Phillyist Reviews... Gig Posters Volume 1

Our friends at Philly publishing house Quirk Books recently put out a new book called Gig Posters Volume 1: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century. It's a huge collection (the dimensions are about 14 x 11 x 1) of over 700 posters from the archives of GigPosters.com, selected by the website's creator and proprietor, Clay Hayes, who also provides a short introduction. The posters are organized by the artists that created them (if you'd like to see all the posters for a particular band, you can check the index in the back), with each artist represented by a full-page, tear-off poster (each page is perforated for easy removal) that has on its opposite side six more, smaller examples of the artist's work, plus plenty of data on all the posters and the artist, including website, influences, preferred medium/method, and some random remarks from the artist. So yes, the claim that the book has "over 700 posters" is slightly misleading, as there are only 101 full-size posters, but the quality of the art and of the reproductions is so high that you could tear out any or all of those 101 posters, frame them, put them right on your wall, and not feel the least bit embarrassed (well, unless you selected one of the posters that features full frontal nudity; that might be a bit embarrassing if your Mom comes over).

It's true that some of the posters included in the book fail in their original purpose—that is, advertising a rock show—because the text on them is so warped and abstracted you can't even tell what band is playing, let alone where or when. But hardly any of them fail as art. This is a truly beautiful book, absolutely loaded with exhilarating, imaginative, eye-popping examples of a fascinating art form which, as Hayes points out, is now the most important visual representation of contemporary music, given that the rise of MP3s has nearly eliminated traditional album art. The decision to focus on a limited and very recent time frame gives the book some real immediacy and makes it a fascinating survey of where we are now in terms of the visual side of music. There's a real variety of colors, media, style, genre, and technique. Some artists do their posters entirely on the computer, then ship them off to be silkscreened by someone else, while some still do the entire process by hand, personally. They list as their influences anything from comic books to garbage to aboriginal rights to classical painters. Some of the posters perfectly capture the artist they're advertising in one iconic image, while others, though they're often still powerful and fascinating, seem to have nothing to do with the artist at all. Some are simple and stark, others mind-blowing in their complexity. There are only a handful of posters in the whole bunch that fail entirely. Bands represented include The Decemberists, The Black Crowes, The Melvins, Beastie Boys, Bright Eyes, Cat Power, Death Cab for Cutie, The Roots, Erykah Badu, The Sword, Kanye West, Modest Mouse, Nine Inch Nails, Neil Diamond, and Yo La Tengo, just to name a few.

Gig Posters is the kind of book you can be proud to have on your coffee table, and/or on your wall. Which is why that "Volume 1" in the title is so exciting. We look forward to seeing more soon!

Image via GigPosters.com