Rock Archaeology 101

February 7, 1969, Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley: Judy Collins

2011-10-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from Ralph Gleason's Chronicle column on February 10, 1969

Judy Collins was a popular folk act in the mid-60s, and she was so talented that she easily made the transition to the folk-rock era that followed. She has remained a stellar attraction ever since, and rightly so. I recently came across a review of a long ago sell-out concert in Berkeley, on February 7, 1969. At the time, this must have seemed like just another fine show by a popular artist, and surely it was. Nonetheless a careful reading of Ralph Gleason's San Francisco Chronicle review the next Monday (February 10) reveals a few significant details that make this a more memorable event in retrospect than it may have appeared at the time.

Judy Collins
Judy Collins (b. 1939) had been trained as a classical pianist as a teenager, but she threw it all over for folk music in the early 1960s, much to the dismay of her piano teacher. However, her eminent musicality served her in good stead in the mid-60s, when folk music expanded its palate to include a wider variety of sounds. In late 1967, Collins had had a huge hit with the Joni Mitchell song "Both Sides Now," which had been found for her by former Blues Project member Al Kooper. The newly-divroced Kooper was staying in Collins apartment while she toured, and met Joni Mitchell (also newly divorced) and called Collins in Denver at about 4am to tell her "I've got your next single!"

"Both Sides Now, " released in conjunction with Collins's October 1967 Elektra album Wildflowers, peaked at #8 on the Billboard charts. Collins's November 1968 album Who Knows Where The Time Goes was an even bigger hit, peaking at #29 on the Billboard album charts. Although Collins beautiful voice was still the center of the record, tasteful backing from various Los Angeles musicians put the album into the folk rock vein. Among the musicians on the album were James Burton (ex Ricky Nelson, future Elvis), Jim Gordon (future Domino, and co-author of "Layla") and her then-boyfriend, Stephen Stills.

Saturday, February 7, 1969: Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA
Gleason was not himself too thrilled with Collins's performance in Berkeley, although he cheerfully acknowledges her talent. He concedes that her audience received her rapturously, so they were all happy, even if he was an outlier. The interesting thing about the review was his description of the band. Collins seems to have had a regular trio of Gene Taylor on bass (ex-Horace Silver), drummer Susan Evans (whom Gleason calls a "girl drummer") and 'hippie' pianist Michael Sahl, who had played on the album. This appears to have been Collins's regular performing trio at the time (they can be seen on YouTube, appearing on the Smothers Brothers show from 1969). Also along for the ride on this Friday night in Berkeley was Stephen Stills, who Gleason describes as a "Canadian guitarist."

According to Gleason, Stills

got to play very little but it sounded exquisite. He was along only for the one night. Saturday he began recording for Atlantic with David Crosby and Graham Nash. Rolling Stone reports that Atlantic swapped Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield to Columbia for Nash (who was under contract to them). I assume it was a straight player deal, no cash involved.

Gleason's description of the dealings between Atlantic and Columbia are correct, although somewhat simplified. The aforementioned Al Kooper had used Stephen Stills on his Super Session album for Columbia, and Atlantic had assented in return for allowing Nash to come to Atlantic. Columbia had insisted that Richie Furay be allowed to record with Columbia in his new group Poco, and the deal was done.

On the night of the sold-out show, Collin's fans were probably mostly aware that Stephen Stills was a former member of Buffalo Springfield, who had broken up in mid-1968. Although celebrity gossip was not what it was today, a few of them may have discerned that there relationship was not exclusively professional. When they look backwards, however, they probably don't think of that at all. Judy Collins is Sweet Judy Blue Eyes now, forever and a day. By the time the Crosby, Stills And Nash album was released, I think Stills and Collins had moved on, but when the record came out later in 1969, it must have been striking for those that were there to think that Stills was humming "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" to himself while performing on stage with his girlfriend.

285 UCB Campus Drive, Boulder, CO: Macky Auditorium November 23, 1975: Jerry Garcia Band with Nicky Hopkins

2011-04-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

(an April 2011 photo of Macky Auditorium on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Construction on the 2000 seat venue was begun in 1910, although it was not completed until 1923)

Boulder, Colorado is the best American city without an ocean, and is in the top rank in any case. With perfect air that other parts of the country have to pay to simulate with air conditioning, the Rocky Mountains looming in the background and a perfect mountain stream running through downtown, it's not surprising that Boulder has been a preferred destination for emigrants and tourists for some decades now. For 100 years or so, the principal "industry" of Boulder was the University of Colorado at Boulder, the flagship of the CU system, founded in 1877.

Why, then, does Boulder have almost no meaningful 60s rock history? One 60s band came out of Boulder, the excellent Zephyr, featuring Tommy Bolin and Candy Givens, but even they say that they were the only band in Boulder. Denver has a very interesting rock history rock history in the 60s, if not a satisfactory one. Chet Helms opened a branch of the Family Dog in Denver, in an effort to compete effectively with Bill Graham. It was a very clever idea, providing touring bands with a paying show partway to San Francisco. However, the Denver Sheriff, with the support of the political establishment, harassed the Family Dog into closing, and Denver's role in the 60s rock scene was to some extent superseded by Salt Lake City, of all places.

Why, then, was there no rock scene in Boulder in the 60s? If the heat was on in Denver, why didn't bands play Boulder? While Boulder was not a big town--it still isn't--why wasn't it an incubator for bands to get it together, in preparation for heading to Denver and then the rest of the country? The Macky Auditorium, completed in 1923, was a 2000 seat venue that could have accommodated the touring bands of the day, and yet there seem to have been no meaningful rock concerts there until the Jerry Garcia Band (with Nicky Hopkins) on November 23, 1975. While there seem to have been regular concerts after 1975, I can find no record of anything remotely hip before that.

While only a few "college towns" like Berkeley and Cambridge were substantial enough cities to sustain a music scene on their own, college towns generally played an important role in music from the 60s onward. A modest town with a big University generally couldn't have its own Fillmore, but there was usually a folk club and a popular dive bar for the local talent. As the 60s wore on, bands like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane or The Doors might come through and play the gym or the main auditorium, with the local heroes as the opening act. The students became fans for life, even more so if a band played for free one afternoon, and especially so if the College Dean banned all rock concerts after some legendary blow out. This narrative was particularly true of college towns in striking range of California, so there are lots of fond, if fuzzy, 60s memories in places like Palo Alto, CA or Eugene, OR.

The Grateful Dead, always the pioneers, did play the University of Colorado Student Union on Sunday, April 13, 1969. However, this unique event seems to have been a "throw-in," after the Dead had played shows at the University of Arizona (Friday April 11) and University of Utah (Saturday, April 12). The band was on their way to Omaha (Tuesday April 15) and then Purdue University (Friday April 18), so playing the no-doubt tiny Student Union was probably just gigging for gas money. When the Dead put out a few successful albums in the early 70s, why didn't the band play the Macky at CU? The Dead were playing theaters and gyms up and down the East Coast, so why weren't they headlining at the Macky?

Other than far too limited Grateful Dead activity (limited by the standards of the Dead's relentless touring, anyway), all my research into Boulder bands, venues or concerts in the late 60s and early 70s turned up a dry hole. While its true there have been demographic changes since the 60s, in that undergraduate enrollment at CU-Boulder has nearly doubled (15,000>29,000), and the population of the town has increased by 1/3 since 1970 (66,000>100,000), that has largely been true of many towns with flagship state Universities, and that didn't stop those towns from having it going on in the 60s.Why not Boulder?

Why Not Boulder?
It turns out that "Dry Hole" was the correct metaphor. While Colorado lifted prohibition in 1933, along with the rest of the country, the town of Boulder did not. The city of Boulder did not allow the purchase of alcohol until 1967, and the first bar in the city did not open until the Boulderado Hotel obtained a liquor license in 1969. As a result, 1960s Boulder was a very different town economically than most other major college towns.

Sophisticated archival research is my preferred mode of inquiry, but it's very difficult to uncover something that is not present--you can't read a review of a show that did not take place. Conveniently, however, one night in The Boulderado, Boulder's first luxury hotel (built 1909), I had a very informative conversation with a worldly Boulder resident named Phil, who was born and raised in Boulder, lived and worked many places, and had returned to Boulder in semi-retirement (if I were a country songwriter, his story might make a good song, but I'm not).

In 1960s Boulder, there were no bars, only places that sold 3.2% beer. A post-prohibition Colorado law defined anything with less than 3.2% alcohol as "non-alcoholic," and brewers rapidly figured out they could brew weak beer and skirt the law. This eventually became codified into practice, and watery beer was available for adults, but stronger beer, wine or mixed drinks fell under a different set of laws. While the rest of Colorado came out of Prohibition in a somewhat typical fashion (although the 3.2% beer thing turns out to a surprisingly critical to the rise of Colorado microbrews, but that is too tangential even for this blog), the city of Boulder limited its residents to the purchase of 3.2% beer. It wasn't illegal for adults to drink or possess alcohol, but they couldn't buy it in Boulder.

As a result, the city of Boulder was quite a sleepy place. All the good restaurants were outside of town, since otherwise they couldn't have served wine with dinner. There was no night life, because there were no bars. The adult men all belonged to private clubs--Phil's father often went to the Elks Club, across the street from the Boulderado, because he could get a drink there. Private clubs, however, cannot get a license for live music that allows outsiders, so none of those clubs could serve as a venue.

It may seem that hippie pyschedelic rock bands would not have needed bars, but in fact the opposite is the case. However much 60s bands liked playing free concerts and all night rave ups, the ecosystem of music requires paying gigs. If there aren't a few bars to provide steady work, you don't have working musicians, certainly not any drummers, and as a result you have no bands. It may also seem that coffee shops and folk music would be immune to an absence of bars, but the reality is that the opposite was the case. While it's true that the 60s Folk Scare started in coffee shops, so that high schoolers could get involved, coffee shops thrive in districts where there are bars. After all, what would be the point of meeting a pretty girl and bonding over Pete Seeger songs if you couldn't invite her across the street for a beer? Even Berkeley's Freight and Salvage (opened 1968), the first venue not to allow smoking, was across the street from the Albatross Pub.

The seemingly obvious parallel to 60s Boulder would seem to be Palo Alto, a town that Boulder generally aspires to be. Palo Alto had strange liquor laws, stemming from it's founding as the college town for Stanford University in 1875. In the 1960s, despite a profusion of Acid Tests and the like, there were still no bars in downtown Palo Alto, because of an old law (supported by most downtown area residents) that no liquor could be sold within 1 1/2 miles of the Stanford Campus. Yet Downtown Palo Alto was a bohemian enclave of folk clubs in the early 1960s, and Jerry Garcia was only the most famous of the early folkies hanging around Downtown looking to make music. Why did sleepy Palo Alto--and trust me, it was sleepy--have a nascent little folk and rock scene, and Boulder seemingly have none?

One simple difference between Boulder and downtown Palo Alto's liquor laws was that Palo Alto allowed beer and wine to be sold at restaurants. Thus nightclubs (like St. Michael's Alley, The Top Of The Tangent or The Poppycock) could set themselves up as restaurants and at least sell beer. Furthermore, there could at least be restaurants downtown, which while they did not cater to young hippie musicians, at least created a downtown that provided some potential employment for their girlfriends. Boulder's restrictions had neither of these ameliorating factors.

The most important difference, however, was that despite downtown Palo Alto's restrictive liquor laws, it was a relatively tiny blip on a very busy suburban Peninsular strip from San Francisco to San Jose. Even within the city limits of Palo Alto, much less all the neighboring towns, there were bars, nightlife and music gigs. While the bands that formed in Palo Alto couldn't find a paying booking in downtown Palo Alto, there was no lack of employment in the bars, coffee shops and pizza parlors on the El Camino Real strip. El Camino (an extension of Mission Blvd in San Francisco) ran from The City all the way to San Jose, and parts of it were within walking distance of downtown Palo Alto. Thus downtown Palo Alto's isolation affected the town itself, but did not have much impact on the area just around it.

