Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Logo #200: Journey

The scarab logo was illustrated by Alton Kelley and Stanley "Mouse" Miller in 1981 for the "Escape" album. Journey own a huge portion of the real estate in the San Francisco Bay area - what else would you do with all that money but invest? - and the Journey arcade game is one of the stupidest, toughest video games ever and I really hate it. Journey forms the soundtrack of much of my childhood, writing and drawing and being a kid in Saginaw MI. That, and listening to the answering machine at the drive-in because the trailer for "Friday the 13th Pt. II" was so absolutely terrifying that I had to hear it again. Dad, what's a "Caddyshack"? Also: PBS, humidity, hearing about some kid getting his intestines sucked out because he sat on the drain in the pool down at the park, hanging out at the old folks' home, and finding dirty magazines in the snow. But if I went back, 25 years later, it will all have changed, and so will my memories - such is the curse of adaptability in the human organism. Crummy adaptability! Only another thousand or so rock band logos left now - like the man said down at the gallows, hang in there!

Logo #199: Mazzy Star

Designed by the band themselves for the cover of their 1996 LP "Among My Swan." Remember Mazzy Star? That the "Fade Into You" video has been up on YouTube for the past year with almost half a million views means that someone remembers Mazzy Star. And then you try to think of the other big hit they had and you can't even do it. Fount of all knowledge Wikipedia says, "This song was also part of the "Starship Troopers" soundtrack, playing as the scene faded while Johnny Rico fought with Xander over Carmen Ibanez on Star Station Tereshkova." What a legacy! This is singer Hope Sandoval now. This is guitarist David Roback twenty years ago.

This Day in Death:
Alexander Borodin (November 12, 1833 - February 27, 1887)
Louis Vuitton (August 4, 1821 - February 27, 1892)
David E. "Dave" Prichard (Armored Saint; November 27, 1963 - February 27, 1990)
Rev. Frederick McFeely Rogers (Mr. Rogers; March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003)

This Day in Birth:
Famous Monsters of Filmland (February 27, 1958)

Monday, February 25, 2008

Logo #198: Weezer

Created by drummer Patrick Wilson in 1993 during the mixing of "The Blue Album", their eponymous first. Many see the Weezer logo as a riff/rip on Van Halen, but in reality it shares more in common with Wonder Woman. Most of their output since that album has been rather beige and whelming, but the joyous energy and spirit of that first album was a truly welcome apparition in the whiny '90s, doused as the decade was in self-loathing and marinated in a schnapps-soaked riddle of despair - a fact remarked on by Rivers Cuomo in "Rivers' Edge: The Weezer Story": "...I remember just being totally shocked at how little people responded to us, because I thought we were so good. I mean, we were playing the same songs that eventually became big hits, like "The Sweater Song" and "Say It Ain't So," and we'd play 'em out in the L.A. clubs would just be like, "Go away. We want a grunge band"."

Logo #197: Rammstein

The stoic and imposing icon for Rammstein was designed by Dirk Rudolph. Rudolph: "It first appeared on the artwork for "Mutter" in 2001. Not really (a take on Malevich), it is just a reduction of the Rammstein logo I did, which was, if at all, influenced by Malevich subconsciously." Controversial, bombastic and fiery are they! Here they are now, playing "Amerika" on the moon, proving once and for all how easy it it to fake a lunar landing.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Logo #196: Dead Can Dance

Designed by Vaughan Oliver in 1984 for the band's self-titled 4AD LP. A brilliant and simple logo loved by sticker bootleggers the world over, this and about fifty other decals like it were the tiles in the mosaic of alternative culture in the '80s that, like party lines created by telephone wires rubbing together, brought people together through serendipitous chance and giddy recognition. I know some people out there are just nuts for the firm of partners Brendan and Perry, but I just keep moving my shoulders. The records sure look nice, though. I'm more of a Renate Knaup / Popol Vuh fan, I guess. They did get some quality shots of the inside of the Mayfair Theatre in Santa Monica when the played there in 1994; these appeared on the "Toward the Within" DVD of a few years ago, so there's that.

Logo #195: Osymyso

Mark Nicholson of plunderphonic outfit Osymyso: "The Osymyso logo was designed by myself and my brother {Paul "Terratag" Nicholson}, who is a graphic designer, in 1994 when my first EP came out. I had a logo in mind when I came up with the name osymyso, which is why it's a palindrome; I wanted the logo to be symmetrical and blobby."

