It's all about the music

LP artwork of the 1970s. A golden age of graphic design in music.

Well not for John Martyn it wasn't, whose record company commissioned a consistent run of absolute shockers.

 

 

 Bless the Weather (1971).                                                         

                                                                Sunday's Child (1975).

Bless the Weather and Sunday's Child are just plain lazy. "Stick his head in the middle, with the name at the top and the title below. Next!"
 
 
The compilation album So Far So Good tries to make this a bit more interesting by using a painting but the effect is very A-Level Art submission in acrylics.


 

 One World (1977). Art and design by Tony Wright.

One world takes the illustration approach further and we end up in Camden market territory. It’s worth remembering he was signed to Island in this period and worked with Lee Perry and the Upsetters on One World. The artwork is crying out for some influence from reggae design, to reflect the musical hybridity inside.

Solid Air (1973). Cover photo: John Webster.

Solid Air is actually a good cover, but when you know it’s been chosen to illustrate a 'paradox' it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Especially when you know what’s coming next…
 

 

 Inside Out (1973). Design by Visualeyes.

… because you see the outside is on the inside of John, yeah? That’s the kind of guy he is.

Link

Update. Link now works.

"Hello, Bernie Rhodes? It's Tony Benn here..

"Wednesday 28 December

I rang the manager of The Clash , a political punk rock group, because there had been a suggestion from the BBC Television Community Programme Unit that I have a four-minute discussion with the group. I have grave doubts about a Cabinet Minister appearing with a punk rock group, given what the media would make it, and he agreed with me that four minutes was not enough for a serious discussion. But what he said was interesting. The Clash are apparently very popular with working-class youngsters who don't find anything in our popular culture that meets their needs or reflects their feelings. He told me the group were not really concerned with being commercial and refused a lot of television because it put them into an artificial setting when they were really a live group. They were popular in Sweden, France and Yugoslavia. He said that to get any attention at all you had to be absolutely bizarre, but to understand what The Clash were trying to say you had to work really hard because the lyrics were in pidgin French."

Tony Benn, Conflict of Interest: Diaries 1977-80, p.268

Blows Against the Empire

(Because the Audience Always Cheers for the Rebels)

Caption: Insert obligatory Leni Riefenstahl joke here.

Yes, K-punk – we know, we know.

Why would anyone be surprised by this? And what’s the purpose of harping about it? Seems obvious enough. But look at how that comments section stacks up. Not that it isn't a valid thesis, but really – it isn’t the sort that’s likely to go over well with that venue's readership, is it?

But maybe it's just a matter of perspective. For instance...

* * * *
When the first Star Wars film was released, I was eleven years old. Some six years later when Return of the Jedi came out, I was about to begin my final year of high school and wasn't feeling any pressing need to rush out and see the latter movie during its premier weekend. Me and a friend had a conversation about it; about what we knew from the adverts and the advanced promotion, and about our waning enthusiasm. What could we expect this time, the third, time around? I offered a list of predictions:

1.  Han Solo would probably get a bad feeling about something,
2.  Darth Vader would at some point proclaim that something else "is now complete",
3.  There would doubtlessly be some short, cute aliens of some new variety or other, and
4. Five bucks says R2D2 gets shot again.

We'd been of the ideal age when the first one - or the fourth one, or whatever - came out in 1977, and we'd been some of the first in line. Not only that, but we then ran out and bought the action figures when they began to arrive on store shelves, collected the several series of baseball-style cards that followed, and even went so far at one point as to buy issues of the dodgy cash-in extrapolatory Marvel Comics series that followed in its wake. But now we were a little older, and - as happens in mid-adolescence - our interests had drifted into other areas. We were "aging out" of what had become the franchise's target demo.

And perhaps we were also becoming prematurely jaded. But fuck it, we also remembered being subjected to that wretched Star Wars Christmas TV special – so who could blame us?

* * * *

Some sixteen year later, a good many other people would get a strong dose of that same "aged out" and left-behind feeling when the Star Wars "prequels" arrived in theaters. By reviving the series for a second trilogy of films, Lucas and company were looking to appeal to a new and younger generation of viewers. What’s more, the studio and its licensees trotted out an extensive array of tie-in merchandise well in advance of the release of The Phantom Menace, more and more people – far more than usual – started to take to the notion that the films were becoming little more than thinly-disguised, mega-inflated toy commercials.