Griffin created a number of the Grateful Dead’s album covers over their extensive career. A perfectionist when it came to his artwork, Griffin would often create numerous renditions of a design, choosing one he was finally happy with. For the cover of Reckoning he created 25-or-so stencils of the famous skull, cross-bones, and heart, and chose his favorite as the cover. This original stencil was one of the pieces he created in this process and is very similar to the final album cover, with only some slight differences in shading. This artwork is one of the best original Rick Griffin pieces in our collection and would be a prized piece for any Griffin or Grateful Dead collector. Don’t shop in silence, check out Dire Wolf from 1970 concert at the Fillmore East.

If you aren’t familiar with the work of this great artist, he grew up in the surfing culture of Southern California, a environment which had a profound influence on his art. After high school, he worked on the staff of Surfer magazine and created the best-known surfing cartoon character of the time, Murphy. In Los Angeles, Griffin met the Jook Savages, a group of artist-musicians, and took part in writer Ken Kesey’s “Watts Acid Test.” Griffin’s first rock poster was for the Jook Savages, and when organizers for the “Human Be-In” saw the poster in San Francisco, they asked him to do a poster for their own event in January of 1967. Chet Helms of the Family Dog saw Griffin’s work too, and asked him to design posters for the dance parties at the Avalon Ballroom. Griffin took his early influences from advertising and from the counterculture. Combining eclectic typefaces and decorative borders with brilliant colors, Griffin’s compositions were complex without being illegible. He introduced diverse, often startling, objects into his posters, creating visual-verbal puns and playful references to pop culture. A perfectionist, Griffin often applied dozens of overlays and redrew lettering again and again until he was satisfied. In the early 1970s, Griffin became a born-again Christian and religious themes dominated his work. These later works are powerful and bizarre, concerned with ideas of mortality and continuity. One of the last posters he produced was for The Grateful Dead, which illustrate Griffin’s vivid imagination and graphic skill. Griffin was killed well before his time in a motorcycle accident in 1991.

Check out this beautiful piece of artwork and our other items in our Big Ticket Auctions.

http://stores.ebay.com/Wolfgangs-Vault

[Big Ticket Auction: Spotlight on Rick Griffin is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

For you audiophiles out there, some exciting news to add -  every show we offer for download will be availble on the 3rd in lossless FLAC in addition to our standard 256k MP3. You may have noticed we started doing this with our more recent downloads and we are going back and re-encoding everything in both formats.

Here’s our theme song for the day:

As always, we love your feedback and input.

Cheers!

[Cracking the Vault Day – November 3rd is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

[The Brilliant Bonnie Raitt is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Pete Townshend at the Cow Palace in 1967, by Baron Wolman

One of the things that we are extremely proud of here at Wolfgang’s Vault is our collection of great rock photography. Many of the photos cover the walls here at the Vault and we have thousands of images that we are still digging through to get the best ones up on the site. These come both from archives we have acquired over the years and through relationships we have with some brilliant photographers. I’ll shine a deserving light today on Baron Wolman who we have had the pleasure of working with over the last several years. There is a great feature on him over at Nikon’s website and you can browse our site for some of the best classic rock photos ever taken.

Baron moved to the Haight Ashbury in the ’60s and soon after, found himself accompanying journalist Jann Wenner to the now famous and genre-defining Mills College conference on rock music. As most of you know, Wenner happened to be the founder of Rolling Stone magazine. He liked Baron’s style and offered him the job as the first official photographer for the magazine. Many of Baron’s shots graced the early covers of Rolling Stone and photographs of Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin, among many others, have become enduring images of these great performers and help to define that era.

The best thing about Baron is that while there is no doubt he is an amazing photographer, he is an even better person. You get a taste of that in the video below along with some fun stories about the history of rock.

[The Photography of Baron Wolman is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

One of the elements I love on the site is the artists’ descriptions of their songs.  They are typically pretty open about their music and often very insightful.  For example, this is an excerpt taken from the fantastic session that went live today featuring Keegan DeWitt and an accompanying four piece string quartet.  He describes the track “Stormy Weather” as follows:

“Simply put, this song is an ode from one best friend to another. When I was traveling, I met a girl substantially younger than myself, and we became best friends, mainly because we both thought it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to be in love . I spent one of my favorites years in Los Angeles with her, hiking around the mountains, taking photos, reading WH Auden, driving up the coast in the middle of the night to go swimming. These are some of my very favorite memories. She would tell me stories about her childhood, her family, we’d stay up all night and stay at each others houses. It was one of the strangest and most unique friendships I’ve ever had. In the midst of all this, there was a real sense that we were in love, in a strange unmentionable way…”

Well worth checking out.  I had never heard of DeWitt before listening to this session but I’m certain I will go see him when he comes through town.

[Keegan DeWitt on Daytrotter is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Rock fans didn’t have it much easier.  I consider myself a rock fan.   According to this study, I am described rather succinctly as “thoroughly irresponsible and emotionally unstable.”   My wife might agree but I know some very mature fans of rock holding down respectable jobs.  Other genres like rap, electronica, and even classical took it on the chin (intellectual but physically unattractive and dull, ouch).  Jazz fans, take heart.  You were described as “imaginative, peace-loving liberals with friendly and outgoing natures”.   Something like the magical offspring of Jon Stewart and Miles Davis.  The good news for you is that we have some incredible jazz coming to Concert Vault  soon.   The good news for us is that we get hang out with you.

I didn’t see a category for fans of great live music.  I’m sure the description would read something like “erudite, intellectually curious, good looking, and hungover”. So as a toast to fans of live music, the emotionally unstable, and everyone else out there who can’t be classified by what is on your iPod, I offer this:

[Study Shows People Don’t Like People Who Like Music is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

[Wolfgang’s Vault Flash Mob is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]

Over the next couple of months, we will be implementing more ways for you to connect with the music and each other.  We have a number of ideas big and small we are working on and will share details as we get closer.  In the interim, we would love to hear any ideas you might have.  Let us know what you would like to see on Wolfgang’s Vault in the way of features, layout, whatever.

As always, thanks for visiting.

[New Features Coming in the Vault is a post in From the Vault - The Wolfgang's Vault blog.]