Penguin Books, 1997
Design by Jesse Marinoff Reyes
Photograph by Roberta Bayley
Probably the only cover that I’ve done that came to approach (minor?) iconic status as far as I know. There was a time when young art school students would approach me asking if I was “THE Jesse Marinoff Reyes” who designed it. The first edition hardcover was also nicely done in a gritty, punk style by John Gall—though mine took it a step further into the ripped-and-torn transgressive milieu of my punk-culture design heroes Jamie Reid and Art Chantry, and of loads of often nameless or obscure creators of punk flyers from Belltown to the East Bay to the East Village and to Soho and Gateshead and everywhere in between (not telling you where those disparate neighborhoods are—if yer punk you already know!).
The original image/concept was slightly different, using a closeup of an anonymous, snarling singer at the mic (collaged together by me) and the intent was to have it printed on uncoated, chip-board-style paper stock in two colors—black and a Pantone day-glo pink, so as to represent all of CBGB’s punk scene and not any particular artist. Unfortunately, Legs McNeil himself wasn’t wild about the image or the design! McNeil claimed that New York’s punk scene was more stylish, eschewing London’s and the West Coast’s ripped-and-torn aesthetic (!). This was news to me. Granted, NYC did not have as vigorous a punk flyer scene design-wise (though this had changed by the ’90s) but I still found his claim somewhat lacking (I mean, hell, he was the editor of PUNK magazine—which was very comics-driven, thanks to art director John Holmstrom—and very-DIY with ad hoc typesetting and magic marker headlines).
It wasn’t until I adapted Roberta Bayley’s photograph (used on the John Gall-designed hardcover for Grove Press) that he signed off on my design. But the criticism stuck with me. Did I have a “West Coast bias” thanks to my Seattle roots? Well, no, actually. I saw a (very rare) collection of NYC punk flyers at an exhibit at NYU. They were as consistently ragged as you could imagine—as much ransom note lettering as hand-scrawled marker lettering as grungy, photocopied type. Then, years later, I relayed the anecdote to John Holmstrom himself, who noted, albeit lovingly, “Legs can be fulla crap sometimes.”
In the ensuing years, Grove Press retook the publishing of the book for future reprints. They’ve mostly alternated between my cover and Gall’s hardcover original. I later used my original cover design as cover art for an issue of Ronnie Garver’s Dirt Culture ‘zine in Las Cruces.
