The way we Listen

Legendary rock band Queen is finally back ! After resetting with Paul Rodgers on vocals, Queen will release a new album in September, 1st 2008, titled : The Cosmos Rocks

Meanwhile, the band goes for a European tour! That will visit countries from September to November 2008.

Some of you may have recognized the Eagle Nebula on the album cover, probably in relation to the astrophysics Ph.D thesis completed by guitarist Brian May in 2007.

He left the Ph.D programme in 1974 when he decided to concentrate on music. But he took back the course a few years ago and completed his thesis (demonstrating that solar dust clouds are moving in the same direction than the planets) in October 2007.

I also learned that in 2006 he co-wrote a book about astronomy for general public, entitled "Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe".

That makes Brian May the most graduated musician of all times. He was recently graduated in the Imperial College of London, which is one of the highest rank scientific school in the world.

Official website : Queen+Paul Rodgers

This video is a huge success among the prog fans and the nintendo fans : The Dark Nintendo Night is a clever mix between Super Mario Bros Theme song and The Dark Eternal Night, out of Dream Theater last album, Systematic Chaos. Super Mike Portnoy can be seen as a Super Mario clone, and his mission is to rescue James Labrie out of the castle !

The video is shown at each DT concert, just before the Encore.

Here are the details to notice :

• On the top of the screen, "MIKE" can be seen above the score
• [0:07] On the title screen, the following line can be read : "METROPOLIS PT.3 : SUPER MAJESTY BROS"
• [0:22] Subliminal moment I’m sure you all noticed : )
• [0:27] The object coming out of the ? box is the chained heart from the album Images and Words.
• [0:44] Bowser is replaced by big green bear… Someone knows what this means? Maybe Bear Track Studios?
• [0:55] The Warp Zone is replaced by"WELCOME TO PROG ZONE!"
• [1:05] Toad tells us that "JAMES LABRIE IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE"
• [1:14] On the green flag at the end of the level, the letters "DT" can be seen.
• [1:19] The other flag, coming out of the castle, show the DT logo.
• [1:24] The green floating wizard is the dear Jordan "The Wizard" Rudess
• [2:53] The great James Labrie appears, singing lyrics from The Dark Eternal Night.

I may have skipped other details… Anyway here is the video!

Let me tell you the story of the most awaited rock album of all time.

1994 - Beginning of recording

Back in 1994. US rock band Guns n’Roses are slowing down from their terrific success, experienced two years before with Use Your Illusion I & II. The band members, famous for their drinking, drug and fighting problems, were in a difficult situation, mainly because of the dictatorial mood of lead singer Axl Rose. In this context began the recording sessions of the band upcoming studio album, Chinese Democracy.

1996 - Band falls apart

Two years later, nothing done. Tension between the members is at the highest : drummer Matt Sorum, bassist Duff McKagan and guitar hero Slash leave the band to found Velvet Revolver. A new Guns n’Roses line up is created (the band’s name was property of Rose), with guitarist Robin Finck, bassist Tommy Stinson and drummer John Freese (who’ll leave right away).

2001-2002 - Live shows full of hope

January 2001, fresh new Guns give their first concerts since 7 years, including the big Rock in Rio III festival. The band announces an european tour… then cancels. Another european tour… cancelled. Then a US tour which will indeed begin in november 2002. Then blackout, the band goes on hiatus.

2006-2008 - This time it’s for real… not

Guns appears again in May 2006 with some show, followed by a world tour, ironically called "Chinese Democracy Tour". New songs are played : "Madagascar", "I.R.S.", "There Was A Time", "The Blues", "Better" et "Chinese Democracy". Several announcements made by Axl Rose seem to lead towards an upcoming release. Guest performers are quoted: Brian May, Sebastian Bach, Shaquille O’Neal (!). But… still nothing in 2006, nothing in 2007. In 2008, new rumors say the production of the album is finished, but the problem is now in the hands of record labels. In June 2008, high quality demos leaked out on the internet but were removed right away.

The release seems to be getting closer… Dr Pepper even promised to offer one can to each american people if the album comes out by the end of the year. But, after this so long waiting, we all fear that this so-called wonderful piece of rock’n'roll would be very disappointing. See you soon…

Let us follow our little journey into the world of rock logos. In the first post I introduced the origin of the most famous logos. Let us now focus on these bands that have been rocking electric guitars for so many years now: hard rock bands.

