The Topplers 1980s

Poster designs for local bands 1980s. I played bass for The Topplers. We also ran “alternative” discos in Caspers on the Foregate Kilmarnock, which later became Parkers, and The Hunting Lodge at Glencairn Square Kilmarnock.

I was obsessed with comics throughout the eighties.  In 1981 I copied the cover from a 1950s Crime Suspense Stories without thinking about the violent sexism it represented and it was immediately banned by the local Women’s Aid - rightly so! After that I stuck to baldy naked men with massive heads!!!

The posters were hand drawn sometimes using rub down lettering for the text. They were photocopied at Prontoprint or Sinforanis and we would sneak about the town at night pasting them up on walls. More often than not the posters were peeled off while still wet and kept by the bands fans. I often visited people houses who had the stolen posters on their walls!!!

Nyah Fearties 1990s

I’d done some posters for the band Nyah Fearties around 1983 and they asked me to do something for their second album “Desperation O’ A Dyin’ Culture”. The LP wasn’t going to have a traditional cardboard sleeve; Davie had purchased some dull green bio-degradeable plastic carrier bags, so I made a stencil and we sprayed the bags with 'CFC free' spray paint. They looked great lying flat on the floor but when the paint dried and we picked them up to put the records in, the paint flaked right off!!!

After the first batch of spray painted bags the rest came out in a plain brown paper bag! There were home made, hand stamped badges and a booklet inside the bags which were OK!

 

In 1990 I started playing bass with Nyah Fearties and left my work to study Graphic Design at Glasgow College of Building and Printing. One of the first projects we were given was to take something industrial and create a repeat pattern from it. I took the jaws from a pair of adjustable pincers and used them as the basis for a Celtic knot which I then made a lino cut from… that was my template for the next five years! I used lino or woodcuts for everything. Posters, Album Covers, T-Shirts, Booklets and Postcard, almost the entire graphic design for the Fearties were done in this primitive way but it fitted perfectly to the band’s “home made” image.

Saw this Guiness poster in a pub in Ireland and thought I could recreate it with crows flying around Lugton’s tin kirk. This became the basis for a series of scraperboard illustrations that were used on the Fearties SKUD CD and also on Grampa Craw.

After Nyah Fearties split in 1995 Davie went on to form Dub Skelper and later Junkman’s Choir. I continued to do similar woodcut and scraperboard designs for their posters and album covers.

Topplers Records, The NoMen, Commissions 1999 - 2024

As soon as home CD recorders became affordable I bought one and formed Topplers Records releasing small run CDRs for local bands. After a while we upped our game and produced a series of 7” vinyl singles and a 12” LP as well as short runs of professionally manufactured CDs. The NoMen were formed in 2003 and I’ve been designing their sleeves since then. I always try to go one step beyond what is necessary… for example a triple CD in a tin, a gatefold 7” sleeve with a pop-up, a Beano style comic sleeve for a CD, lathe cut singles in square or octagonal shapes… anything goes! Also occaisionally do sleeves for Rev-Ola and Poppy Disc Records. Also see -  www.thenomen.org. - The NoMen on Bandcamp  - Topplers Records on Bandcamp

Still partial to the odd woodcut now and again.

Many of these are still available from https://thenomen.org

With prices starting at £2 it’s probably some of the cheapest vinyl you will see online!!!