I played drums with both of the bands on the poster above. I made this poster for a gig at Scorgie’s. I’m not sure how it works today but in the early eighties bands were given the door and if the club owner didn’t make enough over the bar you were not asked back to play. So bands made posters, had them copied or printed, and then plastered them all over town. You had to watch out for cops and it was sort of a nasty job, wrestling with tape in the freezing cold, but a good poster paid off.
It wasn’t always like that. When New Math started playing in the late seventies we were booked through management companies. I remember someone named Jim Armstrong who got us into the Orange Monkey and the Penny Arcade and some gig at a college. There was someone named Howie who booked us into a club on the river. He went on to manage Poison in LA. Somehow we got into the Electric Circus and Big Daddy’s. But the music scene was changing. And so were the clubs. Everything, even the song writing, was DIY.
I wish I had a copy of every poster I made in those days. I tried to keep a copy of each. The Hi-Techs came together at the very end of the seventies and we broke up in the middle of 1981 so it was a short ride. Three of us went on to form Personal Effects and we played gigs from ’81 to ’86 before falling apart and then getting back together for the Planetarium gigs and a few reunions. We took cell phone shots of the posters we have and Bob sent us scans of the ones he has.
Here are links to the Hi-Techs posters and Personal Effects posters.
Personal Effects – “Nothing Lasts Forever”
I’m the guy on the right…
Looking at these posters I’m struck by how frequently we played in ‘81….
I had no idea that there were so many Personal Effects posters. And were you the artist on all of them? Amazing, I saw one or two that looked familiar, but the rest… posters=gigs=audiences… you guys where busy.
Fantastic! Forgot how many times I spun records @ PE gigs. Was too late on the scene for the Hi-Techs. yes, there was a phenomenal amount of great PE posters… I think the photonovela poster was one of my favorites, plus the one Chris Shepp made (the airplanes, amirite?). I remember one of the earliest PE gigs was @ Red Creek with Mike Holm on guitar. The band had a Gang of Four feel to it back then. Of course, when Bernie & Bob joined, that’s when the band really found its footing.
Glad to see my previous comment made it… upon further reflection, loved seeing how many times I DJ’d at PE gigs, and super happy to see the poster for the one time Invisible Party opened for PE amongst the many varied bands that you had as openers. Seeing Candi Clarke’s name on the poster reminded me of the many times I hung out with her and her radio pals Orest Hrywnak and Jim “Iceman” Eiseman at Scorgies, always upstairs. Orest passed away in 2016, Jim this past Christmas. Not sure what happened to Candi…