Feel free to suggest your own typical publicity shot poses, but the ones that first come to mind for me are as follows:
Johnny Rotten’s psycho stare
Prince’s come hither doe eyes
I’ve always been pulled in by Rotten’s sinister stare no matter how much of a put-on it’s been. On the other hand, Prince’s doe-eyed Look is no more promising for me than the same Look Susanna Hoffs abused. Wonder if her mom ever said, “Susanna, your eyes are going to stick that way if you keep it up!”
(I have two friends who ran out on their own to see the Philadelphia debut of her movie, The Allnighter, only to see each other, sitting alone, in the nearly empty theater.)
The following publicity shot pose, however, is the one that has the greatest effect on me: Continue reading »
Has any rocker beside Stephen Stills ever worked The Poncho? Maybe some dude from that band Beechwood Sparks? Ever since I first saw Stills wearing that bad boy on stage in rock films and documentaries, I wanted one. I thought it was cooler than the suede fringed jacket worn by some of his bandmates, Roger Daltrey, and many others; cooler, even, than John Phillips‘ hat – just barely cooler, to my tastes.
While the Rolling Stones continue to battle Rod Stewart and the Faces in the 1970s and once more find the merits of their later work in question in the Rock Town Hate thread, this seems as good a time as any to take a closer look at the oft-maligned cover of their 1986 Dirty Work album.
As photographed by Annie Leibovitz, the Dirty Work cover could be viewed as testament of what had gone wrong for the Stones. Lounging about in garishly bright outfits, the band seemed to embody the ideas of 1980s excess and lack of taste. Indeed, this was something of a sign of the times, as the band photo was reportedly a record label mandate, and Dirty Work may have been the first Stones album to be released on both vinyl and compact disc.
Though perhaps not the most popular album cover in the Stones’ catalog, Dirty Work does stand as not just a symbol of the times, but also a commentary on the band itself. As someone once sang, every picture tells a story. Continue reading »
Far and few between are the Barry Manilow of the jingle-writing world. You know Barry! Long before he hit the airwaves through bouncy tunes like “Mandy” and with the likely aid of old-fashioned record label-sponsored payola, we knew of his songwriting for the likes of the State Farm as well as his enthusiastic pipes on classic jingles for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pepsi. Thanks to the power of paying corporate ad rates, this once-anonymous singer-songwriter captured the nation’s ear and eventually transcended his shameful status as a corporate pitchman, becoming a universally acclaimed artist and entertainer.
Bet you’re nowhere near as familiar with the names of songwriters Roger Cook, Roger Greenaway, Bill Backer, and Billy Davis. Through a complicated mating of art and commerce, they crafted the melody of one flop pop song Cook and Greenaway had written into the jingle that taught the world to sing in perfect harmony! This Coca-Cola jingle created such as buzz that The Public had to hear more! The lyrics were reworked once more, to remove the product referernces, and The New Seekers scored bigtime with the pop single Cook and Greenaway had initially envisioned. Magical!
The RTH Glossary entry for Mandom has been updated. For a fuller explanation of this phenomenon, please see the original entry (linked at the title of this entry), following the jump!
It’s a simple enough question:Which artist that you first got to strictly on the basis of Look has turned out to have the most musical merit?
My answer is easy enough: around 1996 or ’97, my French-Canadian buddy Rick sent me a cassette of hits by ’60s French pop starlet Francoise Hardy, who at the time was constantly getting namechecked in indie pop circles. I listened a few times, I said “eh,” I moved on. My musical mindset at the time, both in new stuff and older discoveries, was more in tune with the peppy, bouncy and bubblegummy than with Hardy’s more mature and low-key stuff, so after a couple of listens, the cassette migrated towards the bottom of the pile on my desk at my old job as an IT librarian. I’m not sure I listened to the b-side, a hits collection by a contemporary of Hardy’s named France Gall, at all.
So a couple months later, I’m at the Albuquerque Best Buy with my friend Joyce, wandering around the CD section while she’s talking with a salesman about VCRs or something. Now remember, this was a period where Best Buy was trying very aggressively to corner the CD-sales market, complete with TV ads namedropping bands like Fugazi to make it clear how hip they were, so the CD section was both enormous and surprisingly well-stocked, and at popular prices to boot. I’m grazing through the less well-traveled sections — soundtracks, pop vocals and the amorphously-named “world” bin — looking for oddities or misfiled treasures, when I find a Polygram import greatest hits by France Gall. For all I know, this is exactly the same CD that Rick filled side two of that C90 with, but I was at the checkout with the CD in my hand immediately, because…well, how could I not?
Shades are supposed to be cool, right? Often enough in life and film they are cool. Because of this, one might think that shades in rock ‘n roll would be Super Cool, but how often do shades fail miserably in the context of rock ‘n roll?
Ugh!
Great rock ‘n roll shades make me think of The Velvet Underground and the shots of Brian Jones in big, Sofia Loren-style shades and Keith Richards tuning up in round shades in the gatefold photos of Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass). Dylan knew his way around a pair of shades. Inscrutable. Vicious. Cool.
There but for the grace of shades goes Bill Medley.
The mystery-inducing quality of shades is best represented by Roy Orbison. The shades alone made Orbison, maybe rock’s earliest rock star lacking any natural sex appeal beyond his voice, cool. Without the shades he’s like the big, deep-voiced guy in The Righteous Brothers, Bill Medley – great voice, sure, but nowhere near cool.
Before we move on, let’s look within. Musicians, surely you’ve tried taking the stage wearing shades. Has it ever been even halfway as cool as you’d imagined it would be? I bet not. Never has been for me. The lifestyle commitment is huge. You can’t just decide to wear shades one night and come off looking Super Cool. In fact, I’d bet that statistics would prove that it’s almost guaranteed that your big idea of playing a gig in shades will result in a lousy, disappointing show. Beware. Lord knows how many gigs the rare shaded greats had to play in shades before they got it right. Even then, a number of factors can conspire toward killing this seemingly foolproof fashion statement.