Boulder's metropolitan circumstances were very different. A Boulder County resident explained to me that in the late 1960s, the city of Boulder started buying up all the land around the city. Effectively, the city created a 7-mile wide Greenbelt around itself, but at 1960s prices. In this way, Boulder was far ahead of Palo Alto (oh, if Palo Alto had only bought up Menlo Park and Mountain View in 1966...). What this meant, however, was that while downtown Boulder was sleepy, there were no nearby towns to pick up the overflow. You could walk from downtown Palo Alto to downtown Menlo Park, which helps explain while the Palo Alto-born Grateful Dead actually got their professional start in Menlo Park. The nearest towns to Boulder were 10 or more miles away, as they are today, so Boulder was isolated by choice and not just geography.

Certainly the University of Colorado was full of students, probably about 15,000 undergraduates or so. However, CU is up on a hill above the town (mind you, a "hill" in the Rockies would be called a "mountain" in some parts of the country). While presumably the students enjoyed 3.2 beer in great quantities, any serious socializing or interesting dates probably required a car anyway, and if you had a car, why go to sleepy, dry Boulder when you could go to a bar in another town? You're in the car anyway--why not drive to where it's more fun?

Boulder Now
Now, of course, Boulder is Mile High Palo Alto. There are nice restuarants, lots of bars, some converted movie theaters that make great rock venues, and bands play the Macky Auditorium, the CU Events Center (gym) and even Folsom Field, if the bands are big enough to fill up a football stadium. Boulder's population has stabilized, since the city owns all the pristine land around it (Palo Alto's population has been the same since the 1970s), and as a result of the natural advantages of Colorado and the boom in Denver, Boulder is a desirable happening place to live, musically or otherwise, if you can afford it. The University of Colorado has joined the Pac-10, so Boulder is now rightly on a par with Berkeley, Palo Alto, Eugene or Westwood, and it certainly belongs there. Yet a look into Boulder's vacant rock history from the 1960s shows that Boulder has transformed itself into something very different than it was in the past.

I could be wrong about this. Maybe Zephyr was just the only Boulder band that made it out. None of the economic pointers suggest that, however, and I think that Boulder did not have an interesting 60s music history because the economic conditions did not support it. However much the creativity and desire of individual musicians is essential to making music, if the material conditions for a successful music scene are not in place, it will be no accident when there are no memorable bands or concerts to recall. Of course, as always, I will be delighted if if any long time or long ago Boulderites can prove me wrong, and tell me about a secret history of Boulder venues and musicians, but I think that Boulder's very virtues were foundational in insuring that its 60s music history was largely silent.

412 Broadway, San Francisco, CA, Mr. D's, November 7-8, 1969: Three Dog Night/Hoyt Axton

2011-03-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

(a San Francisco Chronicle ad from November 2, 1969, advertising Three Dog Night at Mr. D's, located at 412 Broadway)

When Historians look backwards, it is easy to make the path of history seem simple and inevitable, with a series of discrete events leading to a self-evident conclusion. This effect remains in force whether you look at Medieval Europe, 19th Century Railroads or 60s Rock. However, a closer look at the facts on the ground as they really happened always shows an uneven trail of dead ends and roads not taken. At the same time, the seeds of future result can be seen long before any fruit has ripened.

By November, 1969, Three Dog Night was a hugely successful band by any standard. They had just released a live album, following up on their two successful studio albums. They also had tremendously successful hit singles climbing the charts. What were they doing playing a supper club on Broadway in San Francisco, just down the street from Carol Doda at the Condor, and all the other topless clubs? Why weren't they headlining the Fillmore West, like every other hot band, or else the Berkeley Community Theater or some other venue? The weekend at Mr. D's was Three Dog Night's first headlining performance in the Bay Area, and it seemed to fly in the fact of rock orthodoxy.

Since the band's engagement at Mr. D's has seemingly been lost to rock history up until now, and I can find no other information about it besides promotion for the event, I will consider what facts I do know about the band, the venue and the rock market at the time in the hopes of finding a convincing hypothesis. Hopefully some long dormant memories of the Three Dog Night engagement at Mr. D's will be resurrected. Anyone with information, informed speculation or just a clever idea is encouraged to share them in the Comments.

Three Dog Night
Three Dog Night had initially formed in Hollywood in 1967, under the name Redwood, but became a real going concern in 1968. Although the band had a contemporary rock sound, they had a number of features that made them different than their peers. First of all, the group had three excellent lead vocalists, rather than one, and had sophisticated vocal arrangements in the style of Motown or Stax, albeit in a rock rather than a soul context. Secondly, the majority of Three Dog Night's albums featured newly arranged cover versions of contemporary rock songs, few or none of which were commissioned by the group. Three Dog Night keyboardist Jimmy Greenspoon (in his fascinating autobiography One Is The Loneliest Number) cites Vanilla Fudge's dramatic re-arrangement of The Supremes "You Keep Me Hangin' On" as an inspiration.

Three Dog Night's musical discipline and cover material was in distinct contrast to the self-contained self expression of 60s rock, particularly the kind coming out of San Francisco. This did not make Three Dog Night popular with Rolling Stone magazine and its readers. Nonetheless, the band had a fantastic ear for hearing good songs and giving them a "heavy" rock treatment that worked well both on the radio and the home stereo. The majority of Three Dog Night's fans had not heard the originals anyway, as they were plucked off very obscure records, so it all sounded new to them. Time has been fairly kind to Three Dog Night--songs like "Eli's Coming" and "Liar" hold up fairly well when compared to a lot of psychedelic odes to self expression recorded in the late 60s and early 70s, and the band's contributions to their hits makes it clear that songwriting is only one piece of a hit record.

Three Dog Night's self-titled debut album on ABC-Dunhill was released in October 1968. The single "One" (a Harry Nillson song) did not hit until mid-1969. "One" peaked at #5 on the Billboard magazine charts, while the album peaked at #11. Three Dog Night's follow up album Suitable For Framing was released in June 1969 (ultimately reaching #16). By November, it had spawned two giant hits, "Easy To Be Hard"(peaking at #4) and "Eli's Coming" (#10) A third hit, "Celebrate" (#15), would climb the charts in early 1970. For some reason, ABC-Dunhill also released a live album, Captured Live At The Forum. Recorded on July 14, 1969, when Three Dog Night opened for Steppenwolf, the album recapped the most popular songs of the first two albums. It too was a huge hit, reaching #6.

Three Dog Night Live In The Bay Area 1968
San Francisco and London in the 1960s were the twin Capitals of rock music. While rock music in America was financed and produced primarily in New York and Los Angeles, the San Francisco model of rock concerts and FM radio transformed the music industry. As a result, American record companies often looked to San Francisco for credibility and innovation. This wasn't just habit: for some years after the first wave of bands came out of the Fillmore and the Avalon, a slew of innovative and popular bands came out of the Bay Area, like Sly and The Family Stone, Santana, Tower of Power, The Doobie Brothers and The Tubes, to name a few. For a new band, establishing itself in the Bay Area was one sure way to attract attention and confer credibility.

August 10, 1968: Continental Ballroom, Santa Clara, CA: Country Joe And The Fish/Eternity's Children/Three Dog Night/Weird Herald
Three Dog Night made their Bay Area debut at the Continental Ballroom just outside of San Jose. The Continental was the San Jose area's main psychedelic venue (it was located at 1600 Martin Avenue in nearby Santa Clara), but it was never associated with one promoter. As a result, it has less of an historic profile than the Fillmore or the Avalon, but all the heavy San Francisco bands played there. I do not know anything about this show other than the fact that it happened. All the members of Three Dog Night were very experienced performers by this time, but since it was still two months prior to their debut album, the crowd would have had no predisposition towards them one way or the other.

It would be very interesting to find out how Three Dog Night went over at this show (or anything else about it). Weird Herald had a tremendous reputation as a live band, but they were in the hard rocking psychedelic San Jose school of music (in which The Chocolate Watch Band ruled supreme). Country Joe and The Fish were a way more disciplined band than people realized at the time, but they were a prototype Fillmore band themselves. I know nothing about Eternity's Chidren. There's no telling how long or short Three Dog Night's set was, or what the sound was like, much less how they went over to a crowd of San Jose hippies.

San Mateo Times, Dec 20, 1968 ad

December 26,1968: Cow Palace, Daly City, CA: “Holiday Rock Festival”
Steppenwolf/Canned Heat/Santana/New Buffalo Springfield/Three Dog Night/Spencer Davis Group/Blue Cheer/The Electric Prunes/Flaming Groovies/Tender Loving Care
This KYA (1260am) sponsored event seems to have been an attempt to cash in on the model of the Monterey Pop Festival. I'm not sure if all the acts even played, and in any case they must have played short sets. Three Dog Night shared management with Steppenwolf, so that accounts for the booking. It's worth noting, however, that Three Dog Night's management has booked them at a Top 40 radio event rather than third on the bill at Fillmore West. Since the band shared management with Steppenwolf, they would not have lacked access to Fillmore West if they had desired it.

History has made the December 1968 "Holiday Rock Festival" look different than it really was. Steppenwolf and Canned Heat were the big headliners, as Three Dog Night had not had a hit yet. Santana was a popular live attraction at the Fillmore West and elsewhere, but they were some time away from recording their debut album (it was released in August 1969). The Spencer Davis Group, featuring Eddie Hardin, was a pretty good live band, but Stevie Winwood had left for Traffic two years earlier. The crowd was apparently fairly unhappy to find out that the New Buffalo Springfield only had drummer Dewey Martin from the old group, and that Steve Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furay were not part of the band. Richie Furay was playing with Poco at Fillmore West that weekend, and when he heard about the band, lawyers forced Martin to change the band's name to New Buffalo.

Blue Cheer were a true Fillmore psychedelic band, but if they in fact played, I can't imagine how the suburban crowd would have reacted to guitarist Randy Holden's sonic attack. This would have been near the end of Holden's brief tenure with Blue Cheer.

(a San Francisco Chronicle ad for Martha and The Vandella's at Mr. D's, from January 5, 1969)

Mr. D's, 412 Broadway, San Francisco, CA
Broadway in San Francisco was the City's entertainment district. It abutted bohemian North Beach, which provided the City's culture--Italian food, espresso and Beat Poetry, while Broadway provided bright lights, booze and jazz. The San Francisco jazz scene in the 1950s wasn't really lucrative, but its proximity to Los Angeles made it a great incubator for talent, and the same was true of folk music at the time. Success in San Francisco at the hungry i or other clubs was often a ticket to much larger success in the 50s and early 60s. Broadway in San Francisco, along with Jack London Square in Oakland and the El Camino Real in the South Bay, was part of the circuit of entertainment that played the lounges of Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe.

Broadway changed in the early 60s when topless dancing became the principal form of entertainment. This is worthy of a blog in itself (not written by me), but it had a profound effect on San Francisco music. For one thing, topless clubs were not perceived like strip clubs are today, and indeed shared almost nothing in common with them (save the obvious). Topless clubs were racy, but sort of respectable, like seeing an R-rated movie today. While they featured women without tops (duh), they also usually had music, comedy, dancing and other kinds of performances.

The big change for San Francisco musicians was that Broadway club owners abruptly lost interest in paying for quality music. The clubs needed bands, but mainly just to keep the beat. While rock groups that were new in town found a nightly gig at a topless club a convenient way to pay the bills, no agent was going to discover them there. The rise of the topless phenomenon in the mid-60s forced all the rock musicians to play the Fillmore and the Avalon, since there were no other well paying bookings on Broadway anymore.

While Broadway's time as San Francisco's first stop in entertainment was passing, that wasn't so obvious at that moment. I'm not sure who "Mr D" was, but the club opened around late 1968, replacing a topless club called The Moulin Rouge. Mr. D's was a supper club, offering dinner, drinks and two shows a night. They shared headliners with Reno and Tahoe. Motown acts were booked regularly, like Marvin Gaye, The Temptations or Martha And The Vandellas (above), and they typically played a week long engagement. Because it was a restaurant, minors were welcome, but that was aimed more at groups of people (who might include the occasional minor) rather than teenagers per se, since it was too expensive for kids.

