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MAJOR MINOR: Band fliers, string band
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BY JOHN PETRIC
Band fliers: an art form in their own right
Well, my fellow Midwest cosmopolitans, time for another review of the most pressing issue in Columbus: the recent state of our local music fliers.
Yes, it’s another one of those columns. I know, I know, I’m lamer than a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise left out overnight for a week. Truth be told, I love mayonnaise, so there. It goes great with everything, including Wheat Thins, the breakfast of champions.
This time around, it was a three-way tie for first place—two involving comic-book heroes and the third just plain ol’ clever as hell.
Bourbon Street’s flier for a recent comic swap featured a sort of Aztec android-type character (from an existing comic?) emphatically announcing the event. And drink specials. Very cool.
Another announcement, of a Dick’s Den gig by the jazz outfit Ultimate Superheroes, was really well done, with Superman’s cape stretching out and Spider-Man reaching down to the bottom of the flier. Most effective, yes, indeedy.
But probably the most clever flier I’ve seen so far this year was put out by the Ohio State Department of Dance and advertised a documentary film, Thinking on Their Feet: Women of the Tap, with the title conforming to the soles of the shoes between the metal taps. Simply brilliant, my dear Chadworth.
OK, so two of the above weren’t strictly about music. So what—wanna fight about it? Other contestants:
The Shouldn’t-Work-Because-Technically-It’s-Too-Cute-But-Works-Great Award goes to the Weezer cover band, the Pinkertones, for a flier on which the band being photographed to look like the “blue” Weezer album cover (love the one guy looking so, well, gerbil-esque). Apparently they drew big at Ravari. Good for them.
The Moops apparently thought removing their band pic would improve their fliers. Gotta love the humility, know what I mean?
Weirdest flier was for Nothin’ Doin’s recent CD-release party, with the strangest picture of a dude or a girl (not sure) with the oddest expression. The message, if you ask me: ”You won’t like us.”
Easy to miss on a Legion of Doom flier for a Fall of Efrafa gig were small fetus bubbles dropping from jet fighter bombers. Gotta look closely for these things.
Trials of Evolution’s band shot on its Billiard Club flier doesn’t suggest the “progressive metal” it professes to play but instead makes the group look like a young band from MTV’s Real World set to indulge its rock-star fantasies.
Hamster Parts (an “electro-funk dance band”) wrote their name like rearranged hamster caca. Not good, people.
And of course the quarterly Zachery Allan Starkey Flier Award for dorkiest flier goes once again to...Zachery Allan Starkey. But, actually, let’s be fair: He gets the Most Improved Dorkiest Flier Award. His usual stark(ey) black-and-white affair, one of the worst frequent fliers to be seen around town, got an improvement as it promoted his new single, “No Texting on the Dance Floor.”
Brilliantly, he has added a graphic this time, namely a hand texting a message on a cell phone. This made it the first Starkey flier in this guy’s memory that was decorated with anything besides his fascinating name.
To improve future fliers even more, I have two ideas for the Putz in Black: a new name and a new graphic.
First, ZAS, your new name is hereby legally changed for fliering purposes to Zarkey, and we will let you do it in all caps as a sop to your black hole of an ego.
Secondly, you are now considered the Fifth Great Lost Beatle, and every flier you make must have your silly mug superimposed next to Ringo’s, and you can pass yourself off as the product of the original Starkey’s last one-night stand in the Midwest.
Congratulations, and you’re welcome!
They weren’t just fiddling around
Dear folks, I have a new favorite bluegrass band in town, and it is the Desperation String Band, which was the cat’s meow, the dog’s bark and the bullfrog’s croak last Thursday at Victorian’s Midnight Café.
I heard Bill Monroe, I heard Stephan Grappelli, I heard the Appalachian holler, and I heard the hippie hoe-down. These cats are good, thanks in no small part to fiddle player Dan Cade, who led on Grappelli’s “Minor Swing” like he was born knowing it. And in tandem with mandolinist Brian Flechsig, I say, David Grisman, look out.
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