Tribal Stomp - James Gurley, 1967

This first printing poster from early 1967 frames a fantastic photo of Big Brother & The Holding Company guitarist James Gurley, sporting various hippie fashion items including a Native American feather and beads and some sort of medieval or civil war-era tunic. His hair is long and mussed and he is staring at you expressionless, basically saying, “here I am.”

Photographer Bob Seidemann was one of the leading chroniclers of the later 1960s and his work appeared on 60 album covers (notably and notoriously including the first Blind Faith album) posters advertising concerts and general head shop poster portraits. Although unpublished until her death in 1970, Seidemann's 1967 portraits of a semi-nude Janis Joplin earned him wide acclaim and he regularly hung out with poster artists Mouse, Kelley, and Rick Griffin and members of Big Brother and the Charlatans.

The Oxford Circle was an American garage rock and psychedelic rock band from Davis, California, who were active from 1964 to 1967. They became a popular local act with a proto-punk sound influenced by Them and other blues-based bands of the British Invasion, that, in addition to heavy guitar feedback, came to encompass psychedelia.

The group began to make appearances in San Francisco, where they played in venues such as the Avalon Ballroom but in some ways their most lasting legacy was appearing on some of the most famous psychedelic rock posters of all time including the original 1966 Skeleton & Roses Grateful Dead poster, Moscoso’s swirly-eyed “Injun Joe” poster, the Grateful Dead “Family Dog Logo” poster and more.