Blog: Poster Patrol

< previous

At the weekend ago I headed into town to do a ye olde ROCK ADMIN job which I haven't done for DECADES: going round shops asking them to display some FLYERS!

Back in the previous century before we had THE INTERWEB this was a crucial part of ROCK promotion, although back then I tended to focus on POSTERS rather than flyers, largely because I could get away with photocopying 10 posters for Leicester's various record shops and venues, but would be NOTICED if I tried to do thousands of flyers at work. I would trudge into the city centre, usually on a weekday lunch break, and go round all of the above humbly handing over posters, and then go round again the next day to see if anyone had actually put them up. I really really did not like doing it, so was happy to pack it all in just as soon as T Berners-Lee came along and liberated us all.

HOWEVER, the advice from ALL of the various Fringe organisations where I'm taking Data and Doctor Doom this summer was that you HAD to have posters and flyers for the venues, and so I have embarked upon a series of orders from the lovely people at Banana Print, who did a GRATE job of it. In most cases I just got the posters and flyers delivered direct to the venues, but for the Camden Fringe show at The Hen & Chickens I realised that I could get everything delivered to ME and then a) have a LOOK at it and b) take some round London's COMIC-related establishments.

So that is what I did, and it went SURPRISINGLY well, with flyers happily handed over at The Cartoon Museum, Gosh and Forbidden Planet. It was all much like a DREAM really, a feeling enhanced by popping into Fopp to buy the new Half Man Half Biscuit CD and having a YOUNG PERSON behind the counter eloquently discussing its merits. Young people? Listening to Half Man Half Biscuit? That can't be real, can it?

The day finished even MORE surreally when, after dropping the remaining flyers AND a load of posters off at the venue, I got a Mildmay/Overground train DIRECT to Stratford with no stops. It was AMAZING - it was running really late so they changed it to a non-stopping service, with the next one 2 minutes behind doing the stopping instead. This was a bit annoying for people who DIDN'T want to go direct to Stratford but for the rest of us it was AAMAZING - so amazing in fact that when we arrived approx 20 seconds later Actual Londoners expressed DELIGHT - OUT LOUD - at the speediness of it all! I don't think I've heard Actual Londoners expressing collective delight in public since The Olympics - what a day!

posted 17/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett

< previous