Gig posters

Gig posters, originally uploaded by fred pipes.

After a stint of invigilating at the Dragonfly Open House at 48 Ditchling Rise, I wandered into town for a quiet coffee and toasted teacake at Capers. Unfortunately Brighton was full of ex-drama student twats on stilts pretending to be surreal. 'Expect the unexpected', says the Festival brochure, oh no it's the Streets of Brighton! Oh how I hate audience participation, so i was intensely irritated by a pair of 'street artistes' running off with my bike, and then having a c**t steward in day-glo tabard tell me to move out of the way of the performance! All you can do is grin and endure it! So I escaped to the Argus basement for a wonderfully unexpected (genuine this time) Brighton Fringe exhibition of gig posters (thanks to Dan Thompson of RAG for the tip off). Why I wondered have I never seen fantastic posters like this on the street? Because, with a couple of exceptions, they are all from the US of A! It's an art that seems to have been lost here since the psychedelic sixties, despite artists like Jonny Hannah and Chris Watson producing silk-screened work. Just missed the workshop by Eleanor Grosch (Dan was seen clutching tight a free poster he'd made himself!), but I'll be back next Saturday for Chuck Sperry. BTW not sure about the name of the show, Sub Screen Sonic... but they are all for sale and apparently 50 have been postered up around the place. You find one, you keep it!