Kitsilano Man - Bob Dylan

Here, the psychedelic lettering is outlining a man’s face and not just any moan. Yep, it’s Bob Dylan, in silhouette from the photograph by Jerry Schatzberg. Schatzberg photographed Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde cover and the original photo you see here was used for the cover of Dylan’s book, Tarantuala. It was also used on the back cover of the London tour “programme.” In the spring of 1966.

This exceptional example of psychedelic rock poster advertising made outside of San Francisco is by artist Gary Lee-Nova. He was born in 1963 in Toronto and as an adolescent and young adult, Lee-Nova had several hero figures, both writers: the American William S. Burroughs, and the Canadian Marshall McLuhan. He has studied, collected, and corresponded with Burroughs, and sometimes also carried Burroughsian thinking in new directions in his art-making, Lee-Nova has said. McLuhan's words about electronic media also made him an enthusiast of the computer in his art. He has also said that his thinking about art was aided by the use of hallucinogenic drugs as well as by philosophies such as Zen-Buddhism that were becoming popular in the 1960s.

There was actually quite a scene up in Vancouver beginning with The Afterthought, a. organization spearheaded by a teenager named Jerry Kurz, who travelled down to San Francisco and wanted to try to duplicate the scene. He did a pretty good job and there are a number of standout works that were produced artists like Lee-Nova and in particular Bob Masse.

West Coast Natural Gas was an American psychedelic rock band founded in Seattle, Washington in 1965. The group moved to San Francisco later in 1967 and was recorded in 1968 under producer Matthew Katz. Just after the tracks were recorded, the band broke up and returned to Seattle. [Katz was the notorious manager of the Jefferson Airplane and later Moby Grape and It’s a Beautiful Day]