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14 Jun 2011

Diary of a Billsticker – Lambertville, New Jersey and New Hope, Pennsylvania, USA

By Phantom Billstickers

How to Put Up a Poster

This was a little run I did each morning starting the week after Gil Scott-Heron’s death. It was also around the time that Errol Hincksman died back in old New Zealand. The two were not related, but they may well have been – white powders drew them together.

Mr Scott-Heron was a crack cocaine addict and a very fine musician and poet. They say he invented rap music, but to me, he just embedded the words in the groove deeper than probably anyone ever has. For his part Mr Hincksman was involved in the ‘Mr Asia’ drug ring of the 1970s in New Zealand (and around the world) and was apparently, at once, a rascal and a top bloke. I never met either of them and I’m going on media portraits and the words of close friends. Plus, I’m introducing my own feelings into these topics. That’s the lay of the land.

I was having some problems with American Immigration and decided to go out and put up a few posters to clear my head. I always think it’s a good way to start the day and particularly if you don’t take it all too seriously. I was running low on poetry posters and yet had some Janet Frame, Tusiata Avia, and Roy Smith poems to put up. Thank god for that.

I always thought that when life gets complicated, the best thing to do is just to whack a poster on a lamp-post with a JT-21 heavy industrial stapler. If you start with one poster, before you know it you’ve forgotten yourself and you’ve put up two hundred, then you look back and you feel good. Then other people read the poems and they feel good too. Then, if you think about it, you’re alive and Gil Scott-Heron isn’t and nor is Errol Hincksman. But…. Aaah, I don’t know… The good get to die.

It was forty years ago on June 17th that Richard Nixon declared the US ‘War on Drugs.’ This is a war that has seen forty million arrests and no visible results except that it has ruined the lives of millions of people in too many ways to list. So, as they often say about these kinds of things: the War on Drugs actually does more damage than the situation which it purports to cure. There just aren’t enough prisons to lock everyone up and there’s a whole new type of hypocrisy crawling the streets these days. I think Mr Scott-Heron knew this hypocrisy quite well. He did at least two terms on Riker’s Island and prisons are always where you get to witness hypocrisy first hand. You see people doing life sentences for stealing a thousand bucks and you wonder where are the bankers/politicians /media barons who created the world wide debacle that everyone is suffering from these days. You wonder why these people are not in jail for all the destruction they have bought about. In fact, the next time you see a photo of one of them they are wearing a new suit. You might turn on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and forget it all or Oprah may seduce you into thinking that things aren’t really that bad at all. But they are worse… And you know it, so you put up a poster. Just one.

Here’s what Gil Scott-Heron said about addiction:

“You keep sayin’ kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it! God, did you ever try to turn your sick soul inside out so that the world could watch you die?”

And as a good doctor might say: “Moving right along….”

Here’s how to put up a poem poster in another way: walk into a Starbucks or a Borders Books or any one of a number of places that have notice boards and whack one on said notice board. Don’t ask a staff member, in these places no one has authority to do much at all and you may be trapped into waiting for forty-five minutes whilst the store manager calls the regional manager who then calls someone in Sioux Falls who does have some sort of authority but is most probably away on holiday… Then someone else calls someone in Utah who is out at church and suggests you call in again tomorrow. Then you thank them for their input and they say “You’re welcome” and you remember that you are in America.

It’s because of those sentiments that I love Gil Scott-Heron and also Errol Hincksman. I think they were both probably real people who weren’t particularly afraid of cutting their own pathway and neither was franchised. No one called Sioux Falls, nor had to. So to me, they lead meaningful lives.

Phantom Billstickers was built, quite unashamedly, on going against the tide. That’s what I prefer to think it still stands for. For me, it is some kind of gnarled first against the forces of mediocrity and bureaucracy. It has now survived several earthquakes and so many strange occurrences that it would take me all day to write about them and possibly all year. It has survived many plagues of locusts, do-gooders, hanger-ons, and huge egos split so many ways that they made/make the Southern Cross seem small. I’m dead proud of it and I’m dead proud of the team currently working to take poetry to the world and gigs and music to the streets of New Zealand.

So I start the day by putting up a simple poster.  And I keep my feet on the ground.

RIP Errol Hincksman and Gil Scott-Heron.

