What's Going Ahn

In a world rendered only in back & white, there were few graytones and bitmapped reigned supreme.

I remember the olden days when everything was on black and white (unless it was printed on colored paper stock). Before color printers were all the rage (and affordable), us event-marketing types (aka poster-flyer makers) did all our posters in single color: black on white. Simple graphics for simpler times, they were....

While searching back for some deja blu flyers, I unearthed some rock show flyers I had designed back in the early '90s.

This collection includes:
> 808 State at the ICON
> Ladies Night Saturdays at the ICON
> The Headhunters at Nietzsche's
> A 1991 double bill of The Headhunters & the Steam Donkeys at the Little Harlem
> Gil Scott Heron at the ICON

These flyers were build on a combination of either a band's press photo or something scanned from a magazine-- usually vintage Life magazines or a '90s rock rags like R-Stone-- and some typographic magic. The one up top-- the Double Hoedown (at the Little Harlem, a vintage Buffalo soul & jazz club that burned to the ground and was demolished in 1999) has titles generated in 'Typestyler', an early font manipulation program that was used to create effects now common in ALL graphic design programs. These crazy effects included: drop shadows and outlines. Wow. Heady stuff back in 1990. The graphic computer tricks that seems so basic on computers today, were a byte-churning event back then. Typestlyer was known to take a few minutes-- yes, a few MINUTES- to create a text effect! This DBHD! poster includes a hint at my early obsession of stars on rock posters. I still haven't kicked that habit.

For a band building a reputation at the time on the blips and bleeps of early acid house-techno-- 808 State-- I tried to get 'super electronic & computery'. This flyer was built upon a photo scanned from a science textbook that had some state-of-the-art Photoshop magic -- a noise filter, glow and drop shadows-- added to it. Wow (again).

This other Headhunters poster was a simple one, but it is my favorites from this bunch. Not a lot of computer tom-foolery on this... just a simple closeup of rock legend Chuck Berry lighting a cig, darkened to give it's shadows a bit of a sinister undertone. It had the most basic of event details overlayed in a blocky font. I remember going for something to compliment Terry Sullivan's band's real rock-&-roll sound and I wanted a paste-to-the-wall vintage feel- I think this one has really stood up over time. As the Ladies Night -- with a cleavage peaking, cig-smoking Isabella Rosalinni-- looks dated (Good God Stretched Type! Argggh!!), I think this one and the Gil Scott still look good. They might look nice printed in a 20 x 30 format?

To think these were created on a Mac SE-30, often transferred by floppy disc to my job at a local service bureau and printed to Photostat Paper to create a 'master' hard copy ($8 each). You couldn't print your own-- laser printers wern't all that good back then.... they were printed by the bar owner (or the band) at Kinkos on 8-1/2 x 11" white bond paper. Though I think the futuristic 808 State flyer was printed on neon yellow paper.

Did I get paid well to do these back then? Ha!

No, but I got to see alot of great free rock shows...

Click for larger views:


The Headhunters at Nietzsche's (updated)- Classic rock image for a great Buffalo rock band.



808 State at The ICON (1993)- British electronic comes to Buffalo early '90s.


Double Bill Hoedown featuring The Headhuters & The Steam Donkeys (1991)- Great late night show of local Buffalo bands in an unlikely venue. Nice giant rock hair, Mr. Matt Smith!


Saturday Ladies Nite at ICON w/ DJ Unlimited (1992)- alternative, progessive, wave! club flyer, Buffalo, NY. "Gals," "Girls," "Women" & "Ladies" drink free!


Gil Scott Heron at ICON (1992)- The revolution was not televised, it was live! This was one of those ICON shows where the garage door was open and the side room was filled with folding chairs.

Tiny Bubbles

Easter Sunday 2010! Cousins with bubble guns!!

Don't Call Me Scarface!

The latest installment of OtherWisz posterdom is for the upcoming Punky Reggae Party 2 at the Mohawk Place. This event features some great local punk bands (Wolf Tickets, Chosen Ones, Rockas) with a ska/reggae bent all wrapped up with WBNY's DJ Universal.

This poster is probably one of the more colorful pieces I have created in a while drawing on the red, green and gold of traditional reggae graphics. The client wanted something including, and I quote, "punk rockers, dreads, and speakers speakers speakers!!!"... so did I listen to the client..? Not exactly. Instead I used Don Letts! I figured since Don was using one of my posters in his movie, I would put Don on one of my posters (read post below). Seemed fair enough.

