Collecting has never held much appeal for me, mainly because it's not often that I stay interested in something long enough to want to collect it. However, aside from guitars, which are out of my reach for financial reasons, there is one item that I've recently decided is worth investing in. My love of music and my love of design and typography are two fairly constant things in my life, and there is a place where those disciplines meet: the rock poster.Now, just so we're clear, I'm not talking about your classic glossy group shot posters you pick up in the back of Sam Goody for $5.99 and throw up on your dorm room wall with StickyTack. These are limited-edition, hand-printed designs. Back in the 50's and 60's, it was fairly common for bands and venues to produce a different poster for each show, often to advertise a festival or package tour with a variety of artists. To some extent, this practice fell out of fashion in the 70's and 80's as punk turned more towards flyers and rock bands went the Sam Goody route to fill their poster needs. But in the 90's, as design became a larger part of the American landscape and new houses and agencies sprang up all over the country hungry for work, the single show poster returned. Some of the biggest proponents of this trend were the Seattle bands, most noticeably Pearl Jam, who hired firms around the country, including Ames Bros, who produced the posters pictured above. (I own a copy of the one with the pig-faced guy in plaid pants towards the lower right.)
Rock posters hold a strong appeal for me because there are very few limits placed on the designers, leading to some incredibly creative work. Designers will often draw from retro pop culture, and robots and monsters are common themes. Plus, the letterpress and screenprinting gives the finished product a raw, hand-crafted feel that's very appealing to me. I'll often turn to posters when I'm looking for inspiration in my own design, or just when I need to remind myself why I do what I do. Apparently, I'm not the only one. UnBeige recently posted about rock posters, which was prompted by reading this post from Crit. It seems my love of the poster is not unique.
Currently, my collection looks like this: besides my Ames/Pearl Jam poster, I also own a set of 4 Nickel Creek posters I got from their website, and a Hank Williams poster and a Johnny Cash poster both created by Hatch Show Print in Nashville, the granddaddy of the letterpress rock poster.
Since I am a "collector", I always keep my eye on a few places to see what's available. As the trend speads to more and more bands, many of them will sell posters from past tours on their website (as Dave Matthews Band is doing right now). This is not a bad way to pick up pieces inexpensively, but I prefer to go directly to some of the smaller studios who produce the posters. One of my current favorites is The Small Stakes, a small one-man shop who creates some fantastic posters for a bunch of bands I happen to like. Unfortunately, he produces pretty limited numbers, and his stuff tends to sell out pretty quickly. I also check out other artists whenever I find them. For instance, tonight I discovered Tara McPherson and El Jefe Design, the studio owned by the author of the Crit blog post I linked to above.
Some of the more famous designs have become pretty scarce. Luckily, there are still ways to see most of them. GigPosters.com is a fantastic resource, although it also makes for dangerous late-night surfing. I tend to hide my credit card before I visit. There's also no shortage of coffee-table book collections and historical looks at the industry. For current stuff, try:
Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion (I own this one. It's a great round-up of the current resurgence of the rock poster.)
Swag: Rock Posters of the 90's
And to dive into the history, I'd start with these:
Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop
The Art of the Fillmore
The Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk
Finally, no collection would be complete without a way to preserve it. I order 2" black wood frames and plexiglass fronts from Frames By Mail to protect my posters. Frames By Mail will custom-cut to fit whatever size you need (this comes in handy since most rock posters are not made to fit standard-size frames), and it's usually cheaper by half than going to a framing store. Plus, I've never waited longer than 3 days for an order.
I'm making no claims to be an expert, but as a whole, I think the current crop of rock posters are pretty damn cool, and are something that I might even like to create myself someday. And if that's not worth collecting, I don't know what is.
If you like dark humor, I'd highly recommend checking out Thank You for Smoking. Doug and I watched it the other night, and it had us both laughing. Great performances from a sharp cast, but Aaron Eckhart impressed me the most.
