The relation between album artwork and music?

Hi,

Perhaps, however from the arts side of things, from literature, theater and film, it was much less "surrealistic", than it was imaginary, and in many cases contrary to general thought, with some of the albums, and artists being decidedly political or at least quite socially aware and strong against the government. It's awfully difficult to say that ITCOTKC is not an album of political/social relevance, although the poetic nature with which it was done, had a tendency to hide a lot of the thoughts and ideas.

The covers, for my tastes, were not quite surrealist, as much as they were generally very much an obvious counter social element and view, and this is quite visible in a lot of HIPGNOSIS covers, even if subtle, although it is hard to not consider QUATERMASS' cover surrealistic, or many others, but in general I think that Storm and Roger (Dean) were less worried about their surrealism than they were upon using their graphical surfaces differently, with Roger leaning towards a futuristic and sci-fi view and look, which is quite open and visible in the first book that he did. And Storm T. explains a lot of the graphics in the two big books on the work by Hipgnosis ... in many ways, that made things more "experimental" than they did "surrealistic".

As an art form, this was a very special period for the art ... and so much of the music that went with it ... the sad thing that 30 years later, no one cared about the art anymore, and it was no longer visible, or clear and too many bands were depending on idealistic thoughts that were in their lyrics, which were not what was needed ... I call it a sort of early "trumpism", trying to convince you of what is right, and all that.

For me, in later days, it was no longer about the art, and most music showed it with its commercial copycopycopycopy and stylestylestylestyle and formatformatformatformat ... which pretty much told you that these folks were not connected to a time and space where art as valuable and important. It kinda also suggests to you what kind of art is in NY, London and Paris, when what comes out of their places are crap music, that is thought to be famous, because if you sell 100k in NY, you will be "famous", a suggestion that the actual artistic community is non-existent and decimated by commerciality!

Hi,

So much for him listening to Guru Guru! Mani is a nudist and makes no fuss about it, and it probably goes back to the famous/infamous commune days in Germany!

Greenslade is an acquired taste, since describing their music is difficult at times, but the work is neat and special in its own way, and remember that one of the guys here ended up producing a lot of very nice albums, which kinda makes you wonder ... why is Greenslade so different?

I don't dislike Flash at all, it is simply something else, perhaps without the ability to do something with more "meat" in it, than simply sound, but its early material, like the other band Badger, really showed how YES came about in the first place, but they did not, at the time, really had a keyboard player that could help "expand" the band's material, which Rick Wakeman did by adding a more classical element to it.

The artwork for both Badger, and Flash were likely very different for a good reason ... I had a feeling they did not want the "meaningful" covers that Hipgnosis was creating and then putting out something blatant, like Flash's first 2 albums, so they could (hopefully) show that the music was the important part, however, they did not stand up as well as the main band YES did. However, these covers were a good 6 months ahead of the real start of Roger Dean with "Fragile", thus, the covers might have been, at the time, not quite as well defined as they later became. I have to recheck on this ....

It's a tough conclusion, either way you look at it, and Flash's first two albums were not exactly the along the lines of the work that Hipgnosis did, but they managed to do something that got everyone's attention, which was good for the band, but I'm not sure that the music itself was as "attractive" (sorry ladies!) as the covers made the whole thing out to be ... and perhaps that might have been intentional, as illusory, that "attention" to something, might not necessarily indicate the whole story or idea. Sadly, Flash could never get "better" and I think them not wanting keyboards was a bit of a problem, when compared to the time and most English bands that were becoming keyboard heavy. All of a sudden, it was easy to feel that their material was not quite good enough. The same fate took place with other bands that were not quite keyboard oriented, and Budgie was one, and in the continent, Guru Guru for sure. The Edgar Broughton Band, had the same problem until later, but by then no one was listening to a very well educated, and intelligent band.

In general, trios were a problem musically, in the very early days, until Rush seemed to find a way around it some.

Androgyny, the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics, was a part of the hippie counterculture, and it became in more figurative meaning and important ways a part of Progressive Rock music and the whole culture, which can be seen in artwork too.

In Glam, much more than prog IMHO

And of course in the 80's electro-pop (Communards, Culture Club, Wham, etc...)

Not so sure about punk, though