Cut Teeth on Ratt

Fairfield Fats Band guitarist George Davis is probably best known by his artistic alias Geo, a longtime local-concert-poster artist whose work centers around hard-rock shows.

“I began by doing a banner many years ago for a high school friend,” Davis says, “Stephen Pearcy, for his band Mickey Ratt, which later became Ratt. I dabbled a bit with art but didn’t get real serious until the Fairfield Fats Band…that’s where I first started doing flyers for parties and shows, and then friends started asking me to design logos and posters for their bands too.”

Davis also worked on Fox TV’s early-’90s Attack of the Killer Tomatoes cartoon, for which he produced animation at Sorrento Valley—based American Film Technologies.

“It was the first ‘paperless’ animation studio,” says Davis. “All the storyboards, music, and sound stuff was done in L.A., but the animation was done down here.”

Davis cites Fillmore concert posters and the underground comics of Rick Griffin as early inspirations (“Okay, and maybe my first Playboy magazine”).

“When I started doing posters and flyers, it was mostly metal shows, which is stuff that I totally get. Drawing hot chicks, demons, skulls, barbarians, wizards, and dragons? It doesn’t get any better than that!”

A gallery of Geo’s poster art can be seen at myspace.com/tikigeo.

– Jay Allen Sanford