Pynchon Music: Poster Children

Radio Zero

Poster Children were formed in 1987 in Champaign, Illinois by Rick Valentin and Rose Marshack. They wrote some songs and played some shows and in 1989 released their first record Flower Plower. After two more years of writing songs and playing shows, they released Daisy Chain Reaction (1991). This was around the time that Jim Valentin joined the band. They started touring a lot, wrote even more songs and put them on a record called Tool of the Man (1993).

Some time after that Howie Kantoff joined to fill the revolving drummer’s position. An EP of songs, Just Like You, came out in 1994 and was immediately followed by the full length Junior Citizen (1995). 1995 marked the first appearance of the band’s Web site which features the usual information plus Rose’s detailed tour diaries, an online talkshow, Radio Zero, and a reading list compiled by fans. After the award-winning success of a multimedia disk they created for Junior Citizen, the band made their next release an “enhanced” CD. RTFM (1997) contained not only music but a 3-D environment filled with videos, games, and other fun stuff.

New World Record (1999) was the first Poster Children album to be completely recorded and produced by the band themselves in their studio, Studio Tedium. New World Record was another enhanced CD filled with even more fun stuff and was also one of the earliest albums available for purchase online in MP3 format.

Feeling two years between records was too long to wait, Poster Children went right back to work in Studio Tedium (after touring, of course) and created DDD (2000), their seventh or eighth record depending on how you count it. In answer to the frequently asked question: “When are you going to make a live album?” Poster Children began work on the Zero Stars DVD in the fall of 2000. Friends and fans were recruited as camera operators for two shows in Champaign and Chicago. Local Champaign luminaries became actors for a day in scenes based on Rose’s tour diaries. Thanks to the advent of affordable digital video technology, the band was able to produce and edit the DVD themselves. The Apocalypse Now-like production of Zero Stars unfortunately took its toll on the band and Howie left the drum stool empty once again in the summer of 2001. Vowing to soldier on, Poster Children drafted Matt Friscia (drummer #7).

Poster Children continued to tour and release albums, their latest being Grand Bargain! (2018). members of the band have been involved in other musical side projects, including the electronic group Salaryman, and Rick Valentin’s avant-garde solo project, Thought Detecting Machines. Rick Valentin and Rose Marshack both teach at Illinois State University.

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