On October 14, 2021 Ted Bahr had the opportunity to prepare and give a lecture on the history of the psychedlic poster at Poster House, the only museum in the country dedicated to poster art. It's posted on Facebook and you can click below to learn more about the content or go right to the video here.
Great 4-minute video explaining how the posters of the late 1960s were printed, using offset machine lithography.
Not sure you will ever find Jerry Garcia more animated than in this 4:40 clip. "Get it Ace!"
Great 5 minute video showing people waking up at Monterey Pop in 1967 to find Country Joe and the Fish on stage
Awesome footage of the Dead playing for free on Haight Street March 3, 1968. Great hippie footage, dancing on rooftops, dancing on utility poles! (no kidding). Second half of this 8 minute video is from a Peace and freedom Gathering in Golden Gate park and then downtown SF coverage. Vintage.
May 3, 1968, the Dead appear on the campus of Columbia University out of nowhere. Audience is not clear on what's going on - but they know something is happening...
Jerry is sporting huge mutton chops and the band is at it's revolutionary best. A bit less than 9 minutes
More fascinating details - click HERE
Terrific 9:38 video of the Haight scene from way back when
Early BBC video of Pink Floyd at the UFO Club in London featuring wild dancing, psychedelic images, and eventually a short interview with Paul McCartney about the band. Less than 5 minutes, amazing footage. Floyd is playing Interstellar Overdrive.
This 4:30 video has some amazing footage of the first legendary Pirate's Ball, September 5, 1973, held "just north of the George Washington Bridge, NY Side." This was a Hells Angles party aboard a boat named the SS Bay Belle that sailed around NY Harbor. Footage includes a Hells Angels wedding, Angels flying the colors, women cavorting, and Jerry Garcia & Friends, including Merl Saunders, John Kahn and Bill Kreutzmann.
If there is a song that made Janis Joplin, this is it. The quality of the filming, for 1967, is staggering.
The Doors performing Break on Through at the Magic Mountain Festival, June 1967, the week before Monterey Pop. Great crowd dancing in this 3-minute video
Yes, really. This 3:13 clip from a German documentary features two parts with amazing 1967 footage of Connecticut socialites at Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Canaan. While you don't see the band, the swells are dancing (rather wildly) to NYC nihilists (my description), the Velvet Undrground. First up is "waiting for my man" about scoring heroin and later in the clip is the sadomasochistic "Venus in Furs," certainly a far cry from the Peppermint Twist. The dancers don't seem to notice....
Great period coverage of Woodstock by Walter Cronkite and CBS News
Live video showing Quicksilver Messenger Service with the crowd looking on, wondering who the hell these people are....
Another fairly animated Jerry walking around head bobbin', axe choppin' during a China Cat. 3 minutes.
Short and very funny interview with Jerry Garcia about the famous "set-up" bust of the band in New Orleans following a show at The Warehouse with Fleetwood Mac on January 31, 1970. After bailing out their 19-person entourage (including Owsley), they were broke and cobbled together another show the next night and talked Fleetwood Mac into staying as well. About three weeks later, Bill Graham and all of the major San Francisco bands held a Benefit to raise money to help pay the Dead's legal bills - immortalized by this Randy Tuten poster - click "view more" below to see it.
Bob Dylan, filmed by Monterey Pop documentarist D.A. Pennebaker in 1965 (who also made the Bob Dylan documentary "Don't Look Back" in that same year). World's first music video? You decide.
Rather raw footage of the Human Be-In, January 14, 1967. To an extent a protest against the outlawing of LSD in California on October 6th 1966. Alan Ginsberg and Timothy Leary highlighted. Video is just shy of 5 minutes and Takes You There.
Listen to a 1966 Jerry Garcia go a little nuts 3/4 of the way through this heart-rendering and soulful version of “Hey Little One”, written in 1960 by Dorsey Burnette and Barry De Vorzon. Reached #48 in the charts for them in 1960 and later #54 in 1967 for Glen Campbell. This version is from the Danish Center in Los Angeles, March 12, 1966, an event on the list of official Acid Tests. Here's a link to the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoW6s9Sutuw
1985 New Year's Show coverage which was broadcast nationally on the USA Network. This 10 minute clip (NSFW in that you need to use headphones becuase Kesey is screaming alot) features the annual New Year's Countdown and the unveiling of Bill Graham's grand entrance as Father Time. Once, he ziplined to the stage riding a giant joint. Another time he rode in on a giant mushroom. This time....you will just have to watch but it was considered the 20th Anniversary of the band. Father Guido Sarducci and Ken Kesey commentate and Kesey's mad ravings are Off The Charts.
This is one of those YouTube videos that shows still photos while playing the music. In this case we have the Grace Slick and Great Society doing an early prototype of White Rabbit. Almost a totally different song. 1966. The Matrix, tiny club in San Francisco. We know the story. In the early Fall of 1966, Jefferson Airplane vocalist Signe Anderson, pregnant, no longer wanted to tour with the band. They invited Grace Slick to come aboard and the rest was history. Both White Rabbit and Somebody to Love were Great Society songs Grace brought to the Airplane.
Janis Joplin leads Big Brother & The Holding Company in this quintessential song describing the rock "dance concert" scene in San Francisco. The "Two" in the song title refers to the Avalon and Fillmore, the leading psychedelic venues in San Francisco. The Monterey Pop Festival held June 16-18, 1967, put the growing psychedelic rock movement on the map and catapulted the careers of Jimi Hendrix (who set his guitar on fire), The Who, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding. Big Brother's Combination of The Two wound up on the Cheap Thrills album which was the number 1 album for the year 1968. Note at the end of the video an open-mouthed Mama Cass from the Mamas and the Papas.
an early "rock video" where the boys move a poor scarecrow to a kinder place with a view of the water....seriously. Syd Barrett. Rare. Here.
This is a March 2020 remaster of the awesome 11-minute animation sequence by Gary Gutierrez that opens the Grateful Dead Movie made in 1977. Immortal.
Rated "ET" for Extremely Trippy, this less-than-8 minute film short by Robert Nelson will take you back to the Trips Festival and beyond. Nelson was an avant garde filmaker and this chaotic mess (in a good way - smile) features music from the first album, synced somewhat to footage of the band playing, canoeing and goofing around in an idyllic rural setting. The footage was shot around late May 1967, on the Russian River at the family ranch of a friend of the band, John Carl Warnecke Jr. The Dead spent a week or two rehearsing, clowning around and generally enjoying the area. Supposedly the song Alligator came together during this trip. Given that this was May 1967 - just 2 months after their first album was released, it's possible that this financed by Warner Brothers as a promotional exercise as Nelson was a professional, if "underground" filmmaker, and the music was properly mixed.
The 2-minute song by the very odd psychedelic-folk duo the Holy Modal Rounders would likely be lost to history were it not included prominently in the 1969 cult-classic Easy Rider. There are two versions that I would like to cite for you - it's the same song but the visuals are different:
This version is accompanied by extemely psychedelic graphics - well worth it. See that version HERE
In the movie, the song played after Jack Nicholson had joined Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda on their motorcycles headed east to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The clip in the movie is seminal and also well worth the trip. See the movie clip with song: HERE
A famous recording where the microphone was put inside Lou Reed's guitar. Ferocious. Not for the faint of heart.
The Rock Poster Society, or TRPS, a non-profit dedicated to promoting rock poster art.