Deviations from Select Albums 3

This art is derived from the designs on the covers of great music albums. The original images are mostly square which I processed to fit an 18x10 resolution computer screen. The processes I employ are simple. I am not a professional artist. Credits are given to the artists and owners of the original designs as well as the labels which released the albums. No infringement of copyright is intended in these works. I am using the original designs under the doctrine of "fair use."

Showing posts with label mirror image. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

96. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me

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It was in a mall sometime in 2002 (or 2003) where I first saw her face on a CD album cover. "She's new," I said to myself without even trying to find out how her songs sound like. Some time later in about
the same year I saw a girl on TV who was driving a car in an empty highway and singing a song I've never heard before. The song was "Come Away With Me." The driver was the girl whose face was on the
cover of the CD album that I saw at the record store. I thought that before this, the last album by a female artist that I really treated seriously enough was by Diane Reeves which was a hit in 1987.

Some more weeks later (in about the same year) I was in a record store again looking for some 1970s and 1980s rock albums that I thought I've missed. Of course, I was trying to avoid the new releases
with harsh voices singing the leads in the songs, which I blamed (is this the right word?) on the Rode mic (am I correct?).

After some minutes of scanning through the racks I saw the face on the cover again. The salesgirl at the store offered to let me sample some tracks from a promo disc. It was Norah Jones. With the
headset still on my ears I signalled the salesgirl to wait until I've finished sampling all the songs in the album. Actually I was only listening to "Don't Know Why" from start to finish. This is the opening track
and it has always been the song that makes me remember my first glimpse of Norah Jones to this day, the face on the cover of Come Away With Me. And of course, the song "Cold, Cold Heart" which I've
been familiar with since I was a child.

It is July 2016 and I am writing some thoughts to go with my tweak of the album cover for my blog. Surfing the web, I discovered two things. The first was that Norah Jones is a daughter of Ravi Shankar,
the Indian exponent of the sitar who became associated with The Beatles. The second was that it was a Neumann M49 mic that Norah Jones used to record the song "Come Away With Me."

Learning about her father I am glad I that darkened the original album cover photo for the work above. She looks more Indian on the monochrome.

This is Geetali Norah Jones Shankar on the cover.

No. 52, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time

Design & art direction by Jessica Novod, photo by Joanne Savio. Album produced by Jay Newland, Arif Mardin, Craig Street & Norah Jones. Blue Note 2002.

Norah Jones' debut is a mellow, acoustic pop affair with soul and country overtones, immaculately produced by the great Arif Mardin. Jones is not quite a
jazz singer, but she is joined by some highly regarded jazz talent: guitarists Adam Levy, Adam Rogers, Tony Scherr, Bill Frisell, and Kevin Breit; drummers
Brian Blade, Dan Rieser, and Kenny Wollesen; organist Sam Yahel; accordionist Rob Burger; and violinist Jenny Scheinman. Her regular guitarist and bassist,
Jesse Harris and Lee Alexander, respectively, play on every track and also serve as the chief songwriters. Both have a gift for melody, simple yet elegant
progressions, and evocative lyrics.

Jones, for her part, wrote the title track and the pretty but slightly restless "Nightingale." She also includes convincing readings of Hank Williams' "Cold Cold
Heart," J.D. Loudermilk's "Turn Me On," and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You." There's a touch of Rickie Lee Jones in Jones' voice, a touch of Bonnie
Raitt in the arrangements; her youth and her piano skills could lead one to call her an Alicia Keys for grown-ups. While the mood of this record stagnates
after a few songs, it does give a strong indication of Jones' alluring talents. AllMusic Review by David R. Adler

The album won eight awards (Jones won five of the awards) at the Grammy Awards of 2003, including Album of the Year, as well as Record of the Year and
Song of the Year for "Don't Know Why". Although she was happy about her success, Jones felt bad about sweeping the Grammy Awards. In an interview for
60 Minutes, Jones told Katie Couric:

"I felt like I went to somebody else's birthday party and I ate all their cake. Without anybody else getting a piece. That's how I felt." wikipedia

(A) Don't Know Why - Seven Years - Cold, Cold Heart - Feelin' the Same Way - Come Away With Me - Shoot the Moon - Turn Me On

(B) Lonestar - I've Got to See You Again - Painter Song - One Flight Down - Nightingale - The Long Day is Over - The Nearness of You

"Don't Know Why" music video from emimusic on YouTube.

www.norahjones.com

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Next: The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night

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Saturday, July 2, 2016

95. Billy Joel - The Stranger

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In this work Billy Joel is playing chess with The Stranger. I thought his deep concentration was too much for a harlequin mask.
Well, actually it's just a mirrored image with the reversed letters removed and the chessboard and pieces added. Some Liquify
filter applications on the pillows and the sheets and. . . , well it looks like a draw.

The real story is told below.

The Stranger’s cover art shows Joel lounging on a bed, glancing down with a look of despondent contemplation at a (harlequin)
mask. On the wall behind him hangs a pair of boxing gloves (Billy Joel used to box). Coupled with the lyrics from the title
track, a story is created that differs from the other tracks. Joel ditches pseudonyms and third-person narration and tells a
personal tale of doubt and identity. The first words Joel lets out are, “Well we all have a face that we hide away forever/And
we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.”