After a year of booking Vegas-style acts like Tony Bennett and Motown, I have to assume that Mr. D's started to see the writing on the wall. Up until the Three Dog Night show on November 7, 1969, I know of no rock act booked at Mr. D's. However, Mr. D's was booking headliners like Marvin Gaye, so their financial terms must have been reasonable. Three Dog Night was riding its third straight hit single of the year, and the band knew its way around the stage. Thus it's plain that Mr. D's was trying to hook a new audience with a popular band, and that Three Dog Night must have had various options for performing in San Francisco, and their booking agent must have consciously chosen Mr. D's. A few years later, intimate clubs for rising rock bands were par for the course, exemplified by The Bottom Line in Manhattan or The Roxy in Los Angeles, but no one was ready for it in 1969.

Three Dog Night at Mr. D's, Friday November 7 and Saturday November 8, 1969
At this point I am left with only speculation. Anyone with real insight or knowledge is urged to chime in via the Comments. Nonetheless, the evidence points to certain facts.

Three Dog Night had not played San Francisco since the end of 1968
Three Dog Night's music style and willingness to cover contemporary rock songs was different than other bands
Three Dog Night never played The Fillmore West

Three Dog Night had become very successful in 1969 by following a path that no other band was taking. It did not make them popular with Rolling Stone magazine, but the market was now big enough that there was room for other ways to make it as a rock band. Three Dog Night's management must have wanted the band to headline an engagement in San Francisco, rather than share billing at the Fillmore West. I think Mr. D's was pretty desperate to get in on the rock market, and made a pretty good offer for Three Dog Night. Since Three Dog Night had defied sixties rock protocol so far, skipping Fillmore West to headline a Broadway club would have been par for the course.

However, I think the show was a financial disaster. The show was mentioned in Ralph Gleason's Chronicle column on Friday night (above), but it was never reviewed to my knowledge. Mr. D's booked a few lesser rock acts for the balance of the year, and then closed. Broadway had gone from an entertainment district to a (sort of) red-light district, and there was no place for supper clubs. I think the teenagers who wanted to see Three Dog Night would not have been allowed to go to Broadway by their parents, and the adults who wanted to see them would have found it difficult to park.

I have never found any reference to Mr D's other than ads in the Chronicle, much less Three Dog Night's performance there, and thus it remains a mystery. One enduring curiosity, however, is the fact that Hoyt Axton seems to have opened for them. I don't know if this is where he met the band--probably not--but hanging around together during a disastrous weekend engagement is one way that musicians become friends, so I can't help but think the band gave a good listen Hoyt's songs, even if they didn't strike gold with them until later (as they would with "Joy To The World" and "Never Been To Spain").

Aftermath
Three Dog Night had numerous successful singles and albums up through the mid-1970s. Relative to their massive success, however, they were never big in San Francisco. Perhaps they were so successful elsewhere that they never needed to try, but given the few, odd performances that Three Dog Night had in the Bay Area in the 1960s, it probably wasn't a complete coincidence. After many ups and downs, the band broke up and reformed various times, but as of today Three Dog Night are still going strong.

412 Broadway mostly remained a nightclub, as it does today, even though it changed names and formats. Briefly, its history seems to be

1965-67: The Moulin Rouge (some Broadway background here)
1968-69: Mr. D's
early 70s: The Seven Divinities
Aug-Dec '73: The Matrix (sometimes known as The New Matrix)
1974>: Don Cornelius's Soul Train (yes, the very same)
late 70s': The Hippodrome
1980-90: The Stone (Keystone overview is here)
1990s: mostly empty
Today: Broadway Showgirls Cabaret (don't google it at work)

3138 Fillmore Steet, San Francisco, CA, January 6, 1969: Open Jam with Peter Albin and Dave Getz

2011-01-18T14:39:00.000-08:00

(San Francisco Chronicle Datebook listings from Monday, January 6, 1969)

The San Francisco Chronicle Datebook section was full of interesting listings in the 1960s, even if they often only provide tantalizing clues to events that would otherwise have disappeared. San Francisco's Matrix club was one of the few hippie hangouts, and all sorts of surprising events took place there. Ironically, as a hangout rather than a major venue--The Matrix was too small to be "major"--many of the most interesting events seems to have taken place on weeknights. On January 6, 1969, the first Monday of the year, the listings of openings (above) are topped by this one:

ROCK CLUB--Peter Albin and David Getz in an open jam session at The Matrix, 3138 Fillmore.

Peter Albin and Dave Getz were the bassist and drummer, respectively, of Big Brother and The Holding Company. Big Brother had just broken up in late 1968, when Janis Joplin had left the group. Janis had not been an original member, but she rapidly eclipsed the group itself, and when their 1968 album Cheap Thrills became a mega-hit, Janis ended up leaving the band behind. The rocket ride from underground hipsters to National rock stars had been very hard on some of the band members, and Big Brother did not survive her departure. Janis Joplin and Big Brother played their last show at the Avalon Ballroom on December 1, 1968. Afterward, guitarist Sam Andrew continued on with Janis's new band, while fellow guitarist James Gurley took some time out from making music. Albin and Getz were left adrift.

I had known from various Family Trees and the like that Albin and Getz started jamming together in early 1969. David Nelson, an old South Bay friend of Albin, was known to be one of the participants. Nelson's group The New Delhi River Band had ground to a halt in early 1968, so he too was at loose ends. A few other musicians are vaguely alleged to have jammed with Albin and Getz, but it was difficult to ascertain. However, until I found this listing, I had no idea that Albin and Getz had led any kind of public performance. Who played with them? What did they play?

From 1968 onwards, at least, Monday night was usually "jam night" at the Matrix. A local band or musician would host a jam session. Usually someone was the host for many Monday nights in a row, but sometimes individual musicians or bands would host a single Monday night session. Monday night was a very thin night for performances, so in many ways it was like "musicians night out." When you read about various rumors about famous San Francisco players sitting in at the Matrix, often as not it turns out to have been on a Monday night. Also, to some extent the term "jam" implied as much that the show wouldn't be "regular" rather than specifically that there was a jam. Thus if a group of players wanted to work on something different in public, billing it as a "jam" implied that you wouldn't be seeing a regular set.

In any case, you know what I know. Albin and Getz, who had probably been jamming with their friends somewhere, led a jam session at The Matrix. I would suspect David Nelson was there, since he has acknowledged hanging out with them at the time, but even that is just a guess. Albin and Getz knew everybody and were well liked, and on a Monday night in January almost no musican in San Francisco was working, so absolutely anyone could have played with them.

Tantalizing as this event was, it doesn't seem to have been repeated. The next weekend, January 13, the bill wasn't Albin and Getz--it was "Carlos Santana And Friends," if anything even more fascinating. The next two Mondays (Jan 20 and Jan 27) were not listed in the Chronicle, so while there may have been even better shows, we don't know anything about them. Needless to say, anyone with insights, recovered memories (real or imagined) or amusing speculation is encouraged to chime in.

Postscript: I am no expert on this, but it is plausible that "The Commodores" who are playing at Nero's Nook in Palo Alto, were in fact the Lionel Richie-led band from Tuskegee, AL, who hit it very big in the 1970s. They did sign to Atlantic in 1968, and Nero's Nook, at the swanky Cabana Hyatt House, would be the sort of supper club engagement Atlantic might have tried to find for them.

1702 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA, January 17, 1969: Indian Puddin' And Pipe/Tripsichord Music Box

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(a clipping from the January 17, 1969 San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, announcing shows that would be opening that night)

San Francisco's Straight Theater, located at 1702 Haight Street (at Cole), was seen as the linchpin of a successful Haight Ashbury. The hippies who lived in the neighborhood, bands included, had to go downtown to the Fillmore and the Avalon to make or listen to music. The Straight Theater was an old movie theater that was ripe for conversion to a psychedelic concert hall, but it was blocked by the city of San Francisco in a political struggle over dance permits. By the time the Straight started putting on shows in Summer 1967, the wave had crested somewhat, and the Straight never caught up to its competitors. Although the venue was a crucial part of the Haight community, the Straight never had the cachet of either the Fillmore or the Avalon, but it is remembered fondly. We have attempted to construct the history of musical performances during the Straight Theater's existence as a rock venue, but some gaps persist. Some peculiar listings in the early 1969 San Francisco Chronicle shed some light on an obscure window of the Straight's final months.

January 17, 1969: Straight Theater, San Francisco, CA: Indian Puddin' and Pipe/Tripsichord Music Box
The Straight was managed in a collective, hippie style, but it was not prepared for the explosion of the rock music in the late 60s. Just as rock music became profitable, the absence of working capital insured that the venue was unable to compete. Up until now, we had thought that the venue was dark from New Year's 1968/69 through March 1969. That appears to not quite be the case. In early January, Chronicle columnist Ralph J Gleason wrote "the Straight Theater is now running weekends again with local bands." Although I am not aware of any ads, there were a few listings in the Chronicle's Datebook section. The first one, visible up top, featured two groups, Indian Puddin' and Pipe and the Tripsichord Music Box. Both of these groups were also promoted on the weekend of January 31-February 1.

January 31, 1969: Straight Theater, San Francisco, CA: Indian Puddin' and Pipe/Tripsichord Music Box
What is the significance of these two groups playing some underpublicized shows at the Straight Theater in early 1969? They indicate the unmistakable presence of the infamous promoter Mathew Katz. The rarely photographed Katz had been the manager of Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape when they had first started. Katz was in litigation with the Airplane for over 20 years; the Grape's lawsuit against him was only settled (in their favor) last year, after over 40 years. Few of the musicians who worked with Katz have fond memories of him.

By 1969, Katz was more focused on owning the names of groups, rather than the groups themselves. Both Indian Puddin' and Pipe and Tripsichord Music Box have complex personnel histories that are hard to follow. Katz seemed to believe that a popular group name had more value than the band members who made up the group, and he would pick out the group names himself. From 1967 onwards, Katz also seemed to have an interest in controlling certain venues, at least temporarily, in order to provide an opportunity for his bands to play. How thinly attended concerts at underpublicized venues helped Katz's promotional plans remains impossible to discern.

The whiff of these two listings suggests that Katz took over the booking of the Straight Theater for a month or two in 1969. The lack of other listings is more likely a sign of Katz's unwillingness to actually purchase advertising or pay for posters, just one of his many inexplicable practices. By March of 1969, circulating posters suggest that other entities were attempting to use the Straight for rock shows, even though they weren't successful. However, if Katz was the de facto promoter of the Straight for a month or two in early 1969, it's not surprising that few people recall it and even fewer mention it. Katz has had a lot of bad ju-ju assigned to him over the decades, apparently with some justification, and no one seems to have good memories they want to recall. It's no wonder that this chapter of Straight Theater history has remained unknown.

As near as I can tell, Katz continued to book his bands in distinctly different venues, apart from the regular rock nightlife in the Bay Area. By the mid-summer of 1969, Katz's bands mostly played at a place on 345 Broadway in San Francisco called Headhunters Amusement Park (it was the former site of a club called Goman's Gay 60s). Later in 1969, his bands were regularly listed at the even more mysterious Aheppa Center, at 7400 MacArthur Blvd in Oakland (near the Eastmont Mall). The radio silence that accompanies most of Katz's activities has left these venues complete ciphers that await excavation.

December 3, 1966: 658 Escondido Drive, Stanford, CA: "A Happening In The Wilburness" with Big Brother and The Holding Company

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( a clipping from the entertainment listings of the Berkeley Barb on December 2, 1966)

Stanford University, founded in 1891 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford, was always a unique institution. However, its current status as a sort of West Coast Ivy, where the children of (smart) Presidents attend alongside other future world leaders, even as new industries are invented in dorm rooms, is a rather more recent development. When founder Leland Stanford died in 1893, the University remained on somewhat shaky financial ground until the mid-1950s. The University was always land rich and cash poor, and as a result a more interesting place than it probably is these days. The finances of Stanford changed dramatically in the 1950s, but the University still remained interesting enough in the 1960s. It was not a coincidence that Ken Kesey started the LSD revolution near Stanford, at Perry Lane in Menlo Park, in the early '60s.

I have reason to believe that the "Happening" listed above in the Berkeley Barb was the last gasp of an older, looser Stanford, mixed in with some 1960s troublemaking, but I am unable to find a reliable eyewitness. Thus, I am using this post to marshal what little evidence I can uncover in the hopes that some reader will Flash Back and find this post and give us clues to what really happened. I can say, however, that there were quite a few interesting rock events in Stanford in the Fall of 1966, yet after this event, Stanford all but eliminated rock music shows. There was one outdoor rock concert in 1967, and one other very interesting event, and two more in 1968, but Stanford seems to have been resolutely against rock music events on campus after Fall 1966.