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Logo #194: Cólera

One of the oldest punk bands in Brazil, Cólera had their simple, blunt icon designed by band founder Edson Lopes "Redson" Pozzi in 1985. Redson: "I started to use the logo in 1985, for the "Pela Paz em Todo Mundo" LP (Ataque Frontal, 1986, Brasil). We did a European tour for this album: 56 concerts in ten countries. We were the first Brazilian rock band to tour out of the country." By the way, if you look at their website, "25 anos" just means they've been around for 25 years. It doesn't really mean that they have twenty-five assholes. Here they are now, in their very nicely crafted video for "Pela Paz." Warren Buffett is currently placing his monies in the Brazilian real. Shouldn't you?

Logo #193: Danzig

Drawn by graphic blandisher Michael Golden for the cover of the 1984 Marvel comic "The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior" #8, and appropriated by Glenn Danzig the same year. "Crystar"? Seriously? Is that what we're doing? Well, all right. "Mother" is a great single - it was pretty funny when Scott Ian from Anthrax showed up on that dopey VH1 "Most Awesomely Bad Metal Songs" special and said something like "I have no idea why this video's on this list - this is a great video and I really love this song. You're all totally insane." Anyway, by "Take off every zig," we trust they mean every zig but Danzig.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Logo #192: Contrastate

Designed by Stephen Meixner in 1987. Contrastate, a trio of masked British experimentalists (Jonathan Grieve, Stephen Meixner and Stephen Pomeroy), littered the avant / home taping networks through the '90s with a beautifully insular, eccentric and at times frightening panoply of sound that was at equal points threatening and soothing. The album titles: "A Live Coal Under The Ashes," I Am A Clown Collecting Moments," "A Thousand Badgers In Labour," "False Fangs For Old Werewolves," and "Seven Hands Seek Nine Fingers." Contrastate broke up, but Meixner still makes music as srmeixner and it's eminently worth seeking out.

Logo #191: Metallica

The "Scary Guy" was drawn by James Hetfield in 1992 for the three-track limited edition Metallica CD "Live At Wembley." It also appears on the "Live Shit: Binge & Purge" box, as well as the usual t-shirts and merch. If this was the first logo you looked for, you probably know a lot more about Metallica than I do. "Sad But True" is a brilliant track, but beyond that I kind of tune out. Many of their records are produced by Bob Rock, the bespectacled guitarist busking in the video for the Song of the Moment.

The Song of the Moment is "Eyes of a Stranger" by The Payola$.

Logo #190: Iced Earth

No, not a snack for Galactus, it's a heavy metal band. Greg Capullo and Iced Earth main man Jon Schaffer designed the ankh-scepter wielding Set Abominae for the band's 1998 LP "Something Wicked This Way Comes." Set figures in, erm, a set of four Iced Earth albums, a pending graphic novel about the prehistoric adventures of the Setian race on Earth, and possibly also a tote bag. Here they are now with "The Reckoning," in which we find out how many heavy metallers it takes to change a light-bulb. Know how many Union workers does it take to change a lightbulb? Well, just one - but he might have to use two hands if its one of those big long fluorescent bulbs.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Logo #189: Prince

Ah, Prince. Prince! One of the ten most dynamic artists of the last 50 years. Possibly the only people who don't like Prince are old people and those who think he's a bit too "sweet," whatever that means (Stevia? saccharine? Mexican Coke?). Read all about his storied life here. This "Love Symbol" appeared first in 1992 on Prince's album of the same name. Prince: "The first step I have taken towards the ultimate goal of emancipation from the chains that bind me to Warner Bros. was to change my name from Prince to the Love Symbol. Prince is the name that my Mother gave me at birth. Warner Bros. took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all of the music that I wrote. The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros....I was born Prince and did not want to adopt another conventional name. The only acceptable replacement for my name, and my identity, was the Love Symbol, a symbol with no pronunciation, that is a representation of me and what my music is about. This symbol is present in my work over the years; it is a concept that has evolved from my frustration; it is who I am. It is my name." Apparently the sigil is an admixture of both male and female gender symbols, although the male portion of that equation seems to be looking out over the horizon rather than up into the stars. Prince is now Prince once again, ever since May 16, 2000, at which point his publishing contract with Warner-Chappell ran out. He held a press conference to let everyone know that he was using his birth-name yet again, which was a relief because "The Artist Formerly Known As" takes so long to type! Purportedly he's taking legal action against people who represent him and his public image in an unacceptable light, so watch this space for...well, space!

