Welcome to
Concert Poster Review 1
This has been a labor of Love for me.
As I assembled these artists and their posters and photographs
I actually began to relive the good ole 60s and remember what is was
like to be
curious, open, loving and striving for
Peace in all things.
I began to
remember the concerts, love-ins, anti-war demonstrations,
womens lib, civil rights marches, communes
and hotsprings,
and the Beauty I touched having experienced this in my lifetime.
These posters
and artists are an archive of that time and Now-
-encompassing and embracing the movement that has always been a
target of politcal and religious murder
and put down, ignored and avoided by this country and most of the
world,
and
Now struggles to remain tie-dyed, creative, wise, foolish, free
and loving and innocent.
I never could
ever understand the words-bored, complacent or apathetic!
I hope you will enjoy the selections we have assembled of some great
artists posters and photographs.
These
are such a small part of the whole! Please visit
our Poster Store Gallery
where you can View
and Purchase these archives of our Generation and now Yours.
Please visit
these artists websites to view more of their work!
An
Analysis Of Over Twenty Years
Of American Rock Music Festivals
by Adam Stanley
Cornell College
So
ya
Thought ya
Might like to go to the show
To feel the warm thrill of confusion
That space cadet glow
- Pink Floyd, "In The Flesh"
The
American rock music festival was something that grew out of the
increasingly popular style of music,while incorporating the features
of existing music festivals.Although these features would change
greatly in the next twenty years, the basic ideas were still the
same.The Monterey Jazz Festival began in 1958 as a three day event
with its proceeds going to musical and educational programs aimed
at young people. This was not the first jazz festival, but it is
important because out of it grew the Monterey Folk Festival. Joan
Baez, Bob Dylan, and Peter Paul and Mary performed at the first
Monterey Folk Festival, another three day event, on the weekend
of 17 May 1963, along with many other folk artists. Four years later,
the first International Monterey Pop Festival was the beginning
of a new expression of rock music. The progression of the Monterey
festivals is interesting because each one seems to have started
right as the different musical forms were beginning to gain in popularity
as well as social and critical acceptance. Even though jazz has
existed since the turn of the century, it had become very popular
in the fifties. Folk music was creeping into the mainstream music
culture at the beginning of the sixties. Monterey Pop exemplified
the important contributions rock music was making at the end of
the sixties and beyond.
Along
with the growing interest of popular music during the sixties, was
the growing population of teenagers and young adults. The music
and its market were growing faster than anyone had expected. It
seems only natural that this market would want to come together
to enjoy each other and their music. Monterey Pop, and the festivals
to follow, allowed for this. The problems with these gatherings
were that promoters and the general public were not ready for it.
The promoters had no idea how popular these events would be; Woodstock
was so popular that the promoters could not control the number of
people arriving to the festival, so it was eventually declared free.
The general public, also known as the establishment, was not ready
for the commotion that the youth, also known as the underground,
would create. After Monterey Pop and Altamont, local governments
passed legislation restricting the size of events held in their
areas.
As the underground matured and entered the world of the establishment,
the role of the rock festival changed. No longer were the festivals
considered to be a gathering for the sake of gathering, but rather
as events to popularize social and political ideas. These events
would be attempts to make the world a better place for everyone;
a very sixties idea that unfortunately was not successful until
the eighties. Attempts at sixties-type gatherings, like the US Festivals,
were failures, but attempts at promoting the ideals of the sixties,
like Live Aid and the Amnesty tours, were huge successes.
Musically, the events been quite different, however, some performers
seem to have been at all of the rock festivals of the last twenty
years. Joan Baez performed at Monterey Folk and Pop and Woodstock
in the sixties, and CERF, Live Aid, and the first Amnesty tour in
the eighties. The Who performed at Monterey Pop and Woodstock as
well as Live Aid. The presentations of these bands has been cyclic.
At Monterey Pop, everyone had short sets to get their message across.
By the time of Woodstock and Watkins Glen, bands were able to perform
standard or even extended length sets. Set lengths were slowly decreased
from that point back to the Monterey-type presentation of Live Aid
and the Amnesty tours.
The most important aspect of the rock music festivals is that it
succeeded when rock was not the corporate giant that it has become,
and continued to succeed, in different ways, through every stage
of rock history. Each festival has succeeded for varying reasons.
Each festival was a progression from the one before it. It would
have been impossible to have Altamont without Woodstock, Woodstock
without Monterey. Monterey Pop was successful because of Monterey
Jazz and Folk, and also because it properly reached its market.
The critical success of Monterey let rock music become more popular
in the popular press, which in turn brought it closer to the establishment.
Through the twenty years of the rock festival, rock has become part
of the establishment which has allowed the festival to continue
its success and influence.
