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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

26 May 2010

The Ballad of Phantom Billstickers

By Phantom Billstickers

The Ballad of Phantom Billstickers

I have put up several million posters in the streets of New Zealand over these past few decades and hence given the place a damn good pasting. I have never put up a single poster that I did not think contributed something in some way, whether it was to advertise a band or a brand, a political meeting or a drama group (often the same thing). I always came away thinking that I was helping someone, somewhere on down the line. Employment depends on advertising. That’s a fact. Without marketing you have Estonia in 1952.

I’m not going to give you my line about putting posters up in the snow, but I will tell you that I busted the suspension in my beautiful old Volkswagen Notchback when I went ripping through the Cashel Street Mall in Christchurch in the late 1970s. That was when the mall was being built. I was putting up posters for The Dudes that cold Sunday night. The Dudes gave us Dave Dobbyn and we are extremely grateful for that. ‘Loyal’ is one of the all time NZ pop hits, but I remember ‘Bull by the Horns’ as being a great song too.

I pasted up the Cathedral fence when renovations were happening there in the 1990s. Someone had pasted up the original fence when that Cathedral was first being built over a hundred years earlier in the 1870s/1880s. (And there are photos to attest to this). So posters have been with us since printing was invented five or so centuries ago. Before that people made marks on walls. It is an urge and a mighty good one. Of course we could all just stay indoors and do and say nothing. I believe Janet Frame’s mother warned her against magazines.

Nothing breaks my heart more than to see posters peeling untidily off a wall and at Phantom we call this ‘carnage’. I remember I once had a whole holiday in Istanbul ruined by carnage. I’ve seen carnage in Prague, Glasgow and Manchester and in many other places.

I’ve come to enjoy all things visual and random splashes of colour in the street. I love the arts and think that they save a city in so many ways as to be uncountable (is that a word? Too bad). I also love the creativity that goes into brand logos and I love magazines and photography. These things are cheering and uplifting. I even think that sometimes a billboard can dress up a Soviet era block wall in a good way. This is heresy, I know. Burn me… It’s been done and it did not work. I have heard the words “you cannot put that there” more than anyone in New Zealand I dare say. I lurked in vans with pots of glue for decades like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. I said many of the same things. I certainly thought them.

A poster on a wall is flora for the concrete jungle and might save us from grim moods as we swan about Christchurch in the cold of winter. Miss Emily Dickinson’s poem “A Certain Slant of Light” comes to mind. These moods might happen at other times too, we are all human beings after all and the Buddhist idea of suffering does fit true to many of us. Others would deny it and they end up selling soap and mortgages on TV. All credit to them (Sean Fitzpatrick’s greatest line and a fine one to live by). These people are welcome to their positive thinking as long as it is tied into reality. There is always room for one more inside, sir!

When I first started putting up posters in the 1960s they were being printed offset by Fuller Brothers Printing in Tuam Street. These posters were usually for bands coming to town. In the 1970s photocopies changed everything and punk rock happened at the same time. Many of us got caught up in the excitement of it all and many fine bands gathered an audience because of simple postering. The Androidss come to mind – they had some of the finest street posters I have ever seen. There should be a statue in the park for the Androidss and how they actually did liberate Christchurch in many ways. Toy Love livened up the country at the same time. The Spelling Mistakes were priceless and I’d give my right arm to see The Screaming Meemees one more night. Or the Car Crash Set.

There were many great graphic designers doing sterling work back then hunched over simple kitchen benches. I remember I saw a band called the Whizz Kids (which became Blam Blam Blam) designing a poster on an old table in a house on Salisbury Street for their “We are Tightening Our Belts” Tour. This being Muldoon era New Zealand. There was nothing that man liked to do more than punish us all and keep New Zealand locked up and indoors after 6pm. Government officials roamed the streets looking for the wayward at night. We can’t imagine it these days. God bless David Lange. My only wish is that David Lange could’ve totally liberated New Zealand in the same way that the Androidss could liberate 700 punters at the Gladstone. The Swingers were the best live band I’ve ever seen after The Gordons. But wait, there are countless more good bands and it is unfair to dismiss them by not mentioning a handful…. Mother Goose; Larry’s Rebels; The Chants R & B; The Bilders; The Vauxhalls; Murder Incorporated; The Underdogs Blues Band; Baby; Dragon; Hello Sailor; Flying Wild; Luna Sea; The Punch; Pop Mechanix; Hip Singles; Boot Hill; NZ Fantasy; Butler; Love’s Ugly Children; Pumpkinhead… Yes, I’ve been lucky.

John Halvorsen of The Gordons was probably the best graphic designer I have ever seen (Ian Dalziel would be second and Paul Smith is way up there too). I watched John Halvorsen doing some of those early Gordons posters and I thought my head would split. Every time I put one of them up, I felt something through my total body… A streaming. I was coming alive.

I’ve had many fine and interesting people working with street postering in those dark vans and many a good laugh was had and there was much joyful vitality. Yes I’ve enjoyed it all.

This was the ballad of Phantom Billstickers…

 

Keep the Faith,

 

Jim Wilson

 

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30c    30b

26 May 2010

Diary of a Billsticker – Trenton, New Jersey, USA Poster Run

By Phantom Billstickers

The Ballad of Phantom Billstickers (Part Two)

R.I.P. Beaver.

In Trenton, I was carrying posters by seven poets: Robert Pinsky, Joe Treceno, Marcie Sims, Jay Clarkson, Michele Leggott, Stephen Oliver and Tusiata Avia. This was to be a true urban poster run and I rode my newly purchased second-hand Schwinn pushbike which cost me $40. I was carrying the posters under my wing. I felt like Ignatius J. Reilly and my hunting cap fell down over my eyes several times. I was the thinking man’s oaf.

