Maximum Plunder

By Mike King
Edited by Shawna Gore and Paul Herring

All text and artwork, unless otherwise attributed, 2014 by Mike King.
Contact:
info@maximumplunder.com
www.maximumplunder.com
PAGE 5 MAXIMUM PLUNDER
CONTENTS
Needs Must When the Devil Drives
Foreword by Sean Tejaratchi Page 6
Why I Steal
Introduction by Mike King Page 8
Jungle Nausea
When You Play in a Band, Someone Has to Make the Poster Page 11
A Bad Design Will Kill the Best of Lettering
The Crash Design story Page XX
Big and Dumb
The golden age of stupid Page XX
8-Way Santa
Influence and misattribution Page XX
Jesus Lizard vs. Pink Martini
High brow vs. low brow Page XX
How the Sausage is Made
Process, paste up, panic Page XX
Burgerville, USA
Portland and why Page XX
Index
First, some history and context.
Mike was already making posters in 1989, when I met him in
Eugene, Oregon, not long after I graduated high school. Hed
been making a music and art zine called Snipehunt for years,
and hed come down from Portland to talk about turning it
over to his friend, my girlfriend at the time. When she moved
to Portland not long after that, I followed.
In the late 80s, Mike had started Crash Design with fellow
Portlander Steve Birch. Crash was intended to focus partly on
music packaging and partly on what the pair had already been
doing informally: posters and ads for local shows and
promoters, including Monqui Presents. Monqui partners Chris
Monlux and Mike Quinn promoted shows mainly in Portland
and Seattle, but since they were involved in tours that reached
100 miles south to Eugene, posters from Crash would appear
on local phone poles and bulletin boards during my high school
years. Without knowing anything about the creators, the
graphic designer in me had noticed and saved posters done by
Mike and Steve.
In 1990, around the time I moved to Portland, Steve Birch left
Crash to pursue his passions, music and cat breeding. I would
regularly come to Crashs downtown office to work on
Snipehunt using Mikes copier and light table. I worked at
Kinkos at the time, and had learned enough of the early
Macintosh to occasionally help Mike with typesetting on his
own projects. Now things moved quickly: In 1992, Mike was
hired to art direct a newsweekly called PDXS. He asked me to
help as his assistant. The publisher of PDXS, who had
somehow started living in a small room within the Crash
office, fell in love with my housemate at the time. The
publisher took my place in the house, and I moved into that
small room in Crash. Not long after I moved in, Mike asked me
to join Crash, working on ads and posters.
Crash was, and remains, an important part of the Pacific
Northwests low-budget world of rock and roll. The term
low-budget is not meant to be disparaging. Im using it to
distinguish this kind of design from the high-priced design
culture that accompanies millionaire musicians who fill
stadiums. Designers at the high-end level always seem to
have deep reasons for every design choice and far more time
to plan and conceptualize. Low-budget design is where the
excitement happens, and the gratification is much more
immediate. Its where your favorite musicians get their start,
moving from this terrible band to that slightly better band
long before theyre famous.
In the low-budget world of rock and roll, design is
spontaneous and fluid, and sometimes frantic. Time is never on
your side. Imagine a big hill. Poster and ad designers
reside near the bottom. At the top of the hill are the bands,
frequently comprised of some of the least punctual, most self-
absorbed people on the planet. Below the bands are the man-
agers, various enablers, then promoters, then club
bookers. Further down are usually a few other
advertising/salesmen types. Below them, at last, the poster and
ad designers. (At the very bottom of the hill are the doomed
souls in newsweekly art departments and print shops.)
Each mistake and delay on this hill rolls downward,
snowballing, becoming the increasingly urgent problem of
the people below. By the time it reaches the designer, there
may be only a few hours left to turn the job around. You can
get a head start with the material you have ahead of time,
plugging in the late stuff when it arrives, but you can only get
so far designing around unknown layout requirements. Youre
constantly faced with impatient clients who gave you 3/4 of
a car and are wondering why the hell youre not 3/4 of the
way to Vegas by now.
