I was
trawling through Spotify the other day looking for a few tracks to add to my
already bulging playlist and I came across the seminal and quite brilliant
debut album from Super Group (yeah, I hate that term as well) – Blind Faith! In
case you’ve never seen the cover it I can only be described as a picture of a
naked pre-pubescent girl holding some sort of silver object that looks
remarkably like a British Vulcan Bomber (yes, I know, it was really tempting to
make some sort of Jimmy Saville joke there, but I didn’t …. Er ….)
Anyway,
as I was adding tunes and looking at the rather surprising and in some cases
slightly disturbing album cover – it got me thinking that no one has slightly
bizarre album covers anymore as many musicians/groups are too obsessed with
having pictures of themselves on their album covers instead!
Now I
know the world of pop/rock music has always been full of self-centred,
self-obsessed beautifully wonderful human beings and for years many albums have
had the occasional album cover featuring said artist/band in some sort of
wacky, embarrassing, catalogue-style pose set in some exotic location.
Sadly,
they are pretty much the norm these days and they are really starting to grind
on me!!
Bill
boards featuring massive King Kong-size photos of say: Rhianna are bad enough,
but having to endure the same image over and over again with on-line pop ups,
the side of buses, shop windows and other media outlets takes self promotion
and vanity to a whole new level!
Now,
don’t get me wrong here, I know most of the great bands from the past EG:
Cream, The Stones, The Beatles, etc, etc have all been responsible for having
photos of themselves on their album covers, but lets be honest here – it was only a small handful and the
photos taken were at least shot by a professional photographer.
These
days, the likes of One Direction (down), Adele, Take Twat and other assorted,
perfect looking flunkies seem to be far too obsessed with images of themselves.
Instead
of having a nice, glitzy, glamorous photo of themselves, would they really sell
as many albums if they had a picture of say someone’s house or a block of flats
(see Led Zeppelin’s classic album cover for Physical Graffiti) on the cover of
their latest release? Simple answer is no! The reason for this obviously lies
in the hands of the artist’s all-powerful record label and more to the point –
the marketing department! This also points to the controversial point that
artists no longer have a say in not just what they record, but how it is
packaged and designed!
Which
brings me nicely to my final point which is somewhat of an obituary:
This
week saw the sad news of the death of one of the most important people who was responsible
for creating some of the most iconic album covers ever designed – Storm
Thorgerson.
In
case you didn’t know, Storm Thorgerson has created some of the most superb and
stand out albums covers for bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Muse and
most notably and successfully – Pink Floyd.
The
most iconic, famous and intriguing designs Thorgerson created though has to be
the front cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It is still as stylish
and as baffling today as it has always been, but its one redeeming feature and
lasting trait would be this – it is original!
As
well as having one of the coolest names ever, Thorgerson’s work had a level of
perfectionism that has, in my opinion, never been repeated when it comes to
album sleeve designing.
If you
get a couple of minutes, have a look at the inner sleeve design for Pink
Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album. The photography and attention to detail is
outstandingly brilliant!
Now, compare
Thorgerson’s works of art to the latest offerings from One Direction or Justin
‘I’m not Keith Moon’ Beiber for example and you will soon realise that the
world of music doesn’t just have a problem with the music side of things … it
also has an image problem as its nothing short of cheap and nasty!
Storm
Thorgerson – RIP
Mol
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