The Doors 1968 Northern Calif. Folk-Rock Festival Concert Poster Graded 8.5 (AOR-2.341). ...

Description

The Doors 1968 Northern Calif. Folk-Rock Festival Concert Poster Graded 8.5 (AOR-2.341). An original first-printing concert poster for a two-day festival at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose, CA on Saturday & Sunday, May 18 & 19, 1968. A highly popular poster due to its dominant image of Jim Morrison as the centerpiece, although you have to wonder what the other bands thought of that. Among those other acts were Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane with Grace Slick and the Animals with Eric Burdon. Also, and not surprisingly, the Grateful Dead played on Saturday as well, probably added too late to make the poster.

The weekend festival was held specifically at Family Park in the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose, CA, and was produced by Bob Blodgett, although his name doesn't appear on the poster (he added it the following year, the only other Festival he produced).

The Doors closed the entire weekend by performing a one-hour set at 4:30 Sunday afternoon, following Country Joe & the Fish. Accounts have them playing strong but the audience was somewhat sunbaked and weary after two full days of music. However, part of the show was filmed for the Doors documentary Feast of Friends, which was subsequently canceled but eventually released in its full glory on DVD and Blu-ray in 2014.

Other acts advertised on the poster included the Electric Flag (with Al Kooper), the Youngbloods, Country Joe and the Fish, Ravi Shankar's Indian Festival, Kaleidoscope (with future Jackson Browne guitarist David Lindley), and Taj Mahal. The artwork is credited to Carson-Morris Studios of Oakland, across the Bay.

There's another advertisement for the festival, perhaps a newspaper ad, which adds to the line-up the Loading Zone, People, Transatlantic Flash, Smokestack Lightnin', Crome Syrcus, Indian Head Band, the Dirty Blues Band "and many more." It also mentions that Ravi Shankar's group included Shamin Ahmed on sitar and Taranoth Rao on the tabla.

The Airplane certainly had a busy day on Saturday. They had the day shift at this festival, and then played L.A.'s Shrine Auditorium that night, so we presume they flew down rather than make the five-hour drive. According to Craig Fenton's book Take Me to a Circus Tent: The Jefferson Airplane Flight Manual, their set list consisted of, in order: "White Rabbit," "Plastic Fantastic Lover," "Watch Her Ride," "Today," "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil," "Greasy Heart" performed for the first time ever, "Fat Angel," "Star Track" also for the first time, "Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon" (perfect for this occasion) and "Somebody to Love."

Measures 14" x 21 ¾" and graded to 8.5 Very Fine Plus by CGC (the Certified Guaranty Company). From the David Swartz Concert Poster Collection. COA from Heritage Auctions.

Literature: See Grushkin, Paul, The Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk, Abbeville Press, New York, 1987, p.232 (illus.).

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