Some think the authenticity of an artist; band or musician in terms of visual creativeness has somewhat faded this century. More often you can see the time and effort into album art, concept of the music and music videos aren’t as valued by the audiences, especially with Pop music. I will explore concepts of today’s image of music and the visual art that it embraces compared to the psychedelic sixties. I will compare the two in terms of the importance of the cover art and the community that music brings together. Including subcultures and counter cultures of the sixties and the 21st century, the importance of the image that comes with the music, and more so now the visual identity of the musicians themselvesand their fans. I will look at the start of the sixties ‘hippie’ movement; poster artists and art that we still associate with and compare it to the digital age we live in today.
What is visual identity? A brands visual element such a colour, shape that conveys the meaning not imparted just by words. The same as consumer markets use brand identity as a differentiator so should musicians who are starting out in the music industry. Being a musician is not only about the music, but also about how your audience perceives you and how you are different from the rest. 21C brand identity is consistently represented through a logo, marketing collateral, band website, products, apparel, and signage. Identity in the 21st century has differed over time as we have more opportunities and more options on how we brand and present ourselves.
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“ ''From a graphic design standpoint, psychedelia marked the switch from the strict modernist style of clean lines and clear type into a hodge-podge of influences, references and experiences. These designers weren't concerned with design convention; they just did what they wanted. They were responding to what was going on in Haight-Ashbury: the music, the drugs and the community they worked and partied with. Visually their style was very different, but so were their experiences.'' (Alfred. D. 2009 New York Times) The exhibition curator for “The Psychedelic Experience”.
The counterculture of ‘Hippies’ began in the early sixties; a rebellion of young people, protesting together as the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam was present. Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco was well known for the origins of hippie culture. Residents set up ‘flophouses’, where travellers and touring bands could stay, musicians such as Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin. These ‘flophouses’ were where the psychedelic rock scene occurred. (Issitt, 2009, pg.6)
” A man called Chet Helms created a communal organization that held psychedelic rock concerts that reflected the experimental freedom of the time. There was a five hand picked creatives who produced the most memorable imagery in history for the sixties and rock music. The team of Family Dog: Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Alton Kelley and Rick Griffin all created a new type of imagery to music. Using vivid colours and melting letters for album art, it was a start of a new era for psychedelic art. A lot of people could connect with the posters, as it was fueled by drug experiences and sexual imagery, these rock posters could be called the most iconic ones of all time e.g.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Doors and the Grateful Dead. To this day their posters are heavily collected and even are shown in museums. During the sixties there was a diverse set of styles, for the first time in a long time people wanted to experiment with different art forms and collaborate between music and creativity, for example in the album from Velvet Underground which was released in 67’ had the involvement of Andy Warhol’s famous banana cover, which invited the owner to ‘peel slowly and see’ to revealed a flesh coloured banana underneath. This boosted sales dramatically and is still an iconic image today with the use of simplicity.
Not surprisingly the word Psychedelic comes from the Latin word “psyche”, meaning mind, and the Greek word “Delos”, which means to manifest, or awaken, so together psychedelic means “to awaken your mind” which you can really see how the saying connects with the work produced from the sixties, people started to broaden their thinking of things. The use of Psychedelic lighting in the rock concerts was referred as ‘liquid light shows’. This amplified the effect and enjoyment of the concerts for the audience and could range just from one projector, to seventy or more. Festivals in the sixties were probably the biggest milestone for the hippie culture, Woodstock festival was a place for hippies to all join together and enjoy the music, as well as each others company. “They [festivals] helped shaped rock and provided the best opportunities for massive indulgence in the sacraments: Hope, nudity, sex, rock and community.”(Miller, 1991) This counterculture group would join together at golden gate park not only for music festivals, but to listen to speeches from political and spiritual leaders, poets and activists.
Are festivals and music groups the same in today music industry? It was said that the ‘Monterey International Pop Festival’oin 1967 was the end of the true ‘hippie-ism’ias it exposed the Haight-Ashbury rock bands to a national audience. (Issitt, 2009, pg.42) However, music festivals as a concept are now bigger than ever. With individuals paying up to two hundred pounds to attend a weekend, you would think the music community is growing? Wrong. As the peak of the digital age people attend music festivals not as a community, but as individuals. Not to say there isn’t community within music fans, but more a variety in tastes.
