What’s in a Logo? What the Gap Coulda Learned from Chicago 21.

October 12, 2010

This week, The Gap renounced its plans for rolling out a new logo, mainly due to a massive social media uprising in opposition to the change. And I thought, really? There are that many people that personally invested in a clothing manufacturer’s corporate identity that they would so passionately oppose a logo change? Corporate identities change all the time. Who cares, right? But I turned it around on myself. Wasn’t there a part of me that thought the cover art of Chicago’s 1991 album Chicago 21 delegitimized the record? You may recall (but you probably don’t unless you are a serious Chicago fanatic, of which I believe there are painfully few) that Chicago 21 (or Twenty 1, as it were) marked the first time where the band’s logo didn’t appear on the cover. Okay, so you saw the upper left corner of the logo in the blue background, but the only place the word “Chicago” appeared was in generic block lettering across the top. Fail.

The album was a commercial fail as well, effectively ending the band’s decade-long second heyday. But listening to it 20 years later, the record’s no worse, and it is in many ways better than a few of the hit records that preceded it, being one of the most band-written records they’d put out since the 70s and reclaiming the social consciousness they’d suppressed in favor of Peter Cetera power balladry. All this time, I thought I’d hated the record, but I actually like a lot of it. Could I be so shallow that the mere non-appearance of the band’s logo on the cover art would influence my reaction to and memory of the record so thoroughly? Or was my devotion to Chicago – my very ardent devotion (as evidenced by untold numbers of graffitied high school notebooks) – really less about their music and more about brand loyalty?

The question disturbs me a little. Because I think that I really love Chicago’s music. Not just the early Chicago that a few charitable rock critics might point out as being not-unbearable and semi-respectable – the Chicago of “25 or 6 to 4″ and “Beginnings” and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” – but also the 80s power-ballad Chicago that no rock critic (except Jody Rosen, perhaps, and that is why I love him) would be caught dead defending. But as much as I love the band, I have to admit I love the brand as well. The logo. The numbered albums. The defiant decentralization of their sound and image that, for years, led them, against all the prevailing wisdom regarding the marketing of pop music, to make sure none of their lead singers ever landed consecutive single A-sides.

Until David Foster’s anointment of Peter Cetera as their primary lead singer on Chicago 16 in 1982, the closest thing the group had ever had to a frontman had been its horn section of Walt Parazaider, Lee Loughnane and James Pankow; and though throughout the 80s, that horn section had been increasingly marginalized on record, that trio of players – along with singer-keyboardist Robert Lamm, the only remaining original members of the group still performing today – remained the stars of the band’s live show. [Disclosure: the first three concerts I ever saw were Chicago, in 1987 (at Summerfest), 1988 (a very wet Wisconsin State Fair), and 1989 (co-headlining with the Beach Boys).] Is it any surprise that the group’s most recognizable face and voice – Peter Cetera – would find it impossible to stay in the band?

The band rarely shows up in their cover art. I count only three albums (and a box set) in their 40 year recording career where the band members are depicted on the front cover. Despite their success in the 80s, and to their own eventual detriment in that image-centric decade, Chicago’s most recognizable face remained the guitar shaped script of their logo; and just as Madonna morphs from wily street urchin to boob-tasseled exotic dancer to mystic mother-figure to disco Che Guevara, the Chicago logo morphs from album to album to album. Part of the joy of any new Chicago album – quite apart from whatever they might be doing musically – is seeing what they’ll do next with that logo of theirs.

Sometimes the treatment was political, like the battered flag of Chicago III in 1971. Sometimes it was just timely – the Chicago 13 skyscraper is pure disco (and so was that 1979 record’s lead single “Street Player”), while the logo was seen, partially through a magnifying glass, imprinted on a computer chip for 1982′s Chicago 16. They went through an artsy-craftsy phase in the early 70s – Chicago V was a wood carving, Chicago VII was leatherwork, and Chicago VIII was, inexplicably, embroidered over a cardinal. (That album came with a t-shirt iron-on of the album cover.)

For Chicago IX, the band’s first greatest hits record, the logo was featured on both the front and back covers – on the front, the guys are working on painting the logo onto a wall; the back cover shows the finished product. Chicago 19 (one of my personal favorites) was a computer-generated mash-up of the band’s logo with shapes from their namesake city’s skyline. Chicago XI is a map. Chicago XIV is a thumbprint. Chicago X is a chocolate bar. (They won a Grammy for packaging that year!)

Chicago certainly didn’t invent the notion of a band logo, and theirs may not even be the best. The prog-rockers and hair metal bands of the 70s and 80s may be most responsible for turning the band logo into an art unto itself. It’s hard to hear the words Def Leppard or Metallica without picturing the band’s logo. Moreover, current bands like Cake and Weezer, whose members probably graffitied the hell out of their own high school notebooks with KISS logos, have taken the perpetuation of their own band logos very seriously.

