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| Amazing Rhythm Aces |
| Armadillo World Headquarters |
October 31, 1980
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| 11" x 17"
(27.9cm x 43.18cm) |
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Five years after the first Amazing
Rhythm Aces poster, I was commissioned to do another.
Whereas the first was themed on a song by the band,
this one was themed on the occasion. Halloween was rapidly
becoming the premiere holiday for Austin’s eclectic
community and I sought to address that fact in this
bill. The playing card motif that was the ancillary
theme in the first poster has here morphed into a general
game paradigm, with an anthropomorphic playing card,
the ace of music, sharing the checkered stage with chess
pieces and a hammer banged thought balloon. Above, Jack
O’Lantern, the Irish Halloween deity, disgorges
a flock of aerial aces that torque above the scene,
casting an ominously moving shadow giving startled pause
to the central character and his bag of musical treats.
Bordering the whole mess is a semiotic sweep of suit
symbols, cornered by palm trees, a personal symiosis
of my art.
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| My second Amazing Rhythm Aces
poster for the Armadillo World Headquarters
was executed nearly 5 years after the first. Much had changed
since the mid 70s, and with the election of 1980 –-
and with it the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan and the Republicans
to power -- less than a week away, much much more was scheduled
for much greater change. The Aces were still quite popular,
but their brand of music was threatened and diminished by
these winds of change as well.
Halloween was in the air in Austin; always an auspicious
occasion for the capitol city of Texas. This was also true,
only more so, for the Armadillo, and this particular Halloween
marked a significant change for the traditional holiday concert
there. This was the first year in a half-dozen that the venue’s
traditional Pumpkin Stomp with Ramon,
Ramon and the Four Daddios would not be held. In
its place, the Aces. Nonetheless, it was a memorable show;
a last gasp for central Texas hippie jug-band music. It was
a rip-roaring occasion and a costumed gala in the old Armory
building. And the focus was on the show and Halloween; change
and the ominous future were left outside the hall.
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