Logo #178: Pop-o-pies

The Pop-o-pies, for the first two years of its existence, did nothing but play "Truckin'" by The Grateful Dead. Various members of Faith No More spent time in the Pop-o-pies ranks - but not Mike Patton! God forbid he do something "wacky" in his life. The smiley face was, it turns out, designed by marketing man David Stern in 1967 for a campaign for Washington Mutual Bank. Interviewed in 1988, Stern revealed that he was not best pleased by people tweaking it for their own nefarious uses. Hence the Pop-o-pies. The smiley was detourned by Joe Callahan in 1981 and appeared a few years later on the "Joe's Second Album" LP cover. Callahan: "It first appeared on a banner hung behind the band at the first Pop-o-pies show. It was a reaction to the lame pseudo-toughguy skull-and-crossbones logos that were (and still are) on everybody's clothes." Amen to that! Luke Helder, the Midwest Pipe Bomber, planned a series of explosives in 2002 to form the shape of a happy face across the United States. Conversely, Scott Fahlman invented the first computer world smiley faces in 1982. And yet, even after all those e-mails, somehow the world doesn't seem much happier.

Logo #177: Saccharine Trust

Designer: Raymond Pettibon, 1981. Drummer Tony Cicero remembers this icon as first appearing in the liner notes for the "Pagan Icons" LP, but it may have appeared earlier. Saccharine Trust were at the nexus of punk and jazz, creating a sinewy, spiky and confrontational strain of art rock in their wake, becoming rather like the West Coast analogue of New York's No Wave - as near to such a thing as ever could be. They would tour many times with Black Flag and appear on multiple bills various times with their SST label brethren - living, in the words of Steve Albini, "like a slug and out of a garbage bag." Here they are at Perkins Palace sometime in the '80s, with the definitive Baiza / Brewer / Cicero / Hodson line-up, and here is an earlier incarnation.

This Day in Death:
Jacques François Antoine Ibert (August 15, 1890 – February 5, 1962). The composer.

This Day in Birth:
William Seward Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997). The decomposer.

Logo #176: Reagan Youth

Paul Cripple of Reagan Youth: "At out first show on August 20, 1980, we all wore leather jackets (like The Ramones, we also went to Forest Hills High School) and Dave Insurgent {born David Rubinstein, September 5, 1964 - July 3, 1993} made these armbands (like the Nazis wore) and he painted each one with the stormtrooper thing you're talkin' about. We wore the armbands for the first few shows. I have a picture where I'm wearing it, but you can't really make it out because it wasn't a side view. They really were cool. Shit, I'm gonna tell my singer to make four of 'em and make the band wear 'em (I doubt they'll wear leather motorcycle jackets, though). So, thanks for the inspiration." The same day, somewhere in Maryland, aviation pioneer James Smith McDonnell died. He founded McDonnell Aircraft Corporation (later McDonnell Douglas) in 1939. The company became the principal supplier of fighter aircraft to the U.S. Air Force and Navy. Cosmic balance and all that. Also, if you were with-it enough to be one of those lifestyle geniuses like Jeff Koons, you could've seen the birth of Reagan Youth and then hopped aboard the SST to Europe to catch the premiere of Jean Rollin's "La nuit des traquées" (starring the endlessly beautiful Brigitte Lahaie), but I digress. Reagan Youth were a startling welter of conflicting images: apparent reggae hippies bedecked in tie-dye who released records with seemingly supremacist sleeve designs. Dave Insurgent's girlfriend Tiffany Bresciani became the final victim of Joel Rifkin, the Long Island serial murderer dubbed "Joel the Ripper" by the scandal sheets. Consumed by grief, Dave killed himself shortly afterwards. There really is no good segue to go into after that. Here they are doing a very "rock" set with the song "In the Beginning." I had at that point just turned 18 years old. Where was I? And where have all those people in that audience gone?

Logo #175: sunn O)))

sunn O)))'s sun was designed by Bob Selby for Sunn Amplifiers in 1965 and was borrowed by Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley in 1998 when they embarked upon their doomy drone metal voyage. Pity the poor rock journalist who forgets how many parentheses come after the big O! In case you might feel inclined to ridicule their eldritch affectations, their cloak roadies or their conquering the charts in a manner not seen since Coven, just remember: Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley live in many luxury homes and fly Gulfstream© jets around the world. You live in caves and eat cold worms. The end!

Logo #174: The Power Station

Based on dirty doodles by Duran Duran bassist John Taylor, the electric girl appeared on the "Some Like It Hot" release in 1985 (the video of which includes Robert Palmer propositioning a golden eagle, and Caroline "Tula" Cossey, the first transsexual to pose for Playboy; hence the odd extended shaving sequences). Self-described "awful pervert" Taylor's fantasy sketches were to form the public face of The Power Station, a pop supergroup whose ranks included Robert Palmer, drummer Tony Thompson, guitarist Andy Taylor and John Taylor (who I previously asserted were brothers but eagle-eyed readers have pointed out are not - thanks!). Not much chance of a reunion tour for this band - Palmer (January 19, 1949 – September 26, 2003) and Thompson (also of Chic, and Allah and the Knife Wielding Punks; November 15, 1954 – November 12, 2003) died within weeks of one another and Duran Duran's popularity abides. You couldn't turn on a radio in 1985 without hearing "Some Like It Hot" or "Bang a Gong" every fifteen minutes or so. It says something about Taylor's psyche that he simplifies a woman to her most basic parts: visors and electricity. Reductionist pig!

Logo #173: The Police

Mick Haggerty designed these seemingly simple LEDs for the cover of the 1981 "Ghost in the Machine" LP. The Police are, from left to right, Andy Summers, Sting, and Stewart Copeland. You can tell because Copeland's got his drumstick held high, Summers is getting ready to play a power chord and Sting has his dagger ready to attack House Atreides. Sort of. Possibly the dot at the very end is a roadie. You never know what sign the roadie gets. Sting is actually a fairly charming and underrated actor, Stewart Copeland is a thrillingly inventive percussionist and Andy Summers...well, he's the best Andy Summers he possibly could be. The cover image of their "Can't Stand Losing You" 7" is completely amazing, and the last minute of most of their hits tends to be repetitive filler, but they're golden nonetheless. "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" shall always remain a deeply pleasant reminder of growing up in the innocent winters and lazy summers of upstate Michigan in 1981. What'd NWA say about The Police? Oh, yeah: Help the Police!

Logo #172: Electric Light Orchestra

Designed by John Kosh for the 1976 E.L.O. LP "A New World Record". Jeff Lynne and his Electric Light Orchestra have a good dozen really stellar pop singles, but whoever does the licensing for any film even remotely resembling the work of Charlie Kaufman only includes their songs in the trailers - yet never in the actual film itself. It's like getting instructions on how to feel. Most distasteful. E.L.O.'s "Out of the Blue" LP has an image of this logo as a spacecraft, into which the Concorde flies. Strangely enough!