Original artwork by Ellen Forney for a poster announcing L7, Teen Angels, and 66 Saints at MOE, Seattle, WA, August 29, 1995
This Ellen Forney design was later used to advertise a performance by L7, Teen Angels, and 66 Saints at Moe’s Mo’Roc’N Café in Seattle on August 29, 1995.
L7 is an all-women Rock band founded in Los Angeles in 1985, active until 2001 and then re-formed in 2014. Its main members, who are all vocalists, include Suzi Gardner (1960) and Donita Sparks (1963) on guitar, Jennifer Finch (1966) on bass, and Dee Plakas (1960) on drums. L7 spent a short time in Seattle in the early 1990s, having released a Sub Pop Single of the Month in 1989, followed by their 1990 album, Smell the Magic, also with Sub Pop. L7 also opened for Nirvana on several dates in 1990, and performed at the August 1991 International Pop Underground Convention, held in Olympia, Washington.
Teen Angels was an all-women Punk band formed in Seattle by singer Kelly Canary (b. unknown) and drummer Lisa Smith (b. unknown), both of the Seattle Grunge band Dickless, along with Julie Ransweiler (b. unknown) and Nalini Cheriel (b. unknown). Teen Angels released two EPs with Ransweiler’s Scooch Pooch and then a single and an album, Daddy, with Sub Pop Records in January 1996.
66 Saints was a Seattle Rock band formed in 1991 and active in the Northwest throughout the early 1990s. The band was started by guitarists and vocalists Lisa Orth (b. unknown) and John Maroney (b. unknown). Orth was the first official art director for Sub Pop Records, where she designed Nirvana’s now iconic logo, and she also worked for The Rocket, Manna Records, and Seattle Gay News. The band also featured Mitch Michieli (b. unknown) on drums and backup vocals, and they frequented Seattle venues like Re-Bar, Moe’s Mo’Roc’N Café, and the Off Ramp. 66 Saints released limited recordings with Big Flaming Ego Records before they disbanded.
Moe’s Mo’Roc’N Café was opened at 925 East Pike in Seattle in the early 1990s by Jerry Everard (b. unknown), who had also helped open The Crocodile in Belltown. While much of Seattle’s music scene was located in Pioneer Square and Belltown, Everard hoped to not only move the city’s musical center to Capitol Hill, but to build an Indie Rock club that could attract national and international acts. The name Mo’Roc’N Café was a play on its Middle Eastern food service, when restaurant revenue was required to serve alcohol. Tiny Hat Orchestra was the first band to play at Moe’s in February 1994, the same day the venue received its liquor license, and over time they hosted the likes of Radiohead, Neil Young, and Pearl Jam. Numerous actors, directors, athletes, and other celebrities, including Gary Payton and President Bill Clinton, made their way to Moe’s before it abruptly closed in 1998. In 2004, Neumos Crystal Ball Reading Room—pronounced “new Moe’s”—was opened in its place, a concert venue soon joined by the neighboring Moe Bar.
This poster was designed by Ellen Forney (b. 1968). who is a cartoonist based in Seattle. In the 1990s, her autobiographical comic strip I Was Seven in ‘75 ran in The Stranger, and her work has appeared in various newspapers and magazines, in collaboration with comedian Margaret Cho, writer Kristin Gore, professor Camille Paglia, and Stranger sex columnist Dan Savage, among others. She has published work related to mental health and political activism, curated a travelling exhibition on comics and health for the National Library of Medicine, and painted two murals in Seattle’s Capitol Hill light rail station.