Did something happen that unsettled the Administration? Could it have been an all-day, acid fueled, multi-building party culminating with Janis Joplin and Big Brother and The Holding Company playing the Wilbur Hall Dormitory Dining Commons? God, I hope so.

"Happening In The Wilburness"
An old Big Brother list mentions a December, 1966 event under the heading "A Happening In The Wilburness." Ross discovered the Barb listing (above, from December 2, 1966) and I am confident this was the same event. Rather than listing the event as a concert, the Barb calls it a "Happening:"

HAPPENING: Big Brother & the Holding Company, lights, film, poetry, jazz, sculpting, experiments; Wilbur Hall, Stanford U.. all day? $1.50

Some reasonable speculation suggests the outline of this event. Wilbur Hall was built after World War 2 to handle the incoming volume of students. The "Hall" was actually a complex of 8 residential houses and a central dining commons. It currently houses 707 students, and the grounds cover a substantial area. The Stanford campus has always been sprawling, since its inception, but in the mid-60s the location of Wilbur Hall would have been less developed, as there were considerably fewer labs, classrooms and other buildings on campus (the mailing address is 658 Escondido, but the actual location of the Dining Commons is on Bowdoin Lane, off Campus Drive).

Since there were no less than nine available buildings, plus some open space, the implication seems to be that different activities took place in different parts of the grounds, presumably culminating with a Big Brother concert in the Dining Commons. I have to assume "The Wilburness" was a student nickname for the grounds as a whole. Crowded as the Stanford campus is today, Wilbur Hall would have been more isolated at the time and the name may have been fairly appropriate.

A "Happening" was a 60s term for what would loosely be termed either "Performance Art" or a "Festival" today. I have to assume that the event was at the end of the Fall Quarter, and some insurrectionist students had gotten permission to hold a "Fall Dance" or something, and turned it into a full-on sixties event. I believe the key word here is "experiments," which I think is code for an Acid Test, but I will explain my reasoning subsequently.

Although Stanford was not nearly as urban as Berkeley, the campus had its share of interesting rock events in the Fall of 1966. The Cryptical Development blog has an excellent post on some 1966 and '67 ads for events in the Stanford Daily, including performances by the Grateful Dead, Butterfield Blues Band and Jefferson Airplane. After that Fall, however, as the post shows, Stanford rock events abruptly ceased. There was an outdoor rock concert in May 1967 at the Frost Amphitheater, and a Summer rock concert at Frost in July 1968, but Stanford seems to have simply declared a moratorium on such events. Why? Surely many of the Stanford students wanted to see all the Fillmore bands, who would have been happy to play there on an available Friday night.

Here's what I think happened, although I cannot find proof. Some students got access to some sort of funds for a "Fall Dance" and asked to have a sort of "Festival" at the Wilbur Hall grounds. They probably emphasized art, poetry and jazz to the Administration, who blithely said yes. LSD was legal up until October 6, 1966, and the Kesey crowd was well connected to the Stanford campus. I think the "Experiments" alluded to was a code for an Acid Test--what else would they be experimenting on?--and madness reigned all day and all night on the Wilbur Hall grounds. Why else would the students be very vague to the Barb about the length of the event?

The campus cops probably wondered why no one smelled like whisky, but they must have figured something was up. A full volume concert by Big Brother and The Holding Company must have finished off the evening and the University's patience, because rock music would not be performed at night on the Stanford campus for a very long time.

I can't prove any of this. If any old Stanford students are having odd flashbacks right now, please Comment.

"The Experimental Group"
Palo Alto and Stanford had an interesting bohemian runup to 1966. Ken Kesey had come to Stanford on a writing fellowship in the early 1960s, and his merry bunch got their start just off campus on Perry Lane. Jerry Garcia and other bohemian folkies lived near downtown, as tolerant Palo Alto was unbothered by bearded, draft-dodging ne'er-do-wells. Palo Alto even had it's own Acid Test on December 18, 1965 (and the building is still there). While Kesey went on the lam, and the Dead moved to San Francisco, there was still a modest core of like minded lunatics in Palo Alto and the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The principal core of hip late 60s Palo Alto was the Mid Peninsula Free University (MFU), who began in 1967 in an attempt to provide an educational alternative to Stanford. The MFU story is too long to tell here, but MFU was instrumental in making sure there were free concerts in Palo Alto throughout 1967 and '68, in contravention to less liberal towns. On their now inaccessible website, the MFU founders were associated with some mysterious entity called "The Experimental Group," seemingly an ad-hoc Stanford organization. Who were they?

My one whiff of information about "The Experimental Group" is this mysterious poster (h/t Ross)

The poster advertised a "Psychedelic Celebrations Workshop" on Monday, April 10, 1967 at 8:00 pm. The event featured The Magic Theatre, The New Delhi River Band and the Medway Forest Indians. The event seems to have been at 'Experiment Building--Stanford University." Let's parse what we can about this flyer.

The New Delhi River Band and The Magic Theatre were the "house band" and light show at The Barn, in Scotts Valley. At this time, The Barn had just been closed by the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's department. Both NDRB and Magic Theatre lived in Palo Alto, and two of the principals of The Magic Theatre were both former Stanford art students (they were different than the later Berkeley theater troupe of the same name, however). Since the Barn was closed and the band and light show were in town, this has the look of an ad-hoc student event using some local talent.

Where was the Experiment Building? To my knowledge, there was no such building at Stanford. Although I grew up in Palo Alto, I recognize that there may have been something called that, so here are my speculations:

There was a lot of new building on campus at the time, and this may have been a temporary name for a building
This may have been a student nickname for a building that really went by another name

Either or both of these speculations seem reasonable. However, if the building named Experiment (why a noun not an adjective, by the way?) was new or colloquial, why are there no directions? It doesn't say "Experiment Building, on Pampas off Serra St." Wherever the "Experiment Building" was, anyone seeing the poster was supposed to know where it was. Anyone who couldn't figure it out--like Campus Administration--wasn't supposed to know. I have a feeling there was a newly constructed or underused new building that was used temporarily as a playhouse by some enterprising students, and this flyer gave just enough information for those who needed to know it.

The Medway Forest Indians are even more mysterious, and likely another code. The Medway Forest seems to be in London, Ontario, Canada, and I'm hard pressed to say whether there was actually any Tribe associated with the Forest. It seems more probable that this was some bogus student group that sounded plausible, like UC Berkeley's "Pretentious Folk Front."

I believe there is a different, more crudely drawn flyer for a similar event, possibly for sometime in November, 1966, but I can't find the flyer right now. I think the April 10, 1967 event with NDRB was an Acid Test disguised as a 'Psychedelic Celebration,' and on the Stanford Campus at least the code word was "Experiment," since I presume even square administrators had learned about "Acid Tests." This leads me back to thinking that the Wilbur Hall listing that promised "Experiments" was a clear shout out those in the know to leave all of Saturday afternoon and evening free for "A Day In The Wilburness."

March 5, 1970: Freight and Salvage, Berkeley, CA: Peter Rowan and Richard Greene

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(the panel from Thursday, March 5, 1970, for the Freight and Salvage calendar from March 1970)

Time, as Steve Miller informs us, keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. It is thus easy to look back and lose sight of the context of historical artifacts. The specific panel above is from the March 1970 performance calendar for Berkeley's Freight and Salvage club. The Freight opened in July 1968, and despite (or because of) being run by long-haired hippies, it was thoroughly committed to traditional forms of music in all its diversity. Each calendar featured a few dozen miniature panels for each performance (the March 1970 Freight calendar can be seen in its entirety here), and they serve as journals for the psychedelic artwork current at the time, yet they are overlooked because of their tiny size and because "folk" music is not as officially "psychedelic" as rock music from the same period.

Nonetheless, our detailed analysis of the founding of the Freight and Salvage reveals a number of surprising details about rock history. As we have detailed at length in our early history of the Freight and Salvage, the club served a variety of social and musical functions in late '60s Berkeley. One of those functions was to provide an outlet for musicians in rock bands to play the traditional music that had initially inspired them. Many of the rock musicians of the late 60s and early 70s had gotten started in music by playing bluegrass, blues or folk music in folk clubs; Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonen were among the most prominent of those in the Bay Area. Yet many other band members around the Bay Area had similar stories.

The group Seatrain was based in Marin County, but its roots were on the East Coast. A few members of the Blues Project (bassist Andy Kulberg and drummer Roy Blumenfield) had moved from East to West, and after completing some contractual obligations (the Blues Project album Planned Obsolescence) formed the group Sea Train. After an initial album, they elided their name to Seatrain, and added East Coast pal Peter Rowan on guitar and vocals, along with the Californian Richard Greene on violin. Greene and Rowan had played together in Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys, and Greene had wide experience in various ensembles, including recording with the Gary Burton Quartet (on the 1969 lp Throb). Rowan had been in Earth Opera with David Grisman, who recorded two albums for Elektra, but the band had exploded mid-tour in California in 1969.

By late 1969, Peter Rowan was working with Seatrain in Marin. Rowan, Richard Greene and various other members of Seatrain regularly played acoustic shows at the Freight and Salvage in late 1969 and early 1970 (we have extensively documented the the 1968-69 Freight here). Whether they played "acoustic Seatrain," bluegrass or other original material isn't entirely clear, but the little panel on the March 1970 calendar gives an intriguing clue. The March 5 listing says "Peter Rowan--alias Panama Red." Other listings at the Freight from around that time advertise "Panama Red and Richard Greene," and yet others list Rowan, Greene and other members of Seatrain by name.

Peter Rowan first bubbled out into rock consciousness as the writer of "Panama Red," the title track of the October 1973 New Riders of The Purple Sage album of the same name. Lucky Deadheads in the Bay Area who had seen Rowan play with Jerry Garcia and David Grisman in their bluegrass band Old And In The Way, or heard various local FM broadcasts, knew that Old And In The Way had been doing their version of "Panama Red" as well (both OAITW and the Riders also did Rowan's "Lonesome LA Cowboy"). I have discussed the early, misty origins of Old And In The Way elsewhere, but suffice to say it isn't hard to guess where the New Riders heard the song. The Riders catchy country rock version of the song received regular airplay both on rock stations like KSAN and soon afterwards on the groundbreaking "psychedelic country" station KFAT, out of Gilroy, CA.

"Panama Red" was a perfect mid-70s rock song, catchy and hummable, naughty enough to guarantee no AM airplay, but coded enough to escape the notice of imaginary authority figures (as if High School principals were analyzing rock lyrics). Indeed, as Panama Red itself was replaced by more potent forms of THC, the song itself became a paean to a more carefree era. When the Old And In The Way version was finally released on their 1975 album, the imprimatur of Jerry Garcia assured the song's immortality. Rowan became a popular alternative country rock figure, and new songs like "Free Mexican Airforce" became staples on KFAT. Rowan has had a diverse and successful career ever since, and he continues to tour and record.

It's easy to be nostalgic about Peter Rowan, "Panama Red" and days gone by--I certainly am--but a closer look at the evidence introduces a slightly different twist to the narrative. The Freight and Salvage poster frame celebrating Peter Rowan as Panama Red excerpted above is from March, 1970--a full three years before Old And In The Way and the New Riders started performing the song. Not only had Rowan probably already written the song by 1970, but apparently "Panama Red" was already some sort of performing alter ego for him. "Panama Red" seemed racy and coded enough for 1973, but the song may have been written as early as 1969, when it would have been downright subversive.

Seatrain recorded a number of albums for Capitol, but Peter Rowan had left the group by 1972. I have to assume that Capitol had rejected "Panama Red," or that the band refused to even consider showing it to them. By 1973, Rowan didn't even have a band, so letting the New Riders sing his catchiest song must have been a relief to Rowan, even if he may have been professionally frustrated. Yet it's intriguing to think that the catchiest weed song of 1973, a sort of early Anglo narcocorrido, had been too hot to handle for some years. It's also funny to think that the Freight and Salvage, often chastised back in the day for being too quiet and too serious (people couldn't even smoke!), was the only venue where Rowan's songwriting gems may have revealed themselves, as a true folk tradition in the making.

