Absolute Zero: the posters
For me, one of the unique pleasures of playing in a band was being able to produce the posters for our gigs. In the pre-internet world, we had to use old forms of media to publicize our performances. Mostly, that entailed putting up posters all over campus. The obvious places were the cafeterias (the Ratty and the VW) and the P. O. The problem, of course, is that every campus group used these same sites for their own posters. In order to stand out from the crowd, I tried to make AZ's posters as eye-catching as possible. That entailed having a recognizable logo, some kind of snazzy central image (often drawings of famous paintings or historical figures), and above all, neon colored paper. I used to go to the copy center on Thayer Street across from Richardson Hall to make 100 copies of each poster. Ed and I usually put them up all over campus afterwards. The whole process was pretty time consuming. But the end result was usually solid. Unfortunately, we played a lot of gigs that I have no posters for (how that is possible, I don't know, since I thought I kept everything). Nevertheless, the posters below provide a good sample of AZ's visual style, such as it was.
Gavriel Rosenfeld
__________
This was the original poster used at our first gig at The
Underground, October, 1986. It introduced the AZ logo, with its warpy, semi-Asian look.
Underground, October, 1986. It introduced the AZ logo, with its warpy, semi-Asian look.
This poster, which daringly employs the sophisticated montage technique of Weimar era avant-garde artist, John Heartfield, is from the winter of 1986-87 and was from our second gig at The Underground.
This poster from the winter of 1986-87 was inspired by Jaques Louis David's painting, The Death of Marat (1793). Unsurprisingly, I was taking an art history course in
18th century French painting (Prof. Driscoll) at the time.
18th century French painting (Prof. Driscoll) at the time.
This poster from the fall of 1987 ended up being the cover image for our only album, Frequency Division Multiplexing.
Many left-wing students flocked to Sigma Chi in the fall of 1987, having been lured by the proletarian cachet exuded by this poster featuring Karl Marx. (Many libertarian students came as well, having heard rumors that we were going to play Rush's legendary album, 2112, in its entirety).
Ralph Waldo Emerson takes center stage in this poster for yet another Underground gig from the fall of 1987. I was taking William McLoughlin's canonical course in the social and intellectual history of the United States at the time and was feeling semi-transcendental.
We played at Psi U's Mardi Gras party in the winter of 1987-88. This poster, which shamelessly rips off William Blake's famous 1794 etching, The Ancient of Days (portraying God creating the universe) was also influenced by my 18th century art history course. I wish I had taken more time to do the cross hatching a bit more carefully. But I was in a rush. Dang it.
I'm not sure what was going on with the aesthetics of this poster. It was for a gig at Perkins Dorm in the winter of 1987-88. The lettering is a bit goofy and the central image is of unclear inspiration. I can't even remember whether or not we rocked.
This poster from the winter of 1987-88 features an image from Will Eisner's comic strip, The Spirit, who is meant to be entering a frat house while Brian and Ed are tuning their axes ("twangg").
Here's another bid at a photo montage, this time without the classic AZ logo, which I must have gotten tired of drawing for some reason. Instead, I seem to have used the famous font known as "I've-kidnapped-your-family-member-and-am-holding-them-for-ransom-which-is-why-I'm-using-letters-cut-from-a-magazine." Apparently, we wailed at this winter 1987-88 gig at The Underground.
We played the legendary East Campus Barbecue at the Grad Center in the spring of 1988. Franz Kafka manned the grill.
This was the least successful poster I produced. It was from the tail end of AZ's lifespan, in the fall of 1988. We no longer had Josh as our drummer, and his replacement Scott Johnston, who was in grad school at Brown, didn't have as much time to practice. I think we sense that our playing days were numbered. I seem to have rushed this poster for our Halloween Milhouse gig. I was experimenting with scratch boards (which requires drawing in reverse by removing black ink to reveal the white board underneath) and frankly wasn't very good at it. Sloppy sloppy sloppy.