Well, extremely sad to say, Urlo, Poia and Lu have headed for the airport. The Dark Nouveau Tour was a massive success. I miss my good friends already!!!!

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Vita, the drummer for Ufomammut, was still in town today. George and I drove over to the Mission to get him, and took him over to Alameda for a visit to Jon-Paul Bail’s house and a tour of his Political Gridlock studio. Seemed a good quiet day to chill down from the busy weekend. Went to Ole’s Waffle House for a mid afternoon breakfast and then caught a drink at the Lucky 13 in Alameda. Showed Vita all the cool posters at Lucky 13 Alameda, collected by Dan, the owner of Lucky 13, who made a special trip over to the bar just to say hello to him. Played pinball and drank a couple of good Belgian brews.

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As for Saturday night, Ufomammut and Acid King surpassed my expectations and played just amazingly cool sets, just blew my mind how good the show was. Awesome poster visuals provided by Malleus, Alan Forbes, Dave Hunter, and Firehouse. Justin and Heather played really cool music, perfect for the mood, DJ’ing into Acid King’s masterful and heavy groove. I’m still stunned at the power and grace that drives Acid King – I got swept onto their heavy freight train of metal – and dug the shit out of their entire set. Loved where they were taking me, and was all sweaty at the end.

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I was overjoyed to finally get to witness a live Ufomammut show. Urlo, Poia and Vita played heavy, groovin, doom with modulated soft sections and booming heavy over-drive. Made me so very happy to finally get to meet this side of my friends after knowing only the visual art side of them for over seven years. I’m astonished at how powerful they are with music – and enjoyed every second of their set – and will savor the memory for the rest of my life.

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Varnish was packed full of great people. I want to thank everyone for coming down and supporting the scene! I had the time of my life! Thank you to Varnish Fine Art for hosting my event!

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This morning I called Joey from Acid King to tell him thank you – to him and Lori, and Mark – for such a great show at Varnish Fine Art last Saturday night. He hipped me to Brian Lew’s glowing review of the show on Umlaut. Brian hit the nail on the head when he said, “This will go down as one of my favorite nights of the year!” I want to thank everyone who helped me organize this show and who participated and who came to have a good time.

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After packing all the gear and wrapping at Varnish at 2 am, George and I caught four hours of sleep, met up again at my house at 6 am, and drove over to Golden Gate Park, and started to set up for everyone at Speedway Meadow for the West Fest. We pulled into Speedway Meadow minutes before dawn, and found that our space had been commandeered by our good friends in the Hell’s Angels. Didn’t have a problem with that, and found good lodgings for our booth next door to good friend Chris Shaw and his wife Alex Fischer. Started to set up the table to sell our West Fest Poster Series with Malleus, Dave Hunter, me and Ron Donovan’s posters. Dave was there bright and early. The Malleus boys slept in at my bidding (since they played such a ripping rock show the night before) and Ron, who had just recently arrived home from Hawaii, made every effort to get the posters to the show, so people could get complete sets of posters.

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Going to take the day easy tomorrow. The ever dependable George will meet for coffee in the morning. We’ll return the PA to McCune in South City SF, help search for Acid King’s visual backdrop DVD (we were having a such a good time and forgot this detail), settle the poster details from the show at Varnish, return the gridwall sections, write thank you emails, etc. Take a day to recharge for designing my Dinosaur Jr poster. Think onward to two Widespread Panic posters coming in the Fall. Get cracking on The Young Gods poster. Start to play with designs for The Prodigy who have asked for another design. Schedule printing for Skinny Puppy at the Regency by Zoltron.

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Mail order that backed up while Malleus was here – Tuesday night and in the mail Wednesday

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Ah, I guess it’s back to the drawing board ; )

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Most of all I’ll shed some tears for my Malleus friends. Miss you guys. Hope you arrive safe and sound in Tortona, Italy!

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West Fest 2009

Editon of 200

4 colors on archival cream paper

20″ x 26″

Signed and Numbered

$30 + $7 Shipping

I’m stoked to announce that Acid King is going to play with Ufomammut at the Dark Nouveau art show at Varnish Fine Art on Saturday, October 24, 2009. Details of the show and advance ticket sales information here.

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Dave Hunter made this sweet poster at Hangar 18 for the event (above).

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Cool thing for me about Acid King playing this show – is that the very first poster Ron Donovan and I collaborated on was for Acid King and Fear at the Trocadero. So it’s all in the family.

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Check Ron and my Acid King poster below. And in case you are wondering – this poster is waaaay sold out – so don’t ask.

Join us at Varnish Gallery – Saturday, October 24 for a live concert of MALLEUS’ rock band UFOMAMMUT with ACID KING – doors at 7 – show at 8:30 pm

DJ Evil Justin will round out the evening providing choice punk and rock and roll.

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Tickets $15 at the door

Ufomammut and Acid King at Varnish Fine Art 77 Natoma, SF • 10/24/09 – door 7 pm – show 8:30 pm

Malleus, Alan Forbes, Dave Hunter and Firehouse at VARNISH Fine Art Gallery

77 Natoma Street at 2nd Street

MALLEUS, the artist collective of Urlo, Poia and Lu, the remarkable poster design team from Italy, will be unveiling their new works and limited art prints at 7 pm on Friday, October 23 at VARNISH FINE ART GALLERY in San Francisco.