Trenton is the state capital of New Jersey and has one of the highest crime rates in America. It is also where George Washington gave the British a damn good dusting during the War of Revolution and sent them packing. A nation was then formed that is (I chose the present tense on purpose) dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

In Trenton there are monitoring devices in the streets which detect the sound of gunshots and can also track the direction from which those gunshots came. Say it isn’t so. This is what life has become.

There is a scourge in Trenton and its name is Heroin. The latest street brand of Smack is called “Obama’s Rescue Package” and is sold by those who want to take advantage of the dream of America. They have not joined in the spirit of the revolution. In Mexico, in less than four years, 23,000 have been killed during the “Drug War” and so it goes, (right?).

On to more pleasant subjects:

I am often asked about the old days of billsticking in New Zealand. One doesn’t want to choose favourites, but I have worked with a number of very good poster put-‘er-uppers. The name Harry Sparkle comes to mind first. Harry did the posters for the Hillsborough and Gladstone Taverns in Christchurch during the late 70s to the mid 80s when New Zealand music made all the ground it did. At the time, New Zealand music was like a religious movement and radio stations just did not play it and ‘cover bands’ pulled far more people than original music. I cannot tell you how Spandau Ballet songs made Christchurch swing and what haircuts became during this period of time. This part was appalling.

But, paradoxically, all this made original Kiwi music better as there was a point to be proven. The good bands won out. They are still heard. These bands were very prepared to be honest. At this time, going on the road was dangerous because the public bar clientele may well chase you down the main street for no reason at all and the only food on the menu for touring bands was Hawaiian Ham Steaks. Now that’s what I call dangerous. One took one’s life into one’s own hands to be playing Palmerston North during these years.

To digress, I would also want to give credit to Gerald Dwyer as a paste dude in Wellington, a giant Totara indeed. Then Lee Hubber and Johne Leach also did good work in the capital city. Doug Nuttall was invaluable in Dunedin for getting across the point of New Zealand music and John Greenfield gave his all in the garden city during the 80s and early 90s. Trevor King pasted up the streets of Christchurch in the 1950s and 1960s for Johnny Devlin and Max Merritt and so we must be thankful. You will remember that New Zealand was a closed shop during these years and the Beatles once famously said that they came to New Zealand but it was closed. Many people said this in different ways.

Harry Sparkle? Harry was a punk and during punk we all knew no limits and the walls of repression were being blasted down quicker than you could say “more government please.” Harry’s band was called “The Baby Eaters” and often crashed the stage at the Hillsborough during a touring band’s break. They cavalierly just picked up the headlining band’s instruments without permission and started playing Iggy Pop’s “Cock in my Pocket.” Several punks crowded around the mixing desk as another mate turned the volume Right Up. Pogo-ing was a thing.

Oh what a breath of fresh air.

The touring band’s roadies (often up to nine in total – what did they all do?) would come running and a fist fight would ensue. That’s the price for taking yourself too seriously. The Hillsborough had one of the two best publicans I have ever met, John Harrington (the other was Ray Newman at the Gladstone). And a good laugh was had by all eventually.

I have many Harry Sparkle stories I could relate, not all of them decent.

But I will tell you I saw him paste up the side of a parked bus in Cathedral Square one day for The Terrorways until the driver came running. Yes Harry could make a point.

I also saw Harry flat on his back on another occasion in the Shades Mall with his glue pot upended, posters everywhere and a dozen packets of panadeine cast about in the shape of a cross. For my sins, Harry.

But when a poster needed to go up you called Harry and he went to the maximum for New Zealand music which quite clearly needed to be heard and now has a very real place in the world.

The two other members of The Baby Eaters (Reuben and Johnny) are dead now as far as I know, as are many of the memories of punk. The grandmaster, Malcolm McLaren, died about a month ago.

I think New Zealand Music Month to be a truly great thing (but not universally great), but more than that, I like to see posters coming through for new and vital bands. But I’m going to finish with a joke because none of us should take ourselves too seriously:

This is what English comedian Ken Dodd once said:

“The man who invented cat’s eyes got the idea when he saw a cat facing him in the road. If the cat had been facing the other way, he’d have invented the pencil sharpener.”

The poster run in Trenton was highly enjoyable and I really tried to interact with local people. It worked.

 

Keep the Faith,

 

Jim Wilson

29a 29b 29c 29e

09 Mar 2010

Kit Kat and JWT – Plywood Chair Street Posters

By Phantom Billstickers

Move over Ikea. JWT Auckland have brought flat pack furniture to the people in the form of these plywood street posters for Kit Kat. They’re flat pack chairs made from ply that punters can pull off and assemble. Placed on route to summer gigs and at entrances to parks and public spaces they give punters an opportunity to take a break in an unconventional place.

Phantom Billstickers installed Kit Kat plywood street posters for JWT Auckland on our high profile sites throughout the city of sails.

Advertising Agency: JWT Auckland, New Zealand
Executive Creative Director: Peter Ogden/Angus Hennah
Art Director: Jordan Young
Copywriter: Mike Ramsay
Account Supervisor: Simon Fitch
Senior Account Manager: Louisa Redshaw
Photographer: Troy Goodall
Production Manager: Darryn Warhaft
Production: Carl Moody at Bootleg
Head of TV & Content: Megan Robertson

 

20a

20b

20d

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

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