Lisa
Law Photographer
Lisa Law's story is one among thousands of personal narratives
that made up the cultural fabric of America in the 1960s,
when Americans were wrestling with such issues as civil rights, the
environment,
personal freedom, nuclear arms, and the Vietnam War. to drug use,
sexual freedom, and nonconformity.
Mark
Henson "The
Visionary Eroticism and Political Satire Art of Mark Henson ".
Mark grew up idolizing the Rock and Roll Poster artists
of the 60's.
Mark continues in that tradition
Hee is honored to be included
in the 2004 Art of Modern Rock Poster Book
available here:
Mark's
sense of eroticism expresses itself in a less voyeuristic
and more spiritual way than most art associated with human passion.
He is more interested in the merging of souls
than the merging of organs.
It is his lifetime self-ordained duty to create a body of work
that is filled with positive imagery surrounding lovemaking
in a culture where sex is often associated with exploitation,
violence and abuse.
He sees the merging of souls as the manifestation
of the cosmic design inherent in all living things.
He calls upon our divinity as natural sensual beings
in harmony with our environment by depicting lovers in all forms.
He defines lovemaking as a revelation more than a thrill,
respectful of the gentle interplay when all creatures are in harmony,
including the elements associated with death and the infinite.
In his vibrant colored oil paintings
he delights in emulating the divine by bringing something out of
nothing
into its own sense of existence.
Through these images the deepest parts of our collective soul
are delivered visually imbued with the core of creation and the
love of humanity.
Mark views eroticism and the sex ritual as a natural and exalted
state of consciousness.
The
Summer of Love refers to the summer of 1967, and particularly to
the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco,
where thousands of young people from all over the world loosely
and freely united for a new social experience.
As a result, the hippie counterculture movement came into public
awareness.
The beginning of the Summer of Love has popularly been
attributed to the Human
Be-In at Golden Gate Park on January 14 of that year.
John Phillips of The
Mamas and the Papas took twenty minutes
to write the following lyrics for the song "San
Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)":
If you're going to San Francisco,
be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...
If you're going to San Francisco,
Summertime will be a love-in there.
Scott McKenzie's rendition of the song was released in May, 1967.
The song was designed originally to promote the June, 1967 Monterey
Pop Festival,
the world's first major rock festival, which was attended by over
200,000 people.
"San Francisco" became an instant hit (#4 in the United
States, #1 in Europe)
and quickly transcended its original purpose.
During the Summer of Love, as many as 100,000 young people from
around the world
flocked to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley
and other San Francisco Bay Area cities to join in a popularized
version of the hippie experience.
When these newly recruited Flower
Children returned home at the end of summer,
they brought new styles, ideas and behaviors to most major cities
in the
U.S., Canada, Britain, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Robert
Altman
"I
was blessed with an eye for composition and a talent to know just
when to shoot- thus capture "the decisive moment." I realized
long ago that my "raison d'être" was to chronicle
and publish photos depicting the life and times that the Sixties
inspired. It was "meant to be" and photojournalism became
my vocation, really my calling... whether I was hired to do so or
not. This drive consumed my life.I have since been asked- "Should
we dismiss the 1960s as an irrelevant period in the country's history?"
As a generation, perhaps we were naive in our belief that we could
actually change the world. We should honor ourselves for the tremendous
advancement of causes such as civil rights; dispelling the idea
that our nation could send half a million young men and women to
fight a war that its population did not support; banishing the notion
that women were second class citizens; furthering the permanent
protection of our environment, as well as embracing spiritual and
self growth.I admit that we had an extended adolescence. It's almost
as if our parents said, "OK- go out and have a good time but
be back by 1974."I now have a 70 piece exhibition which has
already garnered much attention and praise. My aim is to keep the
show on the road."
-
Robert Altman-
Mr. Altman has
been professional photographer for many years- first as a photojournalist
(chief photographer, Rolling Stone Magazine) and for several decades
headed his own commercial studio in San Francisco specializing in
fashion photography as well as being a television producer/director
for KEMO-TV. He now actively pursues digital photography and publishes
a words and pictures column on the World Wide Web.
Robert currently teaches Introduction and Advanced Multimedia Authoring
on the World Wide Web for The Center of Electronic Art; The UC Berkeley
Extension; San Francisco State University and the Photo Metro Digital
Workshop. He has served as a guest lecturer for The National Conference
of Educators and at the Non-Profit Program Directors "Meet
the Future" Conference at the Museum for Modern Art. He holds
a B.A. degree in Psychology from the City University of New York
(Hunter College) where he served as President of his class.
Karl
Ferris is known as the Innovator of psychedelic photography. A Photographer
to the "British Rock Elite", Ferris was invited to create
their "Images". Which he achieved, as the personal photographer
to Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Eric Clapton and the Hollies.
He was given an insider access to the "Experience" that
defined the 60s and the world.