Although many fine folk artists have played the Freight every month since it's inception (see for yourself), a closer look shows the implicit rock links to the Berkeley folk scene. A few groups who would become Fillmore West and Winterland regulars are already playing there, such as Commander Cody and Joy Of Cooking, and more serious scholars may recognize some connections to the likes of the Diggers and Owsley Stanley. Rowan was a former member of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys, and certainly earned his credentials as a folk musician many years before, but he too was another Freight musician who would make "folk" a part of rock music yet to come.

Rhythm Dukes Performance List: January-July 1970 (with Jerry Miller and Bill Champlin)

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(a scan of a poster for Lee Michaels, The Rhythm Dukes and Robert M. Savage at The Family Dog On The Great Highway, March 6-8, 1970)

I did extensive research into the performance history of The Sons Of Champlin from 1966 through mid-1970, and as a result I became familiar with the history of The Rhythm Dukes. The Rhythm Dukes were a Santa Cruz Mountains band from 1969 to about 1972, with various members, but they were founded by Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson of Moby Grape, so the Dukes have always been historically associated with The Grape. However, after a variety of somewhat mysterious personnel changes in late 1969, The Rhythm Dukes were revitalized in 1970 when Bill Champlin joined Miller and the rhythm section to make a somewhat serious attempt at success. Some recorded evidence suggests that this configuration was a terrific band, if short-lived, and I felt I should document what I have been able to find out about their performing history.

The Rhythm Dukes
I wrote about a 1969 version of The Rhythm Dukes elsewhere, specifically about a surviving tape from December 1969 at The Family Dog, so I will not repeat all of it here. Suffice to say, the original formulation of The Rhythm Dukes featured both Miller and fellow Graper Don Stevenson, along with bassist John Barrett and drummer Fuzzy Oxendine, all of whom shared a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Although Stevenson had been the drummer in Moby Grape, he played guitar and shared vocals in the Dukes. The original Rhythm Dukes did one tour in the Summer of 1969, but they were often billed as Moby Grape, much to their dismay. Sometime in the Fall, Stevenson left the group.

The Rhythm Dukes played a number of Bay Area shows in Fall 1969, but the exact lineup or lineups remains a mystery. The surviving tape features a five piece band, with Jerry Miller as the sole lead vocalist, and a saxophonist as well as a pianist/rhythm guitarist joining Oxendine and Barrett. The material is also obscure, although they sound pretty good for an opening act at The Family Dog.

The Sons Of Champlin
I have written an extensive performance history of The Sons, so I needn't recap it. However, by early 1970, despite a loyal Bay Area following and two excellent Capitol albums, the Sons were frustrated and broke and they decided to go "on hiatus." Effectively that meant they were breaking up, although they continued to finish an album they owed Capitol (released in 1971 as Follow Your Heart). How the plan for Champlin to join The Rhythm Dukes came about remains unknown, and since band members are usually cagey about their future plans (so as not to offend their current bandmates), I'm not aware of how long the idea was afoot. Nonetheless, Moby Grape and The Sons Of Champlin went way back together, and I suspect that Miller and Champlin knew each other from their predecessor bands as well (The Frantics and Opposite Six, respectively). More importantly, bassist Barrett and drummer Oxendine had been in a band called Boogie that rehearsed at the Sausalito Heliport along with The Sons. Oxendine had even been in The Sons briefly in mid-69, when the band experimented with having two drummers. So there were plenty of connections between Bill Champlin and the other members of the Rhythm Dukes.

Bill Champlin played his first show with The Rhythm Dukes in January, 1970. After The Sons gave their "Farewell" performance on February 21, 1970, Champlin moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains and made The Rhythm Dukes his primary musical endeavor. What follows is my chronicle of the known performances of The Rhythm Dukes with Bill Champlin. Anyone with additional information, updates, insights or corrections is encouraged to email me or put them in the Comments.

Rhythm Dukes Performance History January-June 1970

January 7, 1970: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Rhythm Dukes w/Jerry Miller and Bill Champlin
The Sons were still actively touring at this juncture, but Bill Champlin joined the Rhythm Dukes for this Wednesday night show at The Matrix. The show was mentioned in Ralph J. Gleason's SF Chronicle column that day (above).

>February 20-21, 1970: Family Dog At the Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Big Brother and The Holding Company with Nick Gravenites/Rhythm Dukes with Jerry Miller and Bill Champlin
Because the poster for this shows circulates comparatively widely (for a Family Dog On The Great Highway event), it often represents one of the few ways in which the Miller/Champlin collaboration was known. However, the dates on this poster conflicts with the heavily publicized shows the Sons played as their "farewell" shows (Berkeley on Friday February 20, and Contra Costa Fairgrounds on February 21). However, a close look at the SF Chronicle listings for the weekend show that Cat Mother and The All Night Newsboys had replaced The Rhythm Dukes at The Family Dog.

March 4, 1970: High Street Local, (Santa Cruz), CA: Rhythm Dukes
This show is known from a J.Freiermuth poster on the Rhythm Dukes website, although I don't know the exact address of the venue. There's every reason to assume that the Rhythm Dukes played a fair number of shows in the Santa Cruz/Monterey area, particularly on weeknights. However, the Santa Cruz area was much less populated than it is now, and while the shows were probably very fun, the club scene would not have been that lucrative.

March 6-8, 1970: Family Dog at The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Lee Michaels/Rhythm Dukes/Robert M Savage
An eyewitness reported that Lee Michaels was “impossibly loud.” This would probably have been the effective debut of the Champlin/Miller version of The Rhythm Dukes in the Bay Area (poster up top).

March 11, 1970: High Street Local, (Santa Cruz), CA: Rhythm Dukes

March 20-21, 1970: New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA: Rhythm Dukes
The New Orleans House was Berkeley's home for original rock music, giving groups that were lower on the bill at the Fillmore West or Family Dog a chance to headline.

April 3, 1970: Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA: Rhythm Dukes/Snail/Joint Possession
This show is known from a Richard Moore poster on the Rhythm Dukes site. It is interesting for a number of reasons. Opening act Snail had evolved out of two local bands, Talon Wedge and The Bubble, and they would go on to be local heroes for the next several years, even putting out two albums. Snail never made much headway outside of Santa Cruz County, but they remain a headline act in Santa Cruz clubs even today (they have a reunion every decade or so).

Equally interesting is the use of Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. The Civic, at 307 Church, would have been the perfect 60s rock venue, in a hip college town not far from San Francisco, but for a variety of reasons the City of Santa Cruz refused to sanction that. Their refusal opened the door for the temporary success of The Barn, a much wilder venue a few miles Northeast, in Scotts Valley, and I have discussed the history of The Barn elsewhere. This show headlined by The Rhythm Dukes seems to be the first to use the Civic for a rock show since 1967, and that is an interesting piece of Santa Cruz rock history in its own right.

April 10-12, 1970: Family Dog at The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Albert Collins/Rhythm Dukes/A.B. Skhy

On April 16, 1970, old friend Bruce Walford recorded a demo tape of The Rhythm Dukes at The Sons’ rehearsal facility (The Church in San Anselmo). The 10 tracks appear to be recorded live in the studio, with some modest piano and harmony vocal overdubs from Bill Champlin. Bill sings lead on 8 of the 10 tracks, all but one of which turned up in some form in the Sons repertoire in the next few years (the exception was a cover of “Kansas City”). The Rhythm Dukes, however, had a more laid-back bluesy feel than the Sons uptempo, swinging sound. The material was officially but privately released (a mere 34 years later) on a cd entitled Flash Back. The accompanying Rhythm Dukes website has some nice photos of the band and posters.

April 23-25, 1970: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: The Rhythm Dukes w/Jerry Miller and Bill Champlin

May 1, 1970: Gym, Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, CA: Rhythm Dukes/Potter’s Wheel
For about a year, thanks to the Millard Agency (Bill Graham's booking agents) and some local promoters, there were regular rock shows in the Monterey area, mostly at the gym at the local Junior College. This little scene did not quite have the momentum to sustain itself, but many San Francisco-area bands played there for that year.

This show is known from the Richard Moore poster on the Dukes website. Potter's Wheel was the Santa Cruz incarnation of a Bay Area band called Phoenix.

May 22-23, 1970: New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA: Rhythm Dukes w/Bill Champlin/Nargul

June ?, 1970: The Matrix Rhythm, San Francisco, CA: Dukes w/Jerry Miller and Bill Champlin
A poorly reproduced May/June 1970 Matrix calendar makes the exact date difficult to read.

June 19-21, 1970: Family Dog at The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Flying Burrito Brothers/Cat Mother and The All Night Newsboys/Rhythm Dukes with Bill Champlin, Jerry Miller

June 27, 1970: Gym, Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA: Elvin Bishop/Rhythm Dukes/Snail
Cabrillo College was a Junior College in Aptos, not far from the UC Santa Cruz campus. It's not clear when Bill Champlin left the Rhythm Dukes, but since he was booked at the Family Dog the week before, I have to think that he played this show as well.

July 3, 1970: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Bill Champlin and Friends
It's not at all clear if this was a Rhythm Dukes show or Bill playing with other musicians. I am more likely that to believe the latter. The exact date of Champlin’s departure from the Rhythm Dukes is unknown.

At some point in the Summer, Bill Champlin moved back to Marin County. He may have finished a few shows with the Rhythm Dukes, but he left the band and they continued on without him. Champlin started to hang out at The Lion's Share in San Anselmo, playing impromptu gigs with various musicians, including former members of The Sons. One thing led to another, and by September, 1970 The Sons Of Champlin were back in business under the improbable name of Yogi Phlegm. They rapidly returned to their original name, however, and went on to long career--with some significant interruptions--that is still lively today.

The Rhythm Dukes continued on until about 1972, weathering not only Bill Champlin's departure in 1970 but Jerry Miller's departure in 1971, when Moby Grape reformed once again. What little recorded evidence remains of The Rhythm Dukes suggested they were an excellent live band, although an actual live tape of the Dukes with Champlin remains elusive. The Rhythm Dukes have even been known to reform on occasion, including once in 1992 at the Crow's Nest in Santa Cruz, when Bill Champlin joined in once again.

7751 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA: Thee Experience: Performance List March-December 1969

2010-11-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

(a scan of an ad for the opening of Thee Experience, at 7751 Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles, for March 14, 1969)

Thee Experience was a rock club in Hollywood at 7751 Sunset Boulevard (at N. Genesee). While only open for about 9 months in 1969, it often gets mentioned in memoirs of the 60s Hollywood rock club. Despite the constant references, there is very little coherent information about the club. Mark and I have been researching performance dates at the club from a variety of sources, and although the resulting list is incomplete, it still provides a useful snapshot. I am posting my information as it currently stands, in the hope that readers can add information about performers or the circumstances around the club. I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who went to the club, even if they don't recall who they saw. It appears from published ads that the club was open 7 nights a week, but I do not know if there were live bands every night. I also gather that Thee Image was consciously attempting to be a cool hangout for musicians and industry folks, but I do not know if it was cleaner, louder or had better food, or just depended on a sort of vibe.

Background
Thee Experience operator Marshall Brevetz had been been an important player in the Miami rock scene. He had a Miami club in late 1967 called Thee Experience, but by early 1968 he needed a bigger place. He found a disused bowling alley and converted it to a psychedelic ballroom called Thee Image. A Tampa, FL group called The Motions moved to Miami and became the house band, changing their name to Blues Image. Thee Image became a major stop on the fledgling underground rock circuit, and most of the top bands played there in 1968 and early 1969. Brevetz also played a key role in the December 1968 Hollywood Pop Festival in Florida, along with future Woodstock promoter Michael Lang. By the end of 1968, however, the Blues Image had been encouraged by the likes of Frank Zappa and Eric Burdon to relocate to Los Angeles, and they did so. Brevetz followed Blues Image to Southern California.

