(To celebrate Labor Day weekend’s 30-year reunions of the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, longtime graphic artist and Che Underground blog contributor Kristen Tobiason has prepared a striking pair of flyers to feature each night’s lineup. Here’s the story behind the art and a glimpse of the sociology of music flyering.)
It seems like yesterday I was drawing a flyer for the Wallflowers’ first gig with a black Sharpie.
Twenty years later, here I am putting together a poster for the Unknowns, while listening to one of their songs on YouTube.
I still sketch my preliminary ideas on paper, but my medium has evolved, becoming less primitive and infinitely more digitized.
Buy your tickets now for the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, Sept. 2-3!
Some girls love shoes, I love color and typography. I was never patient enough to learn guitar, but drawing came naturally. I loved record albums as a kid, and some of my earliest memories are of studying the covers from my dad’s collection. As a teenager in the San Diego music scene, flyering was a way that I could contribute to the music without having to actually be in a band. When I was 16 I got my first box of rapidograph inking pens, which I had seen Jerry Cornelius use for his illustrations. Jerry’s art was intimidating, but inspiring too. I learned by emulating his style, and used to sit and copy Tennielle’s drawings from “Alice in Wonderland,” or the covers of H.P. Lovecraft, to learn how to do the crosshatching/shading.
After working for years as a pasteup artist in the printing industry, I went back to college in the late ’90s and got my degree in digital media. I’ve spent the past years designing publications, logos and ads.
But poster art is my passion. Doing music posters doesn’t pay the rent but keeps me connected to the people doing the music I love and is a great way to express my own creativity.
— Kristen Tobiason
San Diego then and now, featuring Kristen Tobiason:
- Then and Now:The Che Cafe
- Then and Now: San Diego!
- Then and Now: Ideas as my maps
- Then and Now: Graveyard Park
- Then and Now: New Year’s resolutions
- Then and Now: Saigon Palace
- Then and Now: the Chicken Pie Shop
- Then and Now: Off the Record
- Then and Now: Rock Palace
- Then and Now: The Ken Cinema
- Then and Now: Adams Avenue Theater
- Then and Now: Topsy’s
- Then and Now: Greenwich Village West
- Then and Now: Funland
- Then and Now: Studio 517
- Then and Now: La Posta
- Then and Now: Presidio Park
- Then and Now: El Cajon Blvd. Denny’s
Kristen is one of the shining lights to come out of the san diego music scene, It’s never just the music is it ? As with preformance art, by it’s very definition, can not exist with out an audience. A musical happening always, when good, is informed by the artists, poets, visionary thinkers and maniacal personalitys that fill those little smoke filled rooms where the culmination of all these things turns into music. this kool inventive lady added then as now, a free thinking creative spark of fun beauty to everything she touches. thank you
it SHOULD pay the rent. how does grealish do it? i love your work, mama.
Peter,
Great to see your posting here. I think that that time in 82-83 resulted in a lot of people having the time of their lives. I wouldn’t lose much sleep over the regrets, about you having yours, too. 🙂
C’mon! You managed to get people to watch “To Sir, With Love” in a nightclub!
Kristen,
Beautiful stuff. The Gibson with a Bigsby on the Crawdaddys poster is amazing. You capture the exact mood with the band name typography on each of these, too…
Jerry,
If you email me your address I will have a poster sent to you.
Thank you for your feedback. I remember you had a real talent for hand-lettering. I hope you have fontographer and have registered one of your cool typefaces! Nothing more enjoyable than listening to music while making art.
The Crawdaddys Live at The King’s Road
I just found this footage of the Crawdaddys playing at the IBlend/King’s Road Cafe at one of Keith and Peter’s “Afterschool Special” shows in 1982:
I won’t stop tryin’, ’till I create disturbance in your mind!
For anybody that wasn’t there, that was exactly what it looked like. Pretty freaking amazing, eh Jerry? I guess together we all (and I mean everybody that was there) created a real time warp. Cool Miracles tune! Great drum sound! Great Ron Silva impression! Where were you the other day, Jerry?
Keith,
Ahh. I wished to be there. I’m afraid that any elective travel is going to be out of my reach, for some time. I’d just ended a 4-day conference out-of-town before the weekend. There’s more where that came from, too.
I’m really a dad, a husband and more -- before I am a “Modfather”… 🙂
My dearest wishes and fondest thoughts are with all of you who played and listened for these reunion shows. Worthy tokens of appreciation are hard to pass along through bits on the network. I hope that this bit, which I found today, will put the dip-in-your-hip and the glide-in-your-stride. Put on your biggest grins, people.
This fo’ YOU!
And this goes to Fleminger, Doyle, Suarez and Zadarnowski. Hell. It goes out to Castillo and Rothenberg, and Lucas, too.
This is the isolated bass track (with much leakage from drums & sax) from the original Motown master tape, featuring the legendary bassist James Jamerson with The Four Tops.
Oh, and Paul Howland, Tom Ward and that awesome kid from The Nephews and Mike Stax.
Hope none of the EADG crowd were left out…