NON: Logo #323

1980 was a banner year for logos. Roughly the same time Boyd Rice adapted the wolfsangle for his Industrial noise act NON, the following musicians were also developing, drawing, and detourning symbols that would become their own logos:

7Seconds
45 Grave
Adam and the Ants
Anti-Nowhere League
Bad Manners
Bad Religion
The Beat
Circle Jerks
Circle One
Conflict
Devo
Die Tödliche Doris
The Effigies
Einstürzende Neubauten
Hüsker Dü
Ill Will
Inner City Unit
Instagon
Iron Maiden
Judas Priest
Laibach
Men Without Hats
Klaus Nomi
Reagan Youth
Sisters of Mercy
Stray Cats
This Heat
White Spirit

I like lists. Think of all the collective creative brainwaves that energized the world thirty years ago, making it a better and more interesting place - terminal obscurity notwithstanding. "Iconoclast," Larry Wessel's documentary on Rice, premiered this past August to a packed house in L.A. at the New Beverly Cinema. It was overlong - in much the same way that chocoholics sometimes overindulge - and filled with the Boyd Rice legends that have been re-told through the years, entertaining though they always are. There was scant mention of Rice's longtime companion Lisa Carver throughout the film - the overall effect of which is a bit like the Old Testament written without mention of Moses. I'll always have time for Boyd's many different noises; in the '90s, he wasn't replying to many people who wrote to him in his Colorado sanctum sanctorum. He did, however, take the time to send me an impressive nastygram because I'd pissed him off with a postcard the contents of which neither of us can recall now. Now with Peter Christopherson from Throbbing Gristle having passed into the Great and Eminently Deserved Beyond, we should cherish our Industrial forefathers more than we already do (yes, Male Rape Group, too).

God doesn't just make rainbows. He makes spitting cobras, too.

Distorted Pony: Logo #319

I love following up something like Take That with something like Distorted Pony. David Uskovich, guitarist with the industrial / noise rock band, remembers: "Around '88 or '89 - maybe as early as '87 - Dora Jahr, bassist, made an abstract "pony" out of clay. She rolled the clay into ropes. I can't remember, but I think the head, body and tail were all one piece, with separate pieces for the legs and the "eye," which is that big circle in the middle of the head. It was like a 3-D version of a line drawing. She probably still has that thing. One of us, or maybe it was Robert Hammer or Theodore Jackson, had the idea to slap some black paint onto the clay pony and then press it onto a piece of paper. The results were pretty cool, as you have seen, so we decided to have some rubber stamp maker make us a rubber stamp from the original print and Bob's-your-uncle: instant portable logo-maker. We definitely used it for the first single. We were all total industrial dorks, so the fact that the Pony logo resembled the Einsturzende Neubauten logo was not lost on us."

Distorted Pony re-united this year in Los Angeles; sometimes it takes years for people to catch on. The world needs ditch-diggers - and grave-diggers - too.

:zoviet*france:: Logo #313

One of the greatest musical groups of all time - flat-out, hands down, bar none. They make the mystical and transcendent into something intimate, they make some of the best record packaging ever created and if ever there were a need for meditative drones made of sticks and stones, :zoviet*france: fulfills it. Robin Storey, late of zoviet*france:: "The ZF logo developed organically with input from all the artists involved in the early days (including Lisa Hale). I can't remember when that particular configuration (Nb. the star-crescent) was first used, but it must have been around the mid-'80s." The band is fractured and fractious now, for various reasons - which is sad, but their music is immortal and surpasses the paltry emotional firefights in which mere humans tend to delight from time to time. :zoviet*france: came out of a confluence of avant-garde minds working in northeastern England in the late '70s and early '80s - The Hafler Trio, Metgumbnerbone, Alien Brains, The New Blockaders and various variations of the people in those great creative brain-trusts. Here's :zoviet*france: about 20 years ago. Here's their incredible discography, which is fraught with some of the most luminescent titles ever - including "Shouting At the Ground," which comes from a slightly longer quote, "Shouting at the ground won't make it hear you any better." AMEN TO THAT!

By the way, that comment on the Operation Ivy entry just totally made my week. It's not that I'm running out of logos or affection for the form - I'm just overwhelmed in my current state of human limitation. Further bulletins as events warrant - lightning strike or sudden radioactive mutation notwithstanding.

Logo #224: Skinny Puppy

Jim Cummins designed the logo for the cover of the the band's "Too Dark Park" LP in 1990. It's another simple, stylish icon that looks great airbrushed on the back of a leather jacket. Combining the best of performance art - shock, and possibly some spinach mixed with some mysterious dark viscous material - Skinny Puppy probably got more people aware of animal rights and veganism than most any other alternative band through the '80s and '90s. Well, short of Morrissey, maybe. Then member Dwayne Goettel (February 1, 1964 - August 23, 1995) died and things got kind of blah from there on out. This was the scene as recorded by this reporter at the Skinny Puppy live action in Los Angeles on July 3, 2004: "Oilfield fires and airplane graveyards from the film "Baraka" appear alongside fog and lasers as war-torn bodies of children inspire a battle between heart and mind where ultimately neither wins. Skinny Puppy's ohGr emerges, beaked beast costumed in tatters, his voice sliced and excoriated on delivery - but after all these years offstage, it's a bit like what Keith Richards remarked to John Fogerty: He'd better start playing Creedence songs lest everyone think Ike Turner wrote "Proud Mary." The vitriol of "VX Gas Attack" and "Pro-Test" filtered out with the gasps of the effects machines misting the audience with vapor and sonic assaults; cEvin Key on keys as the synth tones rebounded off the resounding pounding Justin Bennett gave the drums. Klieg lights flood the audience as ohGr's image is incorporated in CGI visuals (courtesy of Travis Baumann and William Morrison) of rebirth and fire simulcast behind him. Drenched and drenching the front rows with some kind of reddish bodily fluid (possibly hematospermia), oGhr holds a gas mask like a stereoscope, cocooning the stage in police "Do Not Cross" tape, his paroxysmal moves shimmering in the black light. Yet repetition of images without context is such that, were you a neocon who liked industrial music and the war in Iraq…two tickets, please! In much the same way that news of "mad cow" disease increased hamburger consumption, the brain-melting cavalcade of crucifixes / W. / flags / Osama / swastikas / Hitler / war-wounded unveils a double standard: Though the artist alleges that certain symbols no longer hold relevance in modern society, he fetishizes those symbols as intensely as a cargo cult operating a ham radio unit made entirely of bamboo."