The middle 60s had been the high water mark of live rock on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, with the legendary Whisky Au Go Go as the most famous location. By 1969, the Whisky was still thriving, and the record companies were clustered around Hollywood, but as the rock market had become much bigger, the best live bands often bypassed the Sunset Strip as the venues were simply too small. It appears that Hollywood had become more of a hangout and less of a place for touring bands, and smaller clubs that had really been conceived as dance clubs weren't as conducive for the kind of business being conducted in Hollywood.

From what I can tell, Thee Experience was planned as a place where industry people could hang out, and record companies could book their newest bands, giving industry people and local tastemakers a chance to hear them and spread the word. Casual jamming seems to have been encouraged, and there are numerous (if rather vague) tales of numerous players sitting in whenever they were in town. With studios and record companies in Los Angeles and many musicians making their home in Southern California, the idea that a civilian could go to see a hip new band and potentially rub shoulders with the industry and see a late night jam with some heavy players seems very enticing.

The only feature I know for sure about the decor of Thee Experience was that its front had a giant mural of Jimi Hendrix, and the front door was his mouth. Although this seems quite weird, Marshall Brevetz was apparently friendly with Hendrix (and many other stars) so while he may not have had formal permission, Hendrix must have at least been somewhat OK with it (in any case, he seems to have shown up to jam one night in June). Apparently there was a light show, which may have been a little outdated for style conscious LA, but I can't say that for sure. In various references to Thee Image, there are general references to the fact that the club had extremely pretty waitresses, but that may have been a Hollywood thing (and may still be) rather than specifically associated with Thee Image.

The list of performers that we have uncovered generally features bands that were newly signed to labels, or had just released an album, or were on their first National tour. As a result, a number of interesting bands played there, although not big stars. There appears to have been a number of interesting guest appearances, but they are much harder to pin down, and I have only referred to them here when I can identify a date. Anyone with additional information, corrections, insights or recovered memories (real or imagined) is encouraged to Comment or email me.

THEE EXPERIENCE PERFORMANCE LIST March-December 1969
March 14, 1969: T.I.M.E/Blues Image/Steve Young/Magical Berri Lee
No group was listed in the ad for the grand opening on March 14 (above), but Marc managed to figure out who played. Friends and namesake Blues Image had been signed by Atco and had released their debut album in February 1969, so in that respect they fit the Thee Experience mold: hip, connected and with a debut album on a major label.

T.I.M.E was a new band socially connected to Steppenwolf. Steve Young was a singer/songwriter. I have no idea about Berri Lee and his or her magic.

Marc discovered that Thee Experience was apparently open every night of the week. We assume that groups like Rockin Foo played on the weeknights, and the relatively bigger names played the weekends.

March 27-29, 1969: Alice Cooper/Slim Harpo/Rockin Foo
Alice Cooper (a band at the time, rather than just lead singer Vincent Furnier) had been signed to Frank Zappa's Bizarre label (a Warners subsidiary), but they would not release their debut album until August.

April 3, 1969: Albert Collins/Linn County
April 4-5, 1969: T.I.M.E./Albert Collins/Linn County
Linn County was a Cedar Rapids, IA band that had relocated to San Francisco. They had already released their first album on Mercury.

April 10-12, 1969: AB Skhy/Fair Befall/Rockin Foo
AB Skhy were a progressive blues band from Milwuakee, WI, who had recently relocated to San Francisco. They featured organist Howard Wales.

April 17, 1969: Blues Image/Blues Magoos/Rockin Foo
This seems like a fairly late performance for The Blues Magoos.

April 18, 1969: Blues Image/Southwind/Rockin Foo/Black Pearl
Southwind were from Oklahoma, but they had relocated to Los Angeles. They had an obscure debut album, and then released a 1970 album on Blue Thumb, Ready To Ride. Singer/guitarist John "Moon" Martin had success later as a songwriter, including "Cadillac Walk" (Mink DeVille) and "Bad Case Of Loving You" (Robert Palmer).

April 19, 1969: Pogo/Blues Image/Rockin Foo
Pogo was still a fairly new group at this time. Their first album would not be released until May, by which time there name had been changed to Poco. The group was probably a quartet at this time, as bassist Randy Meisner had left during the recording of their debut. Guitarist Jim Messina took over the bass chores during this period.

April 24-25, 1969: Flying Burrito Brothers/Junior Markham and The Tulsa Rhythm Review/Bobby Doyle
Although the Flying Burrito Brothers had been together for some time, they had played very few live shows. Despite their immense talent and wonderful songwriting, they were a very erratic live band.

I'm fairly certain that Junior Markham and the Tulsa Rhythm Review were a loose aggregation of Oklahoma area players like Don Nix, Jessie Ed Davis and Jimmy Karstein. These guys were studio regulars and toured with different acts, but they liked to have some fun on their own. Delaney and Bonnie and Friends were a similar organization, and they may have shared some members.

May 1-3, 1969: Colwell-Winfield Blues Band/T.I.M.E/Blues Magoos

May 8-10, 1969: Screaming Lord Sutch/Mighty Fat/Fields
Lord Sutch, an English rock and roller known as Screaming Lord Sutch, was a legendary English figure, sort of a pre-Beatles Alice Cooper. Despite Sutch's lack of vocal talent, he was a charismatic and entertaining character.

May 15, 1969: Illinois Speed Press/Linn County/C.K. Strong
May 16, 1969: Linn County/C.K. Strong
May 17, 1969: Blues Image/Linn County/C.K. Strong
Illinois Speed Press had been signed by Columbia and relocated to Los Angeles. They had just released their first album. CK Strong featured singer Lynn Carey, later to become a sort of legend due to the album cover of her of next band, Mama Lion (google it yourself, but not at work).

May 22-24: Joanne Vent/Congress Of Wonders/Rockin Foo

May 27-28, 1969: John Lee Hooker/Earl Hooker/Blues Image

May 29-31, 1969: John Lee Hooker/Earl Hooker/Golden Earring

May 29-31, 1969: John Lee Hooker/Golden Earring/Earl Hooker
Golden Earring were already a popular group in Holland, but not known in the States. Some years later they would have a big Top 40 hit with "Radar Love." I think they still perform.

June 5, 1969: Sons of Champlin/Tsong
The Sons Of Champlin were a funky, sophisticated band from San Francisco who had just released their first album on Capitol, Loosen Up Naturally.

June 6-7, 1969: Blues Image/Tsong

June 8, 1969: Tsong

June 9-11, 1969: Joe Cocker and The Grease Band/Bluesberry Jam
Joe Cocker and The Grease Band were on tbeir first American tour, and this would probably have been one of their first Stateside shows. Bluesberry Jam was a local blues group. They would later evolve into the group P, G and E.

June 12, 1969: Southwind/Bangor Flying Circus
June 13-14, 1969: Blues Image/Southwind/Bangor Flying Circus

June 16-17, 1969: Lord Sutch
Apparently Jimi Hendrix showed up to jam one night.

June 19, 1969: Larry Coryell/Bonzo Dog Band
June 20-21, 1969: Larry Coryell/Bluesberry Jam
The story of the Bonzos is too long (and too unbelievable) to tell here, but they were an influential, one-of-a-kind band whose impact far outweighed their modest record sales. Anyone lucky enough to have seen the show would have, among other things, found out the musical answer to the age-old question "Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?"

June 26, 1969: Roxy/Rockin Foo
June 27-28, 1969: Blues Magoos/Roxy/Rockin Foo

July 3, 1969: Eric Burdon/C.K. Strong
Eric Burdon's activities during this period were somewhat mysterious. He wasn't playing with War yet, but he was supporting a Best Of album by playing a few shows. Its not clear who he played with, but he did at least some shows with Blues Image, so perhaps he played with them here. Possibly he just sat in with someone who was booked at the club. However, since Burdon was billed for three nights at Fillmore West on the weekend (July 4-6), this show may have been a warmup gig to get the music together.

July 4-5, 1969: Lonnie Mack/Southwind
July 6, 1969: Lonnie Mack/C.K. Strong

July 10-12, 1969: Illinois Speed Press/Charity

July 13, 1969: Fields/Jerome

July 18-19, 1969: Poco/The Baby/C.K. Strong

July 20, 1969: Jerome/Armageddon/Fat Legs

July 21-23, 1969: Charlie Musslewhite/Roxy/Fat Legs

August 7-10, 1969: Grand Funk Railroad,/The Baby/Stoneface
Grand Funk Railroad had just released their Capitol debut On Time. Its clear that Thee Experience was positioning itself to be the Hollywood debut for bands that had just released their debut albums. Such bookings probably guaranteed that the record companies bought a lot of tickets and paid for a lot of drinks.

August 11-13, 1969: Tyrannosaurus Rex
Tyrannosaurus Rex were a hippie folk duo at this time, featuring guitarist Marc Bolan and conga player Steve Took. They had a sort of spacey, Tolkienesque vibe, quite a long way from the hard rocking glam music that would make Bolan famous in T-Rex.

August 14-17, 1969: Spencer Davis Group/SRC
The Spencer Davis group had reconstituted itself after Steve Winwood had departed. SRC was a well regarded power trio from Detroit.

August 18-20, 1969: Buddy Miles Express/Thumper

August ?, 1969: Bonzo Dog Band

September 4, 1969: Elvin Bishop/The Crow/Sun Country
Elvin Bishop was signed to Bill Graham's label, a Columbia subsidiary. I'm not sure of the exact timing of his debut album, which was released sometime in 1969, but although Bishop was an established club and concert attraction in San Francisco, this would have been an opportunity to introduce him to the Los Angeles based music industry.

September 5-7, 1969: Delaney and Bonnie and Friends/Sun Country
In 1968, Delaney and Bonnie had mainly been playing in the Topanga Corral in Topanga Canyon. They had a number of fine transplants from Oklahoma and thereabouts playing in their group, many of them also working days in the studio, such as Carl radle and Leon Russell. Delaney and Bonnie had released a little noticed album on Stax in early 1969, but in mid-1969 they had released their album Accept No Substitute on Elektra. The album came to the attention of Eric Clapton (via George Harrison, apparently) and Delaney & Bonnie had opened for Blind Faith for their mammoth Summer '69 American tour.

September 8-11, 1969: Blues Image

September 18-20, 1969: PG&E/The Litter/South
PG& E had evolved from the Bluesberries.

September 21-23, 1969: Merryweather/Jerome
Neil Merryweather was a Canadian musician who had come to California via Chicago.

September 24, 1969: Jean Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio
This show was recorded for a live album with George Duke on Fender piano, John Heard on bass and Dick Bock on drums. There were probably several more shows. These were Jean Luc Ponty's American debut, and it seems that these shows were how Frank Zapppa discovered both Ponty and George Duke.

September ?, 1969: James Cotton

October 2-5, 1969: Flying Burrito Brothers/Lighthouse/Rockin Foo
Lighthouse was a Canadian group led by drummer Skip Propop.

October 10-11, 1969: Poco/Stonehenge/Smoke
TIm Schmidt had joined Poco as bassist by this time, returning them to a quintet.

October 16-18, 1969: Big Mama Thornton/Bluesberry
Since PG& E had evolved out of the Bluesberries, I'm not sure who "Bluesberry" might have been. Perhaps part of the band kept going under the old name.

October 19-22, 1969: Southwind/Linn County

October 23-26, 1969: Charles Lloyd/Baby Tsong/Bonzo Dog Band
Tenor saxophonist/flautist Charles Lloyd did not tour that much during this period, as he was mostly studying Transcendental Meditation in Los Angeles, but he was still an exceptional player.

October 29-November 1, 1969: Albert Collins

November 20-23, 1969: Red Hot And Low Down with Barry Goldberg

November 28-29, 1969: Frank Zappa
Zappa had broken up the Mothers in August. His lineup was either FZ, Artie Tripp, Jeff Simmons and Ian Underwood, or FZ, Underwood, Captain Beefheart, Sugarcane Harris, Max Bennett and a drummer, possibly Ralph Humphrey. Zappa played gigs with various one-off lineups during this period.

December 1, 1969: Richard Groove Holmes

December 4-6, 1969: Captain Beefheart/TIME
I do not know who was in Captain Beefheart's band at this time. TIME was a group of mostly Toronto transplants, socially and musically connected to Steppenwolf.

