Logo #241: Hawkwind

Created by Barney Bubbles in 1972 for the cover of the brilliantly titled "Doremi Fasol Latido" LP. An overview of the endlessly brilliant Bubbles is well-worth re-viewing and can be found here. Still wish I knew when his dates of birth and death were - the reason for that can be found here. Yes, I do work very hard at these things - thank you for noticing. Apparently Bubbles also directed the "Ghost Town" video by The Specials, which makes his passing all the more depressing for knowing it. Oh, yeah - Hawkwind. In business for four decades with one propulsive force - guitarist singer Dave Brock - thirty-five years on they're still performing their "Space Ritual" around the world and melting minds in the process even in this jaded day and/or age. They also gave birth to Motörhead. I'm deeply square and clueless but even I have to respect something like that. Also: Robert Newton Calvert of Hawkwind, March 9, 1945 - August 14, 1988. Lest we forget!

Somewhat sideways, the Song of the Moment is "Wehe Khorazin" by Popol Vuh.

Logo #223: Emerson Lake and Palmer

Emerson Lake & Palmer's stylised skull was designed by H.R. "Don't Call Me Guy-ger" Giger in 1973 for the "Brain Salad Surgery" LP. The thing about Giger's work is that although it's sexual and perverse and doomed, there's a very empty aspect to it. A lot of space in those paintings - and in space, no one can hear you scream "It's Gee-ger!" Most of Giger's work looks like it was set up aeons ago and then abandoned and we're only now catching up.

Logo #159: Asia

Illustrator of fantasies large and small, Roger Dean designed this icon for the band in 1982. Dean also designed the Tetris logo. Big fan of straight edges, that Roger Dean. "Heat of the Moment" and "Only Time Will Tell" are rather heavily cynical for pop hits - especially the videos, including the Nam June Paik-influenced clip for the latter song. Asia regrouped recently, playing very strange venues like dive bars in Santa Barbara. To think that you could just brush the crumbs from your deep-fried mozzarella fingers off your pants and walk across the street and see Asia. Conversely, if you wanted to dig straight down to China, there are only but a few places on Earth where you could dig and hit land, not water. So sorry.

Logo #114: Dream Theater

Created for Dream Theater by Charlie Dominici in 1989.

Logo #70: The Tubes

Designed by Matt Leach - most times credited as simply "Leach" - for The Tubes' 1981 album "The Completion Backwards Principle." Quite possibly the greatest rock music logo in the history of Home Depot. The album, based on the eponymous sales instruction manual, features guitar work by the redoubtable, deathlessly skilled Steve Lukather on "Talk To Ya Later," which also contains one of the best couplets in '80s popular music: "It's been six months / she hasn't shut up once." The Tubes would forever be remembered by the early MTV Generation for their terrifying video for "She's A Beauty" But don't fall in love, because it'll turn you into a kid with an old guy mask from the Halloween costume section at Gemco.

Logo #67: Rush

Designed by Hugh Syme, occasional Rush keyboardist and Mellotron maven, for the back of the "2112" LP in 1976. I fully cop to the fact that I don't "get" Rush - but I also fully appreciate constancy, as evidenced in their rendition of "Anthem" from 1975, an "easter egg" on some video or other such. Look at how minimal Neal Peart's drum kit is! And yes, if any rock band logo ever suggested following one's own star, it's this one. Although thematically the hero here, finding the lost miracle of the forbidden guitar and learning new ways to make unheard music with it, is facing off against a dystopian future in which a beknighted few dictate all culture mores for the people at large, and so on. And that hero was Derek Bailey. Or, it's all a thinly-veiled metaphor for all those times the Justice League of America faced off against Starro the Conqueror. Whichever. Speaking in Creem in 1983, Syme recalls, "Initially, that logo didn't begin as an identity factor for the band, it just got adopted. We didn't consider it a mascot overall icon of representation for the band at the time. What I did do with that particular cover was read their lyrics, and understand that there is a good force and a bad force: the good force was music, creativity, and freedom of expression - and the bad force was anything that was contrary to that. The man is the hero of the story. That he is nude is just a classic tradition ... the pureness of his person and creativity without the trappings of other elements such as clothing. The red star is the evil red star of the Federation, which was one of Neil's symbols. We basically based that cover around the red star and that hero. Now, that hero and that kind of attitude about freedom of expression and the band having that kind of feeling ... at the time, it never ready occurred to me, to be honest with you, that they would adopt it quite so seriously as a logo. Because it's appeared just about everywhere, thereafter."

Logo #61: Gong

Gong's ubiquitous gnome, drawn by Gong showman and founder Daevid Allen in 1962, appears as the focal point of a trilogy of albums (expanded to a quinary by 2000): "Flying Teapot" and "Angel's Egg" (both 1973), and "You" (1974). The English progressive band - where "progressive" means all possible positive perceptions of the word - has effectively been alive since 1965, the year in which Allen had a vision in which his entire future was laid out as a plain before him (winning lottery numbers notwithstanding). This illustration was taken from a brilliant history of the EMS line of synthesizers, found here. As rock band logos go, it's a whimsical mix of folk art and the methodology of mythologies both personal and traditional.

I saw Gong perform in the late '90s in Los Angeles at the defunct Billboard Live venue - a club which broadcast the concerts live to a huge video screen on the front of the building. It turned into the Key Club, and sits in the spot on which Bill Gazzarri's (June 16, 1924 - March 13, 1991) club once stood. Same kind of band ethos in that particular block or three of Sunset Boulevard, though - not much has changed from the days of "The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II." This was during the version of the band in which Pierre Moerlen (October 23, 1952 - May 3, 2005) played drums - and just when you think eminently flipped-out, well-traveled musicians have seen it all, no stranger a look on their faces was had than when I asked the members of Gong to sign my, erm, gong. It just seems such an obvious thing to ask. The following day, I had an enlightening conversation with Gong founder Daevid Allen, who detailed at great length how deeply Virgin Records founder Richard Branson hated their guts. Oh, we talked about everything from here to the ends of the cosmos but that really stuck out for some reason - possibly because Richard Branson seems so serene amidst his billions.

Logo #54: Sopwith Camel

Designed by German collage artist Wilfred Sätty for Sopwith Camel's 1972 LP, "The Miraculous Hump Returns From The Moon." Sätty (April 12, 1939 - January 31, 1982), a contemporary of other San Francisco graphic artists, stands almost unknown today; a brilliant lost artist from those halcyon hippie days. Compare. Contrast. A deeply fascinating memorial site can be found here. This cornerstone (or footnote, depending) of underrated psychedelia was remastered by the band last year; a new album drops in November. But go read up on poor Sätty and cry a little, because in the deathless words of Charles Bukowski, "Somebody said / "Well, shit." / and that's / what it was."

Logo #12: Magma

Interviewed by George Allen and Robert Pearson in 1995, Magma founder Christian Vander remarked on the logo he designed in September 1969, "When I created it, I never thought of (it as) a bird. The idea at the beginning was something like the dress of the Egyptians. It was supposed to be like a piece of cloth or articulated metal sheets that would mold over the body, over the ribcage. It was to be similar to breast-plate armor, but supple, not rigid." Contrary to popular belief, Vander was not the drummer in the forest in Jean-Luc Godard's "Week End." The Magma design is a modern example of a very ancient attitude: that a symbol's meaning borders on the mystical and it's something meant to be integrated into the life of the bearer. It's like a literal brand - or, as it appears on the tombstone that graces the cover of the 2004 Magma album "K.A (Köhntarkösz Anteria)", a totem that helps guide the individual even after death.