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1997

Drawn from the punk collections at UMD, these images illustrate the year in D.C. punk. Explore by category or click an image to find more.

FLIERS

Small hand-cut half sheet all-text yellow-gold flier with band names in handwritten script and show information in a monospaced bitmap font.
Corm and Sarge concert flier – Black Cat, Washington, D.C., January 13, 1997
White flier with band names in large serif font above a pixelated image of a person with tongue sticking out.
Chisel, A Minor Forest, and Shoutbus concert flier – Black Cat, Washington, D.C., February 15, 1997
Yellow and black flier with band names in large label-maker like slab font over newspaper classified ads.
Corm and Sarge concert flier – Black Cat, Washington, D.C., January 13, 1997
Black and white hand-drawn and lettered fleir with an illustration of a man in a striped button-down shirt with large white feathered wings looking to one side and a woman in a t-shirt with a halo and eyes closed standing between a sign affixed to the wall with an arrow pointed upward.
Modest Mouse, The Most Secret Method, Other Star People concert flier – Black Cat, Washington, D.C., September 6, 1997
Black and white flier with a dotted line connecting 'United Poultry Concerns' and 'Positive Force' along with a small photograph of a rooster surrounded by chicks.
Dismemberment Plan and Smart Went Crazy concert flier – St. Margaret’s Church, Washington, D.C., September 13, 1997 (Design 1)
Weathered black landscape-oriented flier with text in white serif font and a black eyed susan in the center.
Dismemberment Plan and Smart Went Crazy concert flier – St. Margaret’s Church, Washington, D.C., September 13, 1997 (Design 2)
Black and white flier headed with the Kill Rockstars record label logo and with band names in bold sans serif font surrounded by a woodcut-style illustration of cherubs pointing updward behind a skeleton playing a serpent.
The Crainium, Miranda July, and The Stigmatics concert flier – Project Space, Washington, D.C., circa October 1, 1997
Black and white flier with text in all-lowercased lightweight sans serif font over a pixelated illustration of a kaiju-like robot destroying a city as people flee.
Franklin, Jenhitt, The Elusive, and Atom & His Package concert flier - WMUC, College Park, Maryland, October 11, 1997
Long, narrow, all-text flier with band names and venue information in plain, black sans-serif font on a white background.
Impossible Five concert flier – River Road Unitarian Church, Bethesda, Maryland, October 12, 1997

ZINES

Black and white zine cover with a small picture of three children superimposed on a grainy photograph of a caved-in cieling, viewed from below.
Brickthrower, Issue 1, June 1997
Black and white zine cover with a large illustration of a muscular person wearing a black cap, short-sleeve shirt, and pants raising a brick over their head, ringed with jagged bolts.
Brickthrower, Issue 2, September 1997
Newsprint zine cover with cursive script text in black ink with two black and white photographs, one of Todd Bell and Chris Broach playing bass and guitar and another more abstract photo of musicians performing onstage.
Held Like Sound, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 1997

EPHEMERA

A poster with a black and white fisheye-lens photo of a drumset and other instruments in a recording studio, the photo is processed to be mostly blue and black and there is bold elongated yellow text.
The Delta 72, The Soul Of A New Machine promotional poster, 1997
A poster with a large photograph of the members of trans am, one posed shirtless, standing and looking leftward. Text is below in black and white lowercased Helvetica.
Trans Am, Surrender To The Night promotional poster, 1997

About

Persistent Vision presents the University of Maryland's digitized special collections materials related to punk in the Washington, D.C. area. Most of these materials reside at Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. These materials help to tell the story of a subculture and a community that has thrived since 1976.

Curators: John Davis, Ben Jackson
Design: Ben Jackson, Natalie Salive
Authors: Ben Jackson, John Davis, and Jessica Grimmer

With help from: Cindy Zhao, Jeremy Gottwig, Amanda Henderson, Gabby Cameron, Hayden Kramer

Contact Us

Special Collections in Performing Arts is located in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library on University of Maryland’s College Park campus.

For general information about the library and our collections, contact us