a bit more info on Jacknife, those ROCKIN' postermakers from the UK

After creating yesterday's blog on Jacknife (UK) and dX (San Francisco), I was very pleased to hear back from Jacknife's Chris Hopewell. Here's the update:
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"It was after getting your ART OF MODERN ROCK book as an xmas present that I started up Jacknife. The book was just so inspiring and very few people were doing that kind of thing over here. Doing those QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE posters has been the peak of a really cool year. So, here's the heads-up on what we do.
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"Three guys started Jacknife last November--Ben Foley, Bear Hackenbush, and me. Our first poster was for the British band THE YOUNG KNIVES. Jacknife is run from the studios of Collision Films (www.collisionfilms.com) which is my and Ben's music video company. Jacknife currently is Chris Hopewell, Bear Hackenbush, Sasha Morrison, and John Finch. (Ben is now too busy buying and messing around with Cadillacs). Between us we design, and all take turns at printing.
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"The inspiration for the Queens series was, I suppose, a pretty obvious one, really--those mid-to-late-sixties trashy B-movie posters for those cheaply produced, youth-oriented flicks. The more obscure the better! I just love the trampy look of them, the way the women are scantily clad but still very much in charge. I also love the way they use dottytone and limited spot colour--it's perfect for the screenprinting process. I wanted to do something that also had a contemporary feel, so I vamped up the colours and gave the girls a bit more of a modern / retro feel. The Queens are a band that lets the poster artist do his thing, so it was great just to let 'er rip with some kool looking vehicles and attitudey uber ladies!
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"Also, the band recently had done a video along the B-movie line for their single "3s and 7s," so I thought they obviously like this stuff too. We printed these posters as big as we could just because we wanted them to have the same impact as the original pieces done for the film promotions. So, ours are 32 x 19 inches (81 x 48 cm), in a limited edition of 300 each. These are 3-colour screenprints on heavy-duty off-white card stock. They look great!
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"We did a live print event at their Bristol show last Saturday. That's to say, we took along 150 posters and printed the final colour live at the gig as a kind of side show. The bandmembers all loved the poster, and signed a bunch to us and asked us to do some more for the next stage of their European tour. The people that run their shows really are the coolest people you could ask to work with, very appreciative of the time and effort involved and also genuinely interested in the art itself. We all love the band, so it was an honour to be asked to these shows. In fact, I'm taking the last bunch of posters to them at their Reading gig tomorrow.
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"We haven't as yet been to any hot rod shows, but Ben is going to some big rock & car thing in Holland early next year. It's his '73 Eldorado in the poster for the Reading tour date! His last Caddy got cut up for a Turbonegro (video) we did awhile back (you can see it on the Collision Films site).
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"Cheers, and all the best to our friends around the world--and especially everyone who's enjoyed your new book ROCKIN' DOWN THE HIGHWAY."
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Chris Hopewell