More Part-Time Whore Ephemera

     I went back to Vegas to visit the folks last week.  Vegas never changes and yet it appears to change all the time.  What's the deal with the fart smell everywhere you go?  

     I picked up a few records I left at my parents house and I came across an archive of old flyers, zines, stickers, and other shit.  I don't want to overplay the importance of Part-Time Whore in the grand scheme of my life.  It was super great but I'm not trying to make this blog a tribute to that band.  All in all this collection of stickers and other shit will probably be the end of posts specific to the band Part-Time Whore.

    Graphics were an important part of our band, as important as the lyrics.  I put a lot of thought into the choice of graphics about what this name was supposed to symbolize.  Since it's kind of an ignorant name I didn't want to add any elements which could be construed as degrading to women.    But I didn't want to put any political metaphors into something that wasn't there.  I don't think we were ever a "political" band.  Mixing politics with music is like mixing oil and water.  I don't think it's ever truly inspiring unless it happens by accident.  Direct political diatribes can be preachy even fascist.  That's why I think Dancin In the Street by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas is the most powerful political song ever recorded.  

    Maybe PTW was more of a philosophical band as opposed to being a political band.  I think I was better at pointing out the obvious and trying to "search for truth" instead of telling punk rockers not to fuckin eat meat.  I always hated dogmatic hardcore.  More grist for the mill in my treatise on why straight edge was crap.  Fuck Animal rights too.

     Obviously a whore can be a man or a woman but not everyone has the same intelligence level to see that distinction and not everyone can see any semblance of humor in the name.  I tried to make some connections with these stipulations in mind.  As far as I can remember I'm thinking I made all these graphics on my own or I "stole" them from graphics books I found at the UNLV library.  The above graphic made me wonder too much about who was supposed to be the whore in this picture.  As a result we xeroxed very few of these stickers and never printed them again.  I didn't want to come across as apologetic but I didn't want to come across as a bunch of sexist morons either.  What can I say Part-Time Whore followed the Vegas tradition of stupid fuckin band names.

    I liked the idea of hijacking these phony authority figures and painting them up to be whores.  Saying they were part-time humanized them a little which was not my intention.  Let's face it authority seems to think it's more than human and therefore above it all.  Fuck these guys and anyone else who thinks they have all the answers.  They do not have any answers and more than likely they'll pose a threat to you and yours if given half a chance.  These photographs as well as the photo on the cover of the album were used with permission from the UNLV Special Collections Department at the UNLV Library.  I think these guys were Military Police stationed at Nellis.  

     The above images were culled from random graphic art books I found and they show me reaching for a more esoteric definition of the PTW name.  The yin/yang McDonalds piece was a favorite for many and was included as the label for side b on the record.  I’m not sure what I was going for there.  Maybe I'm saying that corporations are trying to co-opt other cultures to make their products more marketable?  They are trying to weave their message of consumerism into the fabric of Taoism?  I don’t know where I was going with this but it is eye catching.  Keep it simple man! 

     I always dug the army of Santa Clauses drawn up in a Russian Constructivist style.  The cross roads where consumerism meets fascism?

    I won’t leave you wondering, the sticker with the hand signals spell out UNITY.  Ain’t nothing wrong with another unity song.  We sure needed unity for the tiny fragments of the “scene” back then.  Nothing ever really changes.  We need it today maybe more than ever.  We all know unity is a good thing.  Below is a collection of graphics I would often take to Kinkos to copy off stickers.          

     This sticker is the classic and was always a fave of mine.  Again taken from some graphic design book from the 70's.  I feel like this is what I'm looking at every time I watch TV.  I wonder if that's how the broadcasters feel every time they send their bullshit messages over the air?  

     The two stickers posted below are among the rejects that never made it past the drawing board.  I really dig the drunk man graphic.  Great piece taken from an unnamed graphic design book from the 40's.  If I didn’t want to be associated with sexist bullshit you can believe I also wasn’t interested in being associated with drunk punk bullshit.  Nothing annoys me more than drunks.  So yeah I hate straight edgers and drunks, no wonder I’m all alone. 

     The photo of the little person passing out cigars was also a slice of Las Vegas History taken from the UNLV library archives.  It’s kinda funny but mostly just weird.  

     And in conclusion I wanted to share the original lyric sheet from the Part-Time Whore demo just in case anyone gives a shit.  I found it along with a grip of flyers I made for PTW shows.  I tried uploading it here for all to view but it kept getting rejected.  I'll post later on down the line so look for the Part-Time Whore story to be concluded later on.  

     Feel free to drag these images to your desktop if you want em.    Thanks to the Independent Publishers Resourse Center in Portland for the use of the scanner.  Good night and good luck.