Rolling Thunder Artists

The original article is here: Thundering Vandals

Chalfant often gets criticized for this very thing: a lack of impartialness. However, to my mind this approach is ultimately more honest. Rather than having to poke and prod for the author’s biases hidden behind strained obfuscation, Chalfant wears his biases on his sleeve making it easier to frame his work in the overall panorama of graffiti art history.

RTW broke the mold of the public perception about graffiti artists. Mainly, that some weren’t rich white kids from the Upper West Side, or that they were even old enough to drive. The history of New York graffiti generally cut through every demographic, so it isn’t fair to say that RTW was entirely unique in this regard but its members were some of the first to garner media attention via their affiliation with Soul Artists.

Soul Artists formed in the early 70’s and disbanded after their leader, Ali, was badly burned in a subway accident. He later reformed the group around 1979 with the idea of taking graffiti into the art galleries. Many artists known today such as Lee, Daze, Tracy 168, Mare, Futura 2000, and Revolt frequented the Soul Artists meet-ups. Soul Artist train photos are sprinkled throughout the book, and their history, mostly recounted in Haze’s (SE3) interview, seems to permeate discussions of Rolling Thunder Writers.

My perception of RTW’s writers were generally that, “these guys are hippies.” Frankly, this iBook does little to quash my preconception. But what’s wrong with that? It isn’t mentioned in the book, but to my mind RTW sort of took off where early 1970’s graffiti writers like Stay High 149 ended - a sort of psychedelic, underground comix inspired graffiti explosion. They would hang out at the Central Park band shell, painted Vaughn Bode characters, and executed a style that was much more free-form than some of their contemporaries. Frequently during this volume I thought that the members should come out of retirement (many are still painting, actually) and bomb the Phish tour buses - maybe they already have though. These images mainly come from the Bilroc, Regal, Revolt and Haze (SE3) interviews.

My favorite interview is Bilroc’s. He recounts the New York City Transit Strike, and how graffiti writers reacted to it. I will let your imagination run wild with this and say no more -you have to hear it yourself.

In somewhat stark contrast to RTW’s hippie art vibe was their eventual next leader, Min. By all accounts he was driven and determined to bomb graffiti and his persistent energy seemed to be a galvanizing force once the Soul Artist influence receded into the background. His interview describes the historical dynamics of RTW and what eventually led it to be renamed “Rock the World” and its assimilation and synthesis with other graffiti clubs throughout the five boroughs.

Kel and Mare 139 (brothers) were instrumental in the “Rock the World” period, and photos of their trains are well represented in this volume. Kel’s interview frankly opens more questions than answers any, and seems geared to the most researched graffiti buffs, having many references to situations and events not covered in this volume.

Of special note is the Quik interview.