Jobless and addicted to heroin in the early 1980s, Tom Law spent his days aimlessly wandering the streets of San Francisco. But his meandering wasn’t entirely unproductive—he removed posters from clubs, kiosks and building facades promoting the city’s musical acts, and carefully preserved them until his death in 2002. Now, the result of his casual hobby is being celebrated as an important addition to Stanford’s research materials.
Recordings and sheet music abound in Stanford’s archival music collections, but Law’s set of 1,400 sheet posters advertising Bay Area punk rock performances from 1983 to 1986, acquired in the spring of 2014, is a unique volume that enthuses a diverse group of researchers. The collection includes flyers—often homemade and illustrated with hand-drawn graphics—promoting punk archetypes such as Dead Kennedys as well as dozens of lesser-known bands like Crawl Away Machine. Stanford music scholar and assistant professor Anna Schultz says the collection draws interest within the music department but also from disciplines such as American studies, art and design, gender studies and anthropology. Music professor Mark Applebaum plans to incorporate them in his class Rock, Sex and Rebellion, for example.
The posters were acquired through the efforts of Jerry McBride, Stanford’s head music librarian. “It added to the Stanford Libraries a unique collection of extraordinary depth in an American subculture of both local and national significance,” she says. “The size and comprehensiveness of the collection is probably unmatched anywhere.”