The Formula- how it was made....
I "found" a cool photo of Don and blew him out, bit-mapped him and started to build up around the event title. I have no idea why I am so drawn to this western-circus font, the Rosewood Standard, or why it even works here, but for some reason it does. I think because the font has that old-timey poster feel to it, juggle the individual letterforms around and it lends itself well to a party atmosphere. The rest of the text was set in one of my favorite chunky rock font, Poplar Standard Black. I don't know, maybe I need to start using some different typefaces..? You tell me.

I was dying to use the 2-Tone guy and by balancing him with the Circle Jerks dude-- we had both the "punky" and the "reggae." I then added the ska checker board at the top and bottom to frame it. But I wasn't ready to call it day and something felt like it was missing.... I wanted to get some of the aggression and violence that the rastas, punks and ska dude rallied against when the Punky Reggae movement was born in 70's London. So a spray-painted, bloody splat seemed to work just right. By layering it behind and on top of the corner pieces of art, I got some messy depth.

Some fine tuning at this point included pulling an ornament from the typeface and offseting it on top of the jumbled characters. I took the same ornament and placed it over our main man's glasses to add to his 'death stare' with an implied set of daggers. I gave him a golden yellow halo, and we we were just about finished. As per usual, with any OtherWisz rock poster, I had to add a few stars. I started to "over-star it," and the client asked me to pull back a bit on the stars... I think it was a good piece of advice.

BONUS BEATS- the above snapshot was snatched from a photo taken at the Mohawk Place last week and it shows my poster hanging in it's natural environment. Rock on!

I'm In Love With a Girl

RIP Alex Chilton (1950-2010), one of the great ones.....

Party at Ground Zero

ROCK POSTER claim to fame- OtherWisz work included in movie about Strummerville.

I was contacted by the production staff of a movie being made about "Strummerville," the charity foundation created following the death of Joe Strummer to continue his charitable work. They wanted to use one of my rock posters (click now) in the movie!

The film is by Don Letts, the famed English filmmaker with strong ties to the Clash. His list of accomplishments is amazing: he was one of the first club DJs in England to play dub, reggae and ska, he was in Big Audio Dynamite with Clash-man Mick Jones, he is an author and he has directed numerous videos including "Pass The Dutchie" by Musical Youth and "Back on The Chain Gang" by The Pretenders. In 2003, filmmaker Letts won a Grammy for his Clash documentary "Westway to The World." Good bio link here on BBC radio.

His new movie is about Strummerville and the work they do, the bands associated with it, the yearly concerts, benefits and their continuing devotion to helping youths obtain their musical dreams themselves, as DIY-man Strummer would have liked! The charity is described on their website as "aiming to create new opportunities for aspiring musicians. Set up by the friends and family of Joe Strummer in the year after his death, the charity seeks to reflect Joe's unique contribution to the music world by offering support, resources and performance opportunities to artists who would not normally have access to them."

The production company, Brassneck TV describes the movie, debuting this weekend (March 12-21, 2010) at the SWSX music festival in Texas as:

STRUMMERVILLE- Joe Strummer's untimely death in 2002 sent shockwaves around the music world and beyond, yet Joe's friends and family were determined that his spirit would live on. In this documentary, Grammy award-winning filmmaker Don Letts demonstrates how Joe's DIY attitude is manifesting itself through a charity which helps aspiring musicians - Strummerville. The film features performance footage and interviews with Strummerville artists, supporters and founders including Billy Bragg and Damien Hirst, plus previously unseen footage of Strummer himself.

Locally, Wolf Tickets rocker Chris Malachowski has been carrying the flag of Joe Strummer since his death in Dec. 2002 and OtherWisz Creative been designing the posters for each tribute show (as well as DJing them). Chris has kept strong ties to Strummerville, as our local event has donated proceeds from each show to the charity.

It was cool to get the call, and it is an honor to have some of my work featured in a movie about such a great organization that is associated with the memory of one of my heros, Joe Strummer. So if anyone will be at SWSX this weekend, look for the film and the brief glimpse of an OtherWisz-designed poster.

LINKS:

• Here is PR of the movie on the Strummerville website: click here
  
  
• Here is the movie production company's site Brassneck TV, click here.
  
  
• Here is the link to ALL the of posters I have created for the local tribute shows in Buffalo- here click now
  
  
• More info on Strummerville- here ya go

Sounds of the City

Looking back on an era of acid jazz and the posters that set the scene.

Things have been rather hectic around the OW headquarters and I haven't had much time to sit back and contemplate or even muster enough energy to write about something. So the blog has suffered as you can see...sorry. It has been a busy year. I thought I would spend some time looking back (while cleaning the flat files looking for something) and post some old graphic design work, some rock posters, some DJ flyers and some of the fun things I have completed over the years.

