Left Insane: Logo #315

South Bay avant punk band Left Insane had their logo designed by drummer Tony Cicero - from an original sketch by singer/guitarist Paul Radabaugh - in 1989. A masterpiece of simplicity and perspective, it graced the cover of the band's "Visa Weekend" 7" on No Reality Records, an unheralded record label with a catalog that includes Nip Drivers, Pinhead Gunpowder, and Crimpshrine. Radabaugh: "The rendering in your post is my drawing and that's what got used in most of the fliers and promo materials. Tony and Mark Segal (from the SST band Paper Bag, which hailed from deepest darkest Tarzana) cleaned it up a little for the "Toolbox" album." Cicero got his start in Carson - a suburb between Los Angeles and Long Beach with a really beautiful old movie theatre nearby in Wilmington - in 1979 with a band called The Meathooks (I'm told there are recordings hidden deep in the heart of Lomita). He left when SST superstars Saccharine Trust needed a new drummer; after Saccharine Trust, he played in Vida with Dez Cadena. One of the most complex, driven and creative of all the drummers working in the Southern California punk world in the '80s, he's criminally underrated and I'm not just saying that because he's on the payroll. Now he's in Black Love - my band - and we are absolutely dipped in chocolate gold to have him with us. Someone asked recently what Black Love sounds like. We sound like Nick Cave and P.J. Harvey watching scrambled porn - but not necessarily the same channel at the same time. Also: disorienting hard rock.

This just in: Black Flag / DOA / Danzig / Run-DMC drummer Chuck Biscuits has died of throat cancer at age 44; BrooklynVegan has the most comprehensive tribute to Chuck, including a video possibly from 1988 in which Chuck shows off his collection of cereals (!) including Fruit Brute, Fruity Yummy Mummy, Count Chocula and his favorite: Quisp (?!)

Also just in: Chuck Biscuit death hoax?!?

Update: Yes, he's alive. Move along, people - nothing to see here.

Circle One: Logo #287

The good folks at Circle One Central report: "(It's) just your standard symbol for revolution and it originated from some anarchist movement. We think it represents underground unity. Our original bass player Mike Ituarte designed it in 1980. He modified it a bit. I believe it was Turkish." Lead singer John Stephen Macias (January 29, 1962 - May 30, 1991) was by all accounts a deeply scary guy (also, conversely, a staunch Christian) and was shot dead after a confrontation with Santa Monica police after knocking a security guard off the Santa Monica Pier when told to stop preaching the word of the Lord. Purportedly Macias walked into a hail of bullets and just kept going - and so have Circle One, actually.

The logo's from Turkey. It's the best I could come up with for Thanksgiving Day. If you know which anarchist faction from whence this logo originally sprang, we'd like to know!

The Alley Cats: Logo #278

Long-lost L.A. punk/rock band The Alley Cats designed this stick figure around 1978, when it first appeared on flyers for live actions and in Dangerhouse promotional material. Slightly more polished than the average shambolic / young / annihilated (circle one or more) punk band, if the comments on those YouTube videos are any indication, they are sorely missed. Here's a guide to slightly less polished alley cats.

Speaking of cats, here is a story about Monsieur Hat, the Mystery-Solving Cat!

Once upon a time Monsieur Hat was out finding a mystery and he hear someone crying. He see nothing! "A mystery!" he say to himself, and look for the source of the crying. He use his super-sensitive ears to find a large boulder making this sound! There were little rivulets of dust falling from the boulder and so it was his rocky tears! "Why do you cry?" Monsieur Hat ask. "Because I am lonely and feel unloved and my only friend is three feet away and it will take him a million years to come visit! I am a sulky rock." "A silky rock?!" Monsieur Hat ask. "That make no sense! You are too rough and stony to be silky!" "No!" the boulder grumbled, "A sulky rock, a sulky rock!" Monsieur Hat had an idea! "Wait here!" he say. "I will help!" So Monsieur Hat wrote some scribbles on some paper with his clever claws and some juice for ink and take it to the sporting goods store! He come back and saw the boulder being climbed on by rock climbers, who loved the boulders craggy crags and many handholds! The giant boulder was loved! The end.

Logo #177: Saccharine Trust

Designer: Raymond Pettibon, 1981. Drummer Tony Cicero remembers this icon as first appearing in the liner notes for the "Pagan Icons" LP, but it may have appeared earlier. Saccharine Trust were at the nexus of punk and jazz, creating a sinewy, spiky and confrontational strain of art rock in their wake, becoming rather like the West Coast analogue of New York's No Wave - as near to such a thing as ever could be. They would tour many times with Black Flag and appear on multiple bills various times with their SST label brethren - living, in the words of Steve Albini, "like a slug and out of a garbage bag." Here they are at Perkins Palace sometime in the '80s, with the definitive Baiza / Brewer / Cicero / Hodson line-up, and here is an earlier incarnation.

This Day in Death:
Jacques François Antoine Ibert (August 15, 1890 – February 5, 1962). The composer.

This Day in Birth:
William Seward Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997). The decomposer.