Mommy Can I Go Out And Draw The Misfits Tonight? (Danzig’s Inferno and Punk Rock Gatekeeping 101)

I really don’t think much of social media in general but towards the end of last year I spontaneously decided to create an account with Bluesky as Facebook is literally garbage, and besides that I am not on any other platform. I suppose the one good thing about social media is that you meet like-minded people, and Andrew aka YouAintNoPunkYouPunk is one of them. I stumbled across his lo-fi punk rock illustrations and instantly liked them. We started to follow each other’s pages and after a while we started to talk about the possibility of Andrew contributing some of his works to my website. After e-mailing each other with some concrete ideas Andrew agreed to start off with Misfits based illustrations as an introduction to his work and his persona. Before I bore you to death, below everything you need to know about Andrew and of course his take on the Misfits. (Joe Barstool)

Name: YouAintNoPunkYouPunk 

Occupation: Lo-Fi Punk Rock Illustrator extraordinaire 

Short Artist Bio: Henri De Toulouse Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator. Born on 24 November, 1864 in Albi, France, his immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to…..oh..not that kind of short artist bio?

Hobbies: Ironic Punk Rock Gatekeeping

Influences: Ralph Steadman / Ronald Searle / Charles Keeping / Josef Herman / Sidney Nolan / Fritz Scholder / Frans Masereel / Peter Blake/Hannah Hoch/ Winston Smith / Raymond Pettibon / Gee Vaucher

Background: Literally a kind of beige looking anaglypta wallpaper which could really do with a re-paint but I can’t be arsed.

Artistic Practice and General statement: Basically I draw, paint and collage every day and have amassed a huge back catalogue of stuff as I’ve been doing it for years. It tends to lean towards pop culture with regards to subject matter. I do tend to use digital media in order to get work done quicker but I don’t think I could ever bring myself to use A.I. I’ve never had the time or inclination to work towards illustration as a career as, well, you know how many artists are out there? And I like to get paid so I clearly wouldn’t choose that as a living. Generally speaking though I will always do work for friends at the drop of a hat..or even strangers come to that. I have produced hundreds of adverts for someone I met online who has a radio show in the States all for free and not once did I wish to get paid for my time and effort. The appreciation I received was more than enough. I am not a greedhead in the slightest and I couldn’t be the sort of person who only thinks of art in terms of how it could make me money. I have studied illustration and Chinese brush painting  and am usually quite fond of any sort of creative practice. I have started a few graphic novels but…my god the work involved really puts me off, so I admire anyone who has the dedication to do that sort of work. My images usually veer towards a more sardonic outlook but recently I have been trying to be a bit more upbeat artistically. My advice to anyone who thinks they can’t produce anything artistic is that you are completely and utterly wrong. Just have a go. If you’re enjoying the process then you are doing it right.

Mommy Can I go…(Punk Rock Gatekeeping 101)

If you see any Gen Z or Millennial wearing a Misfits T-shirt, demand they name at least one song! If they pass the test and you still feel the need to look down upon them whilst scoffing, ask them what the B-side to 1977’s ‘Cough/Cool’ was!

Actually, don’t do that. I mean. Who cares right? When you become a baldy old punk like yours truly, you know that the Gen Z kid could probably be your own. Luckily in my situation, mine discovered the Misfits and Buzzcocks on her own. I’d been force-feeding her the Ramones since she was an infant so it finally paid off I guess. And yes, she eventually wanted a Misfits T-shirt. Well, I was happy to give old Glenn and Jerry (Damn! Why didn’t I think of an ice-cream gag illustration? - see above) a little something for their retirement fund. However,you may feel free to laugh at some dubious inane ‘celebrity’ trying to give off the air of cool and subversion by wearing an ‘edgy ‘ band T-shirt to show how much ‘cred’ they have. Let’s have a quick google to see who falls into the Misfits T-shirt trap.

Someone called Rita Ora and someone called XXXTentacion. Of course, I am ‘so fucking punk rock’ I have no idea who they are. Well, it would be pretty difficult to avoid seeing Rita Ora’s name somewhere but and I swear by the hairs of Charlie Harper’s chinny chin chin that I am googling to find out why Rita Ora is famous. Okay, that’s done and I still have no fucking idea why she is famous. XXXTentacion must be a rapper. Oh, shot dead at 20. Well that’s sad. In any case they may well have enjoyed the fantastic bass lines of Jerry Only and the dulcet crooning of Glenn Danzig, who’s to say?

One thing that may bother me is the ignominy of having to put your cool band logo on all matter of tacky merch and it makes me feel sorry for them. Jesus, they’ve even got a toy shop, where you can get that essential Punk Rock item - a Madballs Misfits Fiend Foam Horrorball (whatever the fuck that is) for $11.99! But, that T-shirt though! Danzig was a genius to choose that for the band’s logo. I would want to wear that even if I hadn’t heard of them.

