Joanne Kaliontzia grew up in the Boston area and was often found at the Harvard Coop import record section as a teen. She vividly remembers buying Human Sexual Response’s Figure 14 on the same day as The Clash’s Sandinista album. In a ‘Where were you at last night?’ conversation with her dad, Joanne shared her first encounter with Billy Ruane. Her dad’s response, “I bet that boy went home and told his father about a strange girl he saw.” Joanne met Mission of Burma when at an all-ages PIL concert at The Channel. From then on she was known to them as “Joanne from the City of the Dead” –a moniker Clint Conley gave to the City of Providence, where she was attending RI School of Design. While at RISD Joanne spent about as much time at the Living Room and Lupo’s as she did studying Graphic Design.
Joanne returned back to Boston in the mid eighties and worked in TV & film. Now she works as a graphic designer and artist and lives around the corner from where The Channel used to be the Fort Point neighborhood. If you ask her nicely, she might design your next record cover or gig poster… -As long as payment is not guest list for life!