Latest news with #musicposters
ABC News
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Music ephemera a rare glimpse into Tasmania's underground culture
Music posters and handbills spanning 30 years of live performance in Hobart have been donated to Libraries Tasmania. They offer a rare glimpse into underground music culture in Tasmania from the 1990s onwards, focusing on when bands largely relied on street advertising rather than the internet to promote shows. Acting heritage librarian Alex Tassell said memorabilia, such as music posters, band T-shirts and DIY music releases, was "really valuable" because it was ephemeral and often not kept for preservation purposes. Musician and library worker Julian Teakle donated the posters. He said they held huge sentimental value, but public access to documentation of Hobart's underground music scene was important. Mr Teakle can recall looking for expired local music advertisements when doing poster runs, starting in the 1990s, for his own bands and gigs he had organised. As he put posters up, he would take down expired local music posters for keeping. "I put a lot of hard work into this gig." He accumulated more than 150 items, some gathered on the streets of Hobart and others given to him by friends. Mr Teakle shared the advertisements on social media, on his page Goulburn Street Archive, but after decades of collecting, he questioned what to do with the physical posters and handbills. The items are now rare because they were not made to last. "I didn't want it to stay in my garage and get gradually damaged … I didn't want the silverfish to get them," Mr Teakle said. To ensure free access for current and future generations, he donated the collection to Libraries Tasmania. He said preservation of the posters was important to understanding street culture and life in Hobart. His donation to the library is now called the Teakle Poster Collection. "History isn't all about the big things, it's about what people were doing on a day-to-day basis." Mr Teakle said "All that is represented by some of these gigs is the poster, there's no other documentation. It is more than music documented on the posters and handbills Mr Teakle collected. Many of the venues where performances took place have ceased to exist. Venues such as Round Midnight, the Doghouse, which later became the Goulburn Hotel, and the Brisbane Hotel appear in the collection. Mr Tassel, who played in bands in Hobart, can remember sticky floors, stale beer and local characters in venues. He said people could respond quite emotionally to seeing library collection items that evoked memories. "I know so many people who were around this sort of music, who are really excited to see this sort of stuff," Mr Tassel said. The collection also preserves the work of local artists. Illustrations by internationally successful Tasmanian cartoonist Simon Hanselmann are on several posters. In 2022, his cartoon series Megg, Mogg and Owl had its animated debut on streaming service Hulu, featuring the voice of actor Macauley Culkin. Hanselmann's early designs are reminiscent of his current style. Not all posters and handbills in the collection feature the work of known artists; many are made with creative use of a photocopier and marker pens. "There's great variety," Mr Tassell said. "It's really the DIY thing of people [making] their own posters." The musicians and artists who created the posters and handbills now held by Libraries Tasmania likely never imagined they would be enclosed in archival-grade sleeves and made available for public access decades later. The memorabilia is part of a growing collection of cultural ephemera kept by the library. Band T-shirts, restaurant menus and stage show posters can also be found. Mr Tassell was particularly interested in donations that documented Tasmania's underground music scene. "I'm always happy to look and chat about things people may have and if there's a place for it in our collection," Mr Tassell said. Mr Teakle continues to find posters and handbills stashed away at home that he is donating to Libraries Tasmania. "There's a huge sentimental value, I look at these posters and they're pivotal moments of my life," Mr Teakle said. "But I know that as this is a public collection, I can access them at any time."
CBC
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Young musicians are embracing the art of punk rock posters
The telephone poles scattered across downtown St. John's make up a museum of the city's musical past. Every layer of paper posters reveals another month, another handful of local bands. The young punk rock scene is keeping the do-it-yourself tradition alive— at a time when artificial intelligence can produce a graphic with a simple prompt. Caleb Butt is one of the artists going back to the subculture's roots. "I like to help out in any way in the music scene because I love it so much here," he said, sitting on a Bannerman Park bench. "One of those ways is making posters, which I've recently gotten into," said Butt. He started by making posters to advertise shows his band, Twin Rinks, is playing. Butt likes to experiment with collages anyway, so he decided to bring the medium to a wider audience. "It's one of the things I'm really passionate about," he said. It's easy to use the internet for marketing, says Butt, but alternative music is about pushing back against the norm. Young people are more drawn to physical media these days, he said. It's easier to look back to musical memories that way. "It doesn't get, like, lost in all the content people have been putting out," he added. Stephen Chislett of Paradise appreciates the work. A drummer for hardcore bands himself, Chislett digitally archives posters from shows he's been to. "There's always a source of pride whenever you kind of see your band's name on a poster," he told CBC over the phone on Thursday. "I think that people who take the time to actually, you know, design and make a nice looking poster to reflect what kind of music is going to be played, I think that matters a lot," said Chislett. The drummer's favourite posters are the ones where the artist evidently had fun creating it, where the pen scratches and marker lines are visible. Chislett says it is important to use social media as a marketing tool, but it's more fun when musicians leave a trace around town. "I really do like to see [posters] being printed out and kind of taped around poles around town," he said. "I'll see old ones from months ago that are still up and maybe there was one that I went to, and I get to think back fondly on that show." The medium is oftentimes an opportunity for people to flex their creative muscles, even just starting out. That was the case for Mike Feehan, a St. John's illustrator known for his artwork in Star Trek comic books and the award-winning Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles. But it all started over a decade ago in his DIY days. "I remember one of the first shows I went to, someone said to other people that I could draw," Feehan said. "Someone gave me a Sharpie and people started asking me to draw pictures on their arms and things like that." "I kind of made a name for myself as the kid who drew," he said. That kid who drew used posters as a way to evolve his style while helping out his friends who were in bands at the time. Then he started doing work for touring bands, and it spiralled from there. Some of Feehan's favourite designs included a surfing mummy, and another one with a giant robot hanging out with punks in a junkyard. "[A good poster has] things that'll grab people's attention, especially when they're walking down the street," he said. Feehan is happy to see that people are still drawing and designing posters by hand, saying that's what it's all about. "I just think that art and punk rock and hardcore, really go hand in hand," said Feehan. "It's not something to be dismissed," he said. "It's definitely something that should be embraced."