Illustration by Pon Chan
There isn’t just pop, rock, country and soul any more; sub-genres are growing with smaller communities within, such as ‘Electro-swing’ and ‘Glitch-hop’. People are more dedicated to a bit of everything than commit themselves to one taste. “In the UK, in recent years, the conventional wisdom has been that although there was now clearly no money to be made from selling recorded music, audiences were still willing to pay a premium for live performances, which would now become the main source of income for musicians”. (Gilbert. J, 2012)
“Posters are pieces of rock music expanding puzzle. They’re a means in which we look forward to the events with great anticipation; or, afterward, to hold on to our memories of the sights and sounds of the great nights, the wonderful bands who played the camaraderie of all the people who were there. there. Posters are like the icing of the cake; on top of everything else you got that night, there is a beautiful poster to live with, to take how and rediscover sometime later on.” (Graham, 1991)
Although album artwork will always be important, the digital age we live in today we have moved along to online, we no longer need to go to a high street store to buy our favourite CD, we can just stay in and download it from our sofa. Global music revenues have shrunk by 40% since the first online music format was produced in 1999. Piracy is at large, making it hard for artist to produce more work and make money. “In June 1999 a software programme devolved by a college dropout changed the music industry forever. It triggered a transformation that threw decades’ worth of accepted wisdom out the window.. There are over 500 digital music services, Apple selling more than three quarter quarters of a billion iOS devices with iTunes accounts; YouTube is steaming 5 million videos a day, over 200 million digital music subscribers and steamers on services such as Spotify and Deezer” (Mulligan, 2015, pg.1) Studies show that 93% of young people between the ages of 12-29 go online; do you really need to advertise yourself with a poster anymore? With all the Internet has to offer, people who are growing up with it are really missing out on the authenticity of a record to hold, and a poster to hang. It goes without saying that most downloads will not include album artwork, and is just another file in your playlist.
New technology doesn’t essentially mean that it can entirely replace existing ways of doing things, but make things more ‘convenient’. Having said that the rise in vinyl sales has shot up significantly in the recent years, but why are they making a comeback? A number of reasons but the difference are that people want that personal experience back, the real sound quality of a record, and a collection on your shelf and not on your computer. Or maybe its just the one click convenience culture had reached its peak? How can Millennials be nostalgic of something when they never had it in the first place? Why would a teenager buy a record for £20 or more when they can stream it online for free? It may be just to be ‘different’ and it fit in within the category with being ‘Hipster’. The conventional wisdom is that nostalgia is to blame for this trend: Millennials, hipsters or that most-coveted demographic, the millennial hipster. They’re deifying outdated things and repackaging them as contemporary culture.”
So is it harder now to brand yourself and identity with the advances of the Internet? Not necessarily. In the sixties, the era of psychedelic music waiting for posters for concerts and from the bands was more than popular; people would queue down the street to get into the shops. There was thousands on sale and demand was high, the imagery for the vinyl sleeves and posters really did reflect the musicians and the music they played. Because of the vast variety now in music genres, and how illustration has progressed in the modern age there is many ways to approach how you want to visually communicate with an audience. For example ‘Gorillaz’ created the bands persona with animated characters that would be highly recognizable once you think of them, in some ways you could call them a ‘virtual band’. Gnarls Barkley released the song ‘Crazy’, which was an animated video of ink drops, cleverly placed to shape the singer and go with the beats of the song.
The advanced of technology and our knowledge on it has in some ways enhanced how we can visually communicate music in many ways, but the identity of it might have faded somewhat in musicians not playing a part of how their records will look. However those covers and posters that are immediately recognizable don’t have to be as complicated as the style in the sixties. Bands such as ‘The XX’ brand themselves with a simple ‘X’, with different designs inside the letter, although basic the simplicity of it is clean and in some ways is better than having too much. Another example is The White Stripes’ who have consistently used the same three colours, red, white and black in all their branding, videos and even to the clothes they wear giving them a strong visual identity of who they are as a band. Art can talk sounds that music cant speak, depending on the genre of music you can usually tell by the work what to expect, for example punk rock displays gore and particular colours and fonts, whereas a drum and bass cover would be more of a graphic design or a more club scene feeling to it.
