Wear your art on your sleeve

What a picture.  I pored over that collar bone so many times and the half human / half alien creature who possessed it.  What was that mercurial-looking substance pooling there? It was about to drip down into the white space where the red and blue lettering of the album's strange title was placed. 

There was that, and also this.

The chiselled faces staring out from the rocks became carved in my memory too.   I didn't know about Mount Rushmore at 7 or 8 years old, but I could sing along to all the "ah ah" bits in 'Child In Time'..!

This one too.

Those slender, androgynous young men became so familiar, the same ones who were lovingly blue-tacked onto my sister's moss green and chocolate brown painted bedroom walls.  For me the early '70s are connected now not just with the sounds but also the imagery from her record collection and the process of that particular form of osmosis must've begun.  Album sleeve art seeping in, finding its way effortlessly into my pre-teen brain, with every intention of staying there for the long term.

Putting together the two puzzle posts last year (to identify album covers from a small snippet of artwork) got me thinking about it some more.  How come we recognise so many records, even those we've never owned?  Neither I, nor anyone I've lived with, has ever had a copy of  'Tapestry', 'Hotel California' or 'Astral Weeks', for instance, but they're just so familiar.  As I selected covers which I thought might work best I realised that they mainly (though not all) came from a time when vinyl was dominant, when the cover artwork was a vital component of the whole package and we knew nothing else. I guess these are sleeves many of us saw regularly even if we didn't want them, flicking past them as we rummaged through the racks in our favourite shops, perhaps time and time again, one finger flipping forward a Beach Boys perhaps to get to a Buzzcocks - or whatever your taste pursued. Or when looking around at the wall displays in a second-hand record emporium, searching through musty boot sale crates and jumbled up charity shop boxes.  

Working in a record shop increased that for sure, but it goes back further. And I'd be hard pushed now to recognise as much album art from recent decades - certainly some, but I don't think as much has really stuck. Apart from perhaps only seeing them as small form CD inlays, far fewer of them have amassed the same history or had that ubiquitous presence like their predecessors.

As well as the ones I mentioned, others I became aware of early on had a degree of shock value at the time, like Hendrix's 'Electric Ladyland' and the Blind Faith album but many just  had striking imagery which has lodged itself in the brain - 'Abraxas' by Santana, for instance, and King Crimson's 'In The Court of the Crimson King' - memorable artwork in its own right.

How about you?  Which album covers have become permanently lodged in your memory, whether or not you own/owned them?

I'll be testing it out again soon! Hoping to compile another 'Covered Up' quiz next month.

Quark, nettles and Suffrajitsu

"I've got three wonderful random facts for you," I said to Mr SDS as I came into the kitchen after a long day working in my Shedio.

"Did you know about the word quark?" I began...

 "I know it's something to do with atoms and particles..."

"Yes, but do you know where the name actually comes from?"  

He didn't.  Nor did I until earlier that day.   Because every time I'm really busy with work like I have been lately, I also get the pleasure of picking up on a load of varied and unexpected facts through my choice of listening, BBC Radio 4. 

Music is great, but I often need to feel more connected to the outside world too - to hear voices, discussions, facts and fiction.  So Radio 4 it is, the station for grown ups!

It's a joy to be educated on surprising topics without even trying - like recently when I learned that there are scientific reasons why tea tastes better with milk added last and gleaned a wealth of info on earwax; I even gave 'The Archers' a listen although I don't have a clue who's who.  

Anyway, where was I?  Quark. Something to do with particles and atoms and my non-scientific brain didn't understand much more but what I did was far more interesting, I thought.

So I explained about the name quark - it's just a word from James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake' (specifically the line "Three quarks for Muster Mark!") and the bloke - the physicist, I mean (Murray Gell-Mann)  - who assigned it here just thought it sounded right.  He had in mind to call this particle-atom-thing something like "kwork" and then remembered that word and spelling in the book, one he'd leafed through as a child.

I also couldn't then help thinking of Hawkwind's 1977 'Quark, Strangeness and Charm'.  I recall the album's cover and hearing it in my record shop days, when it still sounded really quite contemporary.  I must revisit...

Yes! Still good!

"Ok, random fact number two...  well, maybe not a fact as such but, anyway, there was a woman on Gardener's Question Time who said that if you talk to nettles before you pull them up they won't sting you"

"What?!"

I know!  It sounds mad.  Plus not many people are willing to try and prove it. But I don't mind, I talk to inanimate objects all the time anyway.  And beetles and ants and stuff too.  I decided to give it a go.

So I went out to the nettle patch at the end of the garden and had a little chat.  You don't need to know what I said, that's between me and the nettles.  Then I grasped one of the leaves tightly between thumb and forefinger and steeled myself for the sting.  But - nothing!  Could it be true?  Apparently plants can respond to sounds through the vibrations they cause, and can transmit information to one another to warn of potential pest attacks (this also gleaned from the same GQT episode) so maybe there was something in it?  It "sensed" my voice?  I tried it again - same.  I felt gloriously immune.  Had I tapped into something mysterious? 

To be more prosaic, it's most likely due to the way I grasped it - a firm touch can press down the tiny hairs which cause the sting and in grabbing it so deliberately I probably did just that.  It's when you brush against them lightly that you get caught.  Still, either way, I've learned something.  Always handle nettles with a firm, assertive hold but, just to be on the safe side, why not have a few gentle words beforehand too, it's only polite.  Or wear gloves.

Arctic Monkeys: Nettles

Ready for another?

"Last one! I just listened to this great programme on the Suffragettes and it was all about how it became a popular thing for women to practise martial arts - especially Jujitsu - as a form of self-defence in the early 1900s.  Against the police, mainly, ha!  - and even abusive husbands.  It really took off in the Edwardian era, they ran classes and so on.  Look, there are pictures..."  

I'd had to check it out further after the programme, it was so interesting.

Picture Attribution: British Press - https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/10/02/bow-down-to-the-queens-of-judo/

They called it Suffrajitsu.  I love that!

And there you have it, three random facts; I hope they've enriched your world (if they're new to you too) as much as they have mine.  Even if not, I'll keep listening to Radio 4 and at least I'll always have something new to tell the nettles.

This song immediately sprang to mind on that last one too.

Wham bam, thank you Ma'am