John Davis collection on punk
Collection
0334-SCPA-DAVIS
John Davis (b. 1976) is an American musician, fanzine editor, librarian, and archivist. The John Davis collection on punk contains items that span the period from 1980 to 2022; the bulk of the material dates from 1994 to 1999 when Davis was editing the fanzines, Slanted and Held Like Sound. The collection contains concert photographs taken by Davis, fliers advertising punk concerts that Davis collected, ephemera related to D.C. punk culture, and posters mostly related to his career as a musician.
The collection is open for research use. Materials from this collection must be used in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library's Irving and Margery Morgan Lowens Special Collections Room during SCPA’s operating hours. Please contact the curator for an appointment or if you have questions related to digital access of the materials.
Copyright was not transferred to the University of Maryland with the gift of any copyrighted materials. All rights remain with the creators and rights holders. The University of Maryland Libraries is granted permission for the use in scholarly research by the Libraries’ patrons under fair use in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act.
To inquire about duplication of materials for research or for publication, please contact SCPA’s curator.
71 Photographs
5.75 Linear Feet
The John Davis collection on punk covers the period from 1980 to 2022; the bulk of the materials date from 1994 to 1999. The collection consists of photographs and posters mostly related to Davis’ work in the punk music subculture, both as a musician and as a fanzine editor. Davis took the photographs at various punk concerts in the mid-1990s, primarily in the Washington D.C. area.
John Davis (b. 1976) is an American musician, fanzine editor, librarian, and archivist. Raised in the Washington, DC area, Davis became a participant in DC’s thriving punk subculture as a teenager in the early 1990s. Davis made his initial mark in the local punk community as a guitarist in the band Corm (1992-1997) and as a fanzine editor for Slanted (1993-1995) and Held Like Sound (1996-2002).
From 1998 to 2005, he was the drummer in Q And Not U. The group released three full-length albums and three singles on Dischord Records, the flagship record label for DC’s punk scene. Q And Not U performed more than 400 concerts on four continents, and sold in excess of 100,000 copies of its albums, a notable feat for an independent band. Following his tenure in Q And Not U, Davis started the band Georgie James, in which he played guitar and sang. Since Georgie James’ breakup in 2008, Davis has released three albums with his solo project, Title Tracks, and has released one album and an EP with Paint Branch, a project formed with his erstwhile Q And Not U bandmate (and current Washington Post Pop Critic), Chris Richards.
In 2012, Davis obtained a Master of Science in Library and Information Science degree from the Catholic University of America, which enabled him to embark on a new career as an archivist and special collections librarian. He is currently the Performing Arts Metadata Archivist at the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library at the University of Maryland. In 2015, he co-created a new fanzine, his first project of the sort in more than a decade, called Confab.
Gift of John Davis, received in August 2015 with ongoing accruals.
Part of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library