Alan Forbes, Dave Hunter and Chuck Sperry / Ron Donovan of the Firehouse will exhibit with MALLEUS – each presenting art prints specifically designed for the event.

The show will last for two days – Friday and Saturday – October 23 and 24, 2009.

The event is a celebration of “DARK NOUVEAU,”  a return to the roots of poster creation. DARK NOUVEAU evokes equally the fin de siècle style of Toulouse-Lautrec and 1960’s San Francisco Psychedelia – and operates here as a manifesto of reinvention and revision – aimed at connecting to the poster movement of the Decadent Period to the Belle Epoque and folding it into the Psychedelic Period to the present modern global silkscreen movement.

DARK NOUVEAU art installation at VARNISH FINE ART GALLERY • October 23 through October 24, 2009 • MALLEUS • Alan Forbes • Chuck Sperry and Ron Donovan of the Firehouse • Dave Hunter

It’s been a hectic, hard-working year establishing the Firehouse-Goldenvoice Poster Series, art directing and printing all these great posters, with my friend and partner Ron Donovan. Yes, it has been a year, and we are nearing poster number 70.

If you do the math that’s more than one poster a week. Add that to the other posters we produce (read Eric Clapton and Van Morrison to name but two) while at work on the Firehouse-Goldenvoice Series, it’s been a busy year!

Little did we know what a cool year we would have at the Firehouse in 2009. When Chris Shaw introduced us to his landlord Victor Hanson – who was daring enough to rent to us – Chris set us up and we got the new Firehouse studio. We began to call it Hangar 18, the secret military installation in Dayton, Ohio (my hometown) where alien technology is reverse engineered.

After our awesome trip to the United Kingdom in 2008 – organized by the genius of Marc Malakie, founder of Station 4 Gallery, his impeccable site for art prints produced by the Firehouse crew – including the great Emory Douglas – we set to work on the idea of this Series.

The Firehouse-Goldenvoice Series has also brought out the best in Firehouse; the best in me as well, my artwork, and I hope, brought many new faces here to check out my new designs.

The Firehouse-Goldenvoice Series has also brought out the best in all of the fine poster artists who have been invited to take this crazy ride with me and Ron Don. Thanks to everyone included in the series thus far:

Chuck Sperry • Ron Donovan • Malleus (IT) • Dave Hunter • Alexandra Fischer • Chris Shaw • Dennis Loren • Martin Bedford (UK) • Aaron Farmer • Reuben Rude • Gregg Gordon • Jeff Ross • John Howard • Alan Hynes • Frank Zio • Zoltron • Mike King • Scott Johnson

Thanks to David Lefkowitz of Goldenvoice Presents for inviting Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company to produce this poster series, and for having the vision to know it was the right thing at the right time. Mass props and forever indebted and thankful to Doug Dashiell, the Production Manager of the Warfield, who showed David what was possible to do in silkscreen and brought the idea to his attention. In short, Doug put it all together by changing hearts and minds at Goldenvoice.

Doug, armed with his mighty poster collection, enthusiasm and knowledge of silkscreened posters, pushed the idea. All that was left for David and Firehouse was to just do it.

We have been fortunate to show this series in quite a few exhibits in the last year including:

TRPS Festival of Posters • San Francisco 2008

Art of Musical Maintanance • Portland 2008

Lucky 13 • Alameda 2008

Varnish Fine Art • San Francisco 2009

Ogilvy West • San Francisco 2009

TRPS Rock Art By The Bay • San Francisco 2009

The Best of The East Bay • Oakland Museum 2009

Lucky 13 • Alameda 2009

Rock Art Revulsion • Sacramento 2009

And soon TRPS Festival of Posters • San Francisco 2009

There have been quite a few Poster of the Week awards on Expressobeans – that makes me proud – thanks for everyones’ support! There have been many emergency runs to the paper and ink suppliers, thanks to George Gamboa (KAW!) and Stephen Abramson.

Thanks to the Firehouse buddy-studio Political Gridlock run by Jon-Paul Bail has been a constant source of creativity, ideas (and emergency ink!) at the Firehouse – without JP no cool graffiti, no political compass and no fun!

And many kind thanks to Lulu Ehrhard, one of the very best printers in the Bay Area.

What would a workday at Firehouse be like without a visit from JC Hall of Ideal Posters with his daughter Anjelica along for the ride, who has supported us through many years and made “Bowlio” an international silkscreen superstar; Or without a neighborly visit from Flipper Ted (the band not a poster dealer). And thanks to Chela from PsPrint for the offsets and friendly break from work.

Many thanks and a great big shout out to Nick Cernak who created Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company’s first fully functional website, Hangar 18, and gave me the foundation and design for this site you are reading right here.

Sometimes the Firehouse seems like a cast of characters from a movie – thanks to Merle Becker for committing some of this to film in her brilliant documentary, “American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art,” which came out last year while all this was going down.

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On this occasion, Firehouse-Goldenvoice’s first anniversary, I thought it would be cool to revisit my Mogwai poster, and move it here to my new site – begin to move all the posters I’ve done for the Series here – little by little.

Also supplies are getting mighty low on most of my Firehouse-Goldenvoice Series posters from the last year and thought it best to move them here while I still have some to show.

Here’s some posters included in my updated posts:

• English Beat

• Phoenix

• Neko Case

• Mogwai