 
From a graphical point of view, hard-rock has been quickly associated with sharp writings, spiky decals and aggressive forms. This tradition has raised as a gradual phenomenon in the history of rock as can testify the following symbols.

 AC/DC

  AC / DC is inseparable from that flash of lightning and these Gothic letters representing their logo. The symbol appeared for the first time in 1976 on an alternative version of the album High Voltage where the flash, obvious reference to the “high voltage” electricity of the disc can be noticed. But the current form of the logo (Gothic letters) has been perpetuated since the album Let There Be Rock in 1977. This design is the work of Gerard Huerta, a young American designer whose following work will be the headlogos of Time Magazine, PC Magazine and Superbowl XXVIII. Back then he was employed by the band Blue Oyster Cult for the design of their live album On Your Feet On Your Knees. The cover of this album represents a church: Huerta took inspiration on the Bible printed by Gutenberg and its calligraphy. Concerning AC / DC, Let There Be Rock is also an obvious reference to the biblical phrase Let There Be Light, therefore using a similar writing was logical. The lightning bolt between the two groups of letters also perfectly fits, representing light but also the electricity of the band (Alternative Current/Direct Current) and their music. Let There Be A Logo.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD

The symbol of the psychedelic rock band Grateful Dead has a very interesting history. The lightning bolt skull is widely known due to its simplicity (three simple colors) and its similarity with the Ying & Yang. Its origin goes back to the early years of the band in 1969, where festivals were very frequent and it was easy to confuse the boxes and equipment between the various groups that participated. At this time the band’s sound engineer of Owsley “The Bear” Stanley had the idea to put a simplistic logo on each box: a red and blue circle crossed by a white lightning. This logo will then become an emblem, through the artistic talent of Bob Thomas, a longtime friend of The Bear. A skull was added based on the white cricle. The original idea was to write the letters Grateful Dead and then create an optical effect in showing a skull if you watched from afar. The desired effect did not work but the skull itself remained. This symbol became the main visual of the band, including for their album Steal Your Face, which is the most relevant representation.

KISS

Who does not know the KISS logo? This extremely simple but so specific logo, whose “S” lettering makes it so unique. The New York hard rock band has created this symbol for their second album Hotter than Hell in 1973, at the same time they decided to adopt their now legendary costumes and makeups. Guitarist “Space Ace” Ace Frehley imagined this writing, based on the two “S” lightning bolt shapes. The symbol was recently estimated to $500 millions! Interestingly, this logo was banned in Germany since it recalls the symbol of SS. All albums of the band in Germany therefore display a logo amended where “S” looks like a reversed “Z”.

VAN HALEN

As a perfect transition, the band Van Halen was launched by KISS bassist Gene Simmons, who financed their first demos. The logo was created by designer Dave Bhang for their first eponymous album. It was obviously inspired by initials V and H, appointed to represent wings, recalling the Aerosmith logo.

ALSO…

Other well-known logos can be noticed, talking about “power” but whose history remains mainly unknown.
The famous logo of ZZ Top, with its two ZZ nested one inside the other, expresses very well the concept of acceleration, speed. It was created by Tom Hunnicutt for the album Eliminator, big success of the band in 1983, and has since been used as the official logo.

 
  Similarly, the special writing of “Metallica” was created for the first album by singer and guitarist James Hetfield in 1983.

  Finally, the logo of hard rock band Def Leppard has also become an icon : it was created for the first album On Through The Night. The triangular aspect of the logo and the letters makes it highly recognizable and has inspired many new symbols thereafter.

As a conclusion, it is clear that these bands share much more than just a musical style. It is almost a philosophy of life, a very close mindset, which is very well captured in these logos. The theme of electricity, the main energy for hard rock guitars is heavily used as an image.

This series will continue, in order to show you even more exciting stories about these symbols of rock.

Sources : http://pictograms.blogspot.com/, http://www.intuitivedesigns.net/top-10-rock-band-logos/

Most rock bands spent a lot of time designing logos that suits to their image. Some of theses symbols are now well-known trademarks. Why have they become so famous ? …because they are original, pioneering, shocking…

What I find more interesting is the level of importance that is focused on a logo. Some bands just print their name in a simple format, others like to spice up their name with crazy fonts and character shapes. And others use mysterious or glossy symbols that represent their spirit and their kind of music. Each of these famous (or less famous) logos has its own history, and this series of post will reveal secrets about where they come from and what does they mean.