 

Keep the Faith,

 

Jim Wilson

46a

08 Jul 2010

Diary of a Billsticker – Lambertville, New Jersey and New Hope, Pennsylvania USA

By Phantom Billstickers

Concerning Those Statues in The Park

It’s been so hot here for over a week now that a few days ago I saw a redneck explode in the street.

Then, yesterday when I was on 202 out near Flemington, New Jersey, I saw a dude in a bright yellow Camaro doing 120mph plus whilst being trailed by four New Jersey State Troopers wearing Smokie the Bear hats and wide grins. That is to say that all five of them were wearing the grins and the air was alive. I think they were all playing music by Prince.

On this poster run, I topped up about 120 A3s that I had placed on lamp-posts two weeks before. I added about 60 A3s and it brought the total amount placed to 180. This is a reasonably good ‘showing’ in a town of 4000 people. I placed posters by Bill Manhire, Mariana Isara, Robert Creeley and Gerald Stern. The poem posters have been noticed and I get lots of comments and emails. Posters in the street are very real.

There are many theories as to how to do a perfect poster campaign. I always thought that you started in the outskirts of the city and you kept adding to the posters and bringing pressure to the centre of the city as the play date grew closer. You want to get to the areas where there is a high volume of foot traffic and at the end, you want your point to be inescapable.

My thinking about all of this comes from the time when neither radio nor television were playing much of the Kiwi bands I was promoting and newspaper advertising was very expensive and oftentimes not very effective. In Christchurch, for a long time, the Christchurch Star was a quite effective way for bands to advertise themselves whilst the Press was a bit more conservative and didn’t really appeal. But both newspapers had excellent columns on entertainment that appeared weekly and these really helped. The Christchurch Star’s column was written by Rob White (a great writer) and the Press by Nevin Topp. Of course there was always a lot of disagreement about what worked and people tried many things to promote their bands and this was all for the good. Many good acts came out of this time and climate. Original New Zealand music was thought to be brand new and it took on aspects of being a religious event. I tell you if you’ve seen Toerag at the Gladstone then you’ve seen something and the same goes for Peter Sweeney’s Smack Riflemen. If you’ve ever met Harry Sparkle then you ain’t never gonna forget. This is a man who escaped from jail where he was doing a cooling off period for a smash and grab on a bottle store (The Star & Garter – another great pub gig), and who went to Timaru dressed as a woman. Now that’s what I call creativity. Most people would have gone to Ashburton.

So I always get these posters on the lamp-posts in Lambertville/New Hope to cover the best possible viewing opportunities. I criss-cross the city energetically enabling the posters to be seen in many different locations. Upwards of sixty locations is a good number.

As I put the posters up, I imagine people walking down the street and the direction they would be coming from and then I place the posters accordingly. Because I want to get poetry read as much as I possibly can and I’m not going to go on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ to do so, then I have to reduce this whole thing to pure and utter simplicity. I think everyone knows that these American TV shows are hyped and probably cause obesity and no one really believes in them. But, ah… A poster in the street is very, very true and if you read a Brian Turner or a Michael Palma poem in Lambertville on an old wooden lamp-post, then you have been touched my friend.

So I often think of postering as simplicity with constant repetition. You take the kick-backs and you keep going. Aaaah, my thoughts, my feelings seeping through in truth.

I always think about Kiwi music on a poster run and I am always proud of it. This week I have been thinking about people who deserve statues in the park and my first would be, in my opinion, New Zealand’s greatest ever band manager. My vote would be for Charley Gray. Charley was a very direct guy who cut through a lot of stuff and made a mark. He was way ahead of his time and very honest and devoted to music.

Then I’d give Murray Cammick a statue in the park for his work at ‘Rip It Up.’ In my view, this was New Zealand’s best ever music magazine. It’s hard to say how such a magazine could ever be duplicated or how a website or a Facebook page could come close to matching it. Rip It Up made a clear point… These days the water tends to be murky in many ways.

Aaaah, simplicity and directness of purpose.

Lastly, I’d award a statue to Eddie Chin. Eddie Chin had a few nightclubs in Dunedin when I was growing up. When people mention Dunedin music, I always think of Eddie first. In the 1960s he had a club called ’77 Sunset Strip’ and some great bands played there. These bands sometimes tended to be quite commercial and had very compelling stage acts; this was before such a thing often became something to be sneered at. Eddie nurtured many fine acts and people.

