Whenever they could, they did something other than litter their work with mugshots of hirsute interchangeables. The images they created were swift, crisp, neat. These are not properties that can be ascribed to most of their patrons. Popular music by the 1970s had bifurcated. Rock bands were as often as not composed of leaden, ponderous, pretentious ABs who had dispensed with received pronunciation and with the ideal of a tune that could be whistled in favour of plod rock. Proletarian pop groups were composed of graduates of the University of Butlins put together by end-of-pier chancers who did not allow their charges to diverge from moon/June rhymes. With their matching outfits and close to clog-dancing routines they were throwbacks. Both camps were of course fabulously self-important. Selling fifty million copies of a record really does help with self-importance, even if most of them end up in teenagers’ bedrooms.
The best thing about Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma is the album cover.
And the best thing about that is the Gigi album cover seen lower center.
The music on Ummagnumma isn’t as good as the music on Gigi, and the music on Gigi is terrible.
