Serendipity....

I spent the Sunday after the Great Barrington show with a client in the area culling material from his archives. He is an artist and collector and the material is just an amazing cross section of '60s memorabilia. Original art from the golden age of National Lampoon (where he was one of the early artists), psychedelic music posters (many signed by Ashton Kelley and/or Stanley Mouse), an amazing collection of underground comics (first printings of Zap, Big Ass, Snatch...basically everything R. Crumb and company put to print).

None of this stuff would make me look twice, really, were I to see it in a shop...but to sit and handle it all...researching each piece and learning the background. The history and bits of backstory for various items is so rich and fun. It is sort of like taking a little brain candy vacation from the older, more "staid" material I tend to handle.

Best of all, several weeks before heading to what I hope will be a great four day show in Baltimore, MD, I left GB with a remarkable amount of exceptional Baltimore "stuff." My client lived there for several years, in and around the late 60's. He did many/most of the concert posters for Tree Frog Promotions (including their first, a Leon Russel, Elton John event). Art of Rock ignores the Baltimore music/art scene completely...to their loss. There is some great poster art. I look forward to bringing these items "back home."

He also did title work for Baltimore's favorite son, John Waters. The poster above is the World Premier poster for Pink Flamingos (black ink over pink cardstock)...several orders of magnitude more rare than the general release film posters. I have the "Sneak Preview" posters for Dangerous Living. There is original prop material from at least two of his films and a *stunning* set of photographs taken on the set of Flamingos (taken by unit photog, Lawrence Irvine).

As I have said before, I love cataloguing new material. I love doing the research. I love discovering the little bits of info one inevitably stumbles across. I love figuring out why and how something fits into the context of its time and place (did you know that Zap comics No. 0 was created before but printed *after* No. 1...because the contents were stolen from R. Crumb only to be returned later?). I know I'll be returning to the several boxes of fine press material I have to catalogue sometime next week...but I am having great fun with my wee cache of subversion.