Over the past decades, rock music has evolved a lot. Punk rock, hard rock, alternative rock, heavy metal, folk, progressive rock, “nu metal”, … However logos have always meant the same ideas and therefore a large amount of similarities can be found between old 70’s logos and fresh new logos.

1. The renowned ones

The Tongue and Lip Logo, The Rolling Stones

Some of these rock logos have become so famous that everyone instantly associate the logo with the music and the band, even if this logo is completely abstract and has nothing to do with the band’s name. For example, the Rolling Stones logo can be considered very strange… what does this have to do with rock music?

The famous “tongue and lip logo” was designed in 1971 by an art designer named John Pasche when he was a 25 years old student. Mick Jagger asked him to draw a logo for the band, based on a picture of hindu goddess Kali. Like said in this great article about rock logos, this artwork has every characteristic that makes it perfect : simple to remember, based on few colors, glossy and with round shapes… it represents what the band is about. To me, this is the real strength of this logo.

The Who

Let me now introduce two similar but incredibly famous logos : The Who and The Beatles. Both logos start with a simple written name… but the way the letters are displayed is now very typical.

70’s English rock band The Who made their famous logo designed in 1964 by Brian Pike, a philosopher-art painter. The band was about to play one of their debut concert in legendary venue “The Marquee”, London. The poster for this event is now a piece of collection that every rock fan must have

It is the perfect example of a simple written logo that, with few transformations, became so original and so recognizable. The letters “T” and “H” are tied together in order to create a cascade aspect. The up arrow on the “O” adds a positive ingredient on the final artwork.

The Drop-T Logo, The Beatles

The Beatles logo is tightly linked to Ringo Starr’s custom bass drum heads. It was designed when Ringo went to order his very first custom-made drum kit, with manager Brian Epstein.

The instructions given to drum store owner Ivon Arbiter were to print “The Beatles” on the bass drum, with the word “beat” emphasized. That is when Arbiter got the idea to stretch the B (up) and the T (down) letters, which made the uniqueness of the logo. Later on, The Beatles logo was refined by designer Eddie Stokes and hand-painted on Ringo’s drum, to reach historical fame.

The Flaming Skull, The Offspring

Recent rock bands also created symbols that are now absolutely recognizables. The flaming skull, The Offspring logo, has become a symbol of the new punk rock wave, materialized by bands such as Green Day or NOFX. 

The flaming skull is a recent logo, it made its first appearance on the “Conspiracy of One” album cover, in 2000. Back then it was the beginning of P2P massive music file sharing, led by P2P software Napster. As opposite to most artist at the time, The Offspring claimed its support to this new digital fashion. Napster t-shirts were even sold at Offspring concerts.

In this context, the skull logo seems to be an adaptation of the Napster logo with a punk look. The circle and the eyes are mostly similar. 

Since then this symbol has become the official Offspring logo as it appears on the latest Greatest Hits in 2005. Several fans even tatooed this logo on their skin, guitar picks are made with the flaming skull on it.

The Asterisk, Red Hot Chili Peppers

In a same way, the red star made popular by Red Hot Chili Peppers is now a famous rock logo.

However, its origin is not very exciting. The logo appears for the first time in the 1989 “Mother’s Milk” album cover. It was designed by singer Anthony Kiedis, as promoters asked him to come up with some logo for the band. Most likely it refers to the symbol of chaos designed in the late 1960’s. It has since then been featured in all RHCP album covers, and especially on t-shirts of the band.

Our journey will be resumed in a further post, in which we’ll talk about “electric logos” (ac/dc, metallica and more…). Meanwhile, take a look at this blog, interestingly dedicated to band logos.

If you are registered to Facebook; check out my quiz about rock logos.

What about you? What are your favourite rock logos?

I’d like to introduce to you Andy McKee… I discovered this man on YouTube recently. He’s an incredible guitar player : not only he plays some tune, but he plays it entirely, with bass, chords and melody (even some times with drum beat)… And of course he does this with only one acoustic guitar and two hands

Check out his version of Africa by Toto :

The story take place in 1995, during the MTV Music Video Awards. Michael Jackson and Slash were asked to perform the main event of the show… Michael the King of Pop starts its medley, and during “Black or White”, Slash comes in with his famous hat, and begins a real “guitar hero” solo. But he gets too intense and his solo lasts a very long time… TOO long time for the MTV crew! One of their men get on the stage and kindly asks Mr. Guns ‘n’ Roses to finish up quickly… Slash ends his solo without showing any concern, and then gets off the stage.