Acne Rabble

Here's a primo example of the kinda wacky weirdness you can get involved in when you're a freelance artisté. Back in 1996 I had done a few T-shirt designs for a guy named Roberto, a just-outta-high-school kid with a real old style hustlin' make-a-buck attitude. Later he asked me to do these illustrations for some kinda acne treatment program he was gonna start peddling. I dunno if he ever actually got this project off the ground; I never saw the printed booklet he was planning and this was the last I heard from him but I certainly enjoyed the thought of being involved in some sort of patent medicine type operation. I do think acne is a worthwhile topic for artistic consideration and have plans to revisit the subject at some point. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Castin' My Spell On You

This voodoo vixen was drawn last year for the booklet of the most recent Independents CD, Do It Again. Got some fun new and old stuff on the launchin' pad for later this week so... Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Bullet Skull

This one is kind of self explanatory, I guess. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Doctor Please, Some More Of These...

Predating the Aquellos Maravillosos 90 LP sleeve I did for 'em, here's the artwork for Dr. Explosion's swingin' Eres Feo, Chaval 45. This Spanish-language cover of The Downliners Sect classic One Ugly Child was perfectly suited to my style at the time. Boss little record. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

The Fiends

The Fiends got going somewhere around 1994 out in fog-shrouded Vancouver, BC. They had the same basic creepy garage sound as combos like The Morlocks and The Gravedigger 5, but added in their own brand of crazed, fuzzed-out intensity to convincingly convey a kinda seething psychosis in sound. They had a couple of LPs, a 10" and several 7"s out in the '90s then went underground for a few years. They were back doing shows again in the past 2 or 3 years but I guess Greg Johnson's death will probably be the end of the line for them as he seemed to be the driving force behind the whole thing. I had done some drawings for Greg's pre-Fiends creepy garage combo The Worst, so I segued naturally into doing stuff for The Fiends. I designed the main Fiends logo that they used throughout their career, a bunch of creepy little spot illos that were used on their In Scareo 10"er and made a drawing based on their song Zombies (Have Feelings Too) which was used on a cassette of demos and unreleased tracks that Greg put out. He also used various monster drawings of mine for Fiends gig posters, including the Frankenstein Edsel drawing I posted a little while back. Above are a batch of logos I made for him back around 1996 or so. I'll dig up some of my other Fiends stuff and post it for you at a later date. Stay tuned for MORE GRAVEDIGGIN' ACTION!

The Rock'N'Roll Boat & Trailer Show

Al from the Von Zippers/Roto-Flex records put together this 3 day fest of primitivo garage and related forms of trashy rock'n'roll back in 1997. I made it out to Calgary for the show and they paid me for the poster art with free beer all weekend. Hilites were seeing The Spaceshits again a few months after their Winnipeg show, the always cool and creepy Forbidden Dimension, the best Gas Huffer show I ever saw and diggin' The Von Zippers motorvatin' though their own set then backing the totally crazed, sweat-soaked Pokemonojeff Connolly on a batch of Lyres classics. To top it all off, when I walked outta The Night Gallery after the last show there was a guy walkin' across the street stark naked and he asked me what the hell was I lookin' at? Another highlight of this trip was opening the bathroom cabinet in the hotel we were stayin' at and finding a big chunk of human hair under there. Seems like someone needed to change their appearance in a hurry and had just chopped their long hair off in one big hunk and dumped it there. Pretty mysterious. Anyhow the poster was kind of a takeoff on the one my friend TOMB had done for the previous year's show (see page 267 of that jumbo Art Of Modern Rock book for TOMB's wicked effort). This was originally supposed to be printed in full color but the posters ended up being black and white. I recently learned that there were T-shirts made using this artwork as well. I didn't get one. Anyhow, my recreation of the original color version makes its grand debut here. This is the original version of the poster with The Fiends included in the lineup. They weren't able to make the show (The Brewtals from Edmonton filled their spot if I remember rightly), but it's a good chance to remember Fiends singer Greg Johnson who passed away a couple of days back. I have a bunch of Fiends art that I'll post up here later. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Rocket Science