Money is always in short supply, too. During my years with
Crash, payment for a poster couldnt even begin to
commission original artwork, or buy usage rights to quality
photos, or pay for special inks and other fancy printing
methods. The client wanted things legible and striking enough
to be noticed. Fees were always minimal and set ahead of time.
Whatever extra work and care we personally wanted to add was
probably welcome, but our only additional payment would have
been the inedible, non-transferable warmth of a job well done.
Competition is one more unavoidable reality. You might
design historys most beautifully elegant detergent box, but its
still not going to sell when sold alongside its dazzling
fluorescent competitors. Its even tougher with posters. A street
poster not only has to stand out from competing
designs, it has to be distinct from other posters youve made.
No club or band wants a fantastic poster that looks exactly like
the fantastic poster you did for a competing show down the
block. This is a big reason why its rarely practical to
consistently illustrate your own posters, no matter how fast you
can draw them. Its also why minimalist design, however striking
in a tasteful frame, is not a useful or popular style in street-level
poster design. The first minimal poster stands out really well,
the second not so well, and the third gets mistaken for the
second or first. Mikes earlier, pre-silkscreen posters were not
made for museums or gallery walls. They were literally designed
to be indifferently stapled over previous advertisements on
cluttered phone poles. In that visual chaos, survival of the fittest
applies, and strong design maintains an edge. Bold, mutating
weirdness turns out to be a happy solution for both the working
artist and the potential concertgoer.
Which brings me to appropriation. Swiping, sampling, re-use,
appropriation Whatever you want to call it, for those always
low on time and money, pop culture is a time-honored source
of inspiration and a reservoir of fast, familiar imagery. Pop
culture is easy to alter. Mainstream advertising does the
expensive work of familiarizing these images, allowing the
poster artist to grab a viewers attention by twisting a familiar
image into wrongness. Culturally recognizable images can
also add layers of connotation and sly references that wink
at the audience. Most posters in this book are built
around a swiped style or existing commercial illustration.
Advertisements, vintage art, and altered celebrities are
everywhere in Mikes work, as theyre in the work of just about
every poster artist who doesnt have the luxury of deep
pockets and generous deadlines. For designers in the
low-budget world of rock and roll, the visual noise and clutter
of pop culture is the gasoline that fuels the engines.
NEEDS MUST WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES
FOREWORD BY SEAN TEJARATCHI
Mike had been dealing with these practical constraints for
years before we met, turning them to his advantage, using the
majestic Canon NP9030 digital photocopier (an early digital
copier that amazingly made halftones and positive/negative
reversals) as a creative tool. Faced with deadlines and the
never-ending need to make something from next-to-nothing,
I figure his brain got a constant creative workout, becoming
more flexible and efficient, heading down fewer dead-ends,
seeing more possibilities within given limits.
Why all this background? Primarily to let you know Im a
tough, rough-and-ready, street-smart designer who definitely
is not a total poseur or soft-palmed little pussyboy who still
occasionally wets the bed on weekends. Secondly, Im saying
I believe that Mikes style, sensibility, and methods are a
natural outcome of working very hard for years in a field
where intense creativity coexists with the cold, hard realities
of making a living. I think lack of time, money and other
resources are the reason behind Mikes consistent embrace
and exploitation of lucky accidents, and why his posters are
chaotic, off-kilter, full of layers and motion. I think this is why
you can see his design strategies and styles come and go,
appearing out of the blue, evolving for a while, then being left
behind as new experiments are tried.
I know very well that deadlines and money and making a buck
arent as glamorous as design theory and postmodernism.
Someone else can write about the conceptual side and
subtexts of Mikes art, and Im sure they will. Ive always been
more interested in how artists work around, with, and against the
demands of real life. Knowing that 30 years worth of great art
was the result of needing to make a living is much closer to what
might inspire me as a young designer. Knowing the
designs in this book were the result of someone making the most
of what they had would have been a relief and a revelation.
