One of his friends said he was going to go by Jimmy Stacks and called it \u201cthe perfect rock and roll name.\u201d Their names changed so much that Haskett erupted: \u201cFine, I\u2019m f\u2014ing Scrotum Joe, the true defender of the Open West.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their response: Wow, that\u2019s a great name.<\/p>\n
As a teenager, he drew chalkboards for Del Mar<\/a>\u2019s Pannikin coffee shop and would design T-shirts for surf\/skate brand Life\u2019s a Beach<\/a>. He signed the shirts with his moniker, but even in punk rebellion, who wants a shirt with the words Scrotum Joe on it? \u201cThey just cut out the \u2018t-u-m,\u2019 and the next thing you know, a client referred to me as that, and it stuck,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Scrojo<\/a> could have been part of a band as iconic as The Misfits\u2014had he been able to learn the famously cumbersome bassline to The Kingsmen\u2019s \u201cLouie Louie.\u201d Becoming one of the most renowned concert poster designers\u2014someone who quite literally designed the cover of\u00a0Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion\u2014is a pretty good Plan B.<\/p>\n \u201cTo my knowledge, he\u2019s done more rock posters than anybody else alive,\u201d says Dennis King, whose D. King Gallery<\/a> in Berkeley, California, serves as one of the largest private rock poster collections in the world. \u201cHe\u2019s the hardest-working guy in the poster business.\u201d<\/p>\n King not only co-authored the sequel to music historian Paul Grushkin\u2019s\u00a0The Art of Rock, but he also handles distribution and sales for all of Scrojo\u2019s work. That\u2019s more than 3,000 different posters over nearly 40 years. (That\u2019s over one poster each week. For four decades straight.)<\/p>\n For anything from boxing matches to rodeos, posters have long been used as promotional items. Toulouse-Lautrec\u2019s famous lithographs advertised Moulin Rouge in the late 1800s. Around the same time, Hatch Show Print in Nashville was making handbills for the Grand Ole Opry.<\/p>\n \u201cI propose this: Cave paintings are the first poster art,\u201d Scrojo says.<\/p>\n Rock and roll<\/a> posters took off in the 1960s, when the hippie counterculture era replaced conformity and suburbia. Artists like Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead used their vibrant, psychedelic prints as a form of rebellion from the mainstream. Posters were promotional, commemorative, collectible, and especially expressive.<\/p>\n If the name Scrojo is any indication, he doesn\u2019t shy away from imagery that toes the line of being too provocative. He focused more on what inspired him instead of trying to be offensive for the sake of getting attention.<\/p>\n \u201cDidn\u2019t want to show it to my grandmother, but my parents were fine with it,\u201d Scrojo says with a laugh.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had to ask him to put a Band-Aid over a nipple every now and then,\u201d says Chris Goldsmith, president of Belly Up Tavern<\/a> in Solana Beach<\/a>, where Scrojo started out and hundreds of his posters currently line the walls.<\/p>\n Scrojo spent six weeks at Otis College of Art and Design for a summer semester before drugs, alcohol, and a self-described lack of discipline prevented him from enrolling full time. Still, he taught himself concepts like text hierarchy and later found his niche at the Belly Up and in the surfing and skating world<\/a>, working with brands like Quiksilver, Rip Curl, Scorpion Bay, and DGK.<\/p>\n His first concert poster was for North County band Borracho y Loco, of which Goldsmith was bass guitarist. Scrojo drew an abstract version of the Belly Up\u2019s iconic shark with colorful calypso and tiki themes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Early on, he would craft using a pencil, pen, non-reproduction blue pencil, X-Acto knife, rubber knife, and proportion scale to create each poster, and the finished product could take a week or even longer.<\/p>\n \u201cI recommend every artist coming up to do that for like six weeks,\u201d Scrojo says. \u201cIt forces you to think about every design decision as you\u2019re going along.\u201d<\/p>\n He has since mastered vector imagery through Adobe Illustrator to the point where, depending on the level of detail needed, he could finish two projects in a day. Still, he fills sketchbook after sketchbook to blueprint.<\/p>\n \u201cI liked his line in particular, and he knows how to draw, which a lot of people don\u2019t really know how to do these days,\u201d King says.<\/p>\n Scrojo would research what each musician\u2019s merchandise looks like to get a feel for each artist\u2019s tone and voice. Once he has his central image in mind, he focuses on what and where to place the text.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/scrojo-x-dead-rock-west-768x1024.jpg.webp\")
Courtesy of Scrojo<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/scrojo-red-hot-chili-peppers-663x1024.jpg.webp\")
Courtesy of Scrojo<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/scrojo-the-big-lebowski-697x1024.jpg.webp\")
Courtesy of Scrojo<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/scorjo-jimmy-cliff-697x1024.jpg.webp\")
Courtesy of Scrojo<\/p>\n