Bob Masse

Last updated

Bob Masse is a Canadian artist from British Columbia. Masse has been designing concert posters since the 1960s. While attending art school in Vancouver, British Columbia, he began doing posters for the folk acts that came through town. Masse was greatly influenced by the art and music scenes in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where he lived in the late 1960s, producing posters and album covers for various bands of the day. Masse now produces pieces for contemporary performers such as Tori Amos, the Smashing Pumpkins, Neil Young and others. [1]

Contents

Biography

After graduation, Masse went on to attend art school in Vancouver; a fixture at local coffee-houses, he was asked to design posters advertising upcoming folk music performances. With the rise of folk-rock, Vancouver played host to concerts from the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Steve Miller Band, with Masse contributing increasingly psychedelicized artwork for their appearances. In 1966 he travelled to San Francisco. Direct contact with the poster art of The Fillmore and the Family Dog exerted a profound influence on his subsequent work.

Returning to Vancouver, Masse, now a Scientologist, befriended the local band the Collectors, and when they travelled to Los Angeles to make a record he followed, spending the final years of the 1960s living in the Laurel Canyon area. In 1969 he returned to Vancouver, producing a series of posters for local venues including the Retinal Circus, Moose Valley Farms, and Gassy Jack's. During the 1970s Masse undertook commercial work, illustrating for McDonald's, the Expo Space Station, CP Air, Lock-It Guitar Straps, and others. Masse additionally designed numerous business logos, among them an orange fox for radio station C-FOX.

During the 1980s, Masse created posters for films including Total Recall and Back to the Future Part III; he also worked on the television series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As rock concert art began to enjoy a surge in popularity during the following decade, however, Masse returned to poster design for the Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette, and others.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Smashing Pumpkins</span> American alternative rock band

The Smashing Pumpkins are an American alternative rock band from Chicago, Illinois. Formed in 1988 by frontman and guitarist Billy Corgan, bassist D'arcy Wretzky, guitarist James Iha, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, the band has undergone several line-up changes since their reunion in 2006, with Corgan being the sole constant member since its inception. The current lineup features Corgan, Chamberlin, and Iha.

Al Perkins is an American guitarist known primarily for his steel guitar work. The Gibson guitar company called Perkins "the world's most influential Dobro player" and began producing an "Al Perkins Signature" Dobro in 2001—designed and autographed by Perkins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Iha</span> American rock musician

James Yoshinobu Iha is an American rock musician. He is best known as the secondary guitarist and co-founder of the alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins. He was a member until the band's initial breakup in 2000 and rejoined in 2018.

The 39th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 26, 1997, at Madison Square Garden, New York City. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Babyface was the night's biggest winner, with 3 awards. Celine Dion, Toni Braxton, Sheryl Crow, and The Fugees won two awards. Celine Dion for "Best Pop Album" and "Album of the Year" and Toni Braxton for "Best Female R&B Vocal Performance" and "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance". The show was hosted by Ellen Degeneres who also performed the opening with Shawn Colvin, Bonnie Rait, and Chaka Khan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Charlatans (American band)</span> American folk/psychedelic rock band

The Charlatans were an American folk rock and psychedelic rock band that played a role in the development of the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury music scene during the 1960s. They are often cited by critics as being the first group to play in the style that became known as the San Francisco Sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnny Winter</span> American blues guitarist and singer

John Dawson Winter III was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter and record producer. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums, live performances and slide guitar playing from the late 1960s into the early 2000s. He also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

<i>Adore</i> (album) 1998 studio album by The Smashing Pumpkins

Adore is the fourth studio album by the American alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins, released on June 2, 1998, by Virgin Records. After the multi-platinum success of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and a subsequent world tour, Adore was considered "one of the most anticipated albums of 1998" by MTV. Recording the album proved to be a challenge as the band members struggled with lingering interpersonal problems, musical uncertainty in the wake of three increasingly successful rock albums, and the departure of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Frontman Billy Corgan would later characterize Adore as made by "a band falling apart". Corgan was also going through a divorce and the death of his mother while recording the album.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rick Griffin</span> American artist

Richard Alden "Rick" Griffin was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. As a contributor to the underground comix movement, his work appeared regularly in Zap Comix. Griffin was closely identified with the Grateful Dead, designing some of their best-known posters and album covers such as Aoxomoxoa. His work within the surfing subculture included both film posters and his comic strip, Murphy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Moscoso</span> Spanish artist (born 1936)

Victor Moscoso is a Spanish–American artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters, advertisements, and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first of the rock poster artists of the 1960s era with formal academic training and experience. He was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage in many of his posters.

