RIP multimedia rock artist Shelley Howard

Shelley Howard in the 1980s, standing with a portion of his “ShelleyVision” video setup Credit: Paul Natkin

Veteran Chicago gig-poster artist and graphic designer Shelley Howard died Saturday, October 14, at age 76. For decades, Howard designed concert advertisements for Jam Productions, a Chicago-based independent entertainment producer. Jam placed his work in the Reader, the Illinois Entertainer, the Tribune, and the Sun-Times, among other spots.

“He was essentially the person who was the messenger between Jam and concertgoers for the longest time—most definitely in the 70s and the 80s, even into the 90s,” says Jam vice president of marketing John Soss. “The Reader was how people found out about entertainment. That’s where they would go to see what shows are coming to town, what plays, all kinds of stuff like that—and it was Shelley’s ads that were the things that people saw.”

In the early 1970s, Howard was working in fashion and made the jump to music by taking gigs for Triad Magazine, a publication of local commercial free-form station Triad Radio. In 1974, Soss says, Howard cofounded Jam Productions’ short-lived in-house magazine, serving as its art director. “I think once he got his foot in the door, he sort of became the go-to guy for anything, graphic-wise, that the company did,” Soss says. By the time Soss started working at Jam in 1981, Howard had already helped shape the company’s visual identity as a contractor.

“He was given a lot of leeway for a long time,” Soss says. “We would simply give him, on a slip of paper, ‘Here’s the show info, here’s a photo.’ If we didn’t have a photo, we’d give him a record album cover, and he would just go home and create something based on those parameters and however he felt things needed to look. He was able to have a fair amount of creative input without somebody else looking over his shoulder.”

Metro and Smart Bar owner Joe Shanahan met Howard at a Memorial Day party Howard hosted in 1980, and Howard started coming to parties Shanahan threw at his Old Town apartment. “He became part of our after-hours scene,” Shanahan says. “I would see him at the clubs around at the time. Neo was one that I used to run into him.” That same year, Neo began hanging hand-drawn posters that Howard would make to advertise Jam shows.

“You’d go in and you’d see the Roxy Music poster,” Shanahan says. “These are one-of-a-kind pieces. It showed his artistic side—it showed his ability to have an eye for art, design, and graphics as well as an ear for music.” In 2013, Howard self-published The Neo Collection, an art-book compendium of his Neo show posters from 1980 till 1984.

Throughout the decade, Howard worked with local venues to present a music-video series called Video Dancestand. “He would put together ten to 20 television sets in a grid, and it’d be two-sided,” Shanahan says—a setup nicknamed “ShelleyVision.” 

“He’d program videos—some of it wallpaper and some of it actual videos of people dancing, and even some of the earliest music videos,” Shanahan says. He’d sometimes catch Howard’s Video Dancestand nights at Park West in the early 1980s. “He was the VJ, and he would bring in DJs to help augment the video and the audio. I remember going to some of those at the Park West and being amazed that he’d draw five, six hundred people to watch these early Rolling Stone videos.” 

Shortly after Metro opened in 1982, Shanahan remembers Howard calling with the bad news that Park West would no longer host Video Dancestand. “I said, ‘Well, here’s the silver lining, Shelley,’” Shanahan says. “‘You’ve been fired and you’ve been hired in the same sentence. I want to have you come to Metro, and let’s have you set up Video Metro.’” Shanahan recalls that his relationship with Jam Productions, which continues today, arose from his work with Howard. “Shelley was a conduit—he was a connector,” he says. “He was a perfectionist. I know that he never missed a deadline.”

“He could be kind of bullheaded about the way he approached things,” Soss says. His working relationship with Howard developed into an odd sort of friendship. “We didn’t have a hell of a lot in common, but because we worked so closely together, I think it’s kind of like being in the trenches,” Soss says. “Before I knew it, I had a key to his house, and I would feed his cats when he was gone, or I would water his plants.” 

Soss and Howard continued working together till Howard died. “He was a little bit fatigued that last week, so I didn’t want to give him work to do, because if I did, he would’ve done it,” Soss says. “He wouldn’t have told me, ‘I’m not feeling good,’ he just would have done it, and I didn’t want to stress him out. I was saving it for when he was gonna feel better. He never stopped working for us.”

Last week, the Riviera Theatre and Metro changed their marquees to pay tribute to Howard. Metro’s sign bore a proverb that Howard and Shanahan liked to repeat to each other: “Enjoy every sandwich.” 

“Someone told me it came from Warren Zevon,” Shanahan says. “But I always just credit it to Shelley Howard.”

As recently as the late 19th century, medical dictionaries defined “selenoplexia” as a morbid state or diseased condition caused by too much moonlight—the Greek words for “moon” and “stroke” are “selene” and “plexe.” If it were real, it’d surely reach epidemic proportions among people into dark music, black leather jackets, and roaming around graveyards in the middle of the night. Speaking of dark music, though, “Selenoplexia” is the name of an actual Chicago band, and they’ve been releasing top-notch blackened death metal for more than a year. 

Last October’s debut EP, Agony, consists of six tracks of gnashing riffs and breakneck blastbeats, occasionally aired out with crushing breakdowns and lightless dirges. Earlier this month the band followed up with their debut full-length, Exalt and Despair, and to this wolf’s ears it’s superior on every front. On “Bowels of the Earth,” “A Gilded Rope,” and “Void Palace,” guitarist Daniel Vida, vocalist Courtney Vida, bassist Sawyer Fridel, and drummer Jonathan Morhaim pressurize their music with crushing atmosphere until it sounds like a submarine about to crack miles below the waves. Via Bandcamp, Selenoplexia are selling a handsome version of the LP on clear vinyl with black and white splatters, and on Sunday, November 5, they open a fully loaded bill at Reggies Rock Club with Spiter, Withered, and headliners Goatwhore.

Selenoplexia’s debut album is available on clear vinyl with black and white splatters.

Nihilist Records founder and veteran Chicago noise artist Andy Ortmann has taken Gossip Wolf on many harrowing but rewarding musical journeys over the years. He’s got great taste in (very) far-out sounds, whether his own or those of the fellow weirdos whose music he puts out through Nihilist, and over the past few months he’s been busy on both fronts. In August, Ortmann dropped an epic triple LP of his solo music, Psychoacoustic Electronics, whose two hours of intricate compositions traverse industrial noise, crashing glass, sleazy biker-film soundtrack jams, unsettling musique concrète, and more. Listen to the whole thing straight through if you want to learn whether you enjoy having your mind warped!

Andy Ortmann’s recent triple album has been in the works since 2019.

Recent Nihilist releases include a double LP by the Hafler Trio in collaboration with Wire cofounder B.C. Gilbert, titled Idiots; the solo CD Blue Bottle in a Jam Jar by occasional Nurse With Wound and Current 93 member Diana Rogerson; and the CD Denn das Schöne Ist Nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang by the New Blockaders, described by Ortmann as the “primary group who defined ‘noise’ as a genre from the UK,” joined by Stephen Meixner, Philip Sanderson, and Guido Hübner. On Thursday, October 26, Ortmann performs at the Empty Bottle as part of A Night of Modular Synthesis IX; also on the bill are J. Soliday, Mode Hexe, _functionless (aka Wiebe Ophorst), and Onur Żłobnicki, with visuals throughout by VideoWaste.

A selection of recent releases from Nihilist Records

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