I drew the cover for this compilation CD back in 2001 for a short-lived label called Suckerpunch Records. It's a fun comp with some well known pop punk combos like The Eyeliners, The Groovie Ghoulies, Teen Idols, The McRackins and The Manges plus a whole bunch of lesser-knowns rockin' in the same style. Joey Ramone died while I was working on this so I included a little tribute to him. Sadly it was not the last Ramones memorial to appear in one of my drawings. More on that later. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Screaming Fists

I used a pseudonym for the sleeve of this compilation of '70s punk rock obscurities since the guy who put it out had not gone through all the proper channels to legally reissue the songs. Since he is now dead, I suppose there's no harm in my admitting authorship of this piece. I was a huge fan of these Killed By Death-inspired punk reissue comps at the time and was really stoked to get to design a sleeve for this one, which includes a couple of great tracks from the Lowlife 7" (Winnipeg's one-and-only '70s punk waxing). The guy who put this out was paranoid about being tracked down if my artwork was recognized so I made a concerted effort to work in a different style, inking entirely in scratchy pen lines rather than my usual classy brushwork and topping the whole thing off with copious amounts of toothbrush spatter, a technique which I had never used previously. This came out on Anarchy International Productions in 1996, supposedly a limited edition of 500 LP copies though I suspect more than that were actually made. A second volume came out later but he just ripped off the artwork from a Pebbles compilation for the sleeve on that one. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

One Last Caress

From 1993, this grim visitation was an early entry in my Memento Mori series. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. Stay tuned for MORE MORBIDLY MACABRE ACTION!

Lost in Tyme

Hot off those proverbial presses, here's thee cover art for the latest issue of Lost In Tyme, a boss garage rock 'zine published by my pal Periklis over in Greece. The mag does a great job in covering new garage combos, focusing more on bands with melodic '60s roots rather than the noisy punky brand of modern garage rock (or that trendy Strokes-type faux-garage malarky), and this issue comes with an 18 song CD featuring all the bands listed on the cover. Look up the Lost In Tyme profile over on MySpace to see about orderin' a copy. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Bat Barf

Quickie poster for a show featuring some of the top local punk combos back around the turn of the century. This was the golden era of craziness at our beloved gutter bar the Royal Albert. I think this was the show where my glasses got broken during the Martian Graverobbers set when stagedivin' maniac Mladen kicked me in the face. Fun times. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Flying Saucer Rock'N'Roll

Here are a couple more selections from the stack of illustrations I did a few months back for Flying Saucer Rock'N'Roll, the forthcoming compilation volume of wild interviews with undeservedly little-known rockers from the pages of Roctober magazine (see Billy Lee Riley post way down below for another taste from the same combination plate). First up is Sam The Sham, one of my all-time fave rockers with deep Tex-Mex musical roots and the all-important sense of style that made early rock'n'roll so great. Also on tap today is my drawing of The Good Rats, who have an interesting '70s rock story even though their music is mostly not to my taste. I'll post more of these soon, hopefully with some updated info about when the book will be hitting the street. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Vampire Devil Skull Bat

Drew this up a couple months back as the official T-shirt design for The Independents Fall 2009 tour. Much more Independents stuff coming up later. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

The Garage Gods

I drew this one last year for the debut 45 of this jangly '60s garage outfit from Portland, Oregon. My buddy Periklis ished this hot wax on his cool Lost In Tyme label over in Greece and word is that he's workin' on a full length LP by The Garage Gods even as we speak. I'm lookin' forward to hearing it. These guys have found their own sound within the parameters of the mid-'60s garage style; good songs and distinctive vocals in a sorta Arthur Lee-ish style make 'em stand out from the crowd. The cover art was inspired by all one zillion Flintstones reruns I sat through in my impressionable youth. More stuff comin' soon. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Rockabilly Rerun

Okay, I know I posted the artwork for the new Rowdymen CD back in the early daze of this blog, but inasmuch as I did some last minute revisions on the image before handing in the final version, and then used that new and improved version to put together this snazzy poster for the CD release party, maybe you all will be so kind as to excuse any redundancy. Looks like this will be a fun show, with local all-girl teen powerpoppers The Paps opening the festivities. Stay tuned for MORE HI-OCTANE ACTION!

