Item #39805 PINK FLOYD. An original London Free School poster including announcements for two ‘Pop Dances’ featuring The Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, Notting Hill, on October 14 and 21, 1966.
PINK FLOYD. An original London Free School poster including announcements for two ‘Pop Dances’ featuring The Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, Notting Hill, on October 14 and 21, 1966.
PINK FLOYD. An original London Free School poster including announcements for two ‘Pop Dances’ featuring The Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, Notting Hill, on October 14 and 21, 1966.
PINK FLOYD. An original London Free School poster including announcements for two ‘Pop Dances’ featuring The Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, Notting Hill, on October 14 and 21, 1966.
PINK FLOYD. An original London Free School poster including announcements for two ‘Pop Dances’ featuring The Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, Notting Hill, on October 14 and 21, 1966.
PINK FLOYD. An original London Free School poster including announcements for two ‘Pop Dances’ featuring The Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, Notting Hill, on October 14 and 21, 1966.

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PINK FLOYD. An original London Free School poster including announcements for two ‘Pop Dances’ featuring The Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, Notting Hill, on October 14 and 21, 1966.

Printed offset litho in dark blue on thin green paper stock. 76x51cm. Designer unknown. Printed by Housmans Bookshop (the location for several of the early London Free School meetings). States that advance tickets are available at 34 Tavistock Crescent, home of Rhaune Laslett, whose front room became the LFS’s office.

It was Pete Jenner, by then managing Pink Floyd, who came up with the idea of putting on gigs at All Saints Hall to raise money for the London Free School. Their first appearance on September 30 was sparsely attended, but word of mouth spread rapidly so that by the time of the dates advertised on this poster, their second and third at the venue, they were playing to a packed hall of more than 300 people. One of the regular attendees was Emily Young, who became involved with the LFS at Hoppy’s invitation, along with her friend from Holland Park Comprehensive, Anjelica Huston. It’s often claimed that she was the inspiration for Syd Barrett’s song (and Pink Floyd’s second single), “See Emily Play”.

Joel (listed on the poster as ‘Joe’) and Toni Brown, recently arrived from Timothy Leary’s psychedelic community at Millbrook, are billed as providing light projection on the October 14 date (the night before the band performed at the Roundhouse for the International Times launch party). They were soon emulated by a homegrown lighting rig, constructed by Andrew King and Pete and Sumi Jenner (‘psychedelic effects’ are promised on the listing for the following date), and their pioneering lightshow for the Floyd, along with Joey Gannon’s and others, quickly became the group’s most famous feature during this early period.

Mixed media is also promised for the second of the dates listed, and Nick Mason has since described this element of the underground as the one that the Floyd were most tuned into, one they took seriously: “We may not have been into acid but we certainly understood the idea of a Happening.”

Other events listed on the poster feature ‘Jazz with Poetry’ (organised by the RAAS legal aid initiative Defence); an evening of ‘New Movies’ (at the recently founded London Film-Makers Co-op); and a ‘Musicians Benefit’ featuring AMM (who later shared the bill with Pink Floyd at UFO), Dave Tomlin (Emily Young’s boyfriend), and Ron Geesin (‘with pre-recorded tape’).

The poster has undergone some minor restoration by a professional paper conservator to fix some edge wear and small holes, and there are just a few signs of residual wear to the upper left corner, small patches of faint discolouration, and an old diagonal crease to lower left corner, o/w an excellent copy of a rare item from the dawn of the psychedelic era.

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