Going back to 1997, when the DJ scene in Buffalo had worn out it's post-rave vibe, all seemed lost on the club scene. Rock & hip-hop ruled the bars and DJs were regulated to the typical Friday and Saturday night slots. A friend of mine opened the Kingsnake Lounge at 112 Chippewa street and a new groove was born for the end of the '90s. DJ Scotty and I took our love of electronic music, early drum and bass, abstrakt hip hop, and a new groove called acid jazz, and created what we called 'deja blu.' We spun records (yes kids, vinyl records...) at the end of the bar on a Tuesday night and created a scene for the chilled out, imported beer and martini drinking set.

The posters and flyers I did for our nights were always changing in order to keep it fresh. Born of the distressed, grunge of the era (late '90s), the posters were often built directly in Photoshop to take advantage of the layers, filters and accidents that made cool & unplanned things happen. A signature look was born to promote a signature DJ night than moved from the weekday stint to the monthly, full house Saturday nights. Often with images of sax players and manipulated jazz icons, I borrowed strongly from the Blue Note graphics of the 1950s and turned it on it's head. Printed after hours at my job at the time, I was limited to one-color on white stock. When my day job bought a color printer, I still worked in a limited color range to keep it simple and stark.

The official deja blu logo is probably the only logo that I have ever designed that doesn't exist in vector format. A layered Photoshop file, the DB logo was a misaligned ghost of an identity, a vibrating, floating logomark that represents the music, the scene and the blurry consumption of too much alcohol. With unnecessary accent marks on the logo, I always wanted us to appear strange and foreign.

Here we have three examples of deja blu flyers, typical of the era. The first one was a 1/2 page, black and white and may have been one of the 1st flyer to promote the deja blu Tuesdays. The official 'deja blu' logo had not been created yet, but the visual aesthetics can be seen in it's infancy.

The other two are from specific Saturday nights at the Kingsnake Lounge and represent the deja blu look at it's top form. The first one from November 28, 1998 includes fuzzy typefaces, fake halftone dots, and a limited color palette (always in blue). The second poster is from a night in 1998 (2-days before x-mas), and it broke away from the norm with a much more balanced, less grunge look. Printed again in a limited palette but on blue paper stock, the yellow glowing deja blu logo hangs on the half-toned, manipulated clip art building like a flag. Other deja blu posters often included Europeans enjoying cigarettes and cocktails or urban landscapes, as with this one. This was a memorable night on the Buffalo club scene with duel slide shows, flashing lights, over-capacity crowds (screw the fire marshall) and people dancing their asses off and flipping up the walls, drinking like it was the end of the world, all over a pumping, jazzy groove that was acid jazz in it's prime. Great flyer, great night!

There will be more to follow, including some early '90s rave/party flyers and some ICON concert posters (where I was the official poster designer in it's heyday). I have to organize them and scan them, so pencil that in as 'coming soon.'

CREDITS: (1) original deja blu logo, (2) deja blu 'The Original" flyer from 1997, (3) "November Twenty Eight Saturday" poster for Kingsnake gig 11/98, and (4) "Sound of the City" poster for Kingsnake gig on Dec. 26th 1998. All designed by Mark Wisz, Wizard Graphics.

Shadrach, Meschach, Abednego

"...got more rhymes than j.d.'s got salinger / I hold the title and you are the challenger"

RIP JD Salinger

The Mirror Conspiracy

Today's Buffalo Snooze essentially re-wrote an ArtVoice story about Buffalo's electronic DJs in the 1990s. See the AV story linked here. Again Scott & I, as "dejablu" were named-checked. It seems a history of this Buffalo DJ scene cannot be written without our influence mentioned. This is very cool and it makes me feel great to not be forgotten! An honor to be remembered, to say the least.

To add to this story: both the Kingsnake, the 658 and the Blu (Osaka) were weekly DJ gigs begun by Scott and I. We were the first DJs at the Kingsnake on Chippewa, the first ones to move to 658 after the original 'Snake closed and we were the opening night DJs at Blu on Main Street. My DJ parner Scott hosted the weekly 'open DJ nights' at Blu that began the careers of a lot of local DJs.

As written in the Buffalo Snooze article:

"Concurrent with these warehouse and loft-space parties, a small but vibrant club scene began to grow in Buffalo — centered around the Chippewa area, but certainly not limited to it. The likes of the Rendezvous, Asbury Alley, the Kingsnake, the Atomic, the Icon (later to be known as Club E), the Opium Lounge, and Osaka's Blu, among others, all featured at least one night of DJ-based music per week....

.... In addition to the Knowmatic Tribe guys, Deja Blu, DJ Zuk, Mike Parker, and the collective responsible for the weekly Baby Steps shows at Broadway Joe's conspired to lay the template for 21st century Buffalo electronic dance music."