With this introspective song and artwork, Joel “hung up the gloves” and fell victim to someone who had a side that was never
shown. The personality from the cover and vulnerability of the song set up the rest of the tracks to undertake a deeper meaning,
transcending beyond entertaining tunes. Review by Ryan Glaspell on Puluche; notes in parenthesis are by Bob Egan on PopSpots.

Photo from PopSpots

No. 70, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time; No. 138, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time;
No. 246, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000.

Photo by Jerry Abramowitz. Album produced by Phil Ramone. Family Productions/Columbia 1977.

Joel describes the sessions for the album as "a blast" and as the breakthrough album with four hit singles. The Stranger contains
nine songs. Songwriting on "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)," "She's Always a Woman," "Just the Way You Are," "Everybody Has a
Dream," and "Only the Good Die Young" was completed before recording, while "Vienna," "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,"
"The Stranger," and "Get It Right the First Time," which originated as short tunes or musical fragments, were completed in the
studio.

Lyrically, the album's approach is decidedly narrative; each song tells a story. The seven-and-a-half-minute epic "Scenes From an
Italian Restaurant" began as a shorter song entitled "The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie," which became the third section of "Italian
Restaurant." While composing "The Stranger," Joel whistled the track's signature theme for producer Phil Ramone, claiming that
he (Joel) needed to find an instrument to play it. Ramone replied: "No, you don't. That's 'The Stranger,' the whistling." wikipedia

(A) Movin' Out (Anthony's Song) - The Stranger - Just the Way You Are - Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

(B) Vienna - Only the Good Die Young - She's Always a Woman - Get It Right the First Time - Everybody Has a Dream/The Stranger (Reprise)

"Just the Way You Are" live from MAXFMTV on YouTube.

www.billyjoel.com

Previous: Elvis Presley - The Sun Sessions

Next: Norah Jones - Come Away With Me

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Friday, June 17, 2016

92. Kate Bush - Never for Ever

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Some record album covers translate okay to a smaller size – whether it be a CD booklet or a computer thumbnail image. Others, however, have rich detail which gets lost when the image is reduced.

Kate Bush’s 1980 album Never For Ever is one such album.

Painted by artist Nick Price, who had previously provided the cover art for Bush’s 1979 Tour program, it features a myriad of fantastical creatures flying out from under her windblown skirt. Symbolizing

dark and light, a fang-baring bat and a swan are the most predominant. Bush described the cover as “an intricate journey of our emotions: inside gets outside, as we flood people and things with our

desires and problems. These black and white thoughts, these bats and doves, freeze-framed in flight, swoop into the album and out of your hi-fis. Then it’s for you to bring them to life.” (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Sept. 1980) Music to Eat

My own personal observation is that Nick Price (at the instance of Kate) was portraying a dreamy surrealism in the tradition of the Early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch. This album cover art

bears semblance with The Garden of Earthly Delights which is attributed to Bosch. In the work above, the original album cover art design is at extreme left. Its right half was flipped and added on the

right in order to mirror itself. The unflipped right half was added farther on the right in order to mirror the flipped half. I would call this a 'Bush flip', somewhat the opposite of but not very much unlike

a Bosh triptych.

While the art of the older masters was based in the physical world of everyday experience, Bosch confronts his viewer with, in the words of the art historian Walter Gibson, "a world of dreams and

nightmares in which forms seem to flicker and change before our eyes". In one of the first known accounts of Bosch's paintings, in 1560 the Spaniard Felipe de Guevara wrote that Bosch was regarded

merely as "the inventor of monsters and chimeras". In the early seventeenth century, the artist-biographer Karel van Mander described Bosch’s work as comprising "wondrous and strange fantasies";

however, he concluded that the paintings are "often less pleasant than gruesome to look at". wiki

Here's the work of Nick Price.

Painting by Nick Price, direction by Kate Bush. Album produced by Kate Bush and Jon Kelly. EMI (UK), EMI America (USA), Harvest (Canada) 1980.

Never for Ever has Kate Bush sounding vocally stable and more confident, taking what she had put into her debut single "Wuthering Heights" from 1978 and administering those facets into most of the

album's content. Bush's dramatics and theatrical approach to singing begin to solidify on Never for Ever, and her style brandishes avid seriousness without sounding flighty or absurd. "Breathing," about

the repercussions of nuclear war, conveys enough passion and vocal curvatures to make her concern sound convincing, while "Army Dreamers" bounces her voice up and down without getting out of hand.

"Babooshka"'s motherly charm and flexible chorus make it one of her best tracks, proving that she can make the simplest of lyrics work for her through her tailored vocal acrobatics. The rest of the

album isn't quite as firm as her singles, but they all sport a more appeasing and accustomed sound than some of her past works, and she does manage to keep her identity and characteristics intact.

Mike DeGagne for AllMusic; abridged.

(A) Babooshka - Delius (Song of Summer) - Blow Away (For Bill) - All We Ever Look For - Egypt

(B) The Wedding List - Violin - The Infant Kiss - Night Scented Stock - Army Dreamers - Breathing