Aiming at the Eye of Nostalgia With No Quarter

Utilizing the trailblazing spirit of tattoo iconoclast Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins, Sailor Jerry Rum has been pushing his air of hand-honed originality, passion, freedom and forging one’s own way amidst the square world since 1999, creating aside and in tandem other independent-minded souls roaming the globe. This back-to-basics approach of aligning themselves with fellow creatives was chose to pinpoint those forever-searching free-thinkers who take pride in simplicity, craft and paving their own path—poverty be-damned—to be part of something forged from their self-contained faculties, while utilizing modern-age tools picked from the digital melee that lay before them to aide. This generation rejects the cultural figures society foists upon them, finding little of resonance, while cherry-picking pure pieces from past and present building blocks of real people doing real, honest things to create an identity all their own. This practice akin to the itinerant, ever-searching life the young Collins led himself, mining the international murk to excise the meaningful and create and shed light upon something personal in the process.

Harnessing the classic, bold and simple color Norman brought (literally) to the tattoo world, the company’s namesake is central and present in all Sailor Jerry Rum does while being neither overt nor obnoxious. Collins’ presence isn’t just a side-order popping a thumb out for attention, or a crass mark of identification, and that rock-solid resonance runs through the spiritual brethren they ally with equally. Sailor Jerry directs the once viewed as derelict art on the bodies of damaged, doomed and devious characters at folk who know these distinct markings speak personal truths and stories. They do this by aiding those individuals in their own pursuits with tours and events in partnership, from modern practitioners of damaged roots (King Khan & BBQ Show) and garage rock (Black Lips), legends of pulsing pop (Buzzcocks, the Dickies), punk die-hards (Adolescents, TSOL, Stiff Little Fingers) and proto-punk progenitors (Radio Birdman, New York Dolls) celebrating the raucous and righteous, to entrepreneurial Johnny Appleseed-types spreading visions about the inter-continental landscape, and sundry artisanal mavericks and malcontent outlaws abandoning cubicle-land monotony. There’s zero air of attaching their name to whatever is profitable, but rather a distinct impression of commitment.

Romantic hues are bred into the manifestations of “nuthin’ but a good time” rousers like bands Eagles of Death Metal and Guitar Wolf, and the go-for-self-drive of record labels like Fullerton, CA, open-genre cassette empire Burger Records, and NYC miners of post-punkian deconstructionists and psychedelic adventurists Sacred Bones and Woodsist, providing an aura of freedom often lacking in mainstream representation of expression. Within these entities lay a cottage-industry content on dirty hands involved in every part of the process, parlaying individual experience in a word-of-mouth, skin-to-skin manner, exchanging and sharing human experience inside an artistic network with global reach, a feeling of being in on a secret, a part of something special. The nobility of sticking a big shoe in the old school, with the tip of the other foot pointing toward the future.

While once the sole province of slick, pompadoured retro-rockers and teddy boys lapping up every extant morsel of backward-looking cool, including the work of Collins disciples’ Don Ed Hardy and Mike “Rollo” Malone’s work, Sailor Jerry Rum has strove hard to expand its focus to include a broader spectrum while honing in on these characters existing outside and covertly inside the straight world, instead of the far-reaching attempts some “brands” have made at attaching themselves to whatever trend makes monetary sense at the time, leaving artists dry after support with a “good while it lasted, eh?” attitude, this facilitates an air of authenticity in this facile world, an alternative to be trusted. Their support and continued interest in the subcultural tentacles progressively feeding upon the all-consuming quest for knowledge and betterment, in lieu of blind consumption is commendable, those that indulge with confidence in their desired kicks.

As the world gets faster and louder, some possess the want to take a step outside that, and having a trusted and dedicated ally willing to support and broadcast their voice is needed. Who knew behind a potent beverage laid a calendar of crazed creation and a commitment to those making their own way in the world? The motions of Sailor Jerry Rum have done a more consistent job of keeping at their cards than any entity I’ve been hip to, and I hope they keep at the central motive of the man himself, “I haven’t done my best yet…only my best so far.”