|
 Neil
Aldis & James Sherry - Heavy Metal Thunder. Album
Covers That Rocked the World (Mitchell Beazley)
Spencer Drate & Judith Salavetz
- Swag 2. Rock Posters of the 90s andBeyond (Abrams)
Klanten, Hellige, & Mischler
- Sonic: Visuals for Music (Die Gestalten
Verlag)
I’ve always found these books
compiling album cover art a bit lame: I
prefer the albums themselves, the complete package,
and I’m more apt to go
pick out a record in my collection
to show it to others, whether it be
awe-inspiring or for a laugh, than dig out
a book with some funny covers
for albums I have no relation to.
 That
stated, I’ll nevertheless always
be picking up these books in bookstores,
since I suppose it’s the kind of book I can relate to,
and some of them can be quite interesting. “Heavy
Metal Thunder” is a classic album cover art
book with a wide selection of covers
divided into different categories and themes, and it actually
does an OK job of covering the whole
genre, from NWOBHM over thrash
and glam, through death and grindcore, around
funk metal, black metal, stoner, and doom, ending up with
nü-metal. Very representative, even if you may disagree
with the selection of some of the 400+ covers:
Is the ugly, pink and baby blue cover to Acid
Reign’s ”Obnoxious” really that representative
of thrash metal, now? There’s also a fine, if
sometimes faulty, introductory text accompanying it, focusing
on how the artwork complements the
different genres, from the fishnet
stockings and hairspray of Tigertailz and Poison over the
gory stock photos of Brujería and
Carcass to the proud, sword-wielding warriors of Manowar and
Saxon. Plus, of course, all the monsters
in the world - and I’m not talking about
Joey Dimaio or Tommy Lee in leather thongs here, mind
you: There’s a short interview
with Derek Riggs, who invented Iron Maiden’s Eddie
the Monster and designed their album
covers throughout the 80s, which is the clou of the book.
Not an indispensable book, but one I know I’m
gonna bring out when I have
friends over for beer.
”Swag 2” and “Sonic” are of a different
calibre, Sonic showing both album
cover art and poster designs, “Swag”
concentrating on the latter with a
mint collection of concert posters from the US. Of the
two, “Swag” will be
the most interesting for LowCut readers,
since its focus is on designers
for alternative rock bands with
a lot of punk and stoner thrown in. 50
designers are represented with a
short introduction to their work, and
 there
are absolutely prime cuts in here, my personal
favourite Connor‘s
work for Melvins, Cramps, and Acid Mothers Temple full of
skulls, syringes,
religious iconography, and, err, crutches. Perfect
material for that back piece you’ve been
saving up for. There are also a lot of more traditional cartoon
inspired punk rock posters by the likes of Dean and
Gaither, some cool psychedelic craft by
Malleus, along with a load of arty-farty, but nevertheless
good looking indie design here by The Decoder Ring, Fowler
et al, so this one’s a must for
anyone with an interest in graphic design, alternative rock,
or both.
”Sonic” is interesting, too, and big
and thorough, with some art included that’ll make
you drool. A lot of it focuses on electronic music,
though, which is OK for the
artwork, but makes it somewhat irrelevant to most LowCut
readers. For graphic designers, though, this’ll
be a big source of inspiration.
Go ahead, make something mindblowing that’ll
cheat us into buying shitty
records just for the covers! I dare you.
If you dig: Graphics
Jon A
http://www.mitchell-beazley.com
All titles available from Politikens Boghal
Neil Cossar - This Day in Music. An Everyday Record of
10.000 Musical Facts (Collins & Brown)
My revolutionary commemoration calendar tells me today,
April 25th, is the
36th anniversary of the Carnation Coup in Portugal, this book
tells me I
Jerry Leiber’ and Stu Cook’s birthdays, 29 years
since Elvis made his last
ever recordings, 26 years since the Stranglers
frontman was released from
jail after serving 6 weeks for possession of drugs, and 16
years since Jimi
Hendrix guitar fetched $295.000
at an auction, among many other
interesting as well as uninteresting
things. Neil Cossar is obviously a
music nerd, one of those people
who lives and breathes for dusty, old
records, of the kind that is endlessly making lists to compare
with his just
as sorry friends along the lines of ?best song about football,
ever, most
uncommon word to pop up in
a Pavement song?, and “best Black Sabbath singer”.
You know the kind, reading this,
you might very well be one yourself. You’ll
need this book, then. This way,
you can start every
morning with fun-facts like On
this day in 1964, Rod Stewart made his
TV-debut on The Beat Room as a member of The Hoochie
Coochie Men (August 6th), On this day in 1974, The 101 Allstars
(formed by Joe Strummer of The Clash) made their debut
at The Telegraph, Brixton Hill, London (September 6th),
or On this day in 2001, Arthur
Lee [of] Love was released from prison after serving
almost six of an eleven year sentence. Every day! Plus
birthdays, every day: Nikki Sixx
(December 11th), Billy Idol (November 30th),
Howlin Wolf (June 10th), and notes about the band or
artist in question. You’ll boreyour friends
to death, and win the awe of
other music nerds!
It’ way over the top, but even so,
this book is strangely enticing.
Not one you’lll necessarily pick up every
single day, but quite fun at times.
Tomorrow’s birthday of the drummers from both Duran Duran
and Slipknot.
Draw your own conclusions. Or something.
http://www.chrysalisbooks.co.uk
If you dig: Factfiends
Jon A
Seb Hunter – Rock Me Amadeus… Or How I Learned
to Stop Worrying and Love Handel (Michael Joseph/Penguin)
If you’re a full-blown music fan, and especially if
you’ve been raised on heavy metal, there will inevitably
come a time in your life, likely when you’re pushing
30 (and if you’re in that age group now and reading this
now, chances are you’ll have indeed been raised on the
good metal), where you’ll be sufficiently intrigued by
the whole classical music thing to want to give it a try.
(If, on the other hand, you’re pushing 40 and reading
this, you’ll have long since written off the whole thing
as pretentious bollocks.) The odd expensive-looking box sets
of Shostakovich, John Cage, Steve Reich, even, God help me,
Beethoven, you’ll find in my record collection, picked
up at jumble sales at various stages in my life, bear witness
to my own inclination towards this, although I have yet to
truly get into any of this stuff, and no one has ever praised
me for looking smarter for having them.
Which, as Seb Hunter will agree, is a big part of it: Earning
props. This 30-something Londoner wrote his heavy metal (or,
to be more exact, glam metal) memoirs a couple of years ago,
the funny and enjoyable, if trying a bit too hard to come
off clever and ironic, “Hell Bent for Leather” (LowCut
# 17); now, post-30, renowned author, a married man, he wants
to be let in to the glassed off basement section of the music
mega stores, he wants to understand what all the fuss is about,
whether this whole classical music thing is just snobbery
and pompousness, or if there actually lies a dormant beauty
within it, waiting to be discovered.
Not one to go half-assed about it, and with a whole book
to fill, Hunter starts at the dawn of modern Western music
with 12th century German nun Hildegaard von Bingen’s
chorals, roars drunkenly through 16th century Palestrina’s
Rome, wanders freezing through the Vienna of Beethoven, Mozart,
and various types of sausage, all the way up to the atonal
20th century mayhem of Schoenberg and Stockhausen.
Not surprisingly, along the way he acquires a taste for some
of the music he’s forcing upon himself, and this way,
“Rock Me Amadeus” works as a fine introduction to
what you, as an equally thick-skulled ex-headbanger, might
want to check out. All those instrumental keyboard parts that
pop up on your Morbid Angel and Bathory-records? That’s
classical music, or it wants to be! Even the twin guitar solos
of Iron Maiden are inspired by classical music. And it’s
definitely more interesting than indie, I can guarantee you
that one, even if you might find jazz more vibrant (and its
solos more like Slayer, if you find anything 60’s).
A born again alternative rocker, Hunter’s writing is
in the style of so many British music journalists, i.e. witty
and ironic to the point of being self-absorbed and moronic,
and it’s not guaranteed to fare well with all readers.
Personally, I clucked heartily all the way through, just as
I’ve done with Hunter’s colleague and soul mate
from the other side of the Atlantic, Chuck Klosterman’s
books; actually, blind tested, I’m not sure too sure
I’d be able to recognize one from the other on a first
read.
Good stuff, might even make you cleverer, though reading
the book in public won’t impress anyone, least of all
your father in law. (“It’s a book about classical
music.” “Really?” “Written by a heavy
metal fan.” “I see.”)
If you dig: Chuck Klosterman, Dave Eggers
Jon A
http://www.penguin.com
Available from Politikens Boghal May 16th.
|
