In the early 1980s, MTV hit the air with the song, Video Killed The Radio Star.

But, as technology advances faster than a steroid-pumped sprinter, we are left to wonder if multimedia will kill the video star.

Perhaps the Poster Children will help answer this question.

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Instead of merely putting out a record next year, the Poster Children, who plays with Sponge in Shryock Auditorium tonight, is releasing an interactive multimedia CD-ROM that will include video as well as audio.

And the band members are doing it themselves.

A lot of bands want to do something like this, singer/guitarist Rick Valentin said. We’re one of the few bands who understand the nuts and bolts of this.

As well they should. Both Valentin and bassist Rose Marshack have degrees in computer programming from the University of Illinois, and Marshack programmed a multimedia floppy disc used for promotion for the Poster Children’s current release, Junior Citizen.

That got us to realize we could do something bigger, Valentin said. We’re trying to form the CD-ROM as we work on the record.

Valentin said he has high hopes for this idea, which would combine musicians and computer programmers into a pool of creative talent that would flow into a stream as large as the potentiality of the human imagination.

I think that’s what bands are going to be like in the future, he said.

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However, since the band is working on both the musical and technical aspects itself, it has total control.

It’s the band itself expanding their creativity outwards into multimedia, he said. It would be easy to hire someone else (to do it), like it’s easy to hire somebody to make your record sound good.

The group was also approached by the Fox network to do a public service announcement for its Saturday morning cartoon lineup.

The result was Superhero, a 90-second piece featuring the band

see CHILDREN, page 7