**This class is a Hybrid. This section of the class will be taught on Zoom.**
Popular music has been packaged and promoted in many visually striking formats. “Sound and Vision” documents this evolution with hundreds of record covers, concert posters, and advertisements, from the days of wind-up gramophones through jazz, rock, soul, psychedelia, punk, and rap. Besides famous artifacts like withdrawn Beatles and Rolling Stones LPs and Fillmore posters, the course will also discuss work by famous artists like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Mapplethorpe used to promote recordings, and how the way music “looked” changed as record labels adopted signature styles and formats evolved from 78s, 45s, and LPs to cassettes and CDs.
Week by Week Outline
Week One
Recorded Music Formats, From Cylinders to Streaming
A. How recorded music is physically shaped and encoded has played a strong part in how it looks since the music business started. That goes back to the first cylinders in the late 19th century.
B. Circular shellac discs become the dominant format for buying music in the first half of the 20th century, spinning at 78 RPM.
C. The seven-inch 45 supersedes the 78 as the primary format for singles in the 1950s, with the twelve-inch LP also gaining popularity.
D. LPs surpass singles in sales by the end of the 1960s, and the 1960s and 1970s are considered the golden age of record artwork.
E. Eight-track tapes, cassettes, CDs, and even Blu-Ray discs and streaming drastically shrink available space for accompanying visuals in the late 20th century and early 21st century, though innovation remains possible.
Week Two
Record Covers, Part 1
A. Although record covers are relatively rare in the early days of the record business, this starts to change when 78s are assembled into literal albums for those who want more than a few minutes of music by one artist, or of one classical work, opera, or musical.
B. The advent of the LP allows for much greater space for cover photographs, artwork, and liner notes. To a lesser extent, visual covers also start to appear on seven-inch 45s and EPs, which include more music than 45s, but less than LPs.
C. Jazz and folk labels like Blue Note, ABC-Impulse, and Elektra start to develop distinctive house styles for their covers that mark their product with a specific identity.
Week Three
Record Covers Part 2
A. By the mid-to-late 1960s, many record covers become iconic statements in and of themselves, reinforcing the increasingly ambitious music, especially by leading rock acts like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Some use the work of leading photographers and artists.
B. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, punk and new wave artists lead a renaissance in bold album graphics.
C. The ascendance of cassettes and then CDs as the dominant musical formats shrink available space for artwork, but even then, labels like Factory and Independent Project establish distinctive graphics styles. The 21st century sees an unexpected revival of vinyl in which covers can again take up 12-inch by 12-inch squares.
Week Four
Posters Part 1
A. Posters were used for concerts even before the record business started, but start to become more vivid and visually sophisticated when records spread the international fame of musicians.
B. Early rock’n’roll and soul shows, and jazz and folk festivals, develop distinctive styles of poster art. Some promote specific traveling revues to build a brand identity, like those for Motown artists.
C. Posters take a starker and sometimes more political stance when they’re associated with a growing number of benefits, and then in the punk era.
Week Five
Posters Part 2
A. The most celebrated, and collectable, form of rock poster art remains those from the psychedelic age, especially from San Francisco.
B. Psychedelic poster art is also often used elsewhere in North America and the United Kingdom. Posters are also sometimes used in album packaging to enhance the value.
Week Six
Record Ads
A. Since records were first produced, they were advertised in print publications. Often they were targeted toward a specific audience, as early blues records were toward African-Americans, or country discs toward rural southern audiences.
B. Advertising gets more elaborate and artistic as greater cultural and artistic significance gets ascribed to popular music, especially rock.
C. Advertising of records, listening equipment, and concerts goes beyond print mediums to billboards, television, and the Internet. The use of music in movie soundtracks goes beyond incidental background to integral to the film, strengthening both movies and record sales, starting with works like A Hard Day’s Night and The Graduate.