After December, the trail of Thee Experience grows cold. I think the club closed around this time, but closures are never advertised like openings. The idea of a destination club for up and coming bands was an idea somewhat ahead of its time, although it would be successfully executed a few later when The Roxy opened. Marshall Brevetz would go on to open Thee Club in 1970, a sort of rock and roll supper club. This too was ahead of its time, but in 1970 rock fans did not have the money or inclination to pay for a fine meal as part of their rock and roll menu. As fans got older, ate better and had more stable incomes, the idea began to make more sense. To some extent this concept was copied by the Rainbow Bar and Grill, upstairs from The Roxy, although the Rainbow did not have performers.

Marshall Brevetz was an interesting character, and friends with many of the bands he booked. He seems to have a great feel for seeing trends before they happened, whether outdoor rock festivals or happening nightclubs, but he never managed to put all the pieces together. He went on to produce films and manage Bobby Womack, among other things, and he would probably have quite an interesting story to tell, but he passed away in 1986.

Forest Gate Center, Woodgrange Road, London E7: The Upper Cut Club, December 21-31-1966

2010-09-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

(a scan of the advert for the opening of the Upper Cut Club, London, December 1966-h/t Ross)

My archeaological and prosopgraphical research into rock history has a natural center in the Bay Area in 1966. While San Francisco and Bay Area were critically important to the history of rock music since then, particularly the history of live rock music, its important to look at other scenes periodically in order to consider the ways in which other environments were materially different. 1966 London was a genuinely swinging place, and thanks to the Beatles and The Rolling Stones the first Capital City of Rock. When Rock moved from being "popular" to "Art," English bands were right at the forefront. They were led by the Beatles, of course, but London had no lack of cool, interesting and way out musicians ready to join the transformation of the rock music landscape triggered by the prominence of the Fillmore and Avalon in San Francisco.

The above ad is for the opening of The Upper Cut Club in East London, which began operations on December 21, 1966. While most of the bands listed were popular in London at the time, they mostly fell into the category of the cool and hip rather than huge stars, even though some of them would become just that. Many of the performers would go on to play the West Coast concert circuit in the coming year, or had other important connections, but the context in which they were playing points up some interesting distinctions between the American and English rock market.

Billy Walker was a popular heavyweight boxer, back when boxing was a nationally popular sport. Handsome and engaging, he had a status similar to David Beckham or Derek Jeter today, an athlete whose appeal extended beyond simply fans of his accomplishments in the ring. Obviously, Walker had partners in the venture, but he was a genuine celebrity in his own right. Chris Welch of Melody Maker reviewed The Who on opening night, and reported a celebrity audience from both show business and the sports world. Note also that while rock bands are only playing on weekends at The Upper Cut, a 15-piece show band (The Mack Sound) plays every night of the week. Show bands were a UK phenomenon, to my knowledge, but I believe they generally included a wide variety of music--big band, pop, soul, music hall and traditional, among others--and were intended to appeal to a broad audience. In the midst of this, some of the hippest bands in London were booked, something that would be hard to fathom in the American rock universe at the time.

One of the often forgotten differences between the American and English rock markets was the vast size of the American continent, which implicitly emphasized regionalism. This is not to say there were not profound differences in different parts of Great Britain, but the entire English music industry was centralized in London. The Beatles were the pride of Liverpool, and proud of it, but they too moved to London in order to become successful. Although there were concert venues all over Britain, London was central enough that a London-based band still had access to the entire country.

In the United States, however, vast and often somewhat empty Western states had entirely different economics, cultures and opportunities than those in the Midwest, South and East. Thus bands or styles of music could be popular and lucrative in one part of the country while having no impact on any other part. Even performers who flew to concert dates--as many did--had a hard time actually covering the country in its entirety, so artists often had pockets of popularity spread around a region if not the entire country (this had a lot to do with radio at the time, but that is outside of the scope of this blog).

England, however, had centralized radio, a centralized music industry and its major economic areas accessible from that place. Thus even the most forward looking bands appeared on TV shows or played variety shows at various major venues, in between playing regular shows for their primary audience.

The Beatles moved to London, as was accepted practice for English success--but if Frank Zappa had moved to Chicago or the Jefferson Airplane had relocated to New York, it would have been seen as "inauthentic" in the American market at the time. Bands from a small place could move to a larger place, but bands who found success in a region in the 1960s were branded "sell outs" if they re-located to a major Music capital like New York or Los Angeles. By the early 1970s, American regionalism had started to fade, as the rock industry became nationalized, but in 1966 American rock music was very much rooted in its locations. Underground rock bands did make occasional appearances on local TV shows of various kinds, but they were the exception rather than the rule, and usually it was because the show didn't realize what sort of barbarians they had signed up.

The only American rock establishment that compares to The Upper Cut would be the fabled Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood. However, while the Whisky was initially a place to see and be seen in Hollywood when it opened in January 1964, it initially featured the same performer almost every night (Johnny Rivers). When the Whisky stopped being the place to see and be seen (or at least was not as glamorous to film stars and the like) it started focusing on hip rock groups (some of whom played The Upper Cut). Yet the Whisky was never really a celebrity joint that booked hip rock groups at the same time, but rather went serially through a phase of being a celebrity hotspot and then a rock club that booked hip bands.

I do not know how long The Upper Cut lasted--probably not that long. I do know that The Small Faces (the classic lineup with Steve Marriott, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane and Kenny Jones) did have a regular residency there at one time. Although I am hardly expert on London geography, I do know that The Upper Cut was in the part of London where the members of The Small Faces actually grew up, so that's not so surprising.

The other claim to fame of The Upper Cut seems to be that Jimi Hendrix apparently wrote "Purple Haze" at the club. Whether that was on Boxing Day isn't clear to me, and in any case I'm not certain how it was determined that Jimi wrote the song there, but it makes my point nicely. Here's Jimi Hendrix, newly arrived in England, writing his arguably most famous song at a club backed by a famous athlete and patronized by celebrities. Imagine if Syd Barrett had written "See Emily Play" while booked at a New York club owned by Mickey Mantle and the disconnect is apparent.

Generally speaking, English bands in the late 60s were more professionally competent than their American counterparts, but Americans were often freer to experiment in different ways that wouldn't have been possible in the competitive London show business environment. The Grateful Dead, The Velvet Underground and The 13th Floor Elevators were all unique, and uniquely different, aggregations that would have had a hard time succeeding in England. Yet all three of those bands stumbled sideways into becoming electric rock bands, while English groups like The Who and The Spencer Davis Group were ultra-competent. It seems simplistic to suggest that the size and isolation of American regions had a profound influence on the music, but it is a point so rarely made that I felt it was important to highlight, and the first week of The Upper Cut presents itself as a uniquely 1966 London experience.

Notes On The Bands

December 21, 1966: The Who
The Who's opening performance was favorably reviewed by Chris Welch of Melody Maker (31 Dec 66 issue). Highlights included "Happy Jack," "Substitute" and the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann."

All the shows (except Boxing Day) are from 7:30-11:30 pm. London venues closed considerably earlier than most American nightclubs. I have to assume that The Mack Sound played their sets, and then the headliners did their turn. As far as I know, sets for headliners at places like these were typically about 30-40 minutes.

December 22, 1966: The Easybeats
The Easybeats were the biggest band in Australia, and Australia's first important pop music export. All the members had emigrated as children to Australia from elsewhere, so they had a symbolic importance to the country beyond sheer popularity. At this time, The Easybeats would have just relocated from Syndey to London, and in November 1966 they had released their most famous song, "Friday On My Mind." Songwriters and guitarists George Young and Harry Vanda returned to Australia in the mid-1970s, largely as producers. Their most famous productions were of the band featuring George Young's younger brothers, Angus and Malcolm, AC-DC.

December 23, 1966: Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich
This British quintet was quite popular worldwide and remains so to this day. They were more pop oriented than some "British Invasion" bands, and did not make the transition to the harder rocking Fillmore circuit.

December 24, 1966: Eric Burdon And The Animals
Although few realized it at the time, Eric Burdon had reconfigured the Animals from an organ-based band to a twin guitar attack that featured Vic Briggs (from Brian Auger's Trinity) and John Weider. The expansive style of the new Animals was custom made for the new rock circuit that would arise in America for the balance of the 1960s.

December 26, 1966: Jimmy Hendrix Experience (Afternoon-2:30-5:30)
The advert helpfully suggests BOXING DAY FOR ALL THE FAMILY. Yeah, bring Gran and the kids. Good times.

December 26, 1966: The Pretty Things
The Pretty Things were a fine and underrated band from that era, somewhere between The Rolling Stones and The Who. Their hair was very long, and their behavior shockingly bad. Had they ever made it to America they could have been extremely popular, if their notoriety didn't get them exiled (like it did in New Zealand), but it was not to be.

December 30, 1966: The Spencer Davis Group
The original Spencer Davis Group was supposed to be one of the finest live bands in England during the era, not surprising given that the key player was then 18-year old Steve Winwood, who sang like Ray Charles while playing lead guitar, organ and piano. The other band members (guitarist Davis, Steve's brother Muff Winwood on bass and Pete York on drums) were solid too, and they had great original material to go with apparently tremendous covers.

December 31, 1966: Geno Washington and The Ram Jam Band
Geno Washington and The Ram Jam band were a very popular English R&B band, so they did not export themselves to the United States. Lead singer Geno Washington was an African American (from Indiana) who would sit in with local bands while assigned to an Air Force base near London. When he left the service, he took up guitarist Pete Gage's offer to become lead singer with the Ram Jam Band. The group released some popular live albums in the 1960s, but I have never heard them.

660 Great Highway, San Francisco Family Dog On The Great Highway: December 12-14, 1969 Canned Heat/Rhythm Dukes (w/Jerry Miller)/Bob McPharlin

2010-08-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

(A brief article and a clip from Ralph Gleason's column from the Friday, December 12, 1969 San Francisco Chronicle)

Family Dog: Canned Heat and Bob McPharlin will appear tonight and tomorrow night at the Family Dog on the Great Highway next to Playland. Canned Heat is now featuring Harvey Mandel.

Ad Libs: At the Lion's Share, San Anselmo (F&S), Joy of Cooking, Personal Friends, Jim Trout: Sun: Thompson Brothers...at the Family Dog (F, S&S) Canned Heat (w. Harvey Mandel, Rhythm Dukes (w. Jerry Miller), Bob McPharlin...at the Both And (F, S&S) Big Black...at the Loma Prieta Ballroom (SJ State, Sat.) Mike Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites

In line with some recent research I have done on rather obscure shows at the Family Dog On The Great Highway, also known as Family Dog At The Beach, at 660 Great Highway in San Francisco, some tapes from that venue have surfaced. One tape in particular appears to have The Rhythm Dukes on one side and Canned Heat on the other, and the helpful soul who is circulating the tape was unable to date it precisely, but I can go a long way towards locking it down. Canned Heat and the Rhythm Dukes played the Family Dog on the weekend of December 12-14, 1969, and there is every reason to believe that both these performances on the tape come from one of those nights.

The Canned Heat tape was identified as in the 69-70 period, based on the band's personnel: Bob Hite (vocals), Harvey Mandel (lead guitar), Alan Wilson (guitar, harmonica, vocals), Larry Taylor (bass) and Fito Parra (drums). Serious Family Dog collectors were aware of the Family Dog poster advertising Canned Heat and Bob McPharlin at the Dog (FD19691212), even though the artist is unknown. The tape of Canned Heat's performance is excellent, similar in style to their 1970 album Live In Europe.

The Rhythm Dukes tape is a considerably more exotic bird. The Rhythm Dukes are mostly known today as a short collaboration between Jerry Miller of Moby Grape and Bill Champlin, when both Moby Grape and The Sons were on hiatus. A fine cd was released privately, albeit somewhat officially, recorded in April 1970. Although Bill Champlin appears to have played a show with the Rhythm Dukes as early as January 7, 1970 at the Matrix, he did not join up with them regularly until after The Sons "Farewell" appearance at the Contra Costa Fairgrounds on February 21, 1970 (I realize The Sons are still playing today, but Ralph Gleason reported it as a sort of farewell in anticipation of a 5-month hiatus).

