Last week, being the 9-5 art director that I am, I was trying to conjure up a brand new color, one wholly underivative from any other established color or palette. Can you come up with one? I couldn’t.
Think about it—every color is a known entity. Sure, there are hues of this and that which can form a third tone, but by and large, the menu is an established commodity.
And it’s much the same way with music I find. You can mix and match this genre with another, fiddle with instrumentation, record however which way—but it all originates from the same tonal well and fiber.
Interpretation is key however—from a design or musical perspective.
Which, after trudging through today’s 30 genre-specific ‘Press Play’ tracks below, delights me to no end to introduce you to the wholly distinctive, Bee and Flower.
Bee and Flower’s Dana Schechter will be coloring all around the lines this week:
Remember? It’s you. The little you, all dorky, mismatched clothes and big teeth, listening to records on Saturday night. When that kid was me, I loved the music, but more often than not I was trying to make sense of the album covers.
I grew up in the 70’s with bohemian parents (in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury, no less) and was exposed to their vast 60’s/70’s record collection. I loved getting lost in it…“lost” being the key word. It’s amazing (and pretty hilarious) how the young mind can interpret—or rather, misinterpret—album art and lyrics. Maggot brain? Was that lady sinking in quicksand? I remember playing with the zipper on Sticky Fingers and looking at the underpants. I was confounded. Yellow Submarine tickled my brain, but I made no connection between the film’s psychedelic imagery and the limp acid casualties that populated the neighborhood (and still do).
The words weren’t much help either. American Pie (yum), White Rabbit (cute), but a Love Gun? Turning Japanese (my first 7″ ever), Whip It, China Girl? Stab you with a steely knife? If I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don’t know?…um, what?
At the ripe age of 12, I shed my skin and got into the B52’s, the Buzzcocks, the Cramps, AC/DC, the Ramones…I wanted to know what the words really meant, what the musicians’ lives were like, what it was like to be in a band. I wanted to make a connection with the music I was obsessed with, but I didn’t know how.
I was a real city kid, and it wasn’t long before I starting learning from experience, and there was hell to pay. I dove headfirst into the music scene, a “bad kid” always in trouble—busted for drinking in alleys behind clubs, sneaking into shows, getting arrested for Friday night keggers deep in Golden Gate Park. At 16 I started playing bass in a band. But these are other stories of their own.
Bee and Flower | Don’t Say Don’t Worry
I have a friend who runs the blog, Cosmic Hearse. He asked his 8 year old son to rate his favorite heavy metal album covers: Judas Priest’s Unleashed In The East “is a good cover cause their clothes are weird and they’re rockin’ out in steam.”
Yes.
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