Through The Looking Glass

Bottom/ H.M.S. Donovan (Dawn Records, 1971) is the ninth studio album from Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. It marks the second album of Donovan's children's music, after the For Little Ones portion of A Gift from a Flower to a Garden. For the majority of the songs on this album, Donovan wrote music for poems that were originally written by others. Many of the poems were from One Hundred Poems for Children compiled by Herbert Strang (Clarendon Press, Oxford – 1925). Other poems come from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Paul McCartney was present for some of the 1968 recordings ("Mr. Wind", "The Walrus and the Carpenter", "The Unicorn"), and there are bootleg recordings where Donovan plays these songs with Paul present. Middle/ The striking artwork for Nursery Cryme (Charisma, 1971) by British progressive rock band Genesis, was painted by Paul Whitehead, who was also responsible for Trespass and Foxtrot. The album cover is a depiction of "The Musical Box" song and story, a ten minute epic touching on themes of death, reincarnation and lust, set in Victorian England: Cynthia, holds a croquet mallet —there is a hoop visible close by— but instead of croquet balls, there are a few heads lying on the ground. Nursery Cryme is the third studio album by the band, then in its "classic" lineup led by Peter Gabriel. Top/ Au-delà du délire (Philips, 1974) is the third album by the French progressive rock band Ange, formed in 1970 by the Décamps brothers, Francis (keyboards) and Christian (vocals). They were initially influenced by Genesis and King Crimson, and their music is quite theatrical and poetic. Their first success was a cover of a Jacques Brel song, Ces gens-là, on the album Le Cimetière des Arlequins.