Seeing what Mike was making out of limited resources DID
inspire me as a young designer, in fact. His early posters were
the first pieces of graphic design it ever occurred to me to
intentionally save. Im still very proud he asked me to work at
Crash, and its very easy to draw a line from the floor-to-
ceiling collages of the Crash walls to the dense layouts on Crap
Hounds pages. The idea for Crap Hound came to me while
pacing in the Crash office. Originally meant as a resource for
those who worked in the low-budget world of rock and roll,
the very first issue was subtitled An Encyclopedia of Clip Art,
and it featured Mikes artwork on the cover.
Mike King has made a hell of a lot out of 30 years of creativity.
Heres to 100 more!*
Sean Tejaratchi
Los Angeles, California
*I read a LOT of stuff online and Im pretty sure were about to see great leaps
made towards the artificial extension of the human lifespan. I have no problem
imagining Mike at a party celebrating the 100th anniversary of this books
publication! The crowd will cheer as hes wheeled out, one dry, red-rimmed blue
eye peering appreciatively at the familiar faces gathered to honor him. Maybe
theyll be astonished that a body so decrepit can still support life. Theyll be
repulsed, yes, but also fascinated at the ravages of time and the cruelty of
science. Mike will manage a smile and then cough up something that looks like
dust and everyone will tense up for a moment, but then the cheering will
resume and his horrid multi-purpose metallic cutting hand will whirr to life and
slowly reach out to cut the cake.
Top
Screaming Trees
WOW Hall - Eugene OR
1991
Bottom left
The Muffs
Roseland Theater - Portland OR
1998
Bottom right
Cover of Crap Hound
1994
WHY I STEAL
INTRODUCTION BY MIKE KING
The first time I made a poster for a rock show I had no idea I
was going to grow up to be a poster artist. The hundredth
time I made a poster for a rock show, I still had no idea where
it might lead. Now, thirty-something years later, I have been
at this so long it appears I might have become an artist
somewhere along the way. Then again, the argument could
be made that I am just an astute arranger of things.
All of my work, whether it looks like it or not, is a visual
counterpoint to punk rockthe music and the spirit that
inspired me to create posters in the first place. It was 1978 and
I was 18. I wanted to do things the way punks didcut things
up, tear them apart, and paste them back together.
This approach to art involves the appropriating of images
from a variety of sourcestaking the bits I like from books,
magazines, the Internet, pictures from my phone, or anything
else that strikes meand remaking them with other
elements. Sometimes I combine images I draw with images I
have found, other times I redraw things from source material,
and occasionally, if I cant find the pictures I need, I draw them
from scratch. This is the unwieldly process I use to cobble
together something that matches the picture I see in my head.
Or if Im not lucky enough to have that picture, I might at least
recognize the image as something Ive been looking for.
Like early artists that made paint from minerals, clay from dirt,
or paint brushes from animal hair to create the pictures of their
world, whether real or imagined, I feel fully justified in making
use of the images we are surrounded with. This is my clay. Am
I a thief or a pirate? Certainly not; I am simply making use of
materials that are most readily available. Still, there is an
element of plunder involved, and I like thinking of it that way.
Making posters to advertise rock and roll shows wasnt
supposed to produce works of real art, anyway, or so I
thought when I first started doing it. These works are meant
to be seen on telephone poles and viewed from car windows,
not viewed in galleries. It is the art of the Xerox machine, the
scanner, glue stick, old magazines, Photoshop, the Internet
and shelves of dusty books. Despite the fact that I often labor
over my work far too much, it is supposed to be made fast
and consumed fast. It was never meant to last.
But at one point I found myself twenty years into this
temporary thing, then twenty-five, and now its more than
thirty years that I have been making art thats more about
advertising than art. And a little more than ten years ago, I
decided I wanted to make a book about my poster art
because Im a little old-fashioned, and making books is an
old-fashioned way of appearing legitimate. At the time I had
some ideas for the book that were sort of clever, and I am
happy now to be making this version of the book, which is
quite different. Ten years ago I would have tried to make an
art book; this is an art and history book.
