Phoenix Album Cover Inspiration
I did some vinyl shopping at the flea market this weekend and picked up the following albums that each had a phoenix on the cover:
The Grand Funk album has a song called “Flight of the Phoenix,” but it’s an instrumental so its missing the wild, shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner. I’m a fan of the Rossington Collins Band song “Don’t Misunderstand Me,” so I was glad to find their debut album. Because the band featured most of the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd at the time, the phoenix is symbolic of their musical rebirth rather than having mythological or fantasy implications.
So neither album fits the Appendix LP vibe from a music or lyric standpoint, but I found inspiration in the artwork on their covers. I browsed through some of my RPG books to see how phoenixes have been treated in different games.
In both AD&D 2E and Pathfinder, the phoenix is an immense, powerful creature. I’m more interested, however, in how the phoenix was used as an alchemical symbol. In alchemical texts, there are five birds who symbolize various stages of alchemical transformation: crow, white swan, peacock, pelican, and phoenix
In my Dungeon Crawl Classics Workshop of the Telescopes adventure, players have an opportunity to find an alchemist’s scroll that contains a special version of a find familiar spell. It summons a large raven that is more powerful than other familiars the spell can typically summon. Inspired by these phoenix album covers, I think an improved version of the spell would reflect this transformation concept. Therefore, I’m working on a new DCC Alchemical Find Familiar spell in which the familiar transforms from crow to swan to peacock, etc. as the spell caster levels up. I will publish it in an upcoming newsletter.
Loot the Body’s latest release is Music from Black Sword Hack. It includes two songs written for the Black Sword Hack RPG, “a game inspired by old school dark fantasy (Moorcock, Howard, Poul Anderson, Vance, Leiber).” Check it out!
Dude, wild pull with the Marvel RPG shot. Blast from the past!
When I first read your post title, I thought for a second you might be talking about the French indie pop band Phoenix, but then I thought, "that doesn't sound like Matt," haha.
A couple of weeks ago I picked up Dan Fogelberg's 'Phoenix' vinyl LP, which has a song on it titled 'Phoenix' as well. The song from that album that every one knows is 'Longer', noted for harp and flugelhorn inclusion, which I imagine there is not too much of on the Grand Funk and Rossington Collins LPs!