If you know who John Vanderslice is, and are familar enough with his music to know he’s a charming Luddite that clings to analog recoding methods…well, you probably know more about this story than we do. If you’re not that person, let us debrief you: until about 2011, the Busch Student Center on the Saint Louis University Campus was a supernova-bright spot in the local music scene. As Thomas Crone noted in the fall of 2007, the center’s resident music venue, The Billiken Club, may have shared space with a burrito stand, but it was booking some of the most exciting shows in town. Bon Iver, St. Vincent, and Dan Deacon all played the student-run venue before they blew up; they were double-billed with some now-legendary local bands like So Many Dymanos and Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra.
And these shows were advertised with some of the most gorgeous, graphically wild gig posters around. Designed and printed by The Firecracker Press, they were famously hard to keep stuck to bulletin boards, phone poles or even high-up, hard-to-reach places. Prized by collectors or just folks with a good eye for a striking image, most of them remained in place for a week or two, tops.
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That high rate of attrition is the inspiration for “(please don’t!) STEAL THIS POSTER: An Exhibtion of Letterpress Prints by The Firecracker Press for The Billiken Club,” opening tomorrow at SLU’s Pius XII Memorial Library. Curated by Timothy Achee, the library’s Associate University Archivist in the Special Collections Department, the show offers a look at a particularly rich time in St. Louis’ art and music scenes.
“We saw this as an opportunity both to display material that is visually arresting, but that spoke to this intersection in the arts,” Achee says.
Though many of these posters reside in private local collections, all six series have never been publicly displayed together. The first series was part of a “100 posters for 100 bucks,” promotion that Firecracker was running, and so is printed on whatever paper the press had on hand. As the collaboration went forward, though, the posters became more deliberate, printed on the same florescent paper, or themed, or designed to work both individually and as a group. There’s a series that features a red stripe down the middle; another set of posters scored with perforations, so they can be torn and assembled into miniature art-books; another’s unified with a science fiction narrative, including one poster that was swapped out due to some unfortunate timing.
“The imagery is the fetus of a baby girl, in utero,” Achee explains of that poster. “The story was about an interstellar spy and this girl who was raised to be a living weapon, and how they fall in love and ran off together from the evil empire they were with. So this is a poster depicting the birth of the girl-weapon. Unfortunately, that poster was going to come out around Right to Life Week. Everyone thought maybe it could be misconstrued in an unfortunate way, so at the last minute, they pulled it and replaced it with this fantastic, Nagel-esque, David Bowie looking character in a muumuu, which went up a week later. And as a result, we have 80 of these 100 posters that were produced. What I think is the more interesting question that comes out of all this is, what happened to the other 20 posters? Because it was only up for a couple of hours. So there was a fairly sizable chunk out there somewhere, I’m guessing in the hands of collectors, or students.”
Another series incorporated pressure printing to add color, or a pattern like a star or a piece of cloud, sometimes unique to that poster. Still another series can be assembled into “one large mega-poster,” which will be on display at the exhibit, along with some of the assembled art-books. Eric Woods, owner of Firecracker, also produced a new poster for the show, using red and blue ink, which were the colors always used for the first poster of each series.
“It can be both a single poster, or eight different mailable postcards, or the front and back covers for two different brochcures that we’re going to have available,” Achee says. “The first 50 people who attend will get those. It’s amazing to me what they are able to do with just one design.”
He adds that the library’s holdings for this particular collection, which was started with a donation of posters by former Billiken Club faculty advisor Chris Grabau, will be a little limited. They’ll only be able to keep five copies of each. So attendees may be able to take home the extra posters. In addition, at the opening reception, Woods will be doing printing demos, and folks are welcome to take home the posters produced during that process as well.
And though a show like this might risk having a bittersweet, nostalgic feel, Achee’s approach will be more dynamic than passive or reflective—after all, Firecracker’s still prolifically producing, and The Billken Club is coming out of hibernation this fall. On September 16, it hosts Sub Pop artists No Age; the following night, U.K. band Lapalux performs. And on September 24, local psych band Tone Rodent opens for Seattle’s Darto. (Currently, the club’s Facebook page is the best spot to look for current show info.)
“I don’t want people to interact with these like they would a gallery show, where you stand five or six feet away and appreciate it for a few minutes,” Achee says. “I think these bear very close scrutiny. I’m going to try to slightly antagonize the patron by not allowing them to stand back and look from a distance without being overwhelmed. If you want any kind of peace in your eyeballs, you’re going to have to go up and read the posters, and engage with them a little bit.”
(please don’t) STEAL THIS POSTER! opens September 12 at 4 p.m. at the Pius XII Memorial Library, 3650 Lindell, on the campus of Saint Louis University. The openinng reception will include speakers Chris Grabau, former faculty advisor at the Billiken Club; Grant Nikseresht, currently Billiken Club manager and KSLU DJ; and Eric Woods of Firecracker Press. In addition to a printing demo by Firecracker and a live performance by Manual Feed, “The Letterpress Band,” there will be food and drink provided by Cherokee’s Black Bear Bakery. The show will be viewable through December 31.
