Indie Record Label

Seriously Groovy

The website for the indie record label 'Seriously Groovy' offers:-

• A list of 'sub-labels' that deal with different genre of music e.g. Infur Records for Guitar-indie alternative music.
• A list of the Artists that they manage and promote, along with a list of their records that you can buy online either on CD or Vinyl. Artists including; Jet Johnson, Emetrex, Mother Goose and Econoline.
• Merchandise that fans can buy e.g T-Shirts with different logos promoting their organisation.
• Ringtones of records from their artists
• Live dates for giggs that the bands/artists will be performing

All of these aspects are promotional devices that are used to establish and familarise their organisation.

Selected Album Cover

'Abbey Road' by The Beatles

Image :-

• Staged posed crossing the zebra crossing on the same foot simultaneously contrast with the natural setting behind of an ordinary street with seemingly unpositioned onlookers.
• No matching dress code, presents all members of the band individually giving the audience a personal insight into the individual members own style and fashion.
• The band members are not lookig directly at the camera, more of a profile shot which weakens the directness but emphasises again the natural pureness of the image.
• Absence of the usual glossiness, no makeup or expensive clothing, no exotic/far off location, very natural.
• Natural colours used; green, grey, blue, brown, white.
• LS of the band member allows the consumer to see far back into the background with the cars, street onlookers etc. Emphasises that it is an everyday situtation.
• Simplicity of the layout and camera angle is particuarly interesting as it is easily achieveable with the least amount of editing yet still so successful.
• One of the band members is walking in barefeet and holding a cigarette, with another with his hand in his pocket, things people do everyday contrasting with the staged position as they simultaneously cross the road.
• The Back image is alot more simplistic with just a brick wall and the name of the album and band written as if they were the street name.

Text:-

• There is no text on the front album cover only on the back.
• The album cover 'Abbey Road' is shown on a street sign against a brick wall long with the name of 'The Beatles' above it.
• The use of serif font gives the album a vintage feel, traditional.
• The font is white against a black background to make it stand out towards the consumer.
• There is also a list fot he songs on each side on the vinyl.
• There is a logo of an apple given for the 'Apple records'
• Also a thanks given to a list of names who helped with the potography and printing.

Relationship between text and image:-

• The way that the text is given as a street sign connects to the street setting of the image on the front cover.
• The natural, unstaged setting links to the style of the image, with no makeup or dress code.

Iconography:-

• The natural image represents that bands image as they play all their own instruments and write their own songs, without the use of computer generated sounds.
• The Volks Wagen Beatle in the background is iconographic the the band name

Institutional Context:-

• The absence of a conventionally staged, glossy album cover suggests that the band are alot more niche and underground, even though we know today that they were highly popular and world renowned.
• Suggests that the band could perhaps be on a low budget and funded by an indie record label due to the absence of fancy editing and simple location.

Target Audience:-

• Suggests niche audience due to the local setting and unglossiness.
• Band could be already established as they are shot at a profile shot, as if there is no need to familiarise the audience with them.

Conventions of Album Covers

I have chosen 10 album covers of varied music genre, decade and style in order to analyse the similar codes and conventions of album covers and see how they evolve over time.







1. The typical features of an album cover are:-

• The band/artists name
• The album cover name
• An image of the artist/band members
• OR an abstract picture that represents the band/artist

2. Other ways of catergorising Albm covers, other than generically could be:-

• Abstract images compared to conventional band/artist images
• Animated and real life images used for the album covers
• Glossy, staged poses compared with natural images
• By the year that they were released
• By the country that the band/artist come from.

3. I think that the functions that album covers serve are:-

• Establishing the style and genre of the band/artist
• Familiarising the audience with the 'look' of the band/artist
• Establishing a certain attitude to society that the band/artist has e.g. Punk = rebel/socially marginalised whereas Britney Spears = All American, Christian, socially popular etc.
• Promoting the band/artist
• Aesthetically pleasing/unique to the consumer to catch their attention.

Album Cover Analysis

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Finger

This Album Cover was released in New York in 1971. I found this particular album cover interesting as it has underlying denotations of male dominance with its hidden phallic imagery and focus on the male reproductive area. This is also a particularly controversial to the time period in terms of musical fashion, with Punk vs Disco and the 'rebel' quailty. The use of black and white gives this album cover a certain vintage quality and red stamp like texts of the band and album name catch the audiences attention. The album cover almost looks like an advert for a pair of jeans, with the red text acting as a price label. This picture of a pair of washed out jeans is another example of the success of simplicity.

