the seniors did a good job with their art work. There were a lot of different ideas covered and mediums explored. My favorites were the pillowcases hung on the wall dealing with dreams and I felt it delt with creation as well. And the ink drawings. They both reminded me of a technique I would work with.
My first concept would be to create a site that is true to rocknroll. The site would focus around awareness. Bringing individuals together through a data base of rock videos, music to buy and preview, a radio, and a section to view album art and poster art. The site would center around the underground stoner, doom, and classic rock bands who get no credit because they don’t follow commercial standards
My second concept would be a do it your self web site where it will give out recipes, instructions, measurements, and a brainstorming section, where people who are into arts and crafts can get together, network, and sell products online. The site would center on how to break free from the commercial industry where the products being produced are all simplified and everything looks the same.
I found an interesting article written by Steven Heller for print magazine back in 2000, talking about the underground comic ZAP; the magazine, which debut in the late 60s, challenging the moral and civil structures laid upon the youth after the second great war. Heller begins the article by laying down the history of why such a group of artists, painters, and left-brain thinkers would want to start a revelation in comics, pushing the laws of censorship. In doing so, he provided a scenario of what life would have been like growing up during the fifties. He explains the law held a strict hand over all forms of entertainment, including medias like films, and comics, censoring any violence, sex, and any disrespect towards the authority. Therefore, with a whole generation of youth growing up through such propaganda caused an out roar with its counter culture. The youth back then became tired of only reading comics like superman and batman, so once people got their hands on Zap in 1968, the image of comics forever changed.
Zap is an interesting comic book, I wasn’t around during the debut in the late 60s, I’m actually coming from a perspective a few generations later, but I can still imagine what it must have been like to read the first edition and then immediately being blown away with such crude humor and outlandish fantasies. The comic started in underground newspapers along the coasts by artists R. Crumb, Kim Dietch, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson, and Spain Roderigues, attacking all conventions of conservative society. Many of the artists already had a name for themselves in the counterculture, like R. crumb who Heller explains was known for his string of bizarre, racy, and ribald characters and even designed posters for rock bands. Then later on, Zap picked up many of the up and coming artists in the counter culture to contribute, like artists Rick Grifth whom was a progenitors to the vibrating psychedelic rock concert posters, and meanwhile, S. Clay Wilson whom was known for living out his perverse fantasies through dark comic figures.
When Zap 1 appeared Rick Grifth and Victor Moscoso were already known as one of the most prominent poster illustrators for the newly forming rock scene in San Francisco. They were designing rock posters for big acts like Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, Jefferson airplane and they were breaking the foundations that the modern designers built. The artists designed the posters to be looked at while high to bring upon euphoria and visuals. They used beautifully bright vibrant colors often complimenting them with their tertiary family, illegible lettering, and vintage graphics. The posters of that time really appeal to me; they reference art history and good type design. Rather then having things be machined and clean cut like the modernist saw, these posters often depict pictures and letters bleeding into each other resembling an acid trip. Heller recalls Moscoso’s background before he became involved in poster and comic design. He was a painter who studied at Yale in the 1960s who found a fascination with the works and philosophies of the surrealists, and began to interpret his own version of surrealism in his own artistic style. He was hesitant at first when Zap comics wanted him to get involved, he thought people wouldn’t appreciate the comics thinking they would all end up in the trash, plus he was a busy entrepreneur in the poster business at the time, producing two to three posters a week and making some decent cash. However in the end he joined the team and helped further the development of zap comics.
Zap comics often found them selves in trouble with the law because of the juicy content. Zap became an arena to test the supreme Courts community standards doctrine, which allowed each community to define pornography in relation to a local census. Then once the law started involving themselves, Zap started pushing the content further making the stories and characters more vulgar. An example given in the article explains, how far they pushed the content once the law became interested. When the magazine first came out, the magazine caused an uproar when it featured pictures of boobies, then in the later editions, after the police uproar, it was publishing dancing penis’s on the cover and entailed stories with characters like “Joe Blow”, and “A ball for the Bung hole”. Then while the government banned the magazine to be sold in most stores, head shops began opening in every major city and collage town acting as a bypass away from government restrictions allowing the sales of Zap magazine.
Heller finished off his article with a piece of Moscoso’s humor, he sarcastically replies, after thirty years, fifteen issues, and millions of copies later, zap is still around printing new issues every two years and still pushing boundaries. Moscoso then finishes by saying, the fact that were even still selling these things actually is still remarkable, these things should have been gone a long time ago by all logical standards. Which intrigues me about the company, the fact that the artist created this as a joke to push buttons, but in the end they created a piece of comic and American history.
strieght from the book of duderonumy twas writen that an event be held, when the moon lights the sky,
the Duders, Amnesia, and Goiterjelly live at Brewsters Saturday january 12 doors open at 9
Rock n Roll
