Flogging Molly: Logo #329

Designed by Flogging Molly in 1998 with the assistance of graphic design artist Brian Peterson. Founded at Molly Malone's pub on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles - and named by virtue of the fact that they played there so often and so loudly - the band celebrates their 20th anniversary next year. Singer Dave King got his start with the metal band Fastway (alongside members of Motörhead and UFO) and is married to Bridget Regan, the band's fiddler and tin whistler. I hope she tells people at cocktail parties that she plays tin whistle for a living.

Interstitial #7: Return to Detourn

I'll be going through all the old posts and clearing out the meta-commentaries that aren't quite so crystalline anymore (i.e. the dead links cropping up like gravestones hereabouts).

The Chinese sure love Men Without Hats! I've received more comments about that logo than any other. Of course, they're all spam, but spammers read, feel, fall in love, buy things, and laugh just like anyone else.

It's not a dead blog. Just a very, very sleepy one.

Phish: Logo #310

Created by Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, possibly as early as 1986. More Holist goodness - the whole being bigger than the sum of its parts. Speaking of the sum of its parts, so what must that internal memo have been like about the guy from Phish being beaten up by Hells Angels? The world, like the ad said with the wise old owl, will never know. I don't particularly care for Phish. Too imprecise and meandering and beardy. Their ice cream is fairly good, though.

My ex-girlfriend died last month. She was 26. Her heart stopped. I'll be 39 on Thursday. Do I really have to experience dead ex-girlfriends at age 39? Naturally - naturally - if you want to read about what a godly being she was, you have but to read any of the blaugs out there extolling her virtues and whatnot. "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones," said Mark Antony in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," and much like Mark Antony, I come to bury Danielle - not praise her. Here's the downright lowdown on the latter-day ambient saint: she was a beautiful pain-in-the-ass who had a deathly fear of commitment through her 20s and sought enlightenment and inspiration from one boyfriend after another. Conversely: I was not her star to follow. She wound up with the man she wound up with - and although I thought much of their recorded output were shiny cogs in one vast and endless boredom factory, clearly she was happy; clearly she was at peace. Who am I to begrudge anyone that? I'm just this curmudgeonly scribbler who writes brilliantly about disposable popular culture. Conversely two times: the day she died (unbeknownst to me), I was digging through storage and found a packet of her love letters that I hadn't looked at in years. Someone meant, it would seem, to say something before she departed for the great Beyond. Anyway, he had his time with her - but I got her on the way out. Bye, Danielle.

The Song of the Moment is "Last Day of Magic" by The Kills.

Jamiroquai: Logo #285

In the tradition of Miles Davis' silhouette or Dolly Parton's latest public image, the Jamiroquai man-bull was conjured up by singer Jason Kay in 1993 for the band's debut album "Emergency On Planet Earth." Much scorn is heaped on Jamiroquai whenever this logo appears in "best of" lists (such as the recent NME list that ripped off my work without even so much as a link in return), but as an admixture of smooth jazz and driveway-moment fuck music goes, it's not half bad. They're still packing audiences in throughout Europe, so that's more than you've probably done.

Interstitial #6: The Return From Witch Mountain

Took about a year, but there's no sense in coming back if it's not at the top:

Millions of websites with the words "rock", "band" and "logos" in them can't be wrong, I guess.

Apropos of something: Debora Iyall from Romeo Void reports, "Well, we used my lip-print with a red circle with a slash across it sometimes, and made a button of that."

I'm real busy. I still have over a thousand logos left. What, a man can't take a few months off and unwind? My triumphal and/or triumphant return awaits!

Treponem Pal: Logo #275

Marco Neves, singer of Treponem Pal, reports, "It was designed by David Lebrun, the first drummer of the band in 1988. We always enjoyed this type of ethnic or tribal kind of image...it fits really well to us! It's on the cover of the first album and comes back since on all the records we did..." Named for Treponema pallidum, the bacterium that causes syphilis (not to be confused with sibilance, even if both are things with which most roadies are intimately familiar), it's a beautifully simple logo because there's the T, there's the P, and there's the primitive pelvic bones that tie the whole concept together nicely.

