The results of the Figment album art competition have now been posted and you can see my choice of the winner on the left here. You can see the rest of the winners and read my comments on the Figment site. The winning design reminded me of the famous cover for the first King Crimson album, In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), a painting by Barry Godber. Both have an arresting quality which make you wonder what it is that’s being witnessed beyond the picture frame.
King Crimson’s debut is one of the key moments when British music abandoned the silliness of psychedelia and got down to the serious business of becoming progressive rock. For some people this means it’s also the moment when rock music Went Wrong but I’ve no time for such Spartan sophistries; Robert Fripp rules. Digressions aside, I’ve not finished with the present psychedelic obsession (no, you don’t escape that easily), and the other piece of news today comes with an alert from Valis whose radio show of psychedelic music, Trip Inside This House, runs for two hours every Tuesday morning on KBHX, St Louis, from 5am to 7am. There’s archived shows on a blog of the same name and that site currently features an interview with Matt Piucci, ex of the fantastic Rain Parade, for my money the best of the Paisley Underground bands of the 1980s. If you haven’t yet heard their finest moment, No Easy Way Down, then your life is quite simply a hollow sham.
Asolutely, Rain Parade were easily the best Paisley Underground band – the only one that was truly psychedelic, although i have a huge affection for the Three O’clock
The eighties were a strange time – most people think of Madonna or whatever, but there was a thriving psychedelic underground, albeit sometimes very revivalist or tongue in cheek.Those times were so horrible with the swing to the right and recession and blatant materialism(…..hmm..sounds familiar) i guess its no suprise that some people (me included sometimes) retreated into a past perfect dreamtime.Makes me think of the way artists during the Industrial Revolution looked back on an imagined medieval world…..anything to escape the brutality and ugliness of the present.
You pinpoint exactly how I felt during the 1970s which were far more glum than they were Glam. And yes, there was a lot happening in Eighties music which gets ignored in favour of pop froth. I always wanted the psych revivalists of the period to go a lot further than they did, there were plenty of novelty singles released, many of them documented on the Rhino comp. Children of Nuggets, but most promised more than they delivered.