It may be strange that a person with my sensibilities is trying
to make some sort of history book because I am someone
who hates nostalgia. I do, however, appreciate sentimentality,
though Im a little vague on where one ends and the other
begins. For whatever reason, I have been reluctant in my life
as an artist to reflect very much on any aspect of my work.
But Ive been at this long enough and have produced so much
that other people are now looking back where I have not;
eventually a few of them convinced me that this book was
worth doingnot only to show off some of the thousands of
posters Ive spent most of my life piecing together in my
studio, but also to consider some questions about what I do.
Like why does someone decide to forego making satisfying
money for the ability to make satisfying work. And perhaps
how art can be work. And how work might be art.
I cant promise this book will answer those questions directly,
but its all in here in one way or anotherwho I am as an artist,
what inspires me, how I work, and a good look at the final
products of my art making, of which there are now
thousands. There is some speculation that I might be the most
prolific rock poster artist in the U.S. I dont know for certain if
thats true, but with many thousand posters under my belt, I
believe Im at least in the running.
And while I think it would be cool to see a massive assembly
of my better work (if not all of it), collecting enough of the
original pieces to make a book like that would be virtually
impossible. I dont have anything close to a complete archive
of my work, and the impossible-to-find element of tracking
down such old examples of advertising ephemera is exactly
what makes hunting for them so much fun for the people who
collect these posters. I was finally able to put this book
together with help from too many friends, collectors, and
former colleagues to name all of them here. But with that
help, posters were located in collectors portfolios, pulled out
of promoters filing cabinets, borrowed from historic venues,
photographed where they were displayed in fancy frames,
and in a few cases at least, rescued from certain destruction.
Whether youre reading this as a poster collector or a music
fan; a Portlander or a curious outsider; a designer or an
advertising enthusiast, I hope you enjoy this book about my
not-quite-accidental career as an artist. I am glad I was able
to stop time for a few moments and collect enough of this
stuff to make this thing. My career, or whatever youd like to
call it, was also never meant to last. But somehow, just like the
artwork in this book, it has.
Mike King
Portland, Oregon
Opposite
Punks Last Stand
New Arts Center - Portland OR
1979
Above
Keep Portland Weird
La Gaite Lyrique - Paris, France
2012
JUNGLE NAUSEA
WHEN YOU PLAY IN A BAND SOMEONE HAS TO MAKE THE POSTER
Just as punk rock threw out the rules (some would say lowered the
bar) as to who would be allowed play in a band and what would
be considered music, it also gave would-be designers
permission to ignore the rules and just make stuff. Instead of spend-
ing your free time trying to master an instrument, you could be in
a band and just play. Instead of countless days of doodling away
for your own amusement, you could produce posters for shows,
T-shirts, stickers, zinesall the stuff that made a band. When I
began playing in bands, I was finally doing something, making
something, and my life had at least a tiny crumb of purpose.
From the late 1970s and until 1990 I played in well over a dozen
punk/post-punk/noise/experimental bands in Portland.
Many of these groups played in front of a few people and broke
up almost right away, unseen, unheard and completely forgotten,
but a few of the groups played a few more shows, lasted a little
longer, and some even made a few recordings. Those were The
Fix, Jungle Nausea, Spike, and the Hell Cows.
We were used to the rogue rumbling river bottom hard rock and
punk of Rats, Wipers, Sado-Nation, Napalm Beach, the aesthetical
turbine chime of Pell Mell, the impelling clamor of Neo Boys.
Jungle Nausea were not at all like any of these templates, nor
would you find their metal ribcage tailings in the slag heap outside
the rendering plant (a la A Rancid Vat). Jungle Nausea went far
beyond audio mechanisms severe and uptight. Their clinical
clatter unnerved (like, what kind of pharmaceuticals are they
advocating?). Lyrically they projected from an austere command
post with a prescription to get up, get dressed, get depressed.
