The Fastbacks, February 28, 1998, San Francisco
Artwork and commentary by Alan Forbes

“This one was a total last minute one. Again, manipulating one color by trying to… it was kinda like, I really dug some of the patterns that were on like weird lamps and stuff, and like ‘60s weird stuff, and I always really liked the cats; they looked really nice to me whenever I saw them. I always just kinda wanted to do a poster with them. So it was just one of those. I’ve used cats in my images a bunch of times, actually I’m still using them from time to time. Everyone’s been asking for skulls lately. So that’s been the majority of my work. So, like everything I do, that’s the freedom of the posters, you can do whatever you want.

“I liked working for a lot of the smaller bands, I didn’t like working for a lot of bigger bands at the time, because I put those posters up all over. You would actually see those in windows of stores on Valencia and stuff like that, and if there wasn’t the poster, it was a Xerox of the poster, a black and white. It was one or the other. It was up somehow, someway. I ran around and did it all myself. They wouldn’t last that long, but when they were up, people noticed them and it made living in the city a lot easier. I mean, nowadays everybody gives me crap about it, but no one would know my stuff if I didn’t do it. All the partying I’ve done in my time, you gotta have a very strict work ethic about getting it done and getting it out and making sure as many people can see it as possible.

“The coloring? This guy Roger, he was helping me with color and everything, and he taught me how to utilize white, as a color itself, and not just a background to put something on. It’s okay to let it show through.”

See more artwork by Alan Forbes