(San Diego expat Dawn Hill Waxon shares highlights from her flyer archive.)
Like most alternative and underground music fans in San Diego in the early-mid 1980s, I collected hundreds of flyers for shows and clubs from record stores like Chula Vista’s Licorice Pizza where Bart Mendoza of Manual Scan worked, so there were always Man Scan show flyers available.
Many show goers from the day will recall having flyers practically jammed into their hands after hours outside venues like the Adams Avenue Theater, promoting shows by Tim Maze, Luis Guerena, Mad Marc Rude’s Dead or Alive, et al. Some featured simple, primitive sketches or collage work; others showcased the fine artistic talents of Mad Marc Rude and LEE (“Testicle Head”).
One could look around and see the fate of the young, fresh flyers: Some were discarded immediately, loosely let go to momentarily ride the air current before coming in for a gentle landing on the sidewalk only to receive a stomping from the few loitering combat boots. Others were perused with intent interest, mental notes made on the time, place, and date of the next gathering of musical madness before they were shoved into the back pockets of jeans, inside painted and studded leather jackets, or neatly folded over and carried away.
I know many of you who received these flyers did the same as I: got them home as intact as possible and tacked or taped them up on the walls of your abode. I know that many of you, like me, also saved them all these years, sometimes lovingly rifling through them, wondering if you should just throw these childish things away, but continually deciding not to, as the realization set in that these artifacts are an important part of a musical timeline, much like the psychedelic concert posters of the 1960s, the rock-‘n’-roll tour posters of the 1950s, and the big-band promotional posters of the 1940s. Like those that came before them, these flyers were the communication network of the underground.
Before 91X switched from a “classic” to an “alternative” format, show flyers would be handed out, music fans would recognize each other on the street, and they would stop and talk about the last show — “Were you there? I didn’t see you” — and the upcoming show — “Are you going? Did you get a flyer?”
These exchanges and the recognition they represent showcase the intimacy that was felt among us in the day. The flyers featured bands we knew the members of, art by people who were friends or that were well-known and recognized in the “scene,” promoters that had faces to go with the names, and venues that became homes away from home.
It’s obvious that for some of us, this somewhat familial intimacy was our panacea for whatever dysfunction we were escaping, and, like proper family, we continue to return to those we loved no matter how far apart we became. Consider the flyers the family portraits.
— Dawn Hill Waxon
More flyers, more fun!
- Flyers from the Mendoza Collection
- A decade of Hair Theatre from the Allen Collection
- Mid-’80s flyers from the Bill Starling Collection
- Punk flyer blow out from the Seibert Collection
- Mod flyer fun from the Fugate Collection
- The Tell-Tale Hearts (and more) in flyers
- The Morlocks in flyers
- The Gravedigger V in flyers
- Saving Bobby Lane
- New flyers! New fun!
- Join the blogroll … And bring your flyers
- Here come the flyers!