No lyric sheet, no personnel information, no recording dates
figure it out for yourself. Or just give yourself an autopsy.
Calvin Johnson
The Fix was solid regardless. The band was a disciplined effort to
say something serious and still sound good. Many of the themes
were simplistic, but with patience, luck and a modicum of
intellectual honesty they would have matured. And they had all
realized that sloppiness was no longer a value in itself; it didnt
prove you were authentic and alternative, it just proved you
werent very good. The Neo Boys had raised the bar, and 1979 saw
1978s amateurs making a real effort to subdue their instruments
and stay tight. The Fix was the best example.
Mark Sten
History of Portland Punk Rock
The legendary EP by Portland, Oregon's jittery and addled post-
punk unit Jungle Nausea has been a top dollar collectable for as
long as I can remember, probably having something to do with
their Smegma associations via their appearance on the seminal
Flies Like Holidays compilation LP. The collector hype on this one
proves well deserved though, with skeletal Gang Of Four-ism
angularities beautifully mated to what sounds like the more art
pop moments of art damage merchants like The Polkaholics and
Henry Kaiser's post punk-period outfit Name.
Mutant Sounds
I was also an enormous fan of Mikes insane noise band the Hell
Cows. I can still see Mike sweating and pounding away on his low
drum kit, flipping his long bangs to one side and exaggeratedly
calling out a four count so the rest of of the band could follow him
into the next blast of pandemonium: ONE...bumbumbumbum...
TWO...bumbumbumbum...THREE...bumbumbumbum...FOUR
...bumbumbumbum...KA-BLOOM!
Steven Birch
Above
Jungle Nausea
The Met - Portland OR
1982
Opposite
Hell Cows
Blue Gallery - Portland OR
1990
Spike was a four-piece rock band active in Portland, Oregon, from
1983 to 1985. Their sound was bright, propulsive, and noisy with a
crunch and dynamism that presaged the Pacific Northwest sound
that would become famous just a few years later. Important
influences were the Minute Men, Gang of Four, the Birthday Party,
Einstrzende Neubauten, Rip Rig and Panic, and the freer sounds
of Sun Ra and Captain Beefheart. Spike represented one of many
musical strands issuing from the punk explosion of the late 70s.
Artist Mike King had been singing and drumming in punk and noise
bands locally for years. After the dissolution of experimental noise
outfit Jungle Nausea, he and bassist Tammy Cates recruited local
Jeff Smith to sing, and then art student and recent Australian
transplant Eric Stotik to play guitar. The song structures were
simple and potent, driven by Kings tom-heavy attack and Stotiks
punishing atonal blasts. Smith brought the gravitas. He bashed a
50-gallon oil drum for emphasis as he railed against the Cold War,
vapid consumer culture, and Regan-era, complacency. He
rearranged Billie Holidays Strange Fruit and delivered it onstage
with stunning force. The alienation was no pose; it was an
undeniable reality. Spike was political at a time when it was not
unusual (thank you, D. Boone) or embarrassing to be so. Having a
stance on the big issues had been part of the punk portfolio. This
was protest music; Spike was angry; Spike wanted to make a point.
Tammy Stotik
Noise. Performance art. No wave jazz. Art punk. Call it what you
will, Portland has a seriously strange and powerful history in this
nebulous area that traces back to the Northwest progenitors of
sound science, Smegma, who have been at work off and on for
twenty-odd years. Almost all of the Hell Cows played in Smegma
at one time or another. The lone album, Toothless, was recorded
at Smegma Studios by Mike Lastra in 1988.
