Chuck Sperry

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

Sold Out – Thank You!