Art Out Loud

In this day and age it seems that anyone with a copy of Photoshop and a friend who works at Kinkos thinks he or she is a poster artist. Record store windows and utility polls on college campuses across the country are in danger of being overrun by these 8.5"x 11" creations. I'll even go so far as to presume there are currently hundreds of players who are holding onto their positions in a band just because; "Dude, if we kick Joey out, who's going to make our flyers?"

But to all those weekend warriors who have tried to find a clever way to incorporate the words "$2 cover" into a scanned photo of Dick Cheney's face, I challenge them to pick up the new book Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion and learn what true poster art is.

Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion (Chronicle Books, artofmodernrock.com) by Paul Grushkin and Dennis King is a sequel of sorts, following up 1987's Art of Rock: Posters From Presley to Punk. This massive 492-page tome is a jam-packed, kandy-kolored, explosion. Each page looks like the brightest wall in the coolest club you can imagine, filled with 1,800 large, full-color examples of poster art selected from more than 8,000 submissions. It covers everything from arena rock spectaculars to nights at some hole-in-the where the band likely didn't play for much more than the sound guy.

With the (all but) disappearance of vinyl albums and their 12-inch sleeves, these posters are pretty much the last outlets for rock art. Sure, some band can have a really cool Flash website, but pixels on a screen aren't ever going to compare to ink on paper. And as more and more posters are being made (and collected), and more and more bands are requesting them, the posters serve increasing purposes. On one hand they are totally disposable; printed on paper and made to advertise one show happening on one night. But on the other hand, in these the artist needs to create something that can signify all the promise that each particular show holds, or convey everything the concertgoer might remember. Plus, these posters are now intertwined with the whole brand image of the band. As a result, if you've seen their posters, you really don't need to hear The Reverend Horton Heat to have pretty good idea how the band's music sounds.

Thumbing through these pages again and again, it occurred to me the number of parallels between the rock poster subculture and the music that it represents.

The first is that there are definite regional "scenes" among the print makers, just like there are for musical styles and genres. Among the many examples is Austin, Texas, highlighted by Frank Kozik. His early works here are certainly inspired by the psychedelic artwork of those old Fillmore West posters. But over the years he adapted that style and created a look all his own. Most of the rest of the book shows work by artists inspired by him.

In San Francisco the scene revolves around Coop. Any music fan knows Coop's work even if they don't know they know it. His hyper-comic-book style, at least partially inspired by R. Crumb, is filled with amble-bosomed women, space aliens, robots, and the like. It's pure pulp, and works exceptionally well with surf punk shows he tends to do shows for.

Cleveland means Derek Hess, whose work holds perhaps the most "fine art" cache among those included in the book. As a teenager, Hess attended figure drawing classes and the influence of those early sketches or obvious in his work even if he is creating a poster for a Cows show featuring a women milking her own udders or a guy with a pumpkin for a head.

And, finally, Nashville is home to Hatch Show Print which epitomizes the wood block printing so associated with the original country scene and labels like Sun Records. In the book we learn that they still do everything pretty much the same way they did back to the 19th century; just now they are making prints for The Beastie Boys rather than Johnny Cash, or Loretta Lynn (with the White Stripes) instead of Loretta Lynn (without the White Stripes).

A second similarity is the open willingness of both art forms to "borrow" and be influenced by others. Seeing all this artwork in one place, it becomes a bit more obvious how this artist begat that one which led to a third and on down the line. From colors to fonts to motifs, it's fun to play spot the similarity. We also see how acts like Phish and String Cheese Incident not only appropriated the Grateful Dead's jam band tendencies, but also their taste for liquefied lettering and other neo-psychedelic imagery in their posters.

The book also shows how poster artists can "sample" from others. There are numerous examples where the artist, say, grabs a still from Citizen Kane. Or scans in an old Esquire magazine cover. Or re-draws a loveable icon like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Then they start tweaking, twisting, and tormenting the image until they have made it something decidedly their own. Many times it is the juxtaposition of some part of pop culture being thrust into a new situation (say, cartoon cereal elves Snap, Crackle, and Pop in a Blair Witch Project takeoff) that makes the poster work. But I propose we put a moratorium on Lee Harvey Oswald pics until someone comes up with a really good, new idea.

A third consideration is that, for the most part, rock music and rock posters reveled in their ability to shock an audience. If you learn nothing else from this book, recognize that inserting a picture of Jesus or a nun is a time-tested attention-getter. Failing that, tack someone or something else up on a cross (And when that someone is Elvis, you earn bonus points.). Then there is Kozik's poster for a Melvin's show where a ________ with a swastika on her _________ is holding a ____________ to ____________'s chest. Fill in the blanks with your imagination. Then check out the real thing on page 231 and see who is more twisted.

Of course, sometimes the artist can go to far. To the person who created the Tori Amos poster depicting John Lennon wearing a t-shirt with Tori's face emblazoned on it, there is a special spot in hell reserved just for you.

Fourth, there are the technical aspects behind the artistic vision. Just like music gear heads can go on for hours discussing tube amps and guitar pedals with Pavlovian awe (and not necessarily care about what notes come out of said equipment) so do these artists discuss the craftsmanship of their work. They note those with special talents for locking in on perfect registration. They talk about ink-mixing techniques to discover new vibrancies of colors and then different ways to apply them. For many of these artists, they started off with borrowed equipment, or presses not specifically designed for poster work. But they took what they had, then adapted the equipment and their style to fit. The important thing was that they were creating and it's refreshing to hear that most of them seem to enjoy the process as much as the end product, even as they point out the drawbacks to tired arms and noxious fumes.

This book is an immense pleasure on many different levels. It works as a history book, explaining how the screen printing process began, exploded during the Great Depression with the WPA posters, and then evolved through the county fair / circus worlds before rock bands grabbed hold of it.

And, perhaps best of all, readers will have no problem enjoying this book simply as a music fan. Flipping through the pages, even after appreciating the art, one can imagine all these fantastic shows or, better yet, remembering shows actually attended. The book reminded me how much I wanted to be in Chicago those nights in 1997 when Wilco, the Jayhawks, and Scrawl all played the Riviera Theater. I longed to see the Afghan Whigs on stage again. And I remembered what a freak out it was the first time I saw The Flaming Lips.

By this for yourself or a friend this holiday and create the coffee table with the most indie-cred on the block.

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