The Hell Cows formed in 1986 from the collective ashes of earlier
groups like Spike, Porkycarcas, Carrion Commandos, and FDM. The
first lineup consisted of Mike King on percussion, Jerry Ostrem on
guitar and sax, Eric Stotic on guitar, Carl Annala on bass, and Brian
Koelling on voice (definitely an instrument of destruction). The
sound was a meltdown of free jazz, metal, punk, and primal scream
therapy enclosed by a wall of confusion. Youve heard of the three
Bs in music (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, for you
classical purists)? For the Hell Cows those roles were probably filled
by Black Sabbath, (Captain) Beefheart, and the Birthday Party. Their
daring dash toward the extremes of music took many people with
them, as did their fearless disregard for rock. The Hell Cows were
undoubtedly the first socially acceptable misfit musical act that
many young Portlanders were exposed to. After the departure of
Eric Stotik, a frisky youngster named Sean Croghan (later of
Crackerbash and Jr. High) was eventually taken into the fold. When
vocalist Koelling left (as did his replacement, Firefly Wrecks Mike
Martinez), Annala and Croghan took up the vocal slack.
Even with several lineup changes, the Hell Cows produced a
barrage of singles and compilation tracks. Their album Toothless
(1988, Black Label), by virtue of its density alone, is the place to
start when grappling with their legacy. The twenty songs are
loaded with real menace from Ostrems bleating sax squalls to
Koellings maniacal and mostly indecipherable screeches and
growls: this isnt just barely structured caterwaul, it has a sound
thats almost evil.
There have been a great many bands in Portland that have
incorporated noise and song deconstruction as an integral part of
their modus operandiHitting Birth, King Black Acid, and
Moustache come to mindbut few if any have equaled the artistic
audacity of the late, great Hell Cows.
John Chandler
Encyclopedia of Northwest Music
Top
Spike
13th Precinct - Portland OR
circa 1983
Bottom
The Fix
Long Goodbye - Portland OR
1979
LCD Soundsystem
Sasquatch! Festival - The Gorge WA
2010
The Decemberists
Tour poster
2005
Top left
Reel Music
Northwest Film Center - Portland OR
2001
Top right
Alligator Blues Fest
Wiltern Theatre - Los Angeles CA
circa 1984
Middle right
Women in Blues Festival
Hilton Grand Ballroom - Eugene OR
1996
Bottom left
BB King
The Showplace - Portland OR
2000
Bottom right
The Go-Gos
The Showplace - Portland OR
1999
Top left
Polyphonic Spree
Seattle WA, Portland OR & Eugene OR
2003
Top right
Cat Power
Wiltern Theatre - Los Angeles CA
2008
Middle left
The Cramps
1998
Middle right
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Seattle WA & Portland OR
1989
Bottom
Mariachi El Bronx
Behind the Dr. Martens Store - Portland OR
2013
The Fluid
Blue Gallery- Portland OR
1989
Most of my early posters generally were either letter or legal size, which were the sizes that were cheapest
and easiest to copy in small amounts, though some were offset printed 11 x 17 inch posters hadnt yet
become the standard.
Various Posters
circa 1978 - 1984
Various Posters
circa 2003 - 2010
Ornette Coleman
Starry Night - Portland OR
1986
Various Posters
circa 1987 - 1992
Various Posters
circa 2004 - 2012
Various Posters
circa 1980 - 1990
This page
Various Posters
circa 1982 - 1990
Following pages
Various Posters
circa 1986 - 2010
Various Posters
circa 2002 - 2012
Top left
Sadonation
Sabalas - Portland or
2003
Top right
Punks vs Psychos
2004
Middle
The Dils
Linnton Community Center - Linnton OR
1979
Bottom left
The Rats
13th Precint - Portland OR
1983
Bottom middle
Spike
Satyricon - Portland OR
1984
Bottom right
The Cramps
La Luna - Portland OR
1998
Opposite
Monitors
Long Goodbye - Portland OR
1979
Various Posters
circa 1987 - 2010
Various Posters
circa 1986 - 1995
HOW THE SAUSAGE IS MADE
PROCESS, PASTE UP, PANIC
Top Left
Lydia Lunch
Doug Fir - Portland OR
2005
I superimposed a photo of an auto accident over a crappy
xeroxed photo of Lydia Lunch, it was barely noticible on
the printed poster, but it made me happy knowing that
car crash was there.
