Addicted To Vinyl Musical thoughts from the open road, with headphones on

Goodnight, BC

While waiting to meet a friend for lunch at Melt on Saturday afternoon, I was enjoying looking at the many pieces of Cleveland memorabilia on the walls - old concert posters, and sports memorabilia that I hadn't noticed during previous visits. One item that caught my eye in particular was a WMMS "Buzzard Next Generation" poster from the station's alternative era, dated 4/4/94, featuring The Buzzard in baseball gear, poised and ready to smack one out of the park.

The poster was a familiar sight to me, but it was one that I hadn't thought about in quite a few years, and as I realized, out of all of the Buzzard memorabilia that I have in my collection, I don't have one of those posters anymore.

Longtime Buzzard artist Brian Chalmers was the creator of that poster, and many other Buzzard creations through the years. Chalmers had worked with original Buzzard creator David Helton as an assistant, and when Helton left WMMS in 1990, Chalmers stepped in as his replacement. As the art director for WMMS, Chalmers also was the creative force behind the images used to market sister stations WMJI and WHK, and as a Clevelander, you saw Brian's art on t-shirts, billboards, in magazines, etc. etc. etc. You might not have known that it was Brian's work, but you certainly couldn't miss it.

Sadly, Brian passed away suddenly this weekend. I found out the news as I was on my way out the door to have a Father's Day lunch with my dad, and I was crushed.

I worked with Brian at WMMS starting in 1995, and he was one of the first people in the building to make me feel welcome as the new guy. To paint a bit of a picture, I'll tell you that I was 20 years old, and completely star struck talking to some of the WMMS veterans that had been around, and I loved hearing about the cool stuff they had seen and been a part of.

Brian definitely had stories....and pictures! I'd walk back to his office, and he'd always show anyone that walked in, the latest stuff that he was working on. And then the conversations would start, and if you were talking about music, it was likely that a subject would trigger something, and Brian would walk over to his filing cabinets, open a particular drawer, and pull out a vintage photograph of the artist's visit to the radio station, and tell the story associated with the picture. As a photographer for both WMMS and Scene Magazine, Brian had photographed virtually everyone and anyone that you could think of, going all the way back to the 70s. So there were pictures of Aerosmith, Hall and Oates, Van Halen, Pat Benatar, etc. - some as mega-stars, some before they were stars, and all of them had stopped by WMMS.

In 1995, if Brian wasn't the last full time artist employed by a radio station, he certainly was one of the last. And he had a great sense of humor. Long before Photoshop, Brian was an ace at manipulating photographs, taking co-worker's faces, and putting them on other people's bodies in amusing photographs. I came in one day, and a photo that Brian had taken of me with Sammy Hagar, now featured my face pasted over Sammy's face, so that in the revised photo, I was standing there arm in arm with myself.

Brian was an unbelievable talent that defined the phrase "attention to detail." Sometimes in the closing stages of a project, Brian would see a last minute graphic proof, notice that a particular color was slightly off, and he'd push to make sure that color schemes were properly revised so that it would look right in print.

A couple of my personal favorite pieces of BC art were for t-shirts that the station did in the late 90s for Cleveland concerts featuring Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the Rolling Stones. These were t-shirts that we gave away free to people that were going to the show - the Petty shirt is still one of my favorite t-shirts.

In 1999, Chalmers was contacted by Dreamworks Pictures - Cameron Crowe was working on a new film called Almost Famous, and Cleveland was part of the storyline. Crowe, wanting to be historically accurate, had his team reach out to WMMS for help with a few details, and the appropriate graphics and logos to correctly represent the time period. Chalmers got that phone call, and provided Crowe and company with more than they could have possibly hoped for - tons of pictures and graphics from the era, and plenty of WMMS swag to boot.

Two years after the release of the film, Crowe showed his appreciation by sending Chalmers an autographed film poster, and a handwritten personal letter that read:

Dear Brian,

Cameron

Now while the above would be a perfectly good place to wrap it up, I've got to share a couple of other memories with you. Brian shared cool stuff with co-workers and friends constantly - while I was still at the station, he gave me poster sized prints of Toy Matinee and Blue Rodeo, two bands that he knew I loved, printed from pictures taken when the bands were visiting the radio station. It was common to come in to work to find photos slipped under your door, or a photo copy of pictures with notes of interest scrawled on the side of the page. After I left the station, I would come home occasionally to find a postal envelope in my mailbox with the familiar BC initials, surrounded by a circle, and inside the package, photos, or samples of recent work with a note asking "How've ya been?"

As Brian moved further and further into the digital side of technology, I started getting emails of stuff that he was scanning into his PC, including this Tubes t-shirt that he did for local concert promoter Belkin Productions in 1979.

Brian was a wonderfully generous soul, and one of the finest people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. There are so many great stories about Brian, and you can read a few more of them, in his words, via this link.

Check out more from legendary Buzzard programmer John Gorman here.

Our sympathies go out to Brian's family and friends....