Monday, October 1, 2007

Logo #65: This Heat

Painted by Pete Cobb in 1980 for This Heat's "Health and Efficiency" 12" on David Cunningham's Piano label in 1980. Cunningham, leader of The Flying Lizards (who had a huge hit with their deadpan deconstruction of "Money"), released one of the shining - if almost virtually ignored - examples of British pop in the '80s with this single. Its refrain, "Here's a song about the sunshine / dedicated to the sunshine," works on multiple levels and orbits eccentrically around the Brixton trio, composed of Charleses Bullen (guitar, reeds, strings, tapes, vocals) and Hayward (keys, percussion, tapes and vocals), and Gareth Williams (April 23, 1953 - December 24, 2001; bass, keyboards, tapes and voices). Here is the first part of a live action from 1982; "Out Of Cold Storage," the 6-CD retrospective of This Heat's work, was released on ReR earlier this year. While not necessarily an official logo for the band, it's as lovely and direct a type of shorthand as anything, and it carries with it some degree of the band's anger and beauty, resembling a chalk body outline with 16" NBC transcription LPs as bullets.

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