Top Right
Blonde Redhead
Crystal Ballroom - Portland OR
2003
While making this poster, I was scanning something, and
on the corner of the page was a tiny silhouette of a
women pushing a baby carriage. The more I blew it up,
the more distorted it got, and the better I liked it. I found
the idea of a rocket blasting out of a baby carriage both
funny and sweet; I think all parents should hope their
children have the potential to be rockets blasting out into
the world.
Bottom Right
L-7
Blue Gallery - Portland OR
1990
While I was making copies one day, a spider wandered
across the glass of the copier. Without thinking, I
slammed down the lid and hit copy, enlarged the image a
few times, added some type, and there you have it.
Bottom Left
Bonnaroo Music Festival
Manchester TN
2003
A poster based on the simple idea that a gramaphone
looks like flower. I made the mechanical humming bird
from something like 15 different engravings from a variety
of Dover books, the birds feathers are various sawblades,
the upper part of the beak is a funnel and so on
Combining things that might not normally go together
provides the opportunity to push things in directions they
dont usually go and make old images tell new stories.
The process of finding the right pictures to work with can
be long and arduous. I have spent days looking for exactly
the right images, other times I will thumb through a book
and see the perfect thing. Sometimes its a tiny picture in
the corner of a page, other times its a mistake in how an
image scans or copies. Often I have fixed ideas in my
head, but I try to keep an open mind in case something
better turns up.
Top
Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings
Sasquatch! - The Gorge WA
2011
I found a photo of Times Square from the 1960s online,
combined it with portions of several publicity photos of
the band, replaced a lot of type on the marquees, and
printed it three colors with a chunky halftone, so it looks
like it was printed in a cheap old magazine. Quite a bit of
my day is spent making things look more gritty and
distorted than they are.
Middle Left
Blue Gallery First Anniversary
Blue Gallery- Portland OR
1990
I pasted type over a picture of an American flag, then by
gently moving the image back and forth on a copier as
the light bar moved across the image (not unlike a DJ
scratching a record) I achieved this waving effect. The
light bars on modern copiers and scanners move too fast
to get that same effect.
Middle Right
Wolfmother
Moore Theatre - Seattle WA
2006
If I had the ability and the opportunity to make a poster
like this in 1975, I would have. Wolves fighting over an
animal carcass in the moonlight, a sword wielding woman
printed in gray on black, art nouveau border. All things I
would have been into as a teenager. I found the wolves
online; the woman with sword is from an old patriotic
postcard.
Bottom Left
Gang of Four
The Showbox - Seattle WA
2005
The eagle and the chick came from a Dover book of
engraved animal pictures, the consumer items came from
books of clip art provided to newspapers to create
department store ads, and I drew the nest myself.
The idea here is, America provides too much stuff and
that its poor chicks are drowning in her bounty.
Bottom Right
Al Franken
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall- Portland OR
2006
The poster as postage stamp motif is one I come back
to quite a few times. This example is made from a
combination of several postage stamps; judging from Mr.
Frankens collar, I would say, South American. This poster
was supposed to say Humorist, patriot but I think I ran
out of room.
Left
Grizzly Bear
Portland OR and Seattle WA
2012
Top right
Pavement
Edgefield - Portland OR
2011
Middle right
Sigur Ros
Portland OR and Seattle WA
2002
Bottom right
Mogwai
Wonder Ballroom - Portland OR
2006
Opposite
Flaming Lips
Edgefield - Portland OR
2009
Top left
Peeping Tom
Wonder Ballroom - Portland OR
2012
Right
Bikini Kill
1996
Bottom left
Neo Boys
Northwest Artists Workshop - Portland OR
circa 1982
Opposite
Mercyful Fate
Starry Night - Portland OR
1984
Left
Arcade Fire
Sasquatch! Fesival - Gorge WA
2007
Top right
DJ Spooky
circa 1998
Bottom right
Avril Lavigne
Tacoma Dome -Tacoma WA
2003
Opposite
Butthole Surfers
Pine Street Theatre - Portland OR
1987
Top left
Pink Martini
Eugene, Portland, Cannon Beach OR
2002
Top right
The Jesus Lizard
2009
Bottom left
The Jesus Lizard
1992
Bottom right
Pink Martini
2000
Opposite
Pink Martini
Japanese Tour
2012
Opposite
Vampire Weekend
2009
Left
Sleater-Kinney
2006
F.T.M.K.
