My 1st exposure was the cover to Emerson, Lake & Palmer's
BRAIN SALAD SURGERY (1973). My brother got into "FM" music for a while, got that and
TRILOGY (1973) and got into the habit of playing
BSS at peak volume. Drove me nuts, I thought it was the weirdest S*** I had ever heard in my life. Then one day (it was in mid-'77) he announced he'd bought 2 tickets to see them, and I was going, whether I liked it or not. So I waited until he was out of the house, and put
BSS on at a reasonable volume for a change... and started to get into it.
When we went to the show, imagine this-- I enjoyed the concert more than he did. He was diaappointed in their new album,
WORKS VOLUME 1 (1977), but I really liked it. By the end of the year I'd bought every LP they put out, and went looking for more (which is how I also got all 5 albums by The Nice).
I still think
BSS is one of the weirdest things I've ever heard, but once I got to like it, ALMOST anything else sounded "normal" by comparison. So it allowed me to get into a LOT of different music I might not have otherwise.
I thought Giger's work was a PERFECT match for that album-- particularly the side-and-a-half composition, "
Karn Evil 9". Later, when I started reading about
ALIEN (before it came out), I recognized his work from the earlier thing.
Apparently he suffered from horrible nightmares most of his life, and the only way to deal with them was to paint what he dreamed about.
I've had the 18" Kenner
ALIEN toy since shortly after it came out. Apparently, there's was a nasty reascvtion from parents to the ting, and it didn't sell, so I got one at Kiddie City for only $10 (half-price) when they were trying to get rid of the ugly things. A few months later, they turned up at Creation conventions selling for $80 apiece!!! Mine has been on display in my room for DECADES. I never put it away. I have it standing right next to the model kid "
The Visible Man".
I got a couple rather pricey books of Giger's art over the years, but I reached a point quite a while back when I realized, I "had enough". It wasn't that I saw sick of him, it's just that, I had all I felt I'd ever "need". So, yeah... "in moderation".