Using a photograph by Lisa Bachelis, Victor Moscoso designed this beautiful poster for a week’s worth of Big Brother and the Holding Company shows at The Matrix. Moscoso made a deal with the Matrix (located at Fillmore and Greenwich Streets) to do their posters for free in exchange for being able to overprint and sell the rest himself. This is the first published photo of the complete band.
Born in Spain, Victor Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists with serious academic training and experience. After studying art at Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University, he moved to San Francisco in 1959. There, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he eventually became an instructor. In 1966, he began designing posters for the Family Dog and the Avalon. Moscoso's style is most notable for its visual intensity, which was obtained by manipulating form and color to create optical effects. Moscoso's use of contrasting colors and vibrating edges was influenced by painter Josef Albers, his teacher at Yale.
Janis Joplin sang for the first time with Big Brother June 10, 1966. It took a while for some of the band's followers to accept the new singer as her music was completely different from that which Big Brother was playing at that time. Big Brother had a very experimental and unconventional sound, but with Joplin, they became more disciplined musicians, their songs adopted a more traditional structure, and the band started to increase its popularity in the San Francisco psychedelic scene.