To be fair, I have been reading "Fargo Rock City" by Chuck Klosterman, and it is really churning up alot of memories from being young and impressionable in Saginaw, MI.
When I was growing up, I lived a few blocks from my grandparents and was there all the time. My Aunt Ann lived there, who was in high school at the time. She and I would sit on the floor and eat Captain Crunch, and watch MTV for hours and hours. This was a very formative experience for me, as I was enraptured by those early videos. I can remember being totally entranced with the "You Got Lucky" clip by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, or "Wrapped Around Your Finger" by the Police - not great songs, but great videos that I can recall in minuscule detail more than 20 years later. Something about the combination of film, motion, and music that seemed so fascinating to me, and could entrance me endlessly - an experience I now replicate to a lesser degree with youtube.
As formative of an experience as this was for me as an artist and designer, there was another to be had at my grandparents house that was even greater. My Uncle Jim lived there too, and to me he was the coolest guy on planet earth. He had long blond hair, played in metal bands, went by the name "James Blond", had sleeveless t-shirts with big #1's on the back, drove a silver Cutlass Supreme with T-Tops that he called "The Cutlass Ultimas", and managed a record store called "Rock-A-Rolla Records". He gave me Holy Diver by Dio on white vinyl for my 12th birthday, Tribute and Ultimate Sin by Ozzy on cassette, and Led Zeppelin II on vinyl over the next few years. My cousin Rob gave me tickets to Motorhead and Black Sabbath - it was a great way to grow up.
He was very, very into Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Motorhead, KISS, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Dio, amongst others. I was not allowed to play his records, but I could look at them. I spent hours and hours and hours and hours laying in the hallway, pulling each one out and poring over it, taking in the imagery, typography, layout, and liner notes. I vividly recall many of those covers, and continue to see their influence in my work all of these years later. In retrospect, this was my design education - I spent summers at the Saginaw Art Museum taking classes in drawing and ceramics, but it was all those day spent laying in the hallway at my grandparents house that taught me invaluable lessons about visual impact, photography, logos, type, etc. You know the joke about an education only costing the price of a library card if you truly want to learn? Well that is where my design training began and continues to inspire me to this day.
This is a newer cover, but I recently saw it and it reminded me of all those covers from my youth. "Eddie", the mascot of Iron Maiden appears on many of their covers, and is the figure on the tank here on A Matter of Life and Death.
Enjoy.
