Some very cool ads from back when.......I bet there are some great ones from other countries!

I remember that ad from a magazine eons ago......don't know which, assume it was Rolling Stone.

Maybe not quite "progressive" but fun all the same. It was an inner sleeve for a Kevin Ayers LP, if I remember it right. Might have been a Battered Ornaments album as well.

I read this one had actual lights.......said it was from 1979.

Almost all ads from back in the day were groovy!! LOL Much more thought went into creating those ads back then. And as well, so many were from the progressive rock category....Unfortunately today not much at all.

Computers dumbed down artistic thinking......

This was the one I was thinking of but I couldn't figure out how to post it on here. 

I'll show up if you serve chocolate cake and beer......Has to be fresh like socks.

"Enlarging the Boundaries of Rock"......

I read this one.....and I did define my comment as "some of this music"...

Bro....it's still rock! 

Still nothing beats this commercial from 2020. Look at the alien's t shirt (at the five second mark). 

Well I remember almost all of what I saw was in the newspaper like in the entertainment section, again back in the 70s. We did have the rock music mags but their news generally coincided with what the newspapers would print as the record labels would do a press release to all media.

Radio stations would get promo records and singles to play but unless it was a popular rock or pop artists I bet a lot of them never got spun. I have Promo labeled records in my collection and most are in NM condition. For sure friends and family recommendations but in the world of progressive rock music in the 70s I bet you bought them cause you were more interested in what this music was since the radio stations were not playing it.

I also bought tons of records that I knew nothing about the music based on the cover art....

You could almost say the same thing about movie ads in the 70s, we all went to see movies we had not much clue what they were about.

I think this ad posted above is a prime example. Many of them do give some insight into what the music is.

I think I still owe Columbia Record and Tape Club some money.........

Hi,

But that is one thing that we do not discuss much, or have a say about ... one of the main thrust of the whole "progressive" thing, were two things ... the American FM radio, and then the various media publications, where so many of these showed up. I mean, if these showed up in Melody Maker or the other huge publication, all of us went at it. Even Rolling Stone, that became a bad show of fame and talent ... but the adds were there, though they made a point of now publishing something that was not "known" ... 

For me it goes back to at least 1972, when I saw Babe Ruth and Iggy at the Whiskey ... and seeing all those posters at the windows at Tower ... who carried the most posters of anyone ... always 5 or 6 of them to blast your mind when you saw the store at the Strip. I think the Whiskey was a couple of blocks either up or down ... can't remember that far!

But you got to see a lot of these on various locations, and the really big ones showed up on those monster boards that you could see for blocks.

It was the elevation of advertising, its "heyday" ... and it did anything it could. Nowadays, the "corporate" structure is very different and it does not own the boards and locations for the posters, and they are expansive compared to the quick adverts that they can show on all their websites for free. 

But, really ... advertising for a band, is gone off the deep end ... the best you get to see is the stuff that we find here, where someone from the band, or the grouping that includes the band (like the cd/record distributor) makes sure that its name is seen with a new release. It's not as efficient since it does not hit as many websites as it could, and I doubt that many "progressive" websites are good at helping fans get the stuff, as PA seems to be ... 

It's a lot less record company, and muchmore the band itself ... which, really, is as should be! The idea that a record company took money from anything to support other bands, was not as real as we thought ... it was more stealing than it was helping ... and let's not forget how much the big balloon's guy owned a lot of folks that never got paid ... and had legalities against him, get thrown in the trash in England ... because it's what rich people do over there ... to buy their fame ... and influence ... not to mention a fake top of the pops of their own that helped them sell their stuff!

It's like chocolate to a kid, no matter how you look at it!

Hi,

I don't "do" heroes ... but in reality I only have 2 of them ... Chuck Jones and Spike Milligan ... 

One would think I would have a musician in that list, but I don't because any comparison in the area of music, or any of the arts is crazy and impossible since everyone does something different ... but Jones and Milligan? No one can touch them ... though there would be a few others at WB that tried ... but they didn't have the magic of Mel Blanc with Chuck Jones creating insanity. Hipgnosis would be the only third one (that means Po and Stormm) ... for me. 

That kind of "insanity" is what is missing in the music of today ... people afraid of doing something that is not recognizable, and they the "fans" won't recognize within a few measures ... and in the end, you have to turn that idea upside down and kill it ... or you'll never become a true artist ... you'll be just another fiddler, just another guitarist, just another high school drummer ... and so on!