White Glove Test (Louisville Punk Flyers 1978-1994)

More than 700 flyers are compiled in this rich visual history of the Do-It-Yourself concert poster. Documenting Louisville’s vibrant and diverse music scene, this collection of beautiful, funny, and profane pieces represents the golden age of a fugitive street art and revives a neglected facet of punk’s expressive force. Clipped, collaged, and photocopied, meticulously hand-painted and lettered, or designed on a glowing computer screen in the early days of desktop publishing, these flyers were outsider broadcasts stuck to phone poles and storefronts, a makeshift gallery installed with staple guns and wheat paste. Offering a parallax view of American punk, this book takes the reader through Louisville’s rise of bold beginnings and eminent international status to the thriving interconnected underground that extended beyond New York and Los Angeles. Assiduously assembled from rare originals each poster illustrates a national phenomenon in microcosm and illuminates a vital style of pre-Internet social media that is sure to appeal to any fan of independent music in Louisville and beyond.