Logo #219: My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

From TKK Central: "We started using that design in 1997, and it was designed together by both tattoo artist David Winland of Blue Buddha Tattoo - he used to crew for the band - and TKK singer Groovie Mann." Another easily propagated, faintly enigmatic sigil that can be quickly carved into desktops or flesh with one sharp implement or another. Their later output is rather beige and whelming but the "I See Good Spirits And I See Bad Spirits" album was always a marvel to me because they accomplished the whole thing so swiftly. Early Thrill Kill Kult, despite its discofied trappings, seemed deeply steeped in sadness and desperation and where did it all go? It is not for nothing that "My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult" implies past lives. You tend to want to put it all behind you when you're through. Or laugh about it.

Another cult of thrills can be found in the 1975 pornographic film "Breakdown." So, in the interest of a wider appreciation of culture both popular and un-, we now present this breakdown of what happens in "Breakdown": "Here is a movie from the mid-1970s, when it seemed that maybe the only way blacks would become free in the U.S.A. would be to overthrow the U.S.A. We view the revolutionaries' headquarters. Posters of Chairman Mao & V. I. Lenin are on the walls. Two white girls have been drawn into their ranks. We see them alone in the HQ. Two white police officers gain entry to the place, and they begin interrogating the girls as to the whereabouts of the two main revolutionaries. The girls really do not know where they are. Our officers are unwilling to accept this answer. But as they have nothing for which they can arrest them, the girls are taken into separate rooms and summarily raped. One girl is forced to take it down her anus {is that Wes Montgomery heard on the soundtrack?!}. The revolutionaries return. Surprise: They are black. The girls are still dazed and aghast. The black guys manage to learn the name of one of the police officers. One black guy knows how to get back at him. He goes over to the house of his white girlfriend, where he rapes her (the cinematography of the sex scenes involving the dark skinned black men and the white girls is luminous. I bet it's those uncredited Hollywood professionals again). Is that Toots and the Maytals now on the soundtrack?! A large squadron of police officers [stock footage] is marshaled outside the HQ. The two black revolutionaries manage to get through the congeries into it, but they are battered. We espy an issue of "The Workers' Advocate" headlining Zimbabwe. The girls attempt to make them feel better (both yield their anuses). How shall this end? I won't disclose. But I will say that whoever made this managed to cram a lot of stuff into only 59 minutes."

Logo #197: Rammstein

The stoic and imposing icon for Rammstein was designed by Dirk Rudolph. Rudolph: "It first appeared on the artwork for "Mutter" in 2001. Not really (a take on Malevich), it is just a reduction of the Rammstein logo I did, which was, if at all, influenced by Malevich subconsciously." Controversial, bombastic and fiery are they! Here they are now, playing "Amerika" on the moon, proving once and for all how easy it it to fake a lunar landing.

Logo #184: Brighter Death Now

Appropriated from an unknown designer by Roger Karmanik for his harsh noise unit Brighter Death Now in 1990. Karmanik: "I found it in an old typographic ornament while I was working at a print shop 20 or so years ago. The first time it appeared was on the "Great Death" LP - it was then only meant to be a symbol for that specific theme: a symbol of death...but of course it also became a symbol for the band itself. Many have asked where it comes from and what it symbolizes - it comes from my point of view and symbolizes me and everything I stand for - hahaha! Go figure!" Speaking of symbols: his remarks from a 1996 interview with the publication Worm Gear: "I have 3 kids as well; I am very much a life transformer, but that has really nothing to do with the things I try to develop through BDN. Death is a symbol for me - the symbol of changes - and all changes are good; even evil is good. All that comes from BDN has my deepest soul within. It is the ultimate sodomy of my soul, mind, and flesh." What he said! For more than 20 years, Karmanik has run the Cold Meat Industry label, showcasing the finest in Scandinavian unpleasantness, and shows no sign of stopping. Live, they're a singularly dynamic experience, so much so that the sound fairly eats through the foam of one's earplugs. Like eating blowfish, it's an experience one should encounter at least once in one's life.

Logo #147: F-Space

Scot Jenerik of Bay Area psychotechnic flame-bearers / beaters F-Space designed this symbol in 1998. It's the Chinese i-ching for fire. Contemporaries of Survival Research Labs, Crash Worship, and Savage Republic, F-Space hark from a time in the '80s in which the modern primitive meme was percolating, Burning Man was but a foetal dream of spectacle and freedom, and there became a rapidly defined ceiling on just how much Industrial Culture shock one was prepared to submit oneself to in order to feel a certain level of progress happening.

Logo #130: The Young Gods

Chiseled in stone (so to speak) by Young Gods founder Franz Treichler in 1987.