![]() And I liked it a little bit better because the Hollywood Hills were all green and bushy. scene was as big as San Francisco, but not acknowledged by the media. "It's funny that I ended up staying in Los Angeles rather than San Francisco. ![]() He began meeting others in the recording industry, hanging out on Sunset Strip, and working for the Whisky a Go Go night club. In 1968, Masse went to Los Angeles to design the first album cover for a Canadian band called the Collectors. I only ever dealt with the concert promoters, and they didn't have any input either, which was good." She said she loved my work, but she never thought to call up and say 'Hey, why don't you do my next album cover.' They just don't do that. And Tori Amos once sent me some posters she signed. Randy Bachman, who lives here on Salt Spring now, is the only one who ever asked me to do a poster for his show. "I never quite understand why they never called me up themselves. "Nope, they never did," explains Masse, as he continues hand-cutting the Grateful Dead posters, which will be on sale at the gallery. Surprisingly, the musicians never had any input themselves. You take a bit of this, add a bit of that and you've got something new." But I guess that's what the music world has been doing for years. I wasn't really doing anything new," he says humbly. ![]() "I'd take an Art Nouveau border, mix it with a modern-day pinup and copy some Stanley Mouse lettering. I remember seeing these incredibly ornate Art Nouveau signs and ribbon banners. "I found this book in someone's house, Strong's Book of Designs, originally published in 1917. His most important influences, however, were found in a dusty old sign painter's manual. He was too busy hanging out at coffee shops like the popular Afterthought, in Kitsilano, partying at a place called the Peace House with the likes of Steve Miller and cruising down to San Francisco in his Mustang convertible, where Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin and other great hippie graphic artists of the era fuelled his creative imagination. But by the end of fourth year, Masse wasn't really going to class much any more. The spelling mistakes didn't earn him very high marks at the Vancouver School of Art, where he studied in the mid-sixties. "I don't make those mistakes any more, probably because I've stopped smoking dope." ![]() "I was more interested in fitting the "g" into the "r" than getting the words right," he says, describing his flowing hand-lettered style, impossible to duplicate with type. "I used to make terrible spelling mistakes," Masse chuckles over the phone from his studio where Peter Green's Rattlesnake Guitar plays in the background and his posters are plastered all over the walls. The most coveted are the ones with the spelling mistakes. Those who are experienced in the Masse tradition will know that his vintage posters have become collector's items, commanding upwards of $1,000 for original prints. In a sea of cheap, digitally enhancedconcert posters, his psychedelic handcrafted images with bold flashy colours and Art Nouveau graphics are still sought after today by discerning promoters for Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette and No Doubt. Now, at 58, he is quite possibly the only poster-artist of his generation still working full-time. Like the Grateful Dead, Masse just kept on truckin'.
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