Captain Beefheart at UC Irvine

This original concert poster was created in 1972 as a commemorative work by the late Rick Griffin for a show that happened in 1968. Well, not really. Inventing this show....well, let's call it taking artistic license as master artist Rick Griffin was showing off what his graphic design company, California Graphic Exchange, could do, despite the fact that his prior work offered quite a visual resume. Here he has created a beautiful blue and red vertical split fountain piece. Many of the standard Griffin items appear in this design including a flying eyeball, a heart, a scarab, and a trash burner that are similar to those used on previous posters.

Born Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefhart was one of modern music's true innovators who employed idiosyncratic rhythms, absurdist lyrics, free jazz, Delta blues, latter-day classical music and rock & roll to create a singular body of work notable for its avant-garde creativity. While he never had mainstream success, Beefhart's fingerprints were to be seen all over punk, New Wave and post-rock. Their opus, Trout Mask Replica was due to come out less than a year before this concert took place.