Logo #188: Faster Pussycat

Designed for Taime Downe's glam/hard rock experience Faster Pussycat by Sxv' Leithan "Sxully" Essex in 2005. Essex: "Taime's a good friend of mine. He's loved a lot of my work on a bunch of friends' bands artwork and wanted me to update the FPC logo. Something raw, hard and vicious. After some tweaking between the two of us, we came up with the one which he's been using for the past three years." Faster Pussycat was, at one point in the reasonably near past tense, embroiled in a battle between various members about who owns the name. We all know who owns that name!

Logo #187: Exumer

Exumer's sadly unheralded heavy metal mascot (the "Halloween Guy") was created by the ironically unsung Martin Apholdt in 1986. Exumer vocalist Mem von Stein, who now leads Brooklyn metal merchants Sun Descends: "We asked the guy to come up with an idea for the album design based on the title of the first album, "Possessed by Fire." We kept him for the second album and he took the masked guy and applied to the title of the follow-up, "Rising from the Sea"."

Speaking of #187, This Day in Death:
Keith Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990)

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Logo #186: Nonhorse

G. Lucas Crane of Brooklyn experimental psych band Nonhorse: "The nonhorse logo was designed by me in 1998. I encountered the logo in a dream - actually a super bleak urban nightmare, post-apocalyptic style. Radioactive fashion zombies picked over the rubble for promotional Pepsi-embroidered leather jackets and such. I got mugged for the AA batteries in my pocket by injured skinheads in front of a huge partly-destroyed billboard. So, in the dream I was aware that it was some previously existing ad campaign that was rendered immediately useless when the bombs fell and the plague hit. That fact coupled with the perspective trick of the actual design combined to create an "information-paranoia-confusion" symbol of the transition in the mind and in the world from a ordered but superficial reality and a post-civilization chaotic natural state. For a while, the symbol itself was seriously bad luck for me. The "nonhorse" was some sort of evil thing, a malignant confusion created to sell but now taken on a horrible new meaning of non-thing-ness. Later, it was pointed out that the symbol also contains the word "yes," which I took to mean some subconscious contradiction on my part - my own brain vs. itself - the confusion being internal. About 2001, I started playing music under the name nonhorse. The original ideas involved in the dream and what the symbol became - a curse - were ideas I wanted to explore performance-wise. Sometimes when I'm in NYC, I play as "G. Lucas Crane vs. Nonhorse," which is a throwback to the dream. It's a little personal, and I don't talk about it a lot."

Logo #185: Madness

Designed by the ever-brilliant Barney Bubbles in 1979 for the "One Step Beyond" 7." Madness? Brighter Death Now? You've crystallized my thoughts eloquently: it's Valentine's Day. Or Valentime's Day, depending on what part of the world in which words like "flustrated," "nucular," "expresso," and "Lemme axe you..." (yes, you may axe me - please make your first blow strong and to the head) drive you entirely too insane. My last girlfriend fell off a cliff and died on impact. Very sad. Oh well, guess that means I'm free for Valentime's Day! Bubbles also designed the logos for Hawkwind and Ian Dury & The Blockheads, which we shall of course examine in a future installment. A beautiful and breathtaking summation of his work can be found here and enjoyed through the coming weekend. On one particularly lovely weekend in summer 1992, 75,000 mad Madness fans danced so hard during a performance of "One Step Beyond" by the reunited band that they caused a tremor of 4.5 on the Richter scale. Is there any other kind of earthquake scale? If there is, it was probably invented by the guy who hangs out with that fifth dentist who recommended eating sugar, and Water, the guy they kicked out of Earth, Wind and Fire.

