The archetypal corner store closed its doors. Claiming the best egg cream around & the home of the birth of the New York Dolls, Gem Spa is a model to be emulated into the future. The old world will continue to die & we will take the best parts & make them live.
I was pretty stoked to see that the label I did for Oakshire’s “HELLSHIRE I” made it on the Alehead’s TOP 100 Beer Labels of 2011 list. Not only that, but I got #9!!! TOP TEN!!! They said, “The perfect combination of Ed Roth and Albrecht Durer. This is what Cthulhu’s wine cellar looks like.” They got it! Stoked.
PORK Street Soldier Carolee Wheeler snapped this pic of Dave King, the designer of the CRASS logo with PORK #5′s interview with Gavin McInnes, relevant because we discuss CRASS a bunch & the PORK CRASS rip-off logo.
The Crass Logo was designed by Dave King for Pennys Christ’s Reality Asylum book, The folling excerpt is from George Berger’s “Story of CRASS”.
“When Pen had finished the book, he asked Dave King to design “a little frontis piece. I’d printed them up on this rough grey paper and it had a militaristic, communistic feel about it. I thought it’d be nice to have a little insignia on it.” So Dave set to work on a design incorporating the subject matter of the book – family, state, church – all the power structures. As Rimbaud remembers, he started with the Greek symbol, The Star of Life, which features a snaked climbing a pole in the middle of a six pointed star and can be seen today on many British ambulances as a symbol of health. Having gone through a number of different designs, he came up with what would become known worldwide as the Crass symbol.A striking black and white mish-mash of ancient and modern symbols, it could mean most things to most people: try and you might see within it the Christian cross, the Union Jack, the Swastika and two snakes devouring each others’ tails. It looks for all its worth like the sort of symbol you might find in an Egyptian pyramid or an ancient book of spells. “We were one of the first outside the big boys like Ford, to use a corporate logo so effectively,” notes Penny Rimbaud. Dave King remembers: “He said he wanted something that would crystallize the title. It started out as a Christian Cross with a snake. But a medical symbol? I didn’t think so much of that symbol . . . all these symbols are in the air, they’re archetypes…” King, unlike Rimbaud, remembers the first sketch as a cross with a snake zig-zagging across it. Between the two of them, it mutated and developed through several prototypes into the symbol that decorates the cover of this book, most of their records and many a punk rock jacket. Given the Christian cross on the Crass symbol, there have been suggestions that the snake represents the devil. But Dave King is ambiguous to the idea: “It was a reflection of Pen’s anger at what he felt were these destructive aspects of Christianity. So in that sense the snake was just against… it wasn’t really Adam & Eve’s serpent, it was just something in counterpoint. “There was a book at Dial House of Japanese family crests, and the majority of them were designed in a circle – it’s something that repre- sents the clan and that appears below the neck at the top of a kimono. So the serpent and the cross were conformed into a circle, it just seemed to come to form that way, there were two heads. The third thing that completed the design was the idea that it could be a stencil. The idea of a stencil had been something in the air for a while. It almost pre-dated the idea of a graffiti campaign. There was a guy called Robert Indiana (aka Robert Clark) who did these paintings: he used stencil lettering and a lot of his paintings were circular. He did this image of the word ‘love’ with the letters ‘lo’ above ‘ve’; his work was an influence. Then there was a book that everyone was interested in called Herbert Stencil, he was called a quick change artist. So, for a while I was Herbert Stencil at art school. I’ve always been interested in trying to reduce something to its essentials.To make it as solid as possible – you can’t really break it. It has an irreducible quality to it – the solidity helps create that sense of reson- ance. I had a pretty good idea it was a strong piece.
“Also, because the pamphlet that Penny was making was being mimeographed on an early Xerox, and he wanted to do a certain amount of copies. At that time, there was no money or access to print- ing, so it was like what’s the simplest, easiest way – apart from potato cut! – to reproduce, and a stencil was perfect for that.The other thing was the Union Jack. I remember being in junior school and they taught us how to draw the Union Jack, which is notoriously difficult to draw because of the way the crosses of the three kingdoms overlap, there’s an asymmetry to it. I wasn’t consciously thinking of the swastika though. The biggest single influence was the Japanese family crests.”
