Bridget Brickert was one of the many awesome volunteers who helped make the 2018 Festival of Rock Posters in Golden Gate Park a success. Thanks to Bridget and all our volunteers! Photo: Ron Schaeffer

With 2018 behind us, we thought we’d take a moment for a quick glance in the rear-view, as well as to announce what’s cooking in 2019.

First and foremost, an enormous and heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped us set up and take down our three major events last year. We cannot do this without you, period. We’ll have a more detailed announcement soon on volunteer opportunities in 2019, but for now, if you want to be on the volunteer list, send your contact info to TRPSvolunteers@gmail.com. Again, thank you!

We’d also like to thank Emek for an amazing job on our 20th Anniversary Poster, which benefits our Artist Relief Trust. For those who could not make the show to order a poster (they are shipping as we speak), you may want to check Emek’s site in the next few days. Hints are appearing there already…

As for 2019, here’s what we know:

* SF History Days, March 2nd & 3rd. Last year was our first time at this free, community event at the Old US Mint in San Francisco. Thousands of people attended to wander halls and rooms of the historic building at 5th and Mission, where almost 100 non-profits were on hand to talk about what they do. We were located in a brick-lined coal vault, which we transformed into a mini-rock-poster show. As we did last year, we’ll be passing out free show cards from past TRPS events (including cards that some people actually pay money for on eBay!). If you are in the area, please stop by and say hello.

* Rock Art By the Bay at Faction Brewing, June or July. Although the date for this one is not set, it will be soon, and you won’t want to miss it. The folks at Faction could not be more welcoming, the airplane-hanger space is incredible, and did we mention the beer? Really, really good beer. Stay tuned for more info on this artist-only show.

* Festival of Rock Posters at the Hall of Flowers, October 19. Yes, we have a date!

See you in 2019!

Billy Perkins in the Hall of Flowers, October 2018. Photo: Ron Schaeffer

John Moehring, “The Quick and The Dead,” January 26-27, 1968.

From November 22 to December 2, 2018, ClassicPosters.com is auctioning a rare collection of seven John Moehring posters from the artist’s personal archive. Advertising shows produced by Boyd Grafmyre between 1967 and 1969 in Seattle and Portland, the posters showcase some of the greatest bands and performers of the era, including Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe McDonald, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Donovan, Jeff Beck, John Mayall, and the Grateful Dead.

What the Big Five poster artists were to San Francisco, John Moehring was to Seattle, all by himself. Influenced as a teenager by the illustrations for Treasure Island by N.C. Wyeth and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Arthur Rackham, Moehring was also impressed by the psychedelic concert posters he saw on a trip to San Francisco in 1966. By the spring of 1967, he’d created his first concert posters for a promoter named Trips Lansing. That fall, he delivered the first of the 30 or so posters he designed for Boyd Grafmyre, who was booking shows into the Eagles Auditorium and, later, the Seattle Center Arena.

John Moehring, Three Eagles Auditorium posters, October and November, 1967

At first, Moehring leaned on his skills as an illustrator for his posters, but the more he learned about the offset-printing process, the more adventurous his posters became. Moehring’s posters for Eagles Auditorium shows featuring Charles Lloyd, Big Brother, and Country Joe, all of which are up for auction, are good examples of his work from the fall of 1967 through the spring of 1968. As Moehring told me for an article I wrote in 2016 about his work, “In traditional printing on a single-color press, you would have made a film negative, burned a plate, and then started printing,” he said. When Moehring learned that he could also burn a plate from the film positive, he immediately recognized the possibilities. “By doing a two-color run using one film positive and one film negative of what had been a black-and-white image, you’d get 100-percent ink coverage on the sheet.”

John Moehring, “Jeff Beck, John Mayall, Deep Purple” April 3, 1969.

Some of these posters were so psychedelic they were barely legible, which drove promoter Grafmyre nuts. “Boyd couldn’t read my lettering,” Moehring recounted in 2016, “so he told me, ‘OK, the next poster you do has to be black-and-white, and it has to be readable.’ So, my poster for the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service had an insane border around it but was otherwise fairly legible. That was the only direction I ever got in two years of working with Boyd.” This poster (shown at top) is also part of the Moehring group—according to Mike Storeim of Classic Posters, this is the first time this poster has come up for auction.

The other gem in the Moehring group is a poster for a November 1968 show by Big Brother, one of the last shows with Janis Joplin as a member of that great band. What’s interesting about this poster is that it features collaged and flopped portraits of Janis Joplin, the source of which was a Berkeley Bonaparte poster by photographer Bob Seidemann, who is credited on Moehring’s poster. Like the Grateful Dead poster, this one rarely comes up for auction.

John Moehring, “Janis Joplin,” November 29, 1968.

These John Moehring posters, along with more than 400 others, are up for auction at Classic Posters through December 2, 2018. To learn more about Seattle’s psychedelic poster scene of the late 1960s, pick up a copy of Scott McDougall’s Split Fountain Hieroglyphics.