White Glove Test

Overview

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.

Reviews

"White Glove Test is a celebration of a lost art form. Though Louisville is the focal point, the flyers—along with the timeframe which they document—tell a larger story about what these scenes meant to a generation of people in this country; truth is, Louisville was just one of many." - Minju Pak, managing editor, T Magazine

"[White Glove Test] offers a narrative of the city's evolving do-it-yourself scene, a tight-knit corner of the U.S. underground that's trajectory is both unique and universal. While the book paints a picture of the artists, venues, and music culture of Louisville, it also speaks more broadly to the ways like-minded folks used primitive forms of social media to connect in a pre-internet underground."  —Liz Pelly, senior editor, Impose Magazine

"A rad book of American punk rock ephemera"  —Dangerous Minds

Author Biography

Mike Bucayu is the founder of Self Destruct Records and the founding member of the bands Solution Unknown and Kinghorse.Stephen Driesler is a writer who grew up in the Louisville punk scene.Tim Furnish is a graphic designer, photographer, and the cofounder of the band Crain. Douglas Maxson is an artist, a musician, and the creator of the louisvillepunk website. Shawn Severs is a visual artist who runs Louisville Lip Records, Press and Archives and the cofounder of Noise Pollution Records. They each live in the Louisville, Kentucky area. John Kampschaefer was a friend, photographer, drummer, handy man, green thumb, studio engineer, and pack rat.