I’m particularly interested in how he got away with ripping off the design from the Crimson Ghost for all these years, especially as my own brand of LO-FI illustration does exactly the same thing (apologies to the Italian dudes who made L’Inferno in 1911 by the way- used as back drops for some of the illustrations). And just how much revenue have those T-shirts brought in? No wonder Johnny Ramone wouldn’t give Ritchie Ramone a cut (note to any new musicians or Punk bands out there who may be reading this and don’t feel that they are artistic enough to come up with any designs, hit me up and I’ll probably help you out for free!).

So, where does the iconic Misfits Fiend Skull rank in the top 100 band T-shirt sales? Coming in at No. 7 and only being thwarted by The Stones, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, AC/DC and somewhat surprisingly Run DMC. Run DMC are more popular than Public Enemy in T-shirt sales, really? I think the Public Enemy design is much better myself. But with regard to punk bands, and let’s be generous and call Nirvana a punk band, Misfits are only beaten by the Cobain designed Smile logo. In terms of design I think Danzig retains the crown though. I’d even go so far as to put it above Arturo Vegas’ presidential seal design for the Ramones and that’s saying something as the Ramones were the greatest thing since sliced Bread and I’m not talking about the 70’s soft rock band from Los Angeles, I’m talking about actual bread.

Well I should get to the point really, why on earth have I illustrated the Misfits in the first place? I doubt you are reading this to find out about my current ironic obsession with them. Hopefully you are reading and enjoying Barstool Revolution and you’ve happened upon these self-styled LO-FI Punk Rock illustrations and at worst just thought ‘Meh!’ The worst thing should be ‘What the hell is this rubbish? Someone strip him of his illustrator privileges right now’.

However, that would amuse me beyond measure and make me want to do even more. Hopefully you were intrigued and thought ‘My God these are the greatest things I have ever witnessed and I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe’. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate ….that’s Roy Batty isn’t it? You’re probably not Roy Batty are you?

I have no idea why I did the three original individual portraits of Glenn in heroic stature in cemetery pose, Jerry in sloped shoulders and venomous spiders pose or Doyle in piles of the skulls of my enemies pose. There would have been some sort of task unit when I was doing an online illustration degree but why choose them? I can only imagine they had just got back together and that prompted me to draw them? Perhaps I had watched a Youtube video and had to do some caricature work and just cobbled it together to meet a deadline. They would have been hand-drawn and then scanned and hastily finished off digitally.

The Misfits were never actually on my radar back in the day and no one I knew ever mentioned them or listened to them. I imagine that was to do with their first proper album only coming out in 1982. By then there was a whole lot of second wave of Punk shaking going on and I don’t think they would have been paid much attention competing with the likes of GBH or Discharge in the UK, especially seeing as they then split up in 1983. If you wanted an American Punk band with a sense of theatricality, you would have been inclined towards the Cramps, who were always well loved here.

When I do start to illustrate something I generally end up having more ideas than I’d like and so I would have thought about putting the band into a band situation rather than just draw them individually and so…

…I came up with Jerry, Glenn and Doyle performing in one of Dante’s 9 circles of hell, the one that has a mosh pit of course.

Next I thought about Jerry Only bravely shouldering the burden of Punk Rock responsibility by baring the weight of the Misfits legacy. On the rare occasion that the Misfits were mentioned amongst my circle, they were playing in a local bar sometime in the late ‘90s or early 2000’s, and whether to go or not was mooted by someone. “Nah! Fuck that it’s only the bassist!” declared one wag who was old enough to have seen the Sex Pistols and a whole lot more. It was no skin off my nose whether I saw them or not at that time unfortunately, but I’m sure it would still have been better than a lot of modern rock bands nowadays. Luckily there are an awful lot of young Punk bands out there who certainly know what is what. The new band demos I’ve come across on Youtube really give me hope that Punk Rock won’t be diluted beyond recognition.

The next one sees me exploring the baby Misfits, with Jerry and Glenn standing outside CBGB’s. Oh for a time machine! There’s a good chance that if you’re a music obsessive like me, you wouldn’t particularly have a strong desire to see a fern munching Brachiosaurus. But you would be rather keen on going back and seeing an early Misfits or Ramones gig at CBGB’s. And the audacity to have your first gig there, though God knows if they were any good or not.

It made sense to mash up the movie and the band. So we have Glenn in the Clark Gable role and Jerry as, well I could have done him as Montgomery Clift, but seeing as Glenn is the over the hill cowboy, Gaylord (stop sniggering at the back!) Langland and he’s brandishing his ropes, then I had to make Jerry a wild mustang replete with devil lock mane.

What could be more fitting to illustrate Glenn and Jerry’s gargantuan legal squabbles than a full ‘Over the Top Stallone style, minus the backwards baseball cap’, arm wrestle? I really don’t want to go into any aspect of those litigation shenanigans right here, but look it up if you’re interested. How they resolved that is a miracle after everything that went on.

Last but not least The Devil’s big fan boy crush on the dark lord Danzig.Perhaps he’s about to serenade him with some of his tunes from his Danzig sings Elvis LP, that surely is what waits for us should we ever get down there. Right, on that fearful thought I’m off to bathe in some holy water.

You can follow me and see what I get up to on BlueSky: @youaintnopunk.bsky.social