This makes me think 2010 is ripe for some dejablu reunion gigs?!?!? Someone call DJ Scotty!!

Buffalo News article: They spin, we dance: DJs draw crowds downtown

Walkin' Up The Road

Smashing Magazine has compiled a nice online collection of retro signage pulled from Flikr and various other sources. Though most are the 'neons' from yesteryear that you might expect to see, there are few painted walls and wooden-type signs which are very cool. Included in this online compilation is Buffalo's own Parkside Candies and one from Greg Meadows (who shoots a lot of Buffalo urban images). I just drove past the Parkside Candies building on Main Street in the University District and though it is still open, it is looking pretty rough.

One of my favorites is the Chandler Liquors with it's flaming comet circling the 1950's script and boxed in characters from an Arizona liquor store and the Route 66 original Shell sign which is still colored in the same branded yellow and red they use today (though probably different Pantone colors). When everything has gone plastic and digital, these original designs serve still to inspire. Take a look at the link below.

>> Click here to check it out.

NOTE: Though my posting has slowed down it has been for good reasons- holidays and very busy work days. I hope to get back in the groove and keep this thing going stronger. By the way, this is POST #300 ! ! !

The Harder They Come

This saturday (26th)- the day after Xmas, I will DJing the annual Joe Strummer tribute show at the Mohawk Place entitled The Harder They Come. This is a great gig organized by Mr. Wolf Tickets, Chris Malachowski that includes a several bands playing Clash and Joe Strummer songs (mostly Clash songs). The headliner being a conglomeration of some of Buffalo's best musicians going under the name Rebel Waltz Orchestra and last year they had some Great Train Robbery horns to really flavor it up.

This gig was a packed house last year- some come early. Doors open at 8:00 PM and I will spinning the tunes between sets and prior to the 1st band. My set list includes a lot of dub, reggae, punk rock and various other grooves inspired by the late great Joe Strummer. Joe had a great liking for a variety of musical styles which his bands, The Clash and The Mescaleros incorporated in their groove.

A portion of the proceeds do go to Strummerville- the Joe Strummer Foundation For New Music (info here).

This year's poster (above) tries to pull the flavor of the title of the event (the Jimmy Cliff classic) and The Clash's love for NYC street music of the 80s- rap, dub and reggae with the boom box and the mohawked Strummer images. Always a sure bet with red, this years poster looks a bit minimal as compared to the past event posters. The fonts include the new P22 font, LTC Winchell and hand-cut looking face, and the chunky Poplar- one of my fav rock poster fonts.

POSTER GALLERY- You can see the full gallery of JS Tribute posters here I have created over the past 8 years by click here.

Hope to see you kids on the 26th, shaking off those Christmas day cobwebs.

Fantastic Voyage

Happy Holidays from us all at the Roam Buffalo blog, Where to Roam and OtherWisz Creative. It is the holiday season- aka Clobberin' Time. Nuff said.



Classic 1974 Marvel Treasury Special- Giant Superhero Holiday Grab Bag courtesy of NateTrax.

Christmas Rapping

The PANIC! Sale was not really panic-driven. I think it was still too ahead of Christmas for panic shopping. The throngs of shoppers who strolled through the main gallery of the Western New York Book Arts seemed pretty calm during the this second annual sale of WNY crafters, screen printers, jewelry makers, book makers, t-shirt designers, and artists alike.

I shot a few snap shots of the crowds in the gallery for you out-of-towners to see. Bonus props for Eric Morse, in-town for the holidays on vaca from his job in Hong Kong. First storm rolls in to remind Eric about BuffaloSnow!

We are working full steam ahead into the holidays with a lot of stuff going on. Gotta be careful to not slip right through the upcoming holiday with head buried behind the computer. The kids would be mad. I'll try to post some neat holidays photos as I might not have a lot to say. Rock on!

Shoppers shop & the boppers bop.



Super Rich and his accomplice Carima.



Crowd chatting, shopping & more. Out-of-town Eric and his glowing alien backpack talks with Kevin & Val.



More crowd with Sunnyoutside David in front- holding court, brewing espresso, selling books.

Jill runs the WhereToRoam booth (with Rich making sure all vendors are chillin', makin' buttons, brewin' joe & hot chocolate, etc.)....

Shopper approaches the W2R booth with hand on wallet.

Shoppers under high ceilings, big windows and joy in their hearts (I think).. See Hero booth across the way.

Looking West across the gallery space from Marti's head.

Crowbiz and her wares.

Crowbiz's Capitalist Pig was coated in Russian text during the show. Ready 4 sale!

Happy Holidays to you! Support & join the Western New York Books Arts Center!