Wrong Headed

Here's the Calgarian companion piece to yesterday's electrified Edmonton extravaganza. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Frankenstein's Edsel

This image was originally drawn for French garagesters The Sidewalk Stroll back in 1995 and was used on the cover of their debut LP Monobooster. There were a couple of little things I didn't like about the drawing in its original form so when Sal from Electric Frankenstein asked me to do a couple of quick posters for EF shows in Alberta I decided it would be a good opportunity to make a definitive revised version of this piece. This is one of a handful of drawings I made in the mid-'90s using DuoShade paper, specially treated art paper with 2 hidden patterns of shading that can be made visible by painting on a chemical solution. This technique was widely used by comic book artists in the '50s and '60s, especially in the Warren horror comics and all those hot rod comic mags like CarToons, so it seemed to add a fitting retro touch to an image like this. I'll post up the companion poster for EF's Calgary show tomorrow. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Great Punk Rock Fiascos Of The '90s Pt. 2

(Continued from yesterday's post...) So I sent all the artwork for the Horace Pinker/NRA split 7" over to France. A couple of days later I get a phone call from FedEx asking me what they should do with my package. It seems that when they took it to Philippe's address there was no building, just a big hole in the ground. I had mailed stuff to that address before so this news was rather baffling. Later that week I got the whole story behind this Twilight-Zoneish turn of events. A leaking gas line had exploded and demolished the whole building the same day that I sent the package out. Philippe survived the conflagration but it seemed to spell the end of Erase-Yer-Head Records and the 7" never came out. Even more annoyingly, all the artwork disappeared under mysterious circumstances, which is why you won't be seeing the 2 paintings I made for this project here in the Rubber Room. Luckily I had the foresight to make photocopies of the black and white drawings before sending them out, so herewith they are presented to the omnivorous eye of the panting public (that's you, buddy!) for the first time ever. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Great Punk Rock Fiascos Of The '90s

Back in the mid-'90s I did a few drawings for a French 'zine and record label entrepreneur named Philippe. He started out in the Garage Punk scene and switched over to hardcore and industrial noise after awhile. In that phase he had a label called Erase-Yer-Head Records which had kind of a neat concept. Their output was exclusively split 7"ers, each with a well known American or Japanese aggro-noise combo on one side and a less-known Euro band playing in a similar style on the flip. Each one came in a gatefold sleeve with full color artwork inside and out and an insert with 4 additional pages of black and white art by the same artist. All the artists for the noisy industrial style releases were contributors to Le Dernier Cri, a French avant garde comix magazine with a heavy Raw influence. I was asked to provide the art for a punk rock spinoff from the main series featuring pop punkers Horace Pinker from the USA and NRA from Holland, so I dutifully whipped up a couple of acrylic paintings and 4 B&W illustrations, two of which you may see atop this very stack of type. As this was an "art for art's sake" type of enterprise I let myself go a bit as far as the style and subject matter were concerned. I was pushing the deadline by the time I got everything done so I sent it over to France via FedEx. A couple days after sending it out I received the most baffling telephone call I've gotten yet in my career in the arts... More on that in tomorrow's post. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!

Submerged

If you are wondering. most of the imagery on this blog comes from my subconscious mind in as unmitigated a form as possible. The point of art, I think, is to rummage around in one's own head until something of potential interest emerges, and then turn it loose in the world and wait to see what may result. From that perspective, my explanation of what this drawing is about would be no more worthy than yours, so I shall offer none. This piece was first used as a flyer for a show by local space rawkers The Breath Grenades. Later my friend Willem from Swamp-Room Records in Germany became enamored of this drawing and used it several times, including a colorized version that graced the cover of a split 7" by Mandra Gora Lightshow Society and Cherry Overdrive back in 2005. Here you may peruse it in it's original monochromatic incarnation. Stay tuned for MORE ACTION!