Robert Wesley Wilson was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters. Best known for designing posters for Bill Graham of The Fillmore in San Francisco, he invented a style that is now synonymous with the peace movement, the psychedelic era and the 1960s. In particular, he was known for inventing and popularizing a "psychedelic" font around 1966 that made the letters look like they were moving or melting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hapshash and the Coloured Coat</span> Band that plays psychedelic rock

Hapshash and the Coloured Coat was an influential British graphic design and avant-garde musical partnership in the late 1960s, consisting of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth. It produced popular psychedelic posters, and two albums of underground music.

Mark Arminski is an American rock concert poster artist born in 1950 in Detroit, Michigan. He began studying art at the Oakland Community College and pursued printmaking in stone lithography at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Rounding out his formal education was his stay at the Dynamic Graphics Education Foundation in Peoria, Illinois, where he studied computer generated art.

Stanley George Miller, better known as Mouse or Stanley Mouse, is an American artist who is notable for his 1960s psychedelic rock concert poster designs and album covers for the Grateful Dead, Journey, and other bands.

Herb “Herbie” Greene is an American photographer known for his portraits of musicians and bands from San Francisco's counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of his images were published by Rolling Stone, by record labels, and in books. Greene's photographed subjects include the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, The Pointer Sisters, Carlos Santana, and Sly Stone.

<i>Zeitgeist</i> (The Smashing Pumpkins album) 2007 studio album by the Smashing Pumpkins

Zeitgeist is the seventh studio album by American rock band the Smashing Pumpkins, released on July 10, 2007 on Martha's Music and Reprise Records. Recorded solely by returning band members Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, the album was the band's first since reuniting in 2006, and was produced by Roy Thomas Baker and Terry Date, alongside Corgan and Chamberlin themselves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Evans (artist)</span> American painter

Jim Evans, sometimes known as T.A.Z., is an American painter, printmaker, and creative director who was a contributing figure in the visual art movement known as underground comix. After a successful career as a comic illustrator, Evans worked as a painter, poster maker, and owner of the digital design group Division 13.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerry Waghorn</span>

Kerry Waghorn is a syndicated caricaturist whose Faces in the News feature, established in 1977 by Chronicle Features is a journalistic legend. He estimates that more than 9,000 of his images have been published since the early 1970s, including just about every prominent news, business and entertainment face over that span of history. During the many years he spent under the management of newspaper icon G. Stanleigh Arnold, the Chronicle's Sunday and Features Editor, he refined his skills within a team that included Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), Gary Larson, Abigail Van Buren, William Hamilton, Phil Frank (Farley), and Cathy Guisewite (Cathy). Arnold had also been instrumental in the early stages of Charles Schulz' (Peanuts) career. Waghorn, who resides in West Vancouver, B.C., is currently represented by Universal Press Syndicate of Kansas City, MO, and he continues to create about three new caricatures a week. Universal, a subsidiary of Jim Andrews and John McMeel's Andrews McMeel Universal, founded in 1970, purchased Chronicle Features in 1997.

John Philip Shenale is a Canadian composer, arranger, musician and producer based in Los Angeles.

<i>July 29 1966, P.N.E. Garden Aud., Vancouver Canada</i> 2017 live album by Grateful Dead

July 29 1966, P.N.E. Garden Aud., Vancouver Canada is a live album by American rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete concert recorded at the PNE Garden Auditorium in Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 29, 1966. It also includes four songs recorded at the same venue on the following day. It was produced as a two-disc vinyl LP in a limited edition of 6,600 copies. It was released on April 22, 2017, in conjunction with Record Store Day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chuck Sperry</span> American artist (born 1962)

Chuck Sperry is an American artist best known for his screen prints on paper and oak panel, his limited-edition rock posters for bands such as Widespread Panic and Pearl Jam, and his political protest art. Since 1985, Sperry's iconography has ranged from astronauts walking on the surface of the Moon to portraits of performers as varied as Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and Chrissie Hynde. Beginning in 2010, many of Sperry's prints have featured images of female muses from Greek mythology.

References

  1. "Bob Masse Rock Posters: A brief bio..." BMasse.com. Bob Masse Studios, Inc. 2 January 2008.

Further reading