When Art & Music Rocked!

From the mid-1960’s to the early 1970’s, an amazing amount of exceptional graphic art was produced in the San Francisco Bay Area. This came about from the demand for flyers, handbills, and posters advertising rock concerts and dances in the city’s ballrooms, sports arenas, and dives. The two main impresarios of this proliferation of flyers/handbills/posters were Bill Graham — who promoted concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium, Winterland, and the Fillmore West — and Chet Helms of the Family Dog, who produced concerts at the Avalon Ballroom, among other venues.

Five great San Francisco graphic artists were ready for this flyer/handbill/poster renaissance: Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Stanley “Mouse” Miller, Victor Moscoso, and Wes Wilson.

They, along with printers Bindweed Press, Cal Litho, Tea Lautrec Litho, and West Coast Litho — and their great pressmen Joe Buchwald, Levon Mosgofian, Ivor Powell, and Monroe Schwartz — were the real unsung heroes of the San Francisco rock poster scene.

My flyer — in the great tradition of the Haight-Ashbury art and music scene —  describes my rock poster “The Electric Sound of San Francisco,” drawn by artist Mike Dolgushkin.

Gerald Jude James Festa

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