Traffic, BG-111, 1968

This postcard version of a Fillmore/Winterland poster from March of 1968 advertised a show by Traffic, whose first album, "Mr. Fantasy," had dropped a few months earlier. The design by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley, with a photo by Bob Seidemann, shows the designers, plus Rick Griffin and a few other poster artists, goofing around at Playland at the Beach, a long-gone San Francisco landmark we used to go to when we were kids (that's the Fun House in the background). Not sure where the Rolls came from, and the flying saucers were obviously added.

As the story goes, rock promoter Bill Graham had been griping that the posters for shows at the Fillmore and Winterland were getting too psychedelic and hard to read, so Mouse designed the dullest, most straightforward poster he could. Of course, as another story goes, once he saw it, Graham complained it looked like a boxing poster...