The Headliners and Legends Auction 2018

February 1, 2018

Backstage Auctions is proud to present an amazing collection of rock and pop memorabilia, including a highly impressive selection of artist signed guitars, RIAA-certified record awards, a large collection of autographed memorabilia, original Peter Max paintings, and a dazzling array of tour and promotional collectibles.

With over 50 signed guitars from - among others - Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton, Eagles, Pearl Jam and U2, as well as a host of other great autographed memorabilia such as a Beach Boys surfboard, a Miles Davis print, Elton John Record Award and Queen posters, this auction truly is all about "Headliners and Legends".


This impressive collection of memorabilia comes from the estate of a well-known music industry executive who spent decades working for music retailers, record labels, and festivals. In the course of his nearly 50-year-long career, he worked with just about every artist and band from the 1970s on. He was involved with the Grammy organization, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as various music-related charities. His broad collection reflects not only his true passion for music, but deep friendships forged over the years. A portion of the proceeds of the auction will be donated to the favorite charities of this well-loved industry icon.

The Headliners and Legends Auction will go LIVE with a preview of the entire catalog on February 9th, 2018 and bidding will begin on February 16th and close on February 25th, 2018.

For more about the auction, carve out some time to listen to Goldmine Magazine's interview with our very own Jacques van Gool. Pat Prince, Goldmine editor and Jacques talk about the auction highlights. Click here: Podcast Link

Sign up today for your All Access Auction Pass: Register Here

Kings of Concert Posters: Uncle Charlie

Clowns, spaceships and Pop Art collide in artist's colorful creations
By Peter Lindblad

Pantera White Zombie
1996 Original Silkscreen
Concert Poster Uncle
Charlie S/N

Flying machines have always fascinated Houston artist Charlie Hardwick, better known by his pseudonym Uncle Charlie.

The son of a Navy man who, for a time, was said to have piloted blimps and dabbled in oil painting, Uncle Charlie has always pushed the boundaries of Pop Art. Dreaming up explosively colorful scenes of insane absurdity, with bright, psychedelic scenes that harken back to the '60s, Uncle Charlie is fond of incorporating spaceships and other types of aircraft, along with his beloved cartoon images, in incredibly vivid and vibrant works.

Renowned for a style featuring striking outlines and surreal fractal landscapes, Uncle Charlie has gained a reputation as a uniquely talented concert poster artist. Major music acts such as U2, The Who, Metallica and Radiohead, to name just a few, have sought him out to produce artwork promoting gigs in venues around Houston and Austin.

Today, some of his handbills can go for as low as $5 to $13, while prices for many of his gig posters may range from $40 to $80, although some will fetch around $130 to $150 and others might push beyond $200 or more. Here's a gallery of some of his finest work for purchase: http://stores.ebay.com/Rock-On-Collectibles/Uncle-Charlie-Posters-/_i.html?_fsub=3340828&_sid=70220124&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322

Known for being humble and soft-spoken, Uncle Charlie, has persevered despite serious vision problems. Legally blind since 2003, Uncle Charlie continued to produce mind-blowing artwork long after, building off his acclaimed work in concert posters and commercial packaging designs.

Love & Rockets 1996 Original
Silkscreen Concert Poster
Uncle Charlie Art S/N

Born and bred in Houston, Hardwick started out playing in bands such as Blunt and local hardcore heroes Dresden 45 in the mid-1980s. While attending the University of Houston, he made a crucial decision not to waste his time with introductory design classes, instead switching to the Art Institute of Houston.

With the help of a musician friend, he found work at a design firm, where he stayed for 15 years as a senior designer. His commercial art graced products by Coke Food, Imperial Sugar and Minute Maid, but corporate downsizing in 2008 left him without a job. That led him to do more work with bands, although today Hardwick has immersed himself in doing more fine art.

On the side, for years, Hardwick had been moonlighting doing art for bands. In the late 1980s, he met the legendary concert poster artist Frank Kozik. Serving as Hardwick's mentor, it was Kozik who taught him a few tricks and encouraged the man who gained fame as Uncle Charlie to follow in his footsteps.