ABOUT MIKE KING
Mike is one of the cleverest, funniest wits Ive ever met.
Brilliant and snarky and sarcastic and a laff riot.
Art Chantry
High school graduate and mostly self-taught graphic
artist and poster designer Mike King has been doing his
part to enrich and beautify the Northwest music scene for
more than three decades.
Week in and week out since
the late 70s Mike has created
posters for concerts and other
events in the Northwest and
around the world. He has also
designed, illustrated, laid out
or art directed dozens of
album covers for a wide
variety of artists, including:
Ben Harper, Elliott Smith, The
Decemberists, The Wipers,
Jack Johnson, Poison Idea, and Pink Martini, as well as all
manner of print advertising and other material for record
labels, breweries, shoe companies, and a very popular
doughnut shop.
His work has appeared in
several museum shows,
including: The University of
Maryland, College Park; The
Museum of Design, Atlanta;
The Brighton Fringe Festival,
Brighton UK, Rock en Seine,
Paris as well as two solo
shows at the Experience
Music Project, Seattle. More
often you can find Mikes
posters on phone poles, shop windows, and in bars,
bookstores, and coffee shops.
Mike has been featured in
more than a dozen books,
including: Art of Modern Rock
(Chronicle), Swag, Rock
Posters of the 90s (Abrams),
Sonic, Visuals for Music (Die
Gestalten Verlag, Germany),
Rock Poster Art, Serigraphies
de Concert (Eyrolles, France),
Swissted (Quirk) and others,
as well as numerous publica-
tions, including Art News,
Juxtapoz, the Guardian.
I was making my own art in my bedroom
by redrawing Judas Preist and Iron Maiden logos for my locker
and making mix tape cases before I was old enough to go
to shows, but it was after I discovered Mike King that the seed
was planted for my own lame attempt at poster design.
Jeff Kleinsmith, Sub Pop Records
Mike was designing posters exactly how I wanted to learn to design them.
Geoff Peveto, Decoder Ring
Despite countless designers trying to cop his style, they are never able to
capture his special je ne sais quoi. Another thing I love about Mike, both as
a person and an artisthe would cringe at the term "je ne sais quoi!"
Adam Zacks, Sasquatch! Festival
Mike definitely helped define how it was done and how it looks
here in the NorthwestWhich, believe me, was way more
inspired compared to a lot of other cities and regions.
Mike Quinn, Monqui Presents
The rock posters Portland artist Mike King started making in 1977
were never meant to be considered works of art.
They were meant to be stapled to telephone poles and taped to
bathroom mirrors in barsfast, inky visuals that emulated the punk shows they
advertised. Now, nearly four decades later, King is in contention for the nonexistent
title of Most Prolific Rock Poster Artist in the world, having created more than 5,000
posters for rock shows at some of the Northwests most legendary venues and beyond.
Maximum Plunder reproduces more than 1,000 of those posters and reflects on higher
notions of art applied to one of its most down-to-earth mediums.
In high school, I papered the walls of my room with rock posters Id taken from
Portland and Seattle telephone poles. Hsker D at Pine Street. Camper Van Beethoven
at the Moore. B-52s at the WOW Hall in Eugene. Shows I hadnt seen; shows I could
only imagine seeing. There was a common denominator to those posters, though.
They were mostly designed by Mike King. His thumbprint is as heavily laid
on the Northwest music scene as any band that started up here.
And he's outlasted most of them.
Colin Meloy, author of The Wildwood Chronicles
and founding member of the Decemberists

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By Mike King

Edited by Shawna Gore and Paul Herring

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