Posters On Sale to Benefit Santa Barbara Bowl

Visitors to The Shopkeepers, the eclectic clothing and design store adjacent to the Lark complex on Anacapa Street in the Funk Zone, will notice something new on the walls this month as the store has become the exclusive venue for a collection of rare rock posters. The art, which focuses primarily on designs created for shows at the Santa Barbara Bowl and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, comes from the private collection of Moss Jacobs, the Goldenvoice senior vice president responsible for booking hundreds of major concerts throughout Southern California over the past several decades.

Jacobs made the decision to release these images in order to contribute a percentage of the profits from their sale to the Santa Barbara Bowl’s 2020 shortfall fund. The Bowl is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to building and maintaining the world’s best outdoor music venue. Since the entire 2020 season had to be canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Bowl is experiencing a shortfall in funding for basic operations. They hope to make up for this gap in revenue by soliciting donations from the community, and the poster sale at The Shopkeepers is an example of how people who care about live music are stepping up to that challenge.

Jacobs has been collecting signage for many different kinds of music events since the 1970s, and the posters on display now at The Shopkeepers represent some of the most desirable items in his archive. Many of them come from special print runs that were not available through the merch booth at the time of the shows, and they can be obtained either framed or unframed. As individual images are sold, others will be rotated through the exhibition. As of Saturday, December 5, there were great posters still available for shows like Radiohead, Wilco, Beck, the Black Keys, and the Beastie Boys.