Renegade Soundwave: Logo #272

Designed in 1994 for the band by David Little. It appears on the "Howyoudoin?" release. It's deeply reminiscent of the flying head in the film "Zardoz," and mixing it with the fierce lion makes it that much heavier a logo. "Biting My Nails" is probably the band's defining moment - "Probably a Robbery" was a hit worldwide but something really falls flat in the notes somewhere.

Logo #264: Average White Band

The daring derriere of the Average White Band was designed by Tim Bruckner and Alan Gorrie in 1974.

Logo #230: Public Image Ltd.

Public Image Ltd. had their logo designed by Dennis Morris in 1978. Driving to work today, I saw that the band Lit has a logo that's a riff on this one (it was on the back of a red windbreaker, incongruously enough), so we'll be covering that one in the reasonably near future tense. From this rather illuminating interview with Morris: "F&F: Is it true you designed the PiL logo? Dennis: Yeah, I did the logo. I did the first single sleeve, the one that was in a newspaper. I did the first album sleeve, and 'Metal Box'. F&F: I was never sure who designed it. I know that John Lydon said he done it but... Dennis: [laughing] John said he designed it? F&F: Yeah. Dennis: Well, it was John's idea - you see what I mean - in terms of we had a meeting and he spoke about it and he put the idea of public image, but the idea comes from an aspirin! F&F: A pill. Dennis: Yeah, exactly the same as an aspirin. F&F: I think it' s the best band logo that's ever been designed. I think it's absolutely brilliant. Dennis: Yeah, it's very distinct." One of the greatest songs ever written about expectation and alienation is "Public Image." If no one gave a shit about you before and you find yourself in a band and cultivating a public image, having people suddenly come up and tell you how cosmically badasstic you are can be a deeply cynical prospect. Here's John Lydon and Keith Levene on Tom Snyder's show in 1980 - cynicism notwithstanding.

Logo #206: Angels and Airwaves

Designed by Blink-182 singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge in 2005. Coincidentally (?), the triple-A of this logo spells the name of DeLonge's daughter Ava. Aesthetically, the logo presents the waves of air in the ups-and-downs of its structure. Sometimes inadvertent brilliance is your greatest entertainment value. DeLonge (the singer who's not as screechy) and Blink-182 are currently at odds and while the odds are against him, we get Angels and Airwaves. For all their distasteful tattoos and overall bourgeois malaise, the Blink-182 camp - in this case, DeLonge - really are quite gifted pop musicians and songwriters. Seeing their lives unfold incessantly and insufferably in every media outlet available is particularly graceless, though. Most distressing.

Logo #95: Dire Straits

About this holist 1977 logo for the band, bassist John Illsley recalls, "The original red guitar logo came from the fact that Mark (Knopfler) was playing a red Strat at the time and we needed a logo, as you did in those days. The record company, Phonogram at that time, got someone in their in-house (art) department to make it happen. There were little red guitar badges being given away at the time to all and sundry - these were the idea of the band. God knows where they all ended up! I asked Mark about this and apparently the record company came up with a rather large-ish cardboard version which we thought could be improved by making them into a badge size (made) out of metal. So I suppose the original idea came from the record company - a rare thing these days!"

Logo #94: The Black Crowes

About his black crows created for The Black Crowes, designer Alan Forbes reveals, "They first showed up in 1989. It was the band's idea - also, my first commercial job. At the time, the band and I wanted to make them as dirty as possible, I guess in a "'70s rock excess" kinda way. I think in the end it worked out to be a real nice logo. I have continued to work on and off since then, working it in and out of various designs." You can buy a numbered silkscreen of this particular image (done for the band's two nights of live action in Philadelphia in 1999) here for a paltry $50.

Gay Dad: Logo #6

Created in 1999 by Factory Records design genius Peter Saville, the "Walking Man" innocuously heralded a British guitar band whose short creative life was battered by controversy and ended after a three-year rocket ride from top to bottom. Capitol was thwarted in its intentions to promote the band Stateside; the conventional wisdom was summed up by one apocryphal publicist who "said he'd resign if he had to work a band called Gay Dad," according to singer Cliff Jones. In this sign there is a clever override of daily experience that - Protestant work ethic aside - effectively makes every crossroads in the United States a four-way advertising campaign. For gay dads. And of course the implicit observation with this logo is that with every street come pedestrians, and some of them are dads, and some of those dads are gay. But at least they're white gays, so that should have been comforting to someone.