Illustration by Jamie Hewlett
If we look back at the sixties, it was the start of psychedelic art. However it was also the start of ‘Optical art’. A series of lines and shapes that give a illusion to the audience of something that isn’t actually real. Both of these art forms can be seen in contemporary music today. Using bright and vibrant colours with random aspects of imagery and collage such as Mika, Maroon 5 and MGMT you can see the resemblance to late sixties work.
Videos especially have advanced so strongly now and many people have the knowledge to create a decent video on their computers to create a feeling that goes with the music, similar to psychedelic posters. For example Wolf Alice’s video for the song ‘Freazy’ involves effects that make the viewer see as if they might be on hallucinates them selves. How you show yourself through videos as a band or individual is the key importance of getting noticed, there are considerably more musicians now and all probably with access to a computer so the visuals are so important when it comes to audience and the concept and meaning behind music.
“I try to explain that to my kids - the experience of going to a record store, flipping through racks and finding that album cover that intrigues you - but my kids don’t want to know about it. They download
Contemporary music has lost that meaning message behind the music, the lyrics esp cially seem to focus more on women, sex and drugs. Leaning more and more to unexplainable songs that makes you think they are just putting words together to they rhyme or have a catchy rhythm that will stick inside peoples heads. However among many hiphop artists, Jay-z has influenced many people as well as representing them. “He created an instant connection with struggling African-Americans of lower socio-economic class using representational strategies of the hustler mentality (with songs “I’m a Hustler” and “1-900-Hustler”).” He has shown how he has never let go of a dream
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So, has 21st century music lost its visual identity? Visuals for a album, a poster a logo or even a live performance can give its own flavor, and an extra flavor to the music it goes along side. It can create an extra dimension to the sound and experience that music could not give alone. Visual identity will always be there in some form, whether it has a message or concept behind it or not it always has to exist. Personally I think mainstream music, ‘pop’ music in particular has lost the individual visual identity musicians had before but it is impossible to generalise, it could be no fault of their own but just the big labels they work for. Music is still such a strong way to seize a message to the world, influence people and give people hope it will always be an art form and always will have the visual, but not always the identity.
Alice Rawsthorn, The New York Times (2009) Tripping back to the world of Psychedelia [online] Available from: http://query. nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE6D6173FF935A25750C0A96F9C8B63 [Accessed: 5 February 2017] Consumption, Culture and Identity; Jay-z: From Urban to Luxury Lifestyle (December 2013) [online] Available from: https://cci13. wordpress.com/2013/12/16/jay-z/comment-page-1/ [Accessed February 15th 2017] David Sax, Los Angeles Times (January 2017) [online] Available from: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-sax-analognostalgia-20160103-story.html [Assessed 15th February 2017) Family Dog Productions (n.d) http://www.familydog.com/ [Accessed 10th January 2017] Gilbert. J (2012) Capitalism, Creativity and the crisis in the music industry [online] Available from: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ ourkingdom/jeremy-gilbert/capitalism-creativity-and-crisis-in-music-industry [Accessed: 9 January 2017] Grushkin, P.D. and Gruskin, P. (1991) The art of rock: Posters from Presley to Punk. New York: Artabra Issitt, M.L. (2009) Hippiwa: A guide to an American subculture. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press/ABC-CLIO Mulligan, M. (2015) Awakening. MIDiA Research RenĂŠe Claire Tafoya, Graphic design history, https://visualartsdepartment.wordpress.com/psychedelic-60s/ [Accessed 17th January 2017] The Unabridged History of Kanye West as Fashion Designer, GQ, (n.d) [online] Available from: http://www.gq.com/gallery/theunabridged-history-of-kanye-west-as-fashion-designerand-the11-year-road-to-todays-adidas-show#12 [Accessed 17th February 2017] https://www.tumblr.com/search/jamie+hewlett