Welcome To Salt Lake Concert Posters!

Thanks for looking at the Salt Lake Concert Poster site! Nothing on this site is for sale! The posters are spread among many collections. This is one of those just-for-fun web sites.

A lot of the pictures were taken by Kenvin Lyman for our show in 1995 at the Finch Lane Gallery. The program for that show can be viewed at the Cosmic Aeroplane blog. The numbering system is from that show for the most part.

In the VISITORS section a group of people have shared their memories and memorabilia from that time. Please feel free to send me any information you wish to share. I will review it with you before it is ever shown Salt Lake Concert Posters is inspired by an exhibition by poster collectors and archivists formed to preserve the memories and artifacts of the Salt Lake Sixties.

We are showing Utah rock n' roll concert posters, handbills, and memorabilia; concert photography, political posters, light show artwork, plus selected artwork from the 80's and 90's. The starting point for this site is an exhibition that was the first in Utah and one of the first in the country to celebrate this unique American art form. Both the Smithsonian and the Louvre have collections of 60s concert posters.

The music and the concerts were the Sixties and the posters are the best visual record surviving. These fragile and colorful relics of disposable history preserve a time, of dramatic political and social upheaval and personal change and growth.

In the summer of 1967 - "the summer of love" - a flourishing counter-culture was emerging in Salt Lake City accompanied by a dramatically new style of rock concert poster art. Geographically and culturally isolated from the already established San Francisco scene, local artists forged a unique and dazzling body of art that defined the Salt Lake Sixties.

Venues such as the Terrace Ballroom, the Fairgrounds Coliseum (the "Dirt Palace"), Lagoon, the old Salt Palace and the Union Ballroom hosted concerts by most of the legendary bands of the sixties: the Rolling Stones, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, It's A Beautiful Day, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and many, many others.

Local bands such as Holden Caulfield, Smoke Blues Band, Wishful Thinking, Wood, Spirit of Creation and many others were the opening acts for the national bands that played Salt Lake. These local acts also performed at the smaller Salt Lake clubs and halls such as The Old Mill, Railroad Exchange, Abyssie, The Red Belle, The Crow's Nest, The Top Hat, Junior's, and others.

These posters were, and remain, a celebration of the music, art and politics of the Salt Lake Sixties. Putting together this show has been a mixture of history and nostalgia, art and politics, detective work and 20th century archeology - a reunion, a celebration, and a rebirth. Enjoy!