Logo #184: Brighter Death Now

Appropriated from an unknown designer by Roger Karmanik for his harsh noise unit Brighter Death Now in 1990. Karmanik: "I found it in an old typographic ornament while I was working at a print shop 20 or so years ago. The first time it appeared was on the "Great Death" LP - it was then only meant to be a symbol for that specific theme: a symbol of death...but of course it also became a symbol for the band itself. Many have asked where it comes from and what it symbolizes - it comes from my point of view and symbolizes me and everything I stand for - hahaha! Go figure!" Speaking of symbols: his remarks from a 1996 interview with the publication Worm Gear: "I have 3 kids as well; I am very much a life transformer, but that has really nothing to do with the things I try to develop through BDN. Death is a symbol for me - the symbol of changes - and all changes are good; even evil is good. All that comes from BDN has my deepest soul within. It is the ultimate sodomy of my soul, mind, and flesh." What he said! For more than 20 years, Karmanik has run the Cold Meat Industry label, showcasing the finest in Scandinavian unpleasantness, and shows no sign of stopping. Live, they're a singularly dynamic experience, so much so that the sound fairly eats through the foam of one's earplugs. Like eating blowfish, it's an experience one should encounter at least once in one's life.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Logo #183: Painslut

Created by Painslut founder Matthias "Matze" Erhard. Matze: "The logo was designed by me somewhere around 2003 and appeared the first time on a 7" release in 2004 named "This Is My War" on Steinklang Industries." A Google search for "painslut" brings up over 59,000 results, so be sure to get in on the ground floor for this exciting fetish today before everyone else knows about it. Painslut released a split cassette with Oregon experimentalist IDX1274 (in an edition of 22 - eat it, numerology!), the notes for which are as follows: "Each cassette was placed into a sandwich baggie and then into a two-tone stenciled paper bag, and each bag was personally huffed by IDX1274 after shooting a generous blast of spray paint inside to inhale."

The Song of the Moment is "Party Train" by The Gap Band, which boasts one of the most emotional and sentimental keyboard riffs coming out of the chorus of any song from the '80s.

Logo #182: General Public

Because after slamming Death for a few hours, you really want to listen to "Tenderness" by General Public, don't you? Designed by Chris Morton for their 1984 LP "All The Rage." I.R.S. Records has a rather sweet memorial for all their label roster who have shuffled off (to Buffalo) this mortal coil. There's poor Bryan Gregory (February 20, 1951 - January 10, 2001) of The Cramps, Buzzcocks and Joy Division producer Martin "Zero" Hannett (May 31, 1948 - April 18, 1991), and Annelle Zingarelli (April 1, 1961 - October 23, 1983) of...Nazi Bitch and the Jews?!? Dave Wakeling lives in southern California and if you lived in a small town on the outskirts of Los Angeles in the '90s, it seemed really weird to hear about him playing Xenon West in Ventura or something. General Public, which had Mick Jones from The Clash as their original guitarist, as well as some members of Dexys Midnight Runners, formed in the wake of the breakup of The Beat, which has recently reunited.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Logo #181: Death

Designed by Charles Michael "Chuck" Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) in 1984. What an intensely morbid blahg this has become lately! Well, fiddle-dee-dee - it's just a coincidence; conversely, there aren't many rock band logos that contain puppies or poppies or other cosmic manifestations of ur-cuddliness. The logo ultimately became slightly more ornate and detailed, like a bored student's Pee Chee folder doodled into oblivion. Chuck ultimately died of a brain-stem tumor. He was also the father of death metal. Talk about living the dream! Richard Christy, drummer on three LPs by Death, is one of our most gifted prank callers working today.

Interstitial #4: Charles Manson

As you may recall, Charles Manson's original painting of the scorpion that inspired the 666 Volt Battery Noise logo was undated. I wrote to Mr. Manson recently, inquiring about this, and received this rather interesting reply: "Today - yesterdeeds to day - tomorrow's yesterday to me; it's always been one day. While camping in a cabin after hard travel, I came upon a bed full of scorpions. I was too tired, so I just brushed them aside and went to sleep - woke up, never got stung. I said, "Thanks." Moved on; found one in my pants and later in prison I [unclear] they were my spirit friends. They're related to spiders, so (after) years in cells I just tied knots in strings and one day there it was - it made me - I made all kinds of stuff out of what I had. Mostly nothing, but when you're in the hole 39 years, you've got time. Some of the stuff I made, people can't look at - as if it's in the room where they are. The bug is a powerful life form. They see/feel things in ways we can't even dream."