As a World War II baby, who grew up in Hastings, England in the
50s, Ferris learned two things that would later affect his life,
the first being the History of Hastings, conquered by the Normans
in 1066. This piqued an interest in this medieval period of history
and he would bicycle around Norman castles and fantasize about battles,
knights, chivalry and heraldry. The second thing he learned was
an appreciation of art, having a showing of his early paintings
at the Hastings Museum. He later went on to study at Hastings College
of Art focusing on the Pre-Raphaelite style of painting
which would later influence his psychedelic photography of the 60s.
Finally,
after 35 years"Jimi Hendrix and Creme' at the Saville
Theatre" poster's are now available in limited quantities.
Originally commissioned by Brian Epstein, the Saville's owner
and,
famously, the Beatles' manager, these posters feature well-known
photographs of the bands taken by Karl
Ferris, the Saville's "house photographer" during the
summer of 1967.
The Saville Theatre was THE place for live music in London. A
former
opera theatre, its boxes were reserved for rock royalty –
the Beatles,
the Rolling Stones, Donovan, Jimi Hendrix among them -- who would
show up
to watch other hot acts of the time.
Karl Ferris was there to record it all, photographing many of
the shows
and stars, as well as shooting 6 record album covers in that memorable
1967 summer alone, for Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, and the Hollies.
But the August 27th 1967 concert featured in this poster was regrettably
one of the more memorable of the Saville's nights: at the end
of the 6pm
show, it was learned that Brian Epstein had just died from an
overdose of
sleeping pills. The 8pm show was cancelled in mourning.
And, sadly, the Saville Theatre was demolished soon after, in
1968.
As Saville performances were always sold out in advance, posters
were not
needed for widespread advertising, and just a few were printed
for
display at the Saville Theatre only. The original poster for this
1967
concerts had a very limited print run and very few are known to
exist.
Click
HERE to View
and Purchase or just to DIG these Posters!
David
Singer
David
Singer grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where he was exposed
to antiques and folk art. Another influence on his work, perhaps
related to the hex signs of folk art, was his childhood interest
in geometric forms. Although Singer had little formal art training,
his polished presentation and prodigious output made him one of
the most respected poster artists emerging in the late 1960s in
San Francisco.
Not initially interested in making posters, Singer assembled a
portfolio of collages that he envisioned as "greeting cards
or something." His work was rejected by most of the publishers
in San Francisco before gaining immediate acceptance from Bill
Graham, a dance-concert promoter for the Fillmore Auditorium.
During the Fillmore era, from 1969 to 1971, Singer created more
posters for Graham than any other artist did, notably the double-size
final poster evoking the Fillmore experience. Even after the Fillmore
closed in 1971, Singer continued to create posters commemorating
special events sponsored by Graham. To a great extent, Singer
was a transitional rock-poster artist; his works possessed a refinement,
even a polish that would dominate the 1970s rock world. During
that decade he produced significant posters for the Rolling Stones,
the Who, and Santana.
Singer's posters are notable for his use of collage, incorporating
thousands of images clipped from magazines spanning several decades.
He developed a format that included a stunning variety of lettering
styles, applying them in close relation to the theme or subject
of a poster.
Therese Thau Heyman. Posters American Style (New York and Washington,
D.C.:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the National Museum
of American Art, 1998).
"In
its deepest sense
Singer's work is both poetic and musical;
it is a series of carefully orchestrated images that yield, through
juxtaposition,
manipulation of scale and recognition patterns, images which underscore
and silently sing the various dreams of the current American experience.
Like paper flowers dropped into a glass of clear water
the multitude of impressions and possibilities implicit in Singer's
montages
expand slowly but relentlessly in the mind."
——— • ———
From the article "David Singer" in CITY Magazine
a San Francisco weekly, August 15-21, 1973.
Jim
Phillips
The Family
Dog, The Avalon Ballroom, The Fillmore West Auditorium
Jim
Phillips is a graphic artist known for his rock posters, surf
and skateboard art with a career that spans more than 36 years.
Jim has created more than 100 rock posters between 1967 and 1998.
His career in rock posters began with a Lothar and the Hand People
poster, at a venue known as The Crosstown Bus in Boston. His second
poster there was for the first east coast appearance of The Doors.
Jim spent that summer of '67 working as a studio artist and light
show performer at the club.
Returning to his hometown of Santa Cruz, he created a series of
posters including Jerry Garcia, Moby Grape, Neil Young, The Tubes
and many others. In later years Jim became Art Director for the
Family Dog and Maritime Hall.
He has also created posters for Bill Graham Presents
creating Fillmore, Warfield, Kezar, Alcazar and Shoreline posters.