Also, even though we often think of metal bands when we think about band logos, it’s generally true that logos know no genre. Like the logos of Chicago and Kansas, ABBA’s mirror-imaged block lettering is a registered trademark. Air Supply’s, though less consistently used, is a flamboyantly calligraphic woosh that pretty precisely represents the band’s musical mission. Similarly mission-oriented (however musically opposite) is the confrontational stencil lettering and crosshairs graphic of Public Enemy.

Still, there may be no other band that has gotten as much mileage out of a single band logo as Chicago has. You sorta have to admire the logo’s tenacity. And if the Chicago 21 experience proves anything, it’s that there are some brands you just don’t mess with. Learn from it, Gap.

The Saddest David Bowie Song Ever

October 6, 2010

Today I heard David Bowie’s 1999 single “Thursday’s Child” and it made me sad. Which isn’t an unusual reaction. The song’s been making me sad ever since it was released. It is, without question, the saddest David Bowie song ever. Even though the lyrics seem to take an uplifting turn, Bowie sings them in a flattened, weary moan over a slow, steady wash of keyboards that suffocates the optimism of the chorus – throw me tomorrow now that I’ve really got a chance. The whole song feels like a bed you can’t get out of on a dark, rainy morning – it’s comfortable and warm, but also undeniably symptomatic of depression. It’s an achy song.

It was the opening and the only real highlight of Bowie’s album …hours, an album that I wanted to love (if for no other reason than the album’s back cover art which resembles nothing so much as a scene from a David Bowie support group meeting), but never quite warmed to. The song’s adult contemporary feel, far more suited to a latter-day Annie Lennox record, not only came in stark contrast to the industrial conceptualism and the frenetic drum ‘n’ bass dalliances of the two records that preceded it, Outside (1995) and Earthling (1997), but also the remainder of the record that followed – a meandering collection of purposelessly artsy guitar-rock (think Tin Machine II 2).

The song also reminded me of the general lack of new David Bowie music. For nearly 40 years starting in the mid-60s, Bowie had been one of the most prolific, and continuously productive artists of his time, but since releasing a quick pair of decent but forgettable albums in 2003 and 2004, he’s been absent. No new music doesn’t mean no new product though. For the last 20 years, Bowie has turned the packaging and re-packaging and re-packaging of his back catalogue into an art form unto itself. Witness the titanic reissue of his 1976 album Station to Station.

Tupac And Tyson

September 8, 2010

In Reggie Rock Bythewood’s ESPN 30 For 30 documentary One Night In Vegas, Bythewood explored the friendship between “Iron” Mike Tyson and Tupac Shakur, who will forever be intertwined because of a fateful night on September 6, 1996. All while he was doing it, I was trying to make sense of why the two iconic figures were so important to me at such an influential stage in my life.

My dad introduced me to boxing at a very young age. I used to hear story after story about how great Muhammad Ali was and how he was untouchable. My favorite at the time was Larry Holmes, who was always a poor man’s Ali, and had to live with that his entire career even if he was one of the top ten heavyweights of all time. But he wasn’t Ali. I wanted my own Ali, someone I could tell my kids about when I was older.

And for a very short time, Tyson was that for me. He didn’t have Ali’s gracefulness and gift of gab. But he had something else. He had rage and quickness and power. Power was important to me. Who didn’t want that kind of ferocity? He had more power than Ali in that small frame. He ended fights and left you without a doubt who the better man was that night. Judges need not show up when Mike Tyson fought. Power.

The first time I heard a Tupac Shakur song, I was in high school trying to figure out who I was supposed to be. Who did high school want me to be? How many different groups did I have to fit in with? On the basketball team, I had to fit in with a diverse crew. Actually, they weren’t all that diverse. To them, I was diverse. They were basketball players, athletes, buddies, homies, and fans of rap music. All I knew back then was MC Hammer and Bell Biv Devoe. And then I found A Tribe Called Quest and immediately fell in love with rap music, or how I liked to call it, hip hop.

Rap music was what people would call it in an undignified manner. Hip hop was poetic. It was respectful. You couldn’t say “Rap is crap” when you called it hip hop. I knew Tupac Shakur from Brenda’s Got A Baby, but even then, that song wasn’t what I thought was powerful. It was a superb message, but I didn’t want message music. I wanted hip hop to make me hyped for basketball. I wanted songs that made me jump higher. I wanted songs that I could listen to in my head when I played so that it felt like I was dancing on the court rather than running. Ironically, today the message music touches me more.

When Mike Tyson first lost to Buster Douglas and was then jailed because of a rape charge, I struggled with the idea that I should still root for him. It was a moral issue. If Mike Tyson did rape Desiree Washington, how could I be a fan? If I was a fan, did that make me also someone who was ok with rape? It’s still a moral conundrum that I live with today. And how can you be powerful in jail?

