BG006

The FIRST poster where Wes Wilson played with "vibrating" colors (complementary or triadic colors of similar grey value, making them difficult for the eye to separate and distinguish, thus causing the adjacent colors to "move" against each other as the eye tries to accommodate this impossible task) which he used to great effect throughout his Fillmore and Avalon design career. Perfect condition.

This poster, more than any of this group, exemplifies the kind of swirly vision you have as you look at straight lettering under the influence of LSD. Because of that alone, it is very valuable as the first truly psychedelic poster.

14" X 20" (36cm X 51cm)

Bob Knickerbocker married a stunning, tall, hilarious comedienne appropriately named Jane, and they moved to a gold mine in North San Juan, above Nevada City on highway 49 in 1967. Bob was taking photographs all over northern California while I moved to Portobello Road in London Christmas of '69. England was a total foreign country then, and I loved it. The music scene was flourishing and I was playing drums.

One day in early 1970, I nipped down to the newsagents on Portobello and bought a copy of Rolling Stone and opened the first page, which led directly to the letters page, always topped with an interesting photo. I creased up with laughter. I was looking at a typical northern California valley scene with a barbed wire fence leading from the foreground to the background, a single cow in the field beyond, and a dead fish laying across the top of the near fencepost in the foreground. It HAD to be KNICKERBOCKER!

Sure enough, it was his photo.

How many photographers have that individual a style that you can recognize their work immediately? He was a true one-off, and certainly opened my eyes in school.

When I moved to LA in 1975, Funky Jack's wife, Susan, called and invited me to see a "special show I want you to come to." That's all she would say. I drove up to SF and we all went to Bimbo's 365 Club of all places to see the Tubes. On stage was a gorgeous Amazon who was doing the most amazing things and turning me on something fierce. Susan was smiling, knowing my predilection for tall, gorgeous women.

This made-up beauty sat sensuously on a Harley on stage and sang "Don't Touch Me There." She was incredible. Susan was looking at me and smiling even more, enjoying herself hugely...what was she up to?

After the show, this impossibly beautiful woman came over to our table, flashed me a saucy smile, leaned over and kissed me as her beautiful big boobs almost fell out of her dress, and said ever so sexily, "Hello, Paul!"

Well.

Susan and Jack were laughing and I was flummoxed. The bombshell pouted and moued, "Don't you remember meeee???"

Jesus....how could I forget a woman like her!?

It was Jane, and I hadn't recognized her because she was so made up.

Jane was knocking them dead during the late 70's and early 80's in the comedy clubs of San Francisco. I stopped in with a friend to see her at a small club on Polk that was filled to rafters with straights, gays, and lesbians. Jane came on stage dressed in a tight knit dress that left nothing to the imagination...she was spilling out all over, much to the delight of everyone in the place. She began a bluesy ballad lamenting her lot as a woman, and how it was a man's world, and women were always getting screwed by them, etc, etc., and how wonderful it would be--just once--to be a man. As she sang, she pumped and grinded and gyrated sensuously, turning on EVERYONE--of every pursuasion-- as she gradually hiked up her skirt, revealing a dangling carrot and two onions in a mesh sack swinging between her legs. She swung this equipment around while she wailed about wanting to be a man....I was collapsing on the bar with laughter, along with everyone else. What a gem she was.

Jane was shortly thereafter spotted by a top agent and offered the gig to do "alternative traffic" for a big New York radio station, broadcasting live from a chopper. The chopper went down in the Hudson one day, but Jane was rescued and grounded until she had the nerve to go up again.

When she did go up again, she hit her stride and was making everyone's ride home more enjoyable with her wit, when one day the chopper went down AGAIN with Jane at the microphone screaming....only this time Jane didn't survive. She would have been bigger than Bette Midler (she WAS bigger than Bette Midler!).

As you look at these posters, please think of Jane, and raise a glass to her when you have the chance....we are all the worse off for her not being here to delight us with her wacky, side-splitting sense of humor.

Here's to you, honey.