Dear Me, Scott King

In early 2006 I made a series of posters called »Stalky«, the posters were what you might call ›method design‹. When I was growing up there was this punk lad (Storky), he was a few years older than me and he was always in bands. He was a funny character, first of all he was still a punk in 1983/4/5/6 (and he probably still is). Secondly, I’m not sure if he wasn’t a bit backwards, either that or he was just very addled by booze and drugs. He was an unfortunate character in many ways, but also quite heroic. I started thinking about him and I realised that I admired him – I admired him for at least TRYING to do something, for trying to be different, for trying to say something.

So, in 2006, I imagined I was Storky (renamed Stalky), I tried to put myself in his place. I imagined that Stalky was still living by his punk ideals and was about forty years old. I imagined he was still trying to get and keep a band together. I designed a poster to promote ›my‹ gig at a pub in Goole – the first gig for many years by »Stalky & The Reprobates«. So, Stalky had got his old band back together – but the band were obviously a bit reluctant, they all had cars, mortgages, kids and jobs. Nevertheless, in my model, the gig happened ­– and of course it was a total failure. Undeterred, Stalky booked the band to play at the same pub a month later. The rest of the band became unwilling, not turning up to rehearsals, challenging Stalky’s authority and refusing to wear the clothes Stalky thought to be ›punk‹. As Stalky, I designed twelve posters all for the same venue, all taking place month after month thus taking up a whole year. As leader of the band and speed fuelled, drunk and increasingly furious designer of the posters, Stalky decided to change the name of the band each month, every month/poster illustrating his increasing dissatisfaction with his band mates as well as his own spiraling paranoia and isolation. By the end, in December, his band have left him and Stalky is forced to play a solo acoustic set of old punk standards.

That, in brief, is the story of the Stalky posters. They’re intended to work as an illustration of the final death throes of The Punk Dream for a middle aged man in a small town.

»Stalky«, 2006, courtesy Galleria Sonia Rosso, Turin

»Stalky’s Revenge« is the second part of the work. In this series, using the same ›method design‹, I imagined being the members of the band that had deserted Stalky. I imagined being the blokes who no longer believed in punk, who wanted something completely different… and who desperately wanted to get away from the paraniod, megalomaniac Stalky. So, Steve Worswick and Daz Tether, formerly of The Reprobates, relaunch themselves as DJ Cosmic Tentacle and DJ Astral D, respectively. Cosmic and Astral start a trance night called Flowtation, it’s run from the back room of The Steam Packet pub (where Stalky and endlessly renamed Reprobates had played their year long residency). Goole is the last place you’d imagine a trance night; being as far away from Goa as it is possible to imagine. Nevertheless, the night was a big success and it looked like Cosmic and Astral had created something positive. However, they made one fatal mistake. If you look at the poster for the second Flowtation night, you’ll see that there was a short solo set by Stalky. Cosmic and Astral allowed this only out of guilt and pity, they thought it could do no harm. Unfortunately for them, Stalky believed his short set to be the best thing about the whole enterprise and used it to muslce his way into the next Flowtation night. Then, disaster begins to unfold… over five posters you can see that Stalky regains his power over Cosmic and Astral. Eventually, Stalky takes over both the design of the Flowtation posters and the night itself. Finally, he forces Cosmic and Astral to rejoin his band and revert to their real names, Steve and Daz… so everything is back where it started. Nothing has changed. Stalky has won, but his victory is a crushing defeat for all concerned.

Stalky, as I said above is based on a real person called Storky, someone told me that he now lives in a hostel in Hull, but I can’t verify this. Daz Tether and Steve Worswick are also real people. I was at school with Steve Worswick, he was a very nice lad who was the classic old- fashioned ›university type‹, someone who might have gone to study accountancy or perhaps engineering – but he never did, he stayed in Goole and became a local trance DJ/remixer. Steve Worswick works under the name Square Bear… he has a website if anyone wants to look him up: www.square-bear.co.uk/

»The Flowtation Story: Stalky’s Revenge«, 2006, courtesy Herald St, London.

In 2005 I started writing a long story, in my dreams it would have become a novel. One of the chapters was set in The Steam Packet pub, and I described some of the posters on the pub wall – all for local, long forgotten bands. I got quite excited about the idea of bands and characters that I remembered and wondered if I could actually design these posters – the idea being to use the posters to tell a story: the ›rise‹ and fall of the band. I wondered if I could convey the positivity and excitement of a new band and track that band through a series of posters until they imploded or drifted apart. So, I suppose, I stopped writing the story and started designing it. Trying to tell a story with this limited vocabulary was very enjoyable, I mean there aren’t a lot of elements to work with: the name of band, the nature of the image, price of admission, number of support acts – that’s kind of it. With »The Flowtation Story: Stalky’s Revenge« I devised the story around the clash of two contrasting sentiments and graphic styles, I wondered if I could convey the whole sorry episode using only the promotional posters. If you like, it was an attempt to combine graphic design and pop cultural cliches in order to create fiction.

MH: Would agree with me when I say that Goa Trance is the worst genre of all music genres?

SK: Yes.

MH: What’s wrong with the Goa Trance people’s taste for design?

SK: They’re all on drugs.

The (real) Reprobates rehearsing in Goole circa 1983. Storky: vocals, Zander Burton: lead guitar, Bones Hutton: drums, Sneady Snead: bass.