Anyone collect Fillmore Posters?

Beautiful works of art that advertised psychedelic concerts in the late 1960s. Any collectors out there? If so, can you post a photo of your collection.

 

Id like to post at sine pint a video. I have a binder that has around 120 Fillmore Avalon and Family Dog handbills. Many I got when I was a kid and signed up in their mailing lists.

 

I have collection of a dozen original, 1st printings from the Bill Graham Fillmore West series, several Family Dog/Avalon Ballroom posters, plus the Bill Graham/The Who "Tommy" at the Met Opera House in NYC, and the Graham Fillmore East "The Final Concerts" poster. All are framed and displayed in my house. I am most proud of my psychedelic Muddy Waters poster, because it is also in the collection at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, where I saw it on display.



Funny story: One time, I bought a BG poster of lesser value (approx. $50) from a seller on eBay, and the guy shipped it to me in a mailing tube. It was wrapped in another old poster as packing (the guy could have used plain brown paper or anything else). Anyway, the poster used as packing was one I had never seen. It had some damage, and was pretty ugly, not something I would want to frame or display.
It was advertising a show with The Who, The Band, and Santana at Tanglewood, Massachusetts, a concert also produced by Bill Graham, back in the early 1970's. The artist is unknown, based on reference books I have consulted. I held onto it in a closet, forgot about it, then found it later and decided to put it on eBay, just for fun. I started the bidding at $15, and when the smoke cleared, it sold for over $1,200 !!

 

I flew up to SF around '91 to grab some Fillmore posters before the big price hikes.

The best one I got is the Grateful Dead / Miles Davis Quintet 4/12/70 I think is the date, need to check.

It's a real stunner, and goes for big bucks now. I paid $35.

Got a nice FZ and Mothers which I still need to find a frame for. A great one.

 

I don't have any but they are my favorite style of poster.

 

There are several good books on the subject, particularly, "The Art of Rock", by Paul Grushkin. I have the original coffee table-sized hardcover edition. I checked on Amazon, and it looks like it has been reprinted. Not sure what the deal is with the "paperback" edition, listed for over $2,000, but I do know that they had published a scaled-down, much smaller paperback edition some years ago, which does not have the visual impact of the big one.

Another good book on the Bill Graham series is, "The Art of The Fillmore":

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fillmore-Poster-1966-1971/dp/1888358092/ref=pd_sim_14_7?ie=UTF8&dpID=61FG7QXTGRL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR118,160_&psc=1&refRID=7NEYAQR0JCKXMKD0KGAV

I met the author, Jay Kastor, and purchased the book from him years ago when he had a poster store on 8th St. in Greenwich Village, called, 'The Psychedelic Solution". This is where I found the first posters to start my collection. The way it happened is pretty interesting:
My wife attended Stuyvesant High School, which was right around the corner from the Fillmore East, which was on 2nd Ave. and 6th St., in NYC. When Bill Graham closed the Fillmore East, he basically got fed up with running it, and just picked up and left. My wife made friends with the building's security guard, and he let her go upstairs to Bill's office and take whatever she wanted. She grabbed, among other things, reams of his personal business stationery, press kits for the concert venue as well as the movie, "Fillmore", which he produced, ticket envelopes, programs, and half a dozen of "The Final Concerts" poster, which sell now for $500 each. Anyway, this was all long before I met her, and when we got together, eBay did not even exist.
Many years later, we had all this stuff stashed in our attic. I got into buying and selling on eBay, and listed some of this ephemera for auction, especially the posters (I kept the best one). I was contacted by Jay Kastor, who offered me $1,000 for some of BG's Fillmore East letterheads and #10 envelopes. When I went down to the store to do the deal, he didn't have the cash, so I picked out $1,000 worth of posters.
The store is long gone, but these posters are still available on auction sites, or from the Wolfgang's Vault website.

 

I started my collection through mail order -- a catalog that Bill Graham/Winterland Productions had put out. I wasn't really "collecting" at the time, just groovy things to put up on the wall, including the Jimi Hendrix "Flying Eyeball" (BG-105, 2nd printing). Also spent a summer in SF on a college internship and got a bunch of stuff from Ben Friedman's Postermat. He was a character. Getting him to part with some of his stash (stored in a downstairs basement) was like extracting teeth.

 

I have three. I used to have six.

When I was about eleven my buddy's sister ran away to the '68 Summer of Love in 'Frisco. She sent him six Fillmore posters she'd gotten for free. The hippies used to line up for them once a week, Thursdays I believe I read. He didn't want them so he sold them to me for a nickel apiece - 35 cents.

I enjoyed them for awhile and then lost track of them around the family house. In my adulthood, twenty-plus years later, I went looking for them as I knew they'd become valuable. I couldn't find them and gave them up for lost. A couple years later my Mom passed away and my father found two of them (first Pink Floyd tour, BG90, and the brown Electric Flag, BG 77) turned upside down and being used as shelf paper at the bottom of a couple drawers in her bedroom!

They have been archivally framed and hanging in my house for over twenty years since. I'd also had the the yellow and purple Jefferson Airplane (BG88) for which I managed to find a replacement. Lost to the ages were Eric Burdon, (BG89), The Doors (BG93) and Count Basie (BG 78). I believe all were done by Bonnie McLean who was married to Bill Graham at the time.

I've collected numerous other originals in the smaller card format as well as several second and third printings. The Pink Floyd poster alone returned my nickel investment over 10,000 %.

 

i have a pretty good size collection of fillmore and similar era posters, handbills, postcards and tickets. the framed otis redding handbills are two variations from the same shows. there's a third i'd love to get. here's a few of my favorites. i also collect new orleans jazz and heritage festival posters and have about twenty of them.

 

Great books

 

Great story!

By the way, there is now a micro-size reissue of Paul Gruskin's Art Of Rock book, for those with shelf space issues.....

 

That Muddy Waters is out of this world!!

 

The only one I have (a reproduction, not original) is Lee Conklin's Lion poster, which was later adapted into the cover of Santana's debut album.

 

Three for me.

First prints, got 'em in 1968, though far removed from the Fillmore, or SF for that matter.

Wish they looked as good as these jpegs. All worn, faded, pinholed. My bad.

Nonetheless, they still manage to provide much pleasure.

 

I have about 200 Fillmore, Avalon, California Hall, Matrix, etc. posters that I collected at the time of the concerts. They were distributed at the concerts (Friday printings) and on Tuesdays (Monday printings) at retailers as countertop giveaways (mostly handbills). I got most of my posters at the shows and the handbills after school on Tuesday by walking Haight Street.

jerol

 

I've had a bunch. Sold a bunch. Kept the flying eyeball (second printing) - framed on my living room wall.

The Muddy above and a Freddie King sits in my closet awaiting framing one day...I do love them...

 

Also, have both books from above. They are beautiful...

 

Oh my, you are sitting on a gold mine. However, the demographic interested in these things is aging, and young kids today have never even heard of most of these bands. You might want to think about selling some now, as opposed to later, if you have any plans to do so eventually.

 

I was going to offer some here but I don't have a camera.

jerol

 

Great Music Posters »

 

I have 3 Avalon Ballroom. A Quicksilver, one Big Brother and one Coldblood.

 

Not Fillmore posters, but two of my favorite from the era:
Magic Mountain Music Festival (6/3-4/67) and Port Chicago Vigil Benefit (2/19/67), both by artist Stanley Mouse.

 

I like what Rick Griffin did on this trio of "Charlatans" posters, one for each Avalon show.

 

My favorite poster by Wes Wilson is probably this one, Otis Rush and the Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore (3/3-5/67)