It's Tuesday and time for a trip back to yesteryear. Today, I have chosen a promotional poster for the Harvest Quartet of GBS (circa, 1995) as our highlighted archival photo. Kevin Moser, who is one of the most gifted graphic designers that I know, usually hit a home run when it came to designing posters for the groups. He struck out on this one. Not that we gave him much to work with.
Harvest featured (L-R) Phil Bishop on the piano, Keith Waggoner singing the tenor (yes, that's me hiding behind that hair), Mark Burley on the low end (the picture does him an injustice; he's actually 6'7"), Dave Bittinger as baritone, and Mike Dickinson as lead.
I literally laughed until I cried every time this quartet traveled. Mike Dickinson is probably the funniest guy I have ever been around. His sarcastic comments were hysterical. I would be angry at the guy because he was making fun of me, but still couldn't help laughing.
Mark was probably the best guy for PR GBS ever had on the road. The guy was awesome! He makes friends faster than anyone I know of. He was a fantastic basketball player.
Dave Bittinger, who is exactly 4 hours younger than I am, possessed a fantastic solo voice. One time he made the mistake of telling Mike that he didn't like the way his shoulders were formed, and he never heard the end of it. Every time we would pass a sign that said "Shoulder Work Ahead" Mike had some comment for Dave.
Phil was and is a great pianist. He was also the biggest pest in the world. The guy wouldn't give it up. I remember one trip that we took to Kansas. I was sick before I ever got in the van. We were stopping every few miles for me to throw up. I remember laying in the back seat trying to sleep the flu off, and Phil pestering me. He stopped at a convenience store and got some Cool Ranch Doritos. After eating them, he would turn and blow his awful breath in my face, as I lay there helpless. He bought an ice-cold can of Sprite and instead of drinking it, kept pressing it on my face. It was miserable! And then we would get to the camp or church and the pastor and people would think that he was a little angel. I guess it was because of his cherub face.
This quartet was also known for something else. I'll let you figure it out. But I will say that if you smacked the seat of the van we traveled in up to a couple of years after our tours, the dust that was raised brought with it a dinstintive aroma.
We weren't the best quartet of all time, but I guarantee you we laughed more than any other quartet. Here's to Harvest.
6 comments:
That poster was cool in it's day. GBS always had the best posters. Probably Kevin designed it in Photoshop 2.0 with no multiple levels of undo. What a graphic design pioneer he is.
Hey, Keith. Before you publicly criticize your humble former graphic designer, you should first walk a mile in his computer! (Thank you, Charlotte Frederick, for tipping me off to this blatant disrespect!)
When I inherited the graphic design position at GBS circa 1994, it was with the title "interim" because I had no experience and no training, other than two weeks of crash-course instruction from departing designer Rob Scott.
My computer was an Apple IIci. Let me refresh your memory as to its incredible power and versatility.
Its original price was $8800! Its computing speed was a lightning-fast 25 MHz! It came with a 40 MB hard drive, which we upgraded to the maximum 80 MB! It came with 1 MB of RAM, which we upgraded to 4 or 8 MB!
Now let's remember the awesome software of that day. Jon was correct that Photoshop did not yet have multiple levels of undo. I could only go back ONE action. Not only that, but my version of Photoshop did not even have LAYERS!! All edits were destructive. I had to plan ahead and know exactly what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. I had to save multiple copies of the project at different stages in its creation in order to be able to go back to a given point and rework it. But I was limited to how many copies I could save because of the 80 MB limit of the hard drive! Practically every project had to be erased before the next one could commence. Don't forget, the only option for saving a file apart from the internal drive was the massive (ha!ha!ha!) 1.4 MB three-and-a-half inch floppy disk!! There were no recordable CD's and certainly no DVD's.
My Microtek scanner could easily take 45 MINUTES to scan a single color picture! We had no internet. iStock photography was not even imagined and we did not have digital cameras. Any art came from a very limited selection of CD's costing hundreds of dollars or from our Dynamic Graphics Clipper files, which were paper copies that had to be scanned!!
I'm looking at that poster (which you described as a "strike out") and wondering how on earth I was ever able to produce it at all! All of those bevels, embosses, and drop shadows had to be created from scratch! They did not exist as an effect you could choose from a menu.
OK, buddy Keith? Got the picture?!! I'd REALLY like to see what YOU would have produced under the circumstances!!
Still your Friend,
(even while smarting with humiliation from your published abuse)
Kevin Moser
P.S. You're right. That poster was awful!
Ok, abracadabra, if you're going to post more than once, please try to come up with something new and creative. You know what the Bible says about vain repetitions, don't you?
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