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Author: April Harper

This Just In: Punk Flyers of the Bay Area

Our new collection offers a visual explosion of the 1970s–80s punk scene in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco.

Bob Clark, Flyer (detail) for Blistering Agents at The Sound of Music, ca. 1980. Bassist “Big Bob Clark”, later of the band Agression, died in 2021.

Punk has always been anti-establishment, and that includes the traditional design establishment. Its ethos is DIY; make do with what’s available, and figure it out. Don’t have the necessary supplies? Doesn’t matter; you can make paste from flour and use a public library’s xerox machine. Punk thumbs its nose at the polished. It embraces the messy, the handmade, and the authentic. It is a state of mind reflected both in the sound of its music and the look of its promotional graphics.

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