Friday, February 8, 2008

Logo #180: Primal Scream

Painted by Paul Cannell for the band's "Scream adelica" album in 1991. Cannell (born March 16, 1963) died in 2005 in Cornwall after a lengthy or short battle with depression, one never really truly knows which. In an interview, he discussed being bored with virtuosity: "You've got to know how to draw; you've got to have control of your fucking hand. All this work that you see here is done with the other hand - it's not even done with my natural hand. I changed my hands about three-and-a-half years ago because I was sick of what my left hand was doing. I like drawing with my right hand because it's messy, it's like a kid. It's clumsy. All this clumsy work you're seeing here, that's why it's clumsy. That's the only way I've been able to build abstraction. I was getting too dangerously technical with this arm." Similarly, Picasso remarked, "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." The primal scream. Likewise, there's the Oblique Strategy that one should "Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)." Occasionally, this means abandoning the sun itself. Hence the death of Paul Cannell, painter for Creation. And yet the sun keeps shining.

Logo #179: Sigur Rós

The iconic "angel foetus" of Icelandic band Sigur Rós was drawn (with a Bic Stic!) by Gotti Bernhöft for their 2000 LP "Ágætis byrjun." Singer Jón Þór Birgisson's apparently nonsensical language of Hopelandic was the most innovative linguistic conceit in pop music since Liz Fraser's lyrics in Cocteau Twins (which came from her taking all the spaces out of a line of verse and then just re-inserting the spaces in odd places). The popular mooing song "Svefn-g-englar" was the hit of 1999 and, through its inclusion in the film "Vanilla Sky," may be the song for which most people remember the band. I have infinite scads of time for Sigur Rós. Like the angelic foetus, they represent promise and beauty - and how fragile those possibilities essentially are. Their fifth album scheduled for late this year; their film "Hvarf-Heim" premiered at various cinemas throughout the world last year.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Logo #178: Pop-o-pies

The Pop-o-pies, for the first two years of its existence, did nothing but play "Truckin'" by The Grateful Dead. Various members of Faith No More spent time in the Pop-o-pies ranks - but not Mike Patton! God forbid he do something "wacky" in his life. The smiley face was, it turns out, designed by marketing man David Stern in 1967 for a campaign for Washington Mutual Bank. Interviewed in 1988, Stern revealed that he was not best pleased by people tweaking it for their own nefarious uses. Hence the Pop-o-pies. The smiley was detourned by Joe Callahan in 1981 and appeared a few years later on the "Joe's Second Album" LP cover. Callahan: "It first appeared on a banner hung behind the band at the first Pop-o-pies show. It was a reaction to the lame pseudo-toughguy skull-and-crossbones logos that were (and still are) on everybody's clothes." Amen to that! Luke Helder, the Midwest Pipe Bomber, planned a series of explosives in 2002 to form the shape of a happy face across the United States. Conversely, Scott Fahlman invented the first computer world smiley faces in 1982. And yet, even after all those e-mails, somehow the world doesn't seem much happier.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Logo #177: Saccharine Trust

Designer: Raymond Pettibon, 1981. Drummer Tony Cicero remembers this icon as first appearing in the liner notes for the "Pagan Icons" LP, but it may have appeared earlier. Saccharine Trust were at the nexus of punk and jazz, creating a sinewy, spiky and confrontational strain of art rock in their wake, becoming rather like the West Coast analogue of New York's No Wave - as near to such a thing as ever could be. They would tour many times with Black Flag and appear on multiple bills various times with their SST label brethren - living, in the words of Steve Albini, "like a slug and out of a garbage bag." Here they are at Perkins Palace sometime in the '80s, with the definitive Baiza / Brewer / Cicero / Hodson line-up, and here is an earlier incarnation.

This Day in Death:
Jacques François Antoine Ibert (August 15, 1890 – February 5, 1962). The composer.

This Day in Birth:
William Seward Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997). The decomposer.

