The Stockport Church Take Off

Introduction

I intended this to be a story based on the image, but then thought there is a lot to say about the painting and the album that it covered. A story may come, but for now I am just going to tell you about the paiting an dthe album.

I feel that my vinyl collection is more than complete, but this week two albums looked to be available at a reasonable price. One was "Black Moses" by Isaac Hayes, if you look at the cover you will see why I wanted it. I paid a tenth of the price they are asking for this one.

This is my copy:

The other was "Space Hymns" by Ramases which come in a six panel fold out painting by Roger Dean. The story of the cover is in this blog post here:

Roger Dean is a favourite artist of mine and I wrote a piece on his work here:

I bought the album from Amazon but it only uses the top middle panel of the painting (the rocket) rather than the whole painting, but the music is enjoyable and I printed an A4 copy of the painting which I have put into the album cover.

The problem is the colour ink ink is running out on my computer, so I will print another when the replacement cartridge comes, though I think the red wash makes it look very apocalyptic.

I was then shocked to find that the backing band for Ramases on this album was 10CC and Eric Stewart produced it.

In 1971, Harvey Lisberg signed Ramases to Vertigo Records, and recorded the album Space Hymns at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, backed by Eric Stewart, Graham Gouldman, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, who would shortly after form the band 10cc.The cover art for Space Hymns, created by artist Roger Dean from a detailed rough sketch made by Ramases, is an expansive six-panel fold out cover depicting what, at first, appears to be a rocket lifting off into the cosmos, and is revealed upon folding out the full image to be a church steeple (St. George's Church in Stockport).

Conclusion

So at the moment my vinyl collection seems complete, but I know something else will turn up, and extroardinary artwork is always a great selling point for me.

Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it.