The Moths Have The Best Effing Flyers

We don’t talk about The Moths nearly as much as we should. I don’t like to talk about “best bands” anymore (unless we’re talking DFA1979 cos “fuck you, bro”, best band), especially because you can’t turn left in South Africa anymore without knocking over a mic stand that belongs to the vocalist from a great band. That does, however, make it easier to recognize The Moths. They’re the homies playing surf rock sans vocals. They’re also the band most closely linked with successful flyer design in the country. Coincidence? I think not.

Sure, you might argue that no two Moths flyers are designed by the same guy, and in some cases you’d probably be right. Flyer design can come from any direction and so we can’t trust that this is anything more than a coincidence. That’s unless, like me, you believe that The Universe is a 5-dimensional hyper-thought that’s being transmitted directly from the heart of a daffodil. And that that daffodil is in fact being nudged effortlessly to the left by the constant wingflaps of a passing moth. Then it doesn’t seem like much of a fucking coincidence, does it!?

I know a bunch of Moths flyers are the work of Chris Staub, but beyond that there are a ton that are the works of some clearly phenomenal other people whose names I don’t know. So let’s put the facts aside again and talk about the mystical element here for a second. Flyers used to be rather powerful summoning tools to inform people that something was happening and that they just needed to follow the signs to get there. Kind of like carnie’s used to paint symbols on walls to direct people to the best spots to put on a show for ignorant rubes looking to see a mer-woman suck off a mule. When the Internet spat Facebook from its gaping wombhole though, they started to become kind of generic. Sure, you’d always spot the odd work of a maven artist with incredible skill, or a designer that poured his heart/soul/heartsoul into the fine work his best friend’s band needed at the time, but then they started to devolve more and more into a collection of text, images and ideas that felt like they all said the same thing: “there is a party at this club you basically live at so why not pretend you weren’t coming by asking your friends if they are going… pssst, they’re already there”.

The magic of the damn things was lost somewhere in the midst of an internet revolution that reduced all human interaction to the same 14 options of “Like/invite/antagonize/masturbate” (that’s 4 of the 14 options but you know the rest from your safe travels through Zuckerbook). There was no art to the art, just aht, and nobody likes aht.

The flyer art renaissance I’m currently detecting seems to have everything to do with the fact that The Moths have come up through a scene that never left but needed a breath of fresh air, and while it quietly fostered the growth and development of many a talented musician, it allowed for the kind of wack experimentation that’s required to give invitations to events back their required dynamism. You shouldn’t feel like you’re hungover when you see an event flyer. You should feel drunk. Drunk and high on the kinds of drugs it takes to write this meandering post. And there isn’t a single flyer that has the words “The Moths” printed on it that doesn’t make me feel like I am freebasing Costa Rican coffee grounds off the ass of a drag queen made entirely from playing cards and paper mache.

The reason for this drug-induced sensation though isn’t just the work of the flyers. I’d argue that it’s the magic of knowing that the music is so fucking good that it deserves a flyer worthy of its dirty, messy sensibilities. The problem with so many flyers is that they reflect how common place DJs and designers both are. They could literally say any combination of words and I’d still scan by them in search of the cover charge. The weird images and seeming lack of focus of most Moths flyers, however, force you to actually engage with what you’re seeing and scan the damn things for a combination of information and stimulation. And that is actually the essence of a strong piece of design, right? Like art, it should elicit some sort of feeling, a sensation that – in the case of flyers – when later combined with music and drugs and alcohol, you find yourself going “Fuck man, this poster is so great I actually want to rip it off this wall and stuff it in my closet with the intention of hanging it up” and then never hang it up because art, like music, is meant to be too affecting to be captured in a stupid piece of paper hanging above your bed or in your study.

Either that or those mushrooms have kicked in.