Logo #176: Reagan Youth

Paul Cripple of Reagan Youth: "At out first show on August 20, 1980, we all wore leather jackets (like The Ramones, we also went to Forest Hills High School) and Dave Insurgent {born David Rubinstein, September 5, 1964 - July 3, 1993} made these armbands (like the Nazis wore) and he painted each one with the stormtrooper thing you're talkin' about. We wore the armbands for the first few shows. I have a picture where I'm wearing it, but you can't really make it out because it wasn't a side view. They really were cool. Shit, I'm gonna tell my singer to make four of 'em and make the band wear 'em (I doubt they'll wear leather motorcycle jackets, though). So, thanks for the inspiration." The same day, somewhere in Maryland, aviation pioneer James Smith McDonnell died. He founded McDonnell Aircraft Corporation (later McDonnell Douglas) in 1939. The company became the principal supplier of fighter aircraft to the U.S. Air Force and Navy. Cosmic balance and all that. Also, if you were with-it enough to be one of those lifestyle geniuses like Jeff Koons, you could've seen the birth of Reagan Youth and then hopped aboard the SST to Europe to catch the premiere of Jean Rollin's "La nuit des traquées" (starring the endlessly beautiful Brigitte Lahaie), but I digress. Reagan Youth were a startling welter of conflicting images: apparent reggae hippies bedecked in tie-dye who released records with seemingly supremacist sleeve designs. Dave Insurgent's girlfriend Tiffany Bresciani became the final victim of Joel Rifkin, the Long Island serial murderer dubbed "Joel the Ripper" by the scandal sheets. Consumed by grief, Dave killed himself shortly afterwards. There really is no good segue to go into after that. Here they are doing a very "rock" set with the song "In the Beginning." I had at that point just turned 18 years old. Where was I? And where have all those people in that audience gone?

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Logo #175: sunn O)))

sunn O)))'s sun was designed by Bob Selby for Sunn Amplifiers in 1965 and was borrowed by Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley in 1998 when they embarked upon their doomy drone metal voyage. Pity the poor rock journalist who forgets how many parentheses come after the big O! In case you might feel inclined to ridicule their eldritch affectations, their cloak roadies or their conquering the charts in a manner not seen since Coven, just remember: Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley live in many luxury homes and fly Gulfstream© jets around the world. You live in caves and eat cold worms. The end!

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Logo #174: The Power Station

Based on dirty doodles by Duran Duran bassist John Taylor, the electric girl appeared on the "Some Like It Hot" release in 1985 (the video of which includes Robert Palmer propositioning a golden eagle, and Caroline "Tula" Cossey, the first transsexual to pose for Playboy; hence the odd extended shaving sequences). Self-described "awful pervert" Taylor's fantasy sketches were to form the public face of The Power Station, a pop supergroup whose ranks included Robert Palmer, drummer Tony Thompson, guitarist Andy Taylor and John Taylor (who I previously asserted were brothers but eagle-eyed readers have pointed out are not - thanks!). Not much chance of a reunion tour for this band - Palmer (January 19, 1949 – September 26, 2003) and Thompson (also of Chic, and Allah and the Knife Wielding Punks; November 15, 1954 – November 12, 2003) died within weeks of one another and Duran Duran's popularity abides. You couldn't turn on a radio in 1985 without hearing "Some Like It Hot" or "Bang a Gong" every fifteen minutes or so. It says something about Taylor's psyche that he simplifies a woman to her most basic parts: visors and electricity. Reductionist pig!

Friday, February 1, 2008

Logo #173: The Police

Mick Haggerty designed these seemingly simple LEDs for the cover of the 1981 "Ghost in the Machine" LP. The Police are, from left to right, Andy Summers, Sting, and Stewart Copeland. You can tell because Copeland's got his drumstick held high, Summers is getting ready to play a power chord and Sting has his dagger ready to attack House Atreides. Sort of. Possibly the dot at the very end is a roadie. You never know what sign the roadie gets. Sting is actually a fairly charming and underrated actor, Stewart Copeland is a thrillingly inventive percussionist and Andy Summers...well, he's the best Andy Summers he possibly could be. The cover image of their "Can't Stand Losing You" 7" is completely amazing, and the last minute of most of their hits tends to be repetitive filler, but they're golden nonetheless. "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" shall always remain a deeply pleasant reminder of growing up in the innocent winters and lazy summers of upstate Michigan in 1981. What'd NWA say about The Police? Oh, yeah: Help the Police!

Logo #172: Electric Light Orchestra

Designed by John Kosh for the 1976 E.L.O. LP "A New World Record". Jeff Lynne and his Electric Light Orchestra have a good dozen really stellar pop singles, but whoever does the licensing for any film even remotely resembling the work of Charlie Kaufman only includes their songs in the trailers - yet never in the actual film itself. It's like getting instructions on how to feel. Most distasteful. E.L.O.'s "Out of the Blue" LP has an image of this logo as a spacecraft, into which the Concorde flies. Strangely enough!