A few years later, in the early '90s, Hardwick was hired through a Cleveland gig poster broker to do a Smashing Pumpkins piece for a Houston-area concert promoter, Pace Concerts, that has long been one of his favorites. There's also a beautiful abstract piece he did for The Cure that so impressed the band that they asked for additional copies. Before that, he did fliers for all kinds of acts, but eventually, he settled on doing poster art, and the results speak for themselves. Below are works representative of Uncle Charlie's art.

The Who 1997 Original
Silkscreen Concert Poster
Uncle Charlie Art S/N

Weird Al Yankovic
2000 Original Concert
Promo Handbill Houston
Uncle Charlie Art

Foo Fighters 1995 Original
Silkscreen Concert Promo
Poster Uncle Charlie Art S/N

U2 PJ Harvey 2001 Original
Promo Concert Poster
Uncle Charlie Art Var 2

Video Review: Korn's 'Spike in My Veins'

New Korn video addresses privacy, cult of celebrity

By Peter Lindblad

Korn - The Paradigm Shift

Orwellian paranoia runs rampant in Korn’s new video for “Spike in My Veins,” which premiered this week at rollingstone.com. And the Nu Metal revolutionaries attempt to make the case that privacy is being eroded in this age of the 24-hour news cycle and Internet overstimulation with their own version of the Ludovico technique, that horrifying aversion therapy that Malcolm McDowell’s character undergoes in “A Clockwork Orange.” Korn’s treatment is far less violent, but almost as disturbing.

Rather than setting out to make its audience impotent, there’s a sense that Korn is sounding an alarm with a bombardment of images that haven’t yet exceeded their expiration dates in the public’s ever-shrinking consciousness. There’s Seahawks’ cornerback Richard Sherman yelling into the camera after the Super Bowl. There’s Justin Bieber and then there’s Justin Bieber again, with his smiling mug shot and a scene of him in tough-guy mode wanting to fight all comers while being pushed into a limo. Tongue stuck out in full twerk, Miley Cyrus, like Bieber, is everywhere, as are egomaniacal rapper Kanye West and disgraced Toronto mayor and noted party guy Rob Ford, dancing without a care in the world and caught by a surreptitious camera making insane threats to do somebody bodily harm.

There are a lot of puzzle pieces that beg for context in "Spike in My Veins," but it's not long before it starts to make sense. All those scenes of cops in riot gear beating people up and press conferences of government officials shamelessly trying to counter the very serious accusations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden suggest totalitarianism isn’t just a Russian or a Third World problem. Although it's not the wildly creative game-changer "Freak on a Leash" was, it’s a fairly effective statement put forth by Korn and director David Dinetz, as well as his creative team at Culprit Creative – the idea being that our obsession with celebrity and scandalous media firestorms are preventing us from confronting very immediate and devastating attacks on privacy in this country, just as junkies avoid reality by shooting up.

Quick cutaways lend the thought-provoking video a sense of urgency, hammering home the sense that it is well past time for action and that apathy is more dangerous than ever. What is being spiked in our veins is not heroin. It’s the constant stream of salacious garbage the media spews like vomit that's dulling our senses. Of course, this sort of thing has been done before. Public Enemy, U2, Ministry … the list of artists who have made similar socio-political indictments through the medium of video is lengthy to say the least. But, if nothing else, at least Korn is staying up on current events.

And they are growing more adept at building tension in tracks like “Spike in My Veins,” as the verses simmer to a roiling boil here, thankfully lacking the momentum-killing down-tuned silliness and irritating vocal histrionics of Korn's past. With its explosive, shattering chorus, strong grooves and thick riffs, “Spike in My Veins,” off the critically acclaimed album The Paradigm Shift, crashes into your living room with the kind of raw emotion and intensity that children of the Korn feed off. Still, as far as the video goes, it's mostly just Korn performing in front of a wall of TVs, even if the parade of familiar cable news touchstones is smartly arranged and edited to both incite and excite. And for those wanting some stunning visual effects to go with their sensory overload, the “Matrix”-like effects that make an octopus of Jonathan Davis’s wheeling arms are pretty bitchin’. Keanu Reeves thinks so, too. 

