The Backstory of the: “WATCH OUT! PUNK IS COMING!” poster
My memories of the most infamous poster campaign in punk rock history
The story of interviewing Lou Reed at CBGB in Legs McNeil’s infamous (and popular) Please Kill Me book was one of the few mentions of PUNK Magazine by that guy. That and his story about the “Watch Out! PUNK Is Coming!” poster. As a result it became a famous incident in the history of CBGB and punk rock. I’ve always wondered why there wasn’t more about PUNK Magazine in that book, since Legs claims that he was a “Co-Founder” of PUNK Magazine and all. Several PUNK Magazine people who hung out at CBGB back in the day were disturbed by some of the details in the book: CBGB was not a haven for drugs and sex. I have to admit that I was shocked by many of the stories in the book. Yeah, sex drugs and rock’n’roll were the mainstream narrative back then, but CBGB was innocent compared to Studio 54, Plato’s Retreat, the sex clubs and leather bars and even mainstream rock music at a time when decadence, drugs and wild sex dominated the culture.
Anyhow, here’s my story as I remember:
In mid-December 1975, Ged Dunn, Jr., Legs and I pulled off the “Watch Out! PUNK Is Coming!” poster campaign. Posting flyers and one-sheets on city walls has been around forever. We weren’t inventing anything here. As long as there has been printing on paper and a way to attach paper to walls, street posters have been a thing. Before that? Graffiti did the job. So it wasn’t like we were re-inventing the wheel: We were promoting an underground/downtown ‘zine as best as we could.
At the time, wheat-pasting posters in New York City was mostly a corporate thing, where posters for big budget films or mainstream music acts were allowed to be displayed in certain areas (all bought and paid for). Underground stuff downtown? Not so much. You didn’t want to paste your posters over mainstream media stuff or else you could get in trouble with the wrong people (if you know what I mean). Mainstream poster campaigns cost a lot of money. We didn’t have any money, so we avoided pasting posters in midtown Manhattan. Downtown, on the other hand, was up for grabs. The East Village was a deserted area back then. So we grabbed.
It was Ged Dunn Jr.’s idea to do a poster campaign. I created the graphic (in addition to a rate card, business cards and-other promotional material that was all hand-lettered since we had no budget for typeset). I can’t remember now who came up with the phrase: “Watch Out! PUNK Is Coming!” It would have been something Ged and I collaborated on. Simple enough since we were all on the same page in the beginning.
Back then, you could run off a lot of copies from a “paper plate” printing shop (as opposed to a metal plate at a high-end printer). It was a cheap, offset technology that enabled you to make 500 copies before the paper plate was used up, when the image quality would then be degraded. There were a lot cheap printing places using paper plate tech back then, so shortly after I created the artwork Ged had a few hundred posters printed. Then he bought a bucket and some wheat paste, added water to the wheat paste. Now we ready to plaster the posters everywhere we could and take over the world!
Unlike today (when it’s one of the most sought-after and expensive neighborhoods in NYC) and there are storefronts and businesses all over the East Village? In 1975 the neighborhood was a dangerous slum. It was crime-ridden, with prostitutes on most street corners, drug dealers on every other block and burglaries, muggings and robberies everywhere else. Tourists avoided the area.
As a result rents were cheap. A lot of aspiring artists and musicians moved moved to the East Village because the rents were so cheap. In some East Village neighborhoods you could get a large apartment for a few dozen dollars! An SVA classmate of mine in 1973 was renting a four bedroom apartment on Avenue D for $40 a month. Dustin Pop claims he got an apartment for $12 a month back in the day! Life (and rents) were cheap because crime was rampant.
So there was a lot of open wall space in downtown New York back then, since not much was happening (yet). The East Village was desolate: A few “hip” clothing stores were still around from the hippie days heyday, and there was a bar here and there as well as a few all-night diners and stores (Veselka, Soup ’N Burger on Broadway, the Village Farms deli on 9th and Second Avenue: Still open today!).
On the other hand, “The Punk Dump” was far away from the East and West Villages. Our office was located near an entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and a block or two away from the main Post Office at 30th and Tenth Avenue (where the High Line now stands).The PUNK Dump was in a No Man’s Land. We were located several blocks away from bars or restaurants (except for Maggies and the West Side Diner on 9th Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets). The Punk Dump wasn’t located in the East nor the West Village. Yeah, rents in those areas were cheap, but we operated on an even cheaper budget. There was no way to rent a large office in the EV in 1975.
We started off our poster campaign walking down Tenth Avenue while there was still some daylight out, but we rarely found a decent place to plaster a poster. We put up a poster here or there while learning how to wheat paste stuff on different surfaces. You know what? Wire fences aren’t the best place to paste a poster unto. Brick walls work much better. Pasting posters over other posters was even better.
We somehow stumbled our way to the West Village, but couldn’t find much wall space for our posters. We would paste a poster here or there in the West Village, but it seemed like hostile territory for street posters. Like I said, the West Village was an affluent neighborhood. It was nice and neat and to me? Devoid of culture. Sex and drugs aren’t culture. You need art and music.
Soon we found ourselves on Bleecker Street, home of the 1950s-60s folk-rock movement. We did better here. There was an occasional space here and there where we could paste our message. As we moved down Bleecker Street towards the Bowery (and the East Village) we were able to paste posters all over the place! We started taking more chances, pasting stuff on fire department boxes and other spaces you wouldn’t expect anyone to place a promo poster.
LINK to WBAI CBGB History:
https://wbai.org/upcoming-program/?id=10743
Finally, we reached the Promised Land: CBGB’s! There was a lot of wall space just below 2nd Street and the Bowery, thanks to a wooden fence protecting a vacant lot. Back then the area was deserted so we had our way with it! Ged decided: “Fuck it! Let’s take this place over.” So we pasted the “Watch Out! PUNK Is Coming” posters all over the place. We were planning to take the place over anyhow, so this we were “marking our territory.”
Debbie Harry’s reaction, as recounted in Please Kill Me: was:
“Here comes another shitty band.”
But we weren’t another shitty band. We became the zine that helped to define and shape the emerging music scene at CBGB’s back in the day. Within a few months Debbie became our first t-shirt and our first centerfold model. We helped make the Ramones famous as the first punk rock band, and we influenced the underground and eventually the mainstream media. But this is a story for another day.
I’m not recounting these memories to brag about what we did back in the day. I remember hating how kids back in the 1970s were nostalgic for the Woodstock Experience. I hated this nostalgia back in the day and still dislike the people who now “wish I could have been there, at CBGB’s in the 1970s.”
People! Start a new music scene! Work together the way that the Ramones and the Talking Heads supported each other. Cooperate, don’t compete. Create together, don’t screw other people on the scene. we need innovation and new ideas in punk rock and other cultural endeavors. We need new ideas. We need creativity.
In other news, I’m now accepting paid subscriptions that have been pledged by some of our subscribers. I have been assured that everyone will receive this newsletter regardless of any paid subscription status, hopefully no one who doesn’t want to pay will receive this content. On the other hand, these newsletters are taking much more time to put together lately. Early chapters only required me to paste an old image or comic strip with a brief backstory.
I intend to keep this newsletter free for all. I will be adding a few things for paid subscribers (since they’re putting money where their mouth is). But if you wanna just check out the free stuff, I encourage you to do so. I just need some cash flow lately. So thanks to any paid subscribers out there. Don’t worry, I’ll find ways to make a paid subscription valuable.
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