And here are my photos from that show, which aren’t all that great, but I didn’t feel like fighting my way through the B.O., stale weed stench and crusty neck beard funk to the front for a prime photography foothold…

And on a related side note, check out this jaw-droppingly dope New Zealand / Australia / Japan tour poster Aaron Horkey did for ISIS:

A stencil promoting the International Day of Climate Justice. Apparently “climate justice” doesn’t include the use of aerosol cans in a street-level marketing effort.

A really nicely constructed set, it features a great coffee table quality book by Paul Drummond (the guy who wrote the official band biography) full of album info, amazing images of the band, their releases, show posters and handbills, etc. All 10 discs are inside the book, which is accompanied by an envelope full of stickers and reproductions of handbills and posters from the Austin, TX group’s heyday.

As I opened the set I noticed — but failed to mention in the video — the reference to “phonographic records” on the back of the box, and it set me to thinking that the only thing that could have made this set cooler would have been the inclusion of some vinyl. I understand that pressing all 10 discs on to 180 gram vinyl would have been cost-prohibitive, but reproductions of a few of the old 45s would have been nice, and I definitely would have paid a few extra bucks for that kind of thing.

All nitpicking and vinyl fetishism aside, I’m still extremely stoked on this…

Anyway, Bawno mentioned on Twitter not long ago that he was planning to bring back the print edition of Ego Trip, which would be dope. In addition to a unique and intelligently irreverent editorial voice, the magazine always boasted really interesting and artistic yet functional design, right down to the house ads. And they were damn good house ads — simple, eye catching, culturally relevant, whip smart.

Unlike most magazines’ house ads, which are basically just boring subscription pitches featuring a couple of past magazine covers, a rate discount and (maybe) some slick or catchy marketing copy, Ego Trip‘s were brand defining without actually making a sales pitch, and were more impactful than just about any house ad campaign I’ve seen since. What these house ads lacked in directly measurable ROI potential (no call-to-action message tied to user revenue), they more than made up for in memorable brand recognition. I’m not going to remember a subscription pitch I get from, say, Maxim — just another generic sweaty hot chick in a biki, offering me 70% off the regular newsstand rate of a magazine I couldn’t care less about — but I sure as hell remember most of Ego Trip‘s house ads, 11 years after the magazine folded (the one featuring the image of Reggie Jackson walking off the field for the last time, tipping his cap to the crowd, under the caption “Bow down to a player that’s greater than you.” has always been my favorite).

The last issue of Ego Trip (cover above) was full of house ads, and reading of Bawno’s intention to reanimate the magazine got me thinking about them, so I dug that issue out of my own little magazine archive and did some scanning. The ads themselves are a bit grainy (note the difference in resolution quality of the copy over the images) and my scanner is a few years old, and not of the highest quality, so…it is what it is. With the exception of the “The ghetto’s trying to kill us.” and “We get lifted.” ads, these are all full-page or two-page ads. They’re all pretty brilliant…

(Note the prophetic statement under the space walking monkey: “Publishing is Dead.” This was ’98, these guys were way ahead of the game.)

*The Ego Trip cover and all the house ads from that issue that appear here are the property of Ego Trip. I scanned and posted them simply to illustrate the blog entry, and because I really like them, and I’ll happily remove these images if Ted Bawno and/or Sacha Jenkins asks me to.

Which is why I’m really stoked on the new Doug Pray film Art & Copy. Pray is the man behind two of my favorite music documentaries, Hype! and Scratch, both stellar works well worth the space in your Netflix queue. Art & Copy looks like it’s going to be no less great, perhaps even moreso. Peep game…

Thanks to Rob G. for the linkage.

Don Ed Hardy
Victory
2008
acrylic, ink on paper mounted on board
10 5/8 x 9 1/2 inches

I just recently learned about an art show featuring new work from tattoo legend and accomplished fine artist Don Ed Hardy. He’s got a duo show up with some guy named Ron Nagle, but it’s only up through the end of today, Saturday January 10. I haven’t been able to get my shit together to check it out, and I won’t within the next 12 hours. Bummer.

I’ve been a fan of Hardy since just before I started getting tattooed (at the ripe old age of 26). And not just his tattoo work — which is phenomenal, no doubt — but also of the other styles he employs in various media, from etching prints to painting. Through a fortunate set of circumstances that have nothing to do with me personally, I have a couple of original Hardy lithograph prints from the mid-1960s, and they’re prized among my meager art collection. One, a small, unsigned self-portrat of the artist in a floppy hat and glasses, is actually in his book, Tattooing The Invisible Man; the other is a signed and dated print of a pot with a feathers in it (pictured, “Feather Bouquet,” May 1964), a Hardy piece that I’ve never seen anywhere else. A veteran tattooer I know once offered me a hefty sum of loot for both prints, but because they’re sort of family heirlooms, I can’t see getting rid of ‘em at any price.

As far as I’m concerned, Don Ed Hardy’s down-by-law credentials as a fine artist make up for the ubiquitous and super gaudy Christian Audigier-partnered clothing brand that bears Hardy’s name. My friend Serg said it was the fashion equivalent of Three 6 Mafia doing a song with Linkin Park (Hardy being Three 6, and Audigier being Linkin Park, in case you were wondering), and I couldn’t agree more.

At any rate, you should go see this before the Rena Bransten Gallery in SF closes tomorrow, and let me know how it is. I can’t make it, got other plans.

I like to take photos of stencils. I’m not a stencil artist or a graffiti writer, and I’m not interested in any so called quality-of-life arguments, but it suffices to say that I enjoy the “vandal arts,” I’m fascinated by it, and I’m a fan. I really started seeing lots of sidewalk stencils when I moved to the Bay. So I take photos of it.

I snapped this at the Market & Spear St. entrance to te BART station in SF last week. I’m not sure what the point is — if there are two things I’m pretty sure Barak Obama is not, it’s a terrorist and a Marxist.

One reason it’s taken so long is because I let it go for a while once all the black line and shading work (three sessions) was done. The other reason is that the artist who’s been doing the piece, Henry Lewis of Skull and Sword Tattoo, is an in-demand tattooer, and it’s tough to get an appointment with any immediacy, so when I did decide to dig back in and finish the piece, I had to get into his queue for a few months before I could get back under the needle. From that point, we put in another three sessions within the last three months to complete Phase 1: the main character with the immediate background (what you see here).

As I see it — and as proven by the finished product, I think — a waiting list is proof positive of Henry’s skills, and I don’t mind waiting a little longer to make sure that something that’s inked in to me for the rest of my life is of the utmost quality. And it is. Henry is a deeply respected player in the tattoo game — as are the other artists at Skull and Sword: Grime, Yutara and Norm — and I’d gladly wait just about any length of time for an appointment.

The piece is a rendition of the Buddhist deity Mahakala. You can read about it here and here. I’m not particularly interested in explaining why I chose Mahakala or what that iconography means to me personally — because it’s not really any of your business — but it suffices to say that I’m extremely happy with the work that Henry’s done so far, and I’m looking forward to Phase 2: the inside of the arm, the deep background.