Jim's
Website
The
Family Dog In
February of 1966
Chet Helms formed a loose connection with the Family Dog a
commune of hippies living at 2125 Pine street who threw open dances
and wild events. Helms was the ideal person to help this group
organize their presentations and he moved into the Family Dog
house. Their first formal production was a concert at Longshoremen's
Hall.
In February 1966, Helms formally founded Family Dog Productions
to begin promoting concerts at The Fillmore Auditorium, alternating
weekends with another young promoter, Bill Graham. As the concerts
became more popular, inevitable conflicts arose between the two
promoters. Within a few months Helms secured the permits necessary
to host events at the Avalon Ballroom, an old dancehall located
at the corner of Sutter and Van Ness. Big
Brother and the Holding Company debuted there in June 1966
at the Avalon. Later Helms would get them the gig that made them
famous, the Monterey Pop Festival where Albert Grossman spotted
Joplin and offered her a contract.
The Avalon
Ballroom
The Avalon
Ballroom was my favorite. It was here in June 1966 that Janis
Joplin made her first public appearance with Big Brother and the
Holding Company. Chet Helms was the director of the Family Dog
that put on a series of great concerts between April 1966 and
November 1968. Helms brought us an eclectic mix of shows. You
would see Moby Grape and Steve
Miller Band but also some great rock and rollers like Bill
Halley and the Comets or Bo Diddley. Bo Diddley appeared with
Big Brother one night and really sent us into a frenzy of musical
delight.The posters they gave out at that time were the essence
of psychedelic art.
The place was originally built in 1911 and was called the Puckett
School of Dance. The upstairs ballroom had a beautiful wooden
floor, an L-shaped balcony, mirrors, columns and oh, yes, red
flocked wallpaper.
Dear Helms lost his permits and another production company called
Soundproof Productions of all names, took the place over for the
next year but it was not the same. Then it was a multi-movie house
and whenever I would go to see movies there and walk up the stairs
, I would feel a flood of memories.
This was a beautiful place to go and I had some wonderful times
there dancing to the bands and also attending Steve
Gaskins Monday Night meetings.
Chet Helms died June 25, 2005 and the Avalon Ballroom is now a
mattress company. By SF Heart
In the mid-1960s, The Fillmore
became the focal point for psychedelic music and counterculture
in general, with acts such as The
Grateful Dead, Quicksilver
Messenger Service, Jefferson
Airplane, and Janis Joplin getting
their start. Besides rock, Graham also featured non-rock acts
such as Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Otis Redding as well as poetry
readings.
After a few years there, because of a deteriorating neighborhood,
in July 1968 Bill Graham moved from the original Fillmore at Fillmore
Street and Geary Blvd to the Carousel Ballroom at the corner of
Market and South Van Ness Avenue, which was called Fillmore West
(in contrast with Graham's Fillmore East auditorium in New York
City).
The original Fillmore location became a private club called The
Elite Club. For several years in the early 1980s, punk promoter
Paul Rat booked punk rock shows at this venue. Punk bands that
performed at The Elite Club include Black Flag, Bad Brains, The
Dead Kennedys, TSOL, Flipper, Gang of Four, and Public Image Ltd.
The Fillmore reopened under Graham's management by the late 1980s,
but it was damaged and closed by the Loma Prieta earthquake of
October 1989. After Graham died in a helicopter crash in 1991,
those close to him decided to carry out his final wish to retrofit
and reopen the original Fillmore. The Fillmore has once again
become a San Francisco hotspot with shows almost every night.
For a standard show, the capacity of the Fillmore is 1250 guests.
The Fillmore is also well known for its psychedelic concert posters
by designers including Wes Wilson and Rick Griffin. Copies of
these posters are given to fans free of charge as they exit selected
shows. A large collection of these posters dating back to the
early days is on display in the upper level of the auditorium
today.
Other traditions are carried on to this day. One is a large tub
of free apples for concertgoers positioned near the entrance.
Another is a "greeter", a staff member who welcomes
each guest as they enter ("Welcome to the Fillmore!").
Steve
Harradine is a Generation X graphic artist that embodies the spirit
of the psychedelic poster art of the 1960s, winning him praise from
trailblazer Bob Masse
and credits to shared posters.
Residing in the UK, Harradine's posters are lustfully sought after
by collectors all over the world.
ClassicPosters.com
is the largest archive of concert-music posters on the Internet.
Our goal is to provide a catalog and detailed information on the
history of concert-music posters,
as well as to make these posters available to collectors, investors,
and anyone who wants to have their own piece of rock 'n roll history.
ClassicPosters.com is the most recent enterprise-level web site
by Internet-content pioneer Michael Erlewine,
a well-known award-winning archivist of popular culture.
Rock Poster
Review 2
Featuring
Armadillo
World HeadQuarters Review
-1970's Austin, Texas-
(Click on the poster above to visit)