The Family Dog Dukes tape sounds quite different from the Champlin/Miller version of the band. The person in possession of it sent it to Bill Champlin, who reported that it was indeed the Rhythm Dukes but that Champlin was not yet a member, which explains why Miller is reported as the only vocalist. This also helps to date the tape somewhat, as well. The original formulation of The Rhythm Dukes featured both Miller and fellow Graper Don Stevenson, along with bassist John Barrett and drummer Fuzzy Oxendine, all of whom shared a house in Felton in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Although Stevenson had been the drummer in Moby Grape, he played guitar and shared vocals in the Dukes. The original Rhythm Dukes did one tour in the Summer of 1969, but they were often billed as Moby Grape, much to their dismay. Sometime in the Fall, Stevenson left the group. Since Stevenson (nor anyone else, apparently) sings lead on the tape, this dates it to the period between Stevenson and Champlin.

The Rhythm Dukes mostly played in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the South Bay, and this show at the Family Dog seems to be one of their earlier forays into San Francisco. The band appears to be a five-piece on the tape: Miller on lead guitar and vocals, bass and drums (surely Barrett and Oxendine), a sax player and someone alternating between guitar and electric piano. I can only speculate on the identity of the last two players. Saxophone can be a relatively easy instrument to make a guest appearance, so it may have been just a friend sitting in. Oxendine and Barrett had been in a band called Boogie that rehearsed with the Sons at Sausalito Heliport, and there were two sax players in the group, apparently called Goose and Crow, so perhaps one of them was part of the group.

As to the keyboard/guitar player, a likely suspect might be Dale Ockerman. Ockerman is a fine player on both keyboards and guitar, and acknowledges jamming with Miller at the time. I had been under the impression he replaced Champlin in late 1970, but perhaps he also preceded him as well. Ockerman lived in Boulder Creek and attended Pacific High School (too much of a digression to explain here), but being only 16 at the time may have been an unwise choice for a band of professionals looking to play bars. When Ockerman turned 18 in 1971, he went on the road as a member of Quicksilver Messenger Service.

The Rhythm Dukes had a reunion at a club called The Crow's Nest on September 25, 1992. Champlin, Miller and Oxendine played, and I believe Dale Ockerman did as well. Certainly Ockerman participated with Jerry Miller at the Summer of Love 'Reunion' in 2007. So Ockerman seems as likely as anyone to be the mystery member of The Rhythm Dukes at The Family Dog in December of 1969.

Some Notes About February 20-21, 1970

For the tiny universe of people concerned with Sons Of Champlin Performance History (probably just me), it has always been troublesome that there was a Family Dog poster for February 20-21, 1970 (above) featured both Big Brother and The Holding Company and the Rhythm Dukes with Bill Champlin and Jerry Miller. Since I had discovered that the Sons were booked at Berkeley Community Theater on February 20 with The Youngbloods and February 21 at Contra Costa Fairgrounds (in Antioch), I had always wondered about the conflict. Newspaper research resolved the problem, however.

Ralph Gleason reported in his February 18, 1970 column that the Sons were taking a break from performing. Ralph Gleason also reported in his Friday, February 20 Chronicle column that The Family Dog will feature Big Brother along with Cat Mother and The All Nite Newsboys. Since Gleason also reviews the Sons performance in Berkeley, there can be no doubt the Sons played Berkeley and Antioch, and the Rhythm Dukes were replaced at the Family Dog by Cat Mother. Since Gleason alludes to Champlin joining the Rhythm Dukes when the Sons go on a planned 5-month break, I have to assume some well-paying bookings came up at the last minute and Champlin delayed joining the Rhythm Dukes for a few weeks.

660 Great Highway, San Francisco Family Dog On The Great Highway January 30-31, 1970: Jefferson Airplane/Osceola

2010-08-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

To some extent, Archaeology is about uncovering mysteries, so here's one that's recently come to light for me. The above is a clip from Ralph J Gleason's San Francsico Chronicle column on Wednesday, January 28, 1970. I realize its hard to decipher, so I will quote the clip

...at the Lion's Share (San Anselmo) tomorrow night Sir Douglas Quintet, Shades of Joy...The Jefferson Airplane and Osceola will be at the Family Dog this weekend...at The Rehearsal tonight and tomorrow night John Antle, Jim Britton

Buried at the end of Gleason's usual lengthy recitation of upcoming rock. jazz and folk shows in the Bay Area in the coming days is a reference to a Jefferson Airplane show at Chet Helm's Family Dog, presumably on January 30 and 31, 1970 (Friday and Saturday).

As far as lists go, this Jefferson Airplane show is a new one for me. Without question, the best list for Family Dog shows is Ross's list, and I see no sign of it here, and the various Jefferson Airplane lists that circulate do not include it. From that perspective, its always great to add another show in the interests of accuracy. However, there are a number of aspects to this booking that make it all the more curious, with respect to both the Family Dog and the Airplane.

Family Dog, January 1970
The Family Dog's history is complex and obscure after it was forced out of the Avalon Ballroom in December 1968. Noise complaints generated a review of the venue's city issued Dance Permit, itself a strange anachronism. Helms complained in subsequent years that he could have simply paid off the police and gotten around the review but he refused to do so (there is good reason to believe this account). However, the Family Dog's finances were always tenuous after the failed effort to open another branch in Denver in late 1967, so the battle over the Dance Permit may have given Helms a chance to rethink his business.

The Family Dog On The Great Highway opened on June 13, 1969 with the Jefferson Airplane. The site was at the former Edgewater Ballroom, part of the Playland At The Beach complex. Despite the dominance of the Fillmore West, many fine bands played the smaller FDGH in the Summer of 1969. However, after a "strike" involving Light Show operators in August, 1969, the Family Dog was once again in dire financial straits. While the Family Dog continued to put on shows in their ballroom throughout the balance of 1969, the fine posters advertising the events were rarely produced, and based on contemporary newspapers advertising and promotion seemed somewhat haphazard.

Ross and I, among others, have relentlessly trolled through old flyers, Berkeley underground papers and various daily newspapers of the time, and yet we are still struggling to come up with a complete list of shows. Thus it is remarkable to find a Family Dog show in January 1970 featuring the Airplane, probably the most successful band to ever play the Dog. This "lost" Airplane show suggests that Chet Helms had found a new source of finance to re-invigorate his enterprise.

By the end of 1969, The Family Dog On The Great Highway was producing regular shows, but headliners were mostly local club bands like Osceola or Cleveland Wrecking Company. A few old Avalon stalwarts (like Canned Heat on December 12-14) headlined some shows there, but that very well may have been as much a favor to Helms as anything else. The bills in the previous month had been

December 26-28, 1969: Lonnie Mack/Osceola/AB Skhy
January 1-3, 1970: Osceola/Cleveland Wrecking Company/Devil's Kitchen
January 4, 1970: Osceola/Cleveland Wrecking Company/Mendelbaum/Phoenix
January 11-13, 1970 Chambers Brothers and Friends

Of these groups, only the Chambers Brothers and Lonnie Mack had a national profile, and the Chambers Brothers were past their commercial prime, and in any case old regulars from the Avalon. Many of the other groups were fine bands, but they were all regulars at The Matrix rather than Fillmore West, and FDGH seemed to be a Western extension of the SF club scene.

In contrast, the Airplane show presaged an exciting month:

January 30-31, 1970: Jefferson Airplane/Osceola
February 4, 1970: NET TV Special, "A Night At The Family Dog" Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Santana/Kimberly (invited audience, broadcast in April 1970)
February 6-7, 1970: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Freedom Highway/Mike Seeger
February 13-14, 1970: Steve Miller Band/Elvin Bishop Group
February 20-21, 1970: Big Brother and The Holding Company with Nick Gravenites/Cat Mother and The All Night Newsboys (Cat Mother replaced Rhythm Dukes)
February 28-March 1, 1970: Grateful Dead/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
March 6-8, 1970: Lee Michaels/Rhythm Dukes with Jerry Miller and Bill Champlin/Robert Savage
March 13-15, 1970: Country Joe and The Fish/Joy Of Cooking
March 20-22, 1970: Big Brother and The Holding Company/Kaleidoscope/Devil's Kitchen
March 27-29, 1970: Youngbloods/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Jeffrey Cain
April 3-5, 1970: Eric Burdon and War/Ballin' Jack

Although many old friends seemed to be returning for Helms, all of these groups were working bands who could not readily have given up weekends for free, so their had to be some expectation of a payday. In Stephen Gaskin's 1980 book Haight Ashbury Flashbacks he alludes to attending meetings with Chet Helms at the home of some potential backer, so we know that Helms was working to find a new partner. Bill Graham (of all people) has alluded to loaning money to help Helms, but I think that was in the late '69 period. Based on the sudden improvement in bookings from January 30 to April 3, along with actual posters (which cost money), Helms clearly found someone as a silent partner. Their very silence suggests either a rich hippie or downtown businessman who preferred to not to advertise his investment, or a partner in a "business" that shunned publicity.

The other interesting event in the January/February 1970 period has to do with the Grateful Dead. While the Grateful Dead were frantically touring the country, trying to pay pack the debts they owed to Warner Brothers Records, their manager Lenny Hart was hatching a plan to merge the Grateful Dead operations with the Family Dog, and move Dead headquarters from Marin County to the San Francisco Dog. Musically and culturally, this was a very interesting idea, and if the Dead had had their own concert facility starting in February 1970, with an experienced booker like Chet Helms running it while they toured, San Francisco rock history might have taken some very interesting turns indeed.

The only problem with the Dead/Dog merger was that Lenny Hart was not an honest businessman. By the middle of February, the Grateful Dead would realize that he was absconding with their money and fire him, a difficult thing even though he was drummer Mickey Hart's father. In the end, Lenny was found to have taken $155,000 from the Dead, a huge sum for 1970, effectively bankrupting the band. The Dead were forced to tour endlessly just to make ends meet, and as a result made an entire generation of Northeastern college students lifelong Deadheads.

According to Dead biographer Dennis McNally, however, Chet Helms sniffed out Hart's perfidy while the Dead were on the road, sometime in the January-February period. Helms had a reputation as keeping sloppy back-of-an-envelope records, but he wasn't a con man. When Helms asked to see the Dead's account books and Lenny Hart refused, Helms called off the merger (the Dead were in Oregon, Hawaii, New Orleans or St. Louis).

A con man like Lenny Hart would not have wanted to merge with the Family Dog unless their were assets he could co-opt. In late 1969 the Family Dog was apparently even more broke than the Dead--and that's saying a lot--yet Lenny found the Dead's arrangements fine. Presumably having stripped their assets bare, he needed another target, and Lenny's eagerness to merge with the Dog suggests some deep pockets to pick. Helms was enough of a businessman to call off the merger and promote the Dog for one last hurrah in February and March. However, the distant location of The Great Highway and the rising costs of the rock market doomed the Dog in any case, and it only lasted through August of 1970.

Jefferson Airplane, January 1970
The activities of Jefferson Airplane in January 1970 are quite murky, and the discovery of this January 30-31, 1970 show adds a little clarity, though not much. The Airplane had released their hugely successful Volunteers album in November 1969, and they were bigger than ever. Existing 1970 Airplane chronologies put them in Hawaii from January 22-26 with the Grateful Dead, but this unlikely event did not take place (the Dead played two nights with local bands in support). In fact, it appears the band only played twice in December (Altamont on Dec 6 and Winterland on New Year's Eve) and one more time at the Family Dog, playing an abbreviated set at the NET special on February 4, 1970. The NET show appears to have been Spencer Dryden's last performance with the Jefferson Airplane.

Thus if the Family Dog Airplane shows on January 30-31 really happened, they would be the last complete concerts by the "classic" Airplane (Grace, Paul, Marty, Jorma, Jack, Spencer). Since the activities of the Family Dog in this period are always murky, and we only have Ralph Gleason's single reference to go on, its hard to say for certain whether the shows occurred or not. A couple of speculative points worthy of consideration:

The Jefferson Airplane had played at least one "stealth" concert at the Family Dog before, on September 6, 1969, when they played with the Grateful Dead (and Owsley thoughtfully taped it).
Although we put the Airplane today in the same category as the Dead or Country Joe and The Fish, in 1970 they were one of the biggest draws in rock and could easily have sold out the Family Dog on the basis of word-of-mouth alone. Thus the absence of a flyer is not in itself significant.
On the other hