The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

As much as the Who staked their claim as rock legends on high-octane numbers like “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “My Generation”, I find that often it’s the more contemplative songs where they really shine.  Take, for instance, this cut from 1975’s The Who By Numbers.  The lyrics are bleak but the music…the music is startlingly simple and beautiful.  Did Pete Townshend ever write a better ballad?

I’m not sure, but this is certainly a worthy contender.  Here’s “Imagine a Man”:

Imagine a man
Not a child of any revolt
But a plain man tied up in life

Imagine the sand
Running out as he struts
Parading and fading, ignoring his wife

Imagine a road
So long looking backwards
You can’t see where it really began

Imagine a load
So large and so smooth
That against it a man is an ant

Then you will see the end
You will see the end

Imagine events
That occur everyday
Like a shooting or raping or a simple act of deceit

Imagine a fence
Around you as high as prevention
Casting shadows, you can’t see your feet

Imagine a girl
With long, flowing hair
And the body of chalky perfection and truth

Imagine a past
Where you wish you had lived
Full of heroes and villians and fools

And you will see the end
You will see the end
And you will see the end
You will see the end
Oh yeah

Imagine a man
Not a child of any revolt
But a man of today feeling new

Imagine a soul
So old it it is broken
And you know your invention is you

And you will see the end
You will see the end
You will see the end
You will see the end
Oh yeah

It didn’t take Robert Plant long after the breakup of Led Zeppelin to find his musical footing.  From his superb 1983 sophomore effort, The Principle of Moments, here’s “Big Log”.  The song reached the Top 20 in both the U.S. and U.K., and the video complements it perfectly.

To this day “Big Log” is my favorite Plant track, helped in no small measure by the top-rate guitar playing of Robbie Blunt.  Blunt left Plant’s band in 1985 and has kept a pretty low profile since, doing occasional session work for various artists.

Since it’s been so long since the last entry, I’ll give you a two-fer.  This marks (I believe) the first entry in the ACotW series featuring a compilation, as well as the first entry from the Fab Four.  These two albums were released in April 1973, less than three full years after the Beatles officially disbanded in 1970.  In contrast to the iconic covers of albums like Rubber Soul or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the images for this career-spanning set are simpler yet more powerful in my opinion.

Up first is 1962-1966, also known as the Red Album.  This shot of the Beatles looking down from a stairwell at the EMI building in London was taken by Angus McBeam, and is actually from the same photo session that gave us the cover of the group’s debut, Please Please Me.

Read on Daddy-O…

It hardly seems possible that it’s been half a century since a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza and its occupants departed from an airstrip in the dark of the Iowa night, bound for Minnesota, and flew into history.  But that’s exactly what happened on February 3, 1959 when, shortly after 1 am local time, the plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson crashed just after takeoff in Clear Lake, Iowa, killing the three musicians and their pilot instantly.

There are a handful of album covers from the Flaming Lips’ discography worth of enshrinement as part of this series.  But for me it came down to a choice between their two best – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and the ultimate winner, At War With the Mystics.  I was tempted to go with Yoshimi because I like the album more, but this cover is just so damn good:

My internet sleuthing tells me the cover art credit goes to Dan Lazenby, although I’m open to corrections on that.  Regardless, I love the mood created by the bright, explosive imagery and funky title font.  It looks it could be the cover of a musty old paperback book you stumble across while browsing the oft-overlooked Fantasy/Sci-Fi section at a rummage sale or flea market.

Right under the Warner Bros. logo it says “Stereo Spaced Higher Dimensions.”  Yeah, that about sums up this album.

Since time immemorial, mankind has approached the future with a mixture of wonder and fear.  From primitive days to Biblical times, and even in our modern, sophisticated age we have imagined ourselves either ascending to the pinnacle of enlightenment and peace or descending into a living hell on earth.

Somewhere in between those two extremes lie the visions of the future shown in music videos.  These glimpses into our possible futures show us what most likely lies in store for us – a world that is bleak and hopeless, but still has a pretty kickass soundtrack.

Kiss – “All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose”

The scenario: This is pretty much your stock “post-apocalyptic rock world” video as you’ll soon see.  Dirty streets, lots of fire, and desperate women in tattered clothes are all in abundance here.  Kiss (freshly unmasked at this point in their careers) looks a bit out of place in this setting, what with their spandex and frilled leather jackets, but they somehow land a gig as the bar band in a place that appears to have neither a bar nor very much liquor.  Actually it looks more like an abandoned warehouse.

Read on Daddy-O…

Although Styx is now shorthand among music snobs for cheesy ’70s arena rock (heavy on the syrupy ballads, please), there was a time that this wasn’t so.  Released before they broke big in America, 1975’s Equinox marked the creative apex of the band’s early period.  On this album they did a much better job at melding their prog rock aspirations with the crisp, straightforward hard rock they were much better at handling.

Other than the excellent music contained therein, Equinox is notable for being the last studio album to feature Styx co-founder and guitarist John Curulewski.  He left prior to the supporting tour and was replaced by Tommy Shaw.  Within a few years, Styx was one of the biggest bands in the land.

The whole fire/ice thing has been played out countless times on album covers and art in general, but this is a particularly appealing example to me.  Given that the art budget here can’t have been terribly large (even though this was the band’s first album for A&M, a much bigger label than their previous one, Wooden Nickel), the design is very well-done.

I’m also a fan of the blue color scheme and the thin, metallic rendering of the group’s first logo.  The logo, incidentally, was used for one more album (Crystal Ball) before falling into disuse.  Styx revived it for their 2005 album Big Bang Theory and it is now used for a lot of their marketing materials.