Keeling Group

As Bjorn mentioned earlier in our blog, we just wrapped production on a new poster for Chicago's great music archaeology record label, The Numero Group. Over the past several years, Numero has hunted and gathered some of the world's most overlooked soul, folk, psychedelic, and disco music from days of yore, repackaging and re-releasing CDs and LPs complete with thoroughly informative liner notes. Numero knows the importance of having great art to go along with great music and we have had the fortune to work with them for several projects, namely the Wayfaring Strangers compilation and the Brotherman soundtrack. One of Numero's best-known series of releases is ""Eccentric Soul,"" collections of songs from specific record labels or producers. Here's Ken Shipley from Numero Group with more information on the series and how it led them to put on a concert: ""Eccentric Soul is a series of compilations that take a long and thorough look at the secret life of soul. Motown, Stax, Chess... their stories have been told ad infinitum, but for every Berry Gordy there were 100 Ed McCoy's, and that's just in Detroit. We've covered scenes in Columbus, OH, Miami, FL, St. Louis, MO, Atlanta, GA, Detroit, MI, and Phoenix, AZ, but some of our best work has been done in our backyard: Chicago, IL. Twinight [Records] was one of those projects that couldn't have been done by any label outside of this city, at least properly anyhow. We pounded the pavement for two and half years, and even after the CD was in stores we kept turning up more information. The one constant thing was how many of their artists still performed or still wanted to perform. We had talked about a Live Revue before, but had always been inhibited by the expense of bringing everyone here. Twinight being here made it a lot easier."" To help promote the concert, Numero once again enlisted the help of Burlesque of North America and asked us to design and screenprint a poster for the concert in the vein of traditional '60s soul posters.This is a design universe that has always fascinated and inspired me, but I had never before attempted to design anything in this style before. So why make a poster in 2008 that looks like it's from 1958? Here's Ken once again with his take on it: ""Everything about the Eccentric Soul Revue has been inspired by the great revues of the past, from the outfits to the backing band to the MC to the room. We want the experience to be as authentic as possible. That includes the poster. When I contacted Mike Davis I gave him the direction to make the poster feel like it could have been hanging on a wall 40 years ago."" I started looking at those classic and iconic '50s and '60s posters to get a feel for layout, colors, and the general visual language. A couple of years ago, this Chuck Berry poster sold for $35,000. Wow. It's argued that it's the first poster to use the phrase ""Rock & Roll,"" making it perhaps the first ever rock poster? Of course I had Hatch Show Print on the brain too. Sooooooo here's what I came up with! These will be available for sale at the Park West Theater on April 4th and right here on our website afterwards! Wanna go see the show? Click here to purchase tickets. Still not convinced? Check out this Grade A footage of the fantastic Syl Johnson performing ""Any Way the Wind Blows"" back in 1975.