Friday, September 12, 2008



On my recent trip to Pittsburgh, I finally drug the huge box of flyers that I left there when I moved to California in 1988 back with me. OK, so I knew that everything in there was at least 20 years old, but what surprised me was how far back before my time it went, back to the original Pittsburgh punk era, roughly 1978 through 1982. I forgot that many of the first generation “punkers” ––Bill Bored and Reid Paley come to mind instantly–– laid their collections on me at some point, so that along with me keeping nearly everything from my own era (1983-88) it's a great collection that I ended up with.

The fact that many of us, from Tom Scott to Jeff Lamm to myself, went to art school, I humbly submit that the flyers for shows in Pittsburgh are among the best ever made. Just look at this forgotten 1984 gem by Paul Bucciarelli… I mean, no big deal, just another Cynics gig right? But look at the Goddamned flyer, it’s a freakin’ masterpiece! For years I’ve been entertaining the idea of writing a book about the Pittsburgh punk scene, and this box of 8 1/2 x 11 inch Xeroxed greatness just added a whole lot of fuel to that fire… Stay tuned, I’ll be posting a lot more in weeks to come.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

post them up! www.gigposters.com

Tom Scott has a bunch of stuff on there

gjhead said...

Holy crap! yes - please write a book on the Pittsburgh Punk scene - you would be the man to do it too!

Umberto138 said...

Sounds like a great idea!
I still have a bunch of your Samhain/Half Life flyers, let me know if you need to "borrow" them...

Unknown said...

dear mike,
please write the freakin book.

curmudgeon said...

Hey Mike!

Bill Bored here - the interesting thing about historical detritus is what it inspires. Cynics posters from Paul Buccarelli and Steve Magee are as interesting as earlier Cardboards posters from Ron Solo and others. The bottom line is the music - which, in Pittsburgh, Half Life trumped in spades...

I'm now a nerd and long past the music scene, but my email is vonhagen@vonhagen.org and I'd love to hear from you. Half Life took the pgh scene to the next level - thanks for that!

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