CD Review: Bon Jovi – What about Now

CD Review: Bon Jovi – What about Now

Island

All Access Review: C

Bon Jovi - What about Now

To some extent, Bon Jovi has always lived in Bruce Springsteen’s shadow, except perhaps when it comes to album sales. Springsteen gets all the critical acclaim, while still managing to sell loads of records. Springsteen has been called the “new Bob Dylan.” He’s New Jersey’s favorite son, the voice of the common man, an honest-to-goodness poet who can, in gritty, powerful language, pen a tense murder ballad or capture the heartbreaking emotions stirred by a factory closing in a rust-belt town.

Bon Jovi, on the other hand, would be the answer to this bathroom-wall, fill-in-the-blank sentence, “For a good time, call _____.” That’s not exactly fair, but with Jon’s good looks, his band’s hair-metal past and little in the way of literary ambition, Bon Jovi has found themselves in the cross hairs of “serious” music critics for years, these pale shut-ins having unloaded a steady barrage of stinging barbs in their direction that has continued unabated. But, really, is there that big a difference between Springsteen’s “Rosalita (Come out Tonight)” and “Livin’ On a Prayer?” Unabashedly romantic and exuberant, these escapist, all-we-have-is-each-other anthems about young love and breaking free of impoverished circumstances by getting out of Dodge are life-affirming sing-a-longs, with great big hooks and the kind of blind optimism that destroys dreamers.

So why is Bon Jovi targeted for abuse, while Springsteen has been elevated to sainthood? Indulging in easy platitudes has never helped him gain favor with music scribes, but it’s probably more because of albums like What about Now, which finds the entire band sliding into adult-contemporary blandness and spouting artless clichés, such as, “If you want to start a fire, it only takes a spark,” from the overly earnest title track. His heart in the right place, Bon Jovi has never played it safer musically or lyrically, standing up for the hungry, the restless and those who are down for the count in what amounts to an inspirational sermon of a title track, throwing his support behind the faithful and the teachers, and anybody else who needs the healing power of Bon Jovi to walk again.

On this newest record of bighearted anthems and simple sincerity, Bon Jovi almost begs for artistic credibility and then abandons the pretense in tracks like “Army of One,” where undying solidarity is pledged for the troops and Bon Jovi repeats the words “never give up” over and over again – both fine sentiments, but ones also voiced at every sporting event held in America. Yes, it’s gratifying seeing Bon Jovi develop a social consciousness, but every song on What about Now seems to have a tear-jerking “Oprah” moment, and after song after song of this, the LP loses its ability to be affecting in any way. There’s less insipid socio-political commentary on local TV morning shows. Say what you will about the pop-metal superficiality of Slippery When Wet, but it was never a crashing bore like What about Now, a record that is only happy to carry the weight of the world on its shoulders, even as the air just seems to go out of the deflated “I’m With You” and “Amen.”

And there are not-so-subtle sonic deviations, too, as Bon Jovi’s sound has come to resemble U2 more than say Poison, with heady, starry-eyed tracks like “Room at the End of the World” and “That’s What the Water Made Me” aiming for the glorious heavens of chiming guitars that Bono and The Edge see when their rockets’ red glare spreads across a night sky. And then there’s the Heartland folk and rather likable, dog-eared country of their beguiling Lost Highway record of 2007 that manifests itself in the sobering, underdog drama of this record’s “The Fighter” – so quiet and genteel, but pretty, nonetheless, with its well-arranged mix of strings and horns – off their latest LP.  

Where’s the fun? Where are the wild hearts and sly grins of their youth? Has maturity sapped these cheery rogues of their ability to raise a little PG-13 hell? Jon Bon Jovi is far more serious and concerned about what’s going on his America than ever, living in hope while offering a helping hand to the downtrodden in the uplifting “Because We Can” or holding onto what’s good in an otherwise nasty, brutish life as the rushing melodic flood and the twinkling golden guitars of “Beautiful World” crash over the levees. These are stirring pop songs, played with panache, especially with the all-too-infrequent guitar supernovas of Richie Sambora – seemingly on the outs now with the group – blowing up here and there. And “Pictures of You” is a charming, sincere ode to true love, while “What’s Left of Me” is a rousing piece of faded Americana.

Does Bon Jovi deserve more credit for growing up a little? Is it too cynical to question Bon Jovi’s motives on What about Now? Probably, but in this era where taking issue with any of the causes Bon Jovi advances here would be tantamount to treason, it’s not such a bad thing to ask critically if they have gone a bit overboard in trying to save the world on What about Now. 

–   Peter Lindblad