Everyone was jumping off the Mike Tyson bandwagon. Didn’t they know that he just took Buster lightly? Didn’t they know he was still lost without his mentor Cus D’amato and that being married to Robin Givens was screwing with his head? I couldn’t jump off the bandwagon. It wasn’t what I was taught. Mike needed my support. He was still the baddest, and plus, I was taught to stick with my teams and my boxers, no matter what.

The first time I bought a Tupac Shakur album was through BMG’s music service. Remember the BMG music catalog? It was also a way in which I could hide what the album actually was. I didn’t think my mom would be cool with her 17-year old son buying an album called Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. So I slipped it underneath her nose by getting it in the mail.

Soon thereafter, I’d have to live with the same conundrum with Pac that I did with Tyson. How could I stand for someone who was in jail because of a rape charge? My favorite boxer and favorite rapper were both in jail because of unfathomable charges. I’m still uncomfortable with that today. But It was worse when I was 19. Way worse.

They both got out of jail in 1995. I was a freshman in college. Suge Knight bailed Pac out and immediately put him to work. For Tyson, it was Don King who promised to help put his life together. Pac came out of the clink and had a hit record out on the radio in months. Tyson was knocking out dudes in less than a year. Damn, that was power.

Mike Tyson knocked out Frank Bruno in his just third fight out of jail and a little dude approached him as he was going back to the locker room and they hugged. I was the only one who knew that was Tupac. It was a meeting of two guys I was secretly rooting for harder than most. And they were friends. It was like just one year prior when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence starred in Bad Boys. Two of my favorites working together to prove to people what I already knew. They were the best and I helped spread that message to the rest of the world.

Tyson’s next fight was the fight with Bruce Seldon on that dreaded day. Tupac and Suge Knight were in the building to support their boy. Or at least Tupac’s boy. People today will say that there was something in the air that night in Las Vegas. A Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas must’ve made that city erupt in testosterone. I remember watching Tyson destroy Bruce Seldon’s will and thinking that he had that fight won at the stare down. No one took Seldon seriously anyway. But still, Tyson knocked the guy down with an over right hand that didn’t even fully connect and it was just seconds later that it was over. I had no idea what was about to come next.

I remember waking up the next morning and hearing my dad say that Tupac was shot. I didn’t really show any remorse at the moment because I didn’t want him to know how much it bothered me. But I did secretly turn on the radio to hear what the FM DJ’s were saying about him. I remember thinking that he was going to be ok because he was way too powerful to let some busters kill him. I also remember thinking that Biggie Smalls had something to do it because of the East Coast/West Coast feud. It wasn’t too long before that Pac released Hit ‘Em Up, which targeted Biggie and the Bad Boy crew. Buster Douglas had beat Mike Tyson, but he was back on top of the world while Buster was out of boxing. Weak ass busters weren’t going to kill Pac.

Exactly a week later, Pac was gone. It was an odd time because he was gone, yet his music was still on the radio. In fact, when he died, radio DJ’s were playing his music more so than when he was alive. His music was littered across the radio stations. The day he died on September 13, 1996, I remember hearing his first single off his next album, Toss It Up. It was really hard to fathom. His videos were on TV, his songs were all over the radio, and yet, he was gone.

I’m not sure it’s simply just a coincidence that Tyson would go on to lose to Evander Holyfield twice in his next two fights. The first fight with Holyfield was the same week that Pac’s The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory was released. I’m not saying that he was depressed over Pac’s death. His own life was in shambles. But their career arcs were so similar that it’s almost as if it was supposed to be this way. Thankfully for Tyson, he seems to have turned his life around, but at the time, you expected him to go out like Pac did, in a blaze.

It was either the one year anniversary of Tupac’s death, or his next birthday that I bought some alcohol to simply pour out for Tupac. I hadn’t ever bought alcohol before and I had to ask my girlfriend what the heck I should buy to pour out in his honor. I don’t think alcohol had even touched my lips at that point. Around the same time, I would ride around in my convertible mustang with Pac’s music blasting out while I mean mugged anyone within distance and mouthed his lyrics which I memorized. I didn’t ever do that while listening to any other music. I guess it just made me feel powerful.

I still followed Mike, even when he told Lennox Lewis that he was going to eat his children. And Mike wasn’t powerful anymore. After he lost to Lewis, he started losing to guys he would’ve beaten before the bell, much like he beat Seldon. I should’ve poured out some liquor for Tyson’s career.

Today, I still wonder why I feel so connected to the two icons. I’m not a violent person. I don’t feel the need to tell anyone off. Yet, whenever I need to disconnect and just zone out the rest of my world, I’ll throw on some Tupac and mean mug again. Two or three times a year, I’ll go back to the time when I was 20-years old when my worries were about school, girlfriends, and what to do on the weekend. My first born wouldn’t even come until three years later. I wouldn’t be married until five years later. I wouldn’t be who I am today until fourteen years later. Picture me rollin’.

Iconic photo of Tupac and Suge Knight just minutes before Tupac was shot is shared by Wikipedia

« Previous Page — Next Page »