This typically 'Punk' era album cover is in contrast with the typically 'Disco album cover of 'Saturday Night Fever' by The Bee Gees. This cover is alot less abstract than The Rolling Stones cover, using colour and an obvious depiction of a man 'disco' dancing on a dancefloor and a band of three men dressed in white, standing out against the black background. This gives the 'disco' era a very enlightened image, as if they are the 'saviour' of music against the rebellious 'Punk'. I have found that the fashion of album covers changes over time and develops, often with two different fashions overlapping, similarly here with punk vs disco with disco as the dying craze and Punk as the new idea pushing forward.

I found this album cover for Cher's album 'It's a man's world' particularly interesting as the dominant female image of Cher acts as a contrast to the album's name itself. The biblical reference that is made to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and 'Original Sin', with the serpent representing Satan and the red apple representing the fruit taking from the tree of life, creates quite a rebellious image. The colours used are very strong and have a sharp contrast against eachother. The dominating white and blue tint creates quite a cold, icy feeland the lack of expression and emotion on Cher's face gives quite a haunting impression.

Inspirational Videos

The first inspirational music video that I cam across was ‘The Scientist’ by Coldplay, which was shot entirely backwards, taking a lot of skill from the cast and imagination from the director. It was particularly impressive as Coldplay’s vocalist, Chris Martin, was still miming the lyrics even though it was shot in reverse, taking a lot of talent and patience.
Stunts are used in this music video as a car swerves off of the road and rolls down a marsh hill. This presents an event contrapuntal to the song’s high, soothing tune and amorous lyrics.
This Video falls into the category between ‘documentary’ and non-narrative abstract. It uses documentary style by the fact that it presents a form of everyday life or reality and it is abstract in terms of its shooting style and does not follow a consecutive narrative.





Another inspirational music video is the classic ‘Nothing Compares to You’ by Sinead O’Connor. This music video is shot almost entirely at a close up shot of Sinead O’Connor singing the song and the instrumental sections accompanied by a sequence of shots of statues of art. This video is very personal and the audience are able to see the emotion following the lyrics of the song. The close ups of O’Connor means that she is speaking almost directly to the audience and telling them her story. I think that this video illustrates how complicated camera shots and movements and fancy editing is not key to producing a sucessful music video. This music video represents the success of simplicity.

Although the narrative of the song is followed through the lyrics, it is no acted out in the video as a Live Action video but falls into the category of a non-narrative video because there are un-related shots of statues and sculptures.

List of Possible Song Choices

Today, me and Kirsty Addae came up with a list of potential songs that we could do our Video to...They are:

* Veronicas - 4ever
* Sugarcult - Pretty Girl
* The Penfifteen Club - Hey Miss Hilton
* Paris Hilton - Nothing in This World
* Goo Goo Dolls - Iris / Slide
* Jimmy Eat World - Hear You Me
* Senses Fail - Save Yourself
* Joseph Arthur - The Honey And The Moon
* Muse - Feeling Good
* Tracy Chapman - Fast Car
* Counting Crows - Colorblind
* All American Rejects - Dirty Little Secret
* Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares To You
* The Killers - Mr Brightside
* Semisonic - Secret Smile
* 3 Doors Down - Here Without You
* Vanessa Carlton - 1000 Miles
* The Kooks - Seaside
* Damien Rice - 9 Crimes

The majority of songs listed above, dont already have music videos, so would be suitable for our project.

Music Video Catergories

Music Videos
Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device to promote the sale of music recordings for the particular artist. For this reason, music videos are often called ‘promo videos’ or ‘promos’. Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came into their own in the 1980s, when MTV's format was based around them. In the 1980s, the term ‘rock video’ was often used to describe this form of entertainment, although the term has fallen into disuse.
Catergories
Music videos often incorporate the same styles of filmmaking, often followign a narrative with the lyrics of the song. These particular style incude animation, live action films, documentaries and non-narrative abstract film.
An example of an animation music video is The Vengaboys single ‘Ibiza’.



An example of a non-narrative, abstract film is James Blunt's simgle 'Your Beautiful'. I chose this music video in particular to illustrate this catergory because the actions in the video are completely unrelated to the story told by the lyrics. The male singer is sitting on a white platform over-looking the sea, stands up and takes his clothes off whilst looking at the camera and then jumps into the water in his underwear. This is cmpletely irrelevant to the song, telling a story of love at first sight on the underground. The undressing could symbolise the peeling away of layers and emotional gaurds and the leaping into water could symbolise the helplessness of love, but these are simply interpretations that are depicted from abstract ides.



An example of a Live action style music video is Snow Patrol's single 'Signal Fire'.

This music video is particularly interesting as it tells a narrative wihin a narrative and also promotes the newly released Spiderman 3 film, whilst simultaneously borrowing it's iconography in order to increase audience famliarity and quailty.



Documentary music videos cover a very broad range, but are fundamentally meant to reflect realism and everyday life. For this catergory I have chosen Coldplay's single 'Yellow' as it uses a natural setting, with earthy, dark, natural colours and lighting and doesnt have a narrative but simply presents a form of 'reality'.