One of my favourite all-time Kiwi Bands was The Fantasy. This was Craig Scott’s band in Dunedin in the late 1960s. Craig moved on and the band went through several line-up changes (no doubt ‘musical differences’). Anyway, some of my mates were in that band and went to play for Eddie in 1971. This is what one of them (Jeff Stribling) said:

“We arrived in Dunedin at midnight one night in 1971. We had caught the 6 PM railcar from Christchurch, Bill (Kearns), Ronnie (Harris), and myself. We couldn’t get a residency in Christchurch as ‘Ticket’ (now there was a band!) had Aubrey’s and Chapta was at Mojos. So we thought we’d try Dunedin. We stayed at a motor camp that night and the next day we went to see Eddie at his restaurant, the ‘Hong Kong’, in Rattray Street. We said we were broke, starving and needed a place to live and play. He found us a flat, fed us and gave us the keys to his club across the road. The club had been closed for a long time and he said that if we painted it he’d feed us every day and we could be his resident band. We worked for three weeks and opened it as “The Groovy Room.” We called ourselves “NZ Fantasy” and we packed the venue with 600 people and it stayed that way. Eddie came into the band room one night with a massive amount of cash and gave us a bonus. He said, “I had a very good night on the horses tonight.” He was a live wire; a very kind man… My lasting memory of him is that his face was always smiling.”

Dudes, that’s how we built New Zealand Music.

I’m away to Flemington now to find that guy in the yellow Camaro. I want to smile like that.

 

Keep the Faith,

 

 

Jim Wilson

32b

11 Jun 2010

Diary of a Billsticker – Lambertville, New Jersey, USA

By Phantom Billstickers

Woke Up This Morning and Got Myself a Broom

It is true that putting up posters will shift the dirty water off one’s chest. I have never come back from a poster run feeling worse (I’ve said this before), not even when my posters have been immediately covered by another posterer. This used to happen all the time in old Christchurch (and elsewhere) when sometimes twenty different people would go out pasting up for twenty different gigs on the same night. It’s a nice and interesting idea that people should ‘share’, but I always think their egos involved and sometimes egos can’t grasp even very simple concepts. Then, it’s not as if every ego in the world is working for a bank or finance company or even in politics. No, there are egos everywhere. Sometimes there are even egos in reverse.

Talking of egos, the most disturbing thing about America right now is the Oil Spill (yes, I meant to capitalise that because it is a huge disaster) in the Gulf. I hear there is another panel of ‘experts’ who are going to meet and discuss the matter later on in the week. The panel consists of Bono, Sting, Sean Penn and Elton John and their discussion will be screened on Entertainment Tonight. That’s how sad it all is. If only they would completely give away their fortunes to make it better. But they’ll never do that. The head guy from BP looks stunned and ineffectual and Mr Obama should front up and start cane-ing people. That’s the view of my ego.

So that’s why I like postering, because when you are putting up posters everything becomes perfectly clear and truthful (“The only thing that matters is the clear and simple truth” – Ernest Hemingway). It’s the activity of postering that unclogs the system and gets me moving and doing something that I enjoy a hell of a lot: putting up simple street posters for poets. That’s about the easiest thing to do and I do not like the theorising before and after the fact that one sees on television these days. Lewis Lapham once said something about television front people being the new car sales people of the media set and he’s right. So the Gulf Oil Spill is a tragedy on a number of fronts. The animals (human and otherwise) will suffer the most. I feel for them.

I did this run in Lambertville over three days and I put up posters by Jeffery McCaleb, Roy Smith, Brian Turner, Gerald Stern, Chris Knox, Robert Creeley, Michael Palma, Sam Hunt, Bill Manhire and Michele Leggott. Some of these are my favourites of course. I can stand back and look at them on a lamp-post and I feel good. I’m ‘put together’ again.

I tried to mix in the different sentiments with these posters too; some go really well in couplings with another poet. Sam is good with anyone. Robert Creeley is the man and will bring light to any lamp-post. Michael Palma goes really well with Chris Knox (he the musician and Michael the dude talking about Ray Charles). Roy Smith’s poem is just funky and smells of sand and diesel and Jeffery McCaleb just has this big heart, which I hope continues to serve him well.

And so on and so forth.

So you can see it’s not just about stapling a few posters to lampposts, it’s about ‘feeling’ and ‘being’ and it beats talking to lawyers and accountants and watching that Oil Spill. It also whips the endless and vapid smiles of television presenters. I’m sure all this is the cause of obesity.

You can quite easily see why people wake up and get themselves a broom. A broom is the best friend of a billsticker. A broom is what a billsticker usually uses to put up posters. Billsticking happens in every major city in the world. People will go out and express themselves. They’ve done this since before the beginning of recorded time. We’ve got a guy at Phantom Billstickers in Christchurch right now who is the fastest guy I have ever seen with a broom. I won’t mention his name because that may cause embarrassment.

I have learnt the noble art of billsticking from some of New Zealand’s best ever promoters. Here I am going to mention some names: Hugh Lynn, Robert Raymond, Harry M. Miller, Joe Brown, Oz Armstrong, Mark Cassin and Benny Levin.

We used to do ‘airport runs’ and this is where a billsticker would go out and poster the road in from the airport just before the date and time of the arrival of the ‘star’ or ‘stars’. Then you’d poster all around the hotel at which the promoter would tell you the act was staying. To use a sentence from “The Thin Red Line” this ‘bucks the men up’. The stars feel better and spirits are lifted. 90% of the value of a concert of any kind is that everyone arrives and leaves happy. The stars included.

Benny Levin would always ‘walk the town’ and ‘talk the act up’. I am privileged enough to be able to say that I did this with him a few times. He’d snaffle down a couple of ginseng and we’d put some posters under our wings and go from shop to shop putting up posters for the gig. This would be a few days before the play date and the important thing wasn’t so much the putting up the posters (although this was still critically important), but the talking to the shopkeepers and getting a gauge of how the concert would sell… Getting people interested.  If two hundred people told you in one day that they loved the act and were going to be at the gig, then this gave you a really good indication of how that concert would go. I don’t like to disparage anyone or anything really, but this kind of thing will still give you a better indicator of the popularity of an act than Facebook or the internet will ever be able to do. This is real people talking to real people. So, even though we may want to freshen up the simple street poster with technology, there is no doubt that it (the simple street poster) is a very powerful instrument and it feels real. I’ve said it.

Real is what the world needs of course. Getting face to face with people and making contact is the most powerful force in the world.

I was going to write about Eddie Chin on this posting. In my opinion, Eddie was one of New Zealand’s finest ever promoters and did one hellacious amount for the NZ music industry. I actually had some intake from people who played for Eddie back in the 1970s to write something, but this will have to wait.

I grew up watching how Eddie’s clubs bought Dunedin alive and I was very much influenced by what he did. I’m going to write about him on my next posting, because right now I hear a lamppost and a broom calling to me.

 

Keep the Faith,

 

Jim Wilson

31a 31b

05 Mar 2010

Diary of a Billsticker – New Jersey, USA

By Phantom Billstickers

There was a break in the weather after basically a month of snow and rain. We just don’t get snow like that in New Zealand (a foot at a time), and it’s kind of difficult to imagine and to get used to. It would be like trying to drive over the Southern Alps. That way you can imagine it. The streets looked like the Himalayas and after a while, you get crazy to do a poster run. People in New Jersey talk about “weather rage”. Everyone’s cooped up and that’s not good for anyone.

I left from Lambertville, New Jersey, which is my base and travelled up I-95 to Princeton. This road is the interstate that features in the intro to “The Sopranos.” Ah, woke up this morning and got myself a gun. Now there was a TV series and so well written.

The journey to Princeton takes about a half hour. I drive down beside the beautiful Delaware River for about ten or fifteen minutes before getting onto I-95. Driving on I-95 is like playing skittles. Everyone is zooming everywhere. I don’t know if that’s good for everyone, but it’s how America is.

Princeton is a lovely and picturesque spot. The town is ruled by the old university which looms most places you look. I’m sure Robert Smith could come here and write some fine Cure type song about the gargoyles on the towers. They are beautiful. The structure of various buildings reminds me of Otago Boys’ High School. The university really is a beautiful sight. It helps my imagination too when I remember that this is the place (Princeton University) which stirred Jimmy Stewart into becoming an actor. Jimmy joined the theatre groups whilst he was at Princeton and the rest is history. I love it. You don’t get actors like that every five minutes and the arts (of all kinds) must be encouraged. People can do small things to help. That’s what I figure I’m doing.

I was carrying with me poem posters by Sam Hunt, Robert Pinsky, Marcie Sims, Michele Leggott and Janet Frame. It is always a privilege to be taking poetry to the streets.

This run was mostly around the various notice boards at the university. There’s a lot going on at this place and you can tell this by the way the various poster sites are jammed with colour and imagination. People are obviously excited and alive. It’s so easy to put up Sam Hunt poem posters, as it really sticks out to me that Sam is, and has always been a vital force for Kiwi poetry. The Sam Hunt poem, ’11 Runes (for Alf, turning 11)’ has many lines that hit me dead centre. To me, Sam Hunt stands beside any poet anywhere in the world:

“I’ll give you what I’ve got
to see you through,
and if I’m not
there, I’ll be waiting for you”

So all this kind of thing (Sam Hunt’s poetry), is really good to think about as you put up posters. The words bring you back to a real ‘core’ within yourself. Sam talks from the heart.

New Jersey? Well, this is where I saw a whole cafe erupt in cheers last week when a Bruce Springsteen tune (“Mr State Trooper”) came on the in-house stereo. These people are tremendously proud of ‘The Boss.’ And he speaks for them so eloquently. This is all how like New Zealand poets speak for New Zealand in such a clear way. They portray our experience or their experience and we can easily relate.

Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. Now there was a dude (a ‘dOOd’) – so much style and charisma and so much a strong voice. Frank put that voice forward with ease.

Yes, New Jersey is a very interesting place. So many influences and so much passion. I’ve never in my life been on a poster run that didn’t make me feel good and this one was no exception.

As I drove back down I-95 to Lambertville, I listened to a tune from ‘The Chairman of the Board’

“When I’m out on a
quiet spree, fighting
vainly the old ennui…”

– “I Get A Kick Out of You” – Francis Albert Sinatra

Well, I get a kick out of postering and certainly for New Zealand (and American poets). It’s 100% Real and I prefer that.

Keep the Faith,

Jim Wilson

19c

29 Oct 2009

Diary of a Billsticker – Princeton, USA

By Phantom Billstickers

On this run, I was carrying poetry posters by four or five New Zealand poets. The poems were by Hilaire Campbell, Michele Leggott, Campbell McKay, Geoff Conchrane, and Janet Frame. I’m always proud to do this.

The day was very pleasant as I set off from Lambertville, New Jersey and up I-95 to Princeton. The trip takes about thirty minutes. Princeton is a beautiful town. The main street (Nassau Street) is good and wide and is dominated by the University. The town somehow just feels open and like there’s a good, clean breeze blowing through it.

Then, as I’ve often said, I enjoy poster runs and always come back feeling refreshed. There is an immediacy to the media. I believe in posters. The air always feels better to me after a poster run.

What do we know about Princeton? Well, this is where the physicist Albert Einstein lived from the late 1930s until his death in the mid-1950s. This chap helped engineer a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in about 1940 that lead to the birth of the Manhattan Project (The Atomic Bomb). Through fellow scientists, he was alerted to Nazi progress on a similar scheme.

Einstein said many great things. He said:

“Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.”

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for War.”

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

The poster run took three hours and I covered the notice-boards in the cafes, restaurants, bookshops, banks etc. I also placed posters on the bollards and through the English Department at Princeton University. I made a difference.

I was back in Princeton a few days later. I was just walking along when I noticed a poster on Nassau Street which stated that the author Joyce Carol Oates was giving a reading at the University. That’s the power, the spontaneity, and the immediacy of the poster for you. I set off for the lecture hall. Joyce Carol Oates is at the top of her league and has more than twenty books in print. She is legendary for her output.

‘JCO’ (as she is affectionately known) held everyone in the palm of her hand for forty-five minutes whilst she read a short story. I just thought that this reading was easily the equal of any live performance I have ever seen. I stayed afterwards for the nibbles and to get a book autographed.

I am thoroughly enjoying my time in the USA putting up poetry posters.

 

Keep the Faith,

 

Jim Wilson

 

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