Steve Ignorant saw the symbol for the first time when it was suggested it would be taken up by Crass.“I thought it looked good – really smart. The only aspect I didn’t like was that there was something about it that looked like a swastika.” Steve recalls a more recent incident that illustrates the ambiguity of the symbol: “I was standing at the bar and I was wearing my green bomber jacket. I had a little enamel Crass symbol and a barn owl just on top of that.There was a black guy standing at the bar and he kept looking over . . . of course, from a distance it looked like a German Gestapo symbol – you had this barn owl that looked a bit like an eagle and then the Crass symbol which looked a bit like a swastika – I soon took that off.” Little could Dave King have known that the sign he designed for a home-published pamphlet with a print run of 100 would still be all around today. It is worn as a tattoo by punks, layabouts and young soul rebels everywhere.“I still see the symbol today in California, on a jacket or a tattoo,” says Dave. “I’m tempted to go up to them and say ‘do you know that I designed that?’ It’d be like,‘piss off granddad!’They wouldn’t believe me anyway!”
To this day, confused people think the CRASS logo is a swastika, even the PORK rip-off version was being torn down by this hippie girl & when I asked her why she was tearing my stickers down she said “it was a swastika.” To help the dialog I said, “Fuck you, you stupid bitch!”
Dr. Bronner – American Hero
“American democratic President Wilson, 1917, replaced Marxism by Lenin. “We are not a nation of classes, races, minority or pressure groups! Anybody trading on our race, color, nationality or religion is not yet American, does not yet deserve to enjoy the liberties of the Stars & Stripes! He does not yet know, that the Army of Principles by America’s Founding Father, the world’s 1st steelbridqe-builder, Thos. Paine, since 1799, unites the whole Human race in our Eternal Father’s great All-One-God-Faith! Once we teach it, 6 billion strong, we’re All-One! “As teach Abraham-Israel-Moses- Buddha-Jesus & Mohammed, inspired every 76 yrs. by the messenger of God’s law, the Messiah, Halley’s Comet! 6000 yrs. since the year One! We’re All-One! All-One!
In ’68 American Mao professor Marcuse upset Moscow’s Czech power till Moscow’s Press had the courage to confess: “Marx is god! Marcuse his prophet! Mao his sword! 50,000 American university professors, his disciples! Black Panthers his killers!” What an apology we Rabbis owe Marx-Moscow, all Jews, all mankind, IRS slave, for our 2000 year failure to teach brave the constructive-selfish Moral ABC the real Rabbi Hillel taught Jesus to unite all mankind free! The exact opposite to absolute-unselfish Marxism, that enslaves the Free! Unless we teach the whole Human race the Moral ABC from uniting All-One-God-Faith, we’re dead men on furlough from half-true hates!”
Ed Cole of the Underlings offhandedly asked if PORK knew the quickest way to UTOPIA. I’ve gone from being a Utopian, which means that I aspired towards a “perfect system” when I was young, to being “anti-utopian”, which was a reaction to my feelings of despair when it became obvious that a utopian system could not exist, to whatever it is I am now, where I understand that there are tiers & varying sizes of systems that must co-exist & none of them work 100% & none of them should be valued that highly except as tools. Similarly, Andy Human brought the idea of “Rockism” back into my consciousness, which is of course tied to “anti-rockism”. These are the problems of belief. People throw their entire existence onto the fire of some idea, like Punk or Rock&Roll or Communism or PORK, which inevitably fails them because external forces cannot give the individual that sense of peace & wholeness that comes from self-mastery. Then, heart-broken they swing wildly the other direction, defining their being on avoiding the structures which failed them. These supposedly opposing forces end up mirroring each other & no one is the better for it. I understand, there is a glory to religious fervor which is unmatched by most things, & even briefly dipping into that pool is an amazing feeling, but at the same time, it never lasts. Which is fine.
Put this together in your head.
First start up this song. Rewrite the lyrics to be about PORK TIME.
Then Animate this in your mind, Porko’s mouth is one of those human mouth animation things, singing the lyrics. The rising sun in the background is rotating.
BLITZKRIEG BUTTONS. ROCK&ROLL. WEIRDO ART. BAD IDEAS. AMERICAN TRASH CULTURE. DIMESTORE DELINQUENCY. GETTUM HERE.
This is pretty amazing. I’ve been trying to understand my relationship to the Hobbit & the Lord of the Rings for a while, & how I want it to be understood publicly. But ultimately, the things are like the dusty myths of a religion which I feel guilty for not actively practicing.
We touched on this in the interview with Shannon & the Clams in PORK #4, but Alice Cooper on the Muppet Show is an important thing.
Also, for the New Year, for you, more online content.
Dirty Donny (as featured in PORK #5) is sending me pictures of his stuff by CHOP. I can’t deal.
