FEATURED ITEM - EXTREMELY RARE - ONE OF ONLY A FEW KNOW TO EXIST

GRATEFUL DEAD
RARE - VINTAGE Original 1st printing concert poster for GRATEFUL DEAD at the Labor Temple in Minneapolis, MN on 2/2/1969 - Tickets were $3.50. This VG poster has slight water damage and staining. See images. Nothing that a good poster bath will not address. There is a small 1/4" tear at bottom boarder. This poster is SO RARE that it is being sold as is and should sell for well over $2000. If you have the ability to own this, it should be in your collection. To add to the RARITY and SPECIALITY of this poster - THIS POSTER MARKED THE GRAND OPENING - FIRST CONCERT - FIRST POSTER - ever created by the Labor Temple and Community News.

ABOUT THE MINNEAPOLIS LABOR TEMPLE:
The Labor Temple was on the 100 block of 4th St. SE. (Central Ave & 4th St). The Minneapolis Labor Temple was demolished decades ago. It was next door to todays Aveda Institute. Address: 117 SE 4th Street (now a surface parking lot for Aveda).

In January, 1969, the third floor of the Labor Temple in Minneapolis started holding concerts on Sunday nights, featuring national (and international bands). The first concert was held on February 2, 1969 and featured The Grateful Dead with local band Blackwood Apology opening up with their rock opera called “House of Leather.” The third floor was packed and people were turned away at the door due to the lack of room. Community News, a local company, began doing the light shows for the concerts, using home made “movie screens” draped across the back of the stage, as well as the posters for the events.

The Labor Temple was supposed to hold 3,000 people for these Sunday night concerts, however, the local fire department required folding chairs to be used and a maximum capacity of 1,250 people, due to safety concerns. The reduced crowd size and other issues with the City of Minneapolis became a financial burden and the concerts at the Labor Temple came to an end in the middle of 1970.

The Labor Temple concerts were never professionally recorded, but there are some bootlegs that can be found. Dicks Picks Volume 26 is the 26th installment of the Grateful Deads archival series was recorded on April 27, 1969 at the Labor Temple in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Juryj “George” Ostroushko is a Twin Cities artist with a passion for music. As part of Community News, his job was to create images and effects for the light show for each concert at the Minneapolis Labor Temple. He was always trying new effects with gels, oils, lights, screens and drapes. Additionally he designed each main poster for every single concert. Already an artist and hippie from the West Bank of Minneapolis, Juryj always carried a sketch pad with him and when ideas came up he drew them. Many of these sketches were used in the posters he designed. Juryj traveled to San Francisco in the hey-day of the Haight-Ashbury and Fillmore Era days. As a known artist in the Bay Area, he knew many other posters artists, and they shared their works with each other. His influences can be seen in the likes of Fillmore and Avalon posters, just as they influenced his work. He is a true artist and influencer of the psychedelic era and continues his passion for fine art and music to this day.

THIS POSTER IS UNSIGNED - AND CAN BE SIGNED BY THE ARTIST PRIOR TO SHIPPING FOR $50 ADDITIONAL FEE. IF ACCEPTED THIS WILL BE ADDED ON TO YOUR SHIPPING FEE

(from the Minneapolis Tribune, February 3 1969)
February 2, 1969: Labor Temple, Minneapolis
GRATEFUL DEAD SOCK IT TO 2,000 MUSIC LOVERS

The Labor Temple was packed. The audience, mostly late-high-school and college-age youth, completely filled the chairless main floor, sitting or standing. And all other seats and aisles were taken in the balcony.
As a preliminary to the Grateful Dead, a local group called the Blackwood Apology held forth for an hour or so with the same sort of electric sound. It came on like just what it was: hundreds of watts of electrified musical power pounding out of great stacks and racks of amplifiers.
And above, lights flashed multicolored, changing images of psychedelia on great wide screens. Making it happen was the Grateful Dead, a group billed as the leader of underground rock, as the nationally famed but uncompromised original.
The more than 2,000 young people who jammed the Minneapolis Labor Temple to hear them Sunday night took it quite coolly. They liked it, they clapped a lot, and some of them danced. But mainly, they did what you do with this kind of youth art: They experienced it.
After a long delay for setting up their nearly 100 pieces of equipment, the Grateful Dead came on with a sound like the end of a bad trip. It was a horrendously penetrating hum from an amplifier gone mad. But when they got the amplifier squared away, they showed that they can play as well as make noise.
Using some incredibly complex tempos and fine improvisations, they did the mixture of jazz and rock and folk that - along with the lights and, in some cases, marijuana - has been turning on people around the country for several years.

VG