besides working in a bookstore, the only thing I knew how to do was to make records—or to write poetry, which isn’t going to help put your kids through school. But when I started doing interviews, people kept saying “Well, you didn’t do anything in the 80s,” and I just want to get Elvis Presley’s gun out and shoot the television out of their soul. How could you say that? The conceit of people, to think that if they’re not reading about you in a newspaper or magazine, then you’re not doing anything.
I’m not a celebrity, I’m a worker. I’ve always worked. I was working before people read anything about me, and the day they stopped reading about me, I was doing even more work. And the idea that if you’re a mother, you’re not doing anything—it’s the hardest job there is, being a mother or father requires great sacrifice, discipline, selflessness, and to think that we weren’t doing anything while we were raising a son or daughter is appalling. It makes me understand why some human beings question their worth if they’re not making a huge amount of money or aren’t famous, and that’s not right.
My mother worked at a soda fountain. She made the food and was a waitress and she was a really hard worker and a devoted worker. And her potato salad became famous! She wouldn’t get potato salad from the deli, she would get up at five o’clock in the morning and make it herself, and people would come from Camden or Philly to this little soda fountain in South Jersey because she had famous potato salad. She was proud of that, and when she would come home at night, completely wiped out and throwing her tip money on the table and counting it, one of her great prides was that people would come from far and wide for her potato salad. People would say, “Well, what did your mother do? She was a waitress?” She served the people, and she served in the way that she knew best.
I finally saw the Richard Linklater movie over the weekend, though not in a theater, unfortunately. Which meant that living room distractions crept in, and we stopped a couple of times to eat dinner, and then later to eat dessert.
The movie has a shambling narrative that is anything but slack, but doesn’t turn on the classic arc. This is a movie about a boy becoming an older boy, tweaked by the healthy and impressive gimmick of being shot over the course of the 12 years it takes to get from there to here.
Linklater is a rock ‘n’ roll fan, of course. His second movie is named after a Led Zeppelin song, and his first movie became the name of a music streaming service. And as you might expect, there is music all over the place in Boyhood. For one thing, the boy’s dad is a musician, at least he is at the start, and lots of time is spent in bedrooms and cars, places where music plays.
What struck me after seeing the movie, however, was how little of the music I knew. Some of that is because the opening song was by Coldplay, who i’ve never really listened to much, and some is because I didn’t listen to that much indie rock and rap in the aughts. But the music is an important part of the film anyway, and I wasn’t bothered by it’s general unfamiliarity to me.
Jack Hamilton has a story in Slate today that, while somewhat pretentious, I think really gets to what’s so excellent about the Boyhood soundtrack. If you get past some of his “oooh-critical!” language, he comes to describe the scene where dad gives boy a copy of the Beatles’ Black Album powerfully and gets it exactly right.
If you haven’t seen the movie and that doesn’t make sense to you, you only have one option. Go see the movie. In a theater, if you can.
I’m not sure about the premise of this slideshow in the Guardian, that these are the album covers that should hang in an art gallery, but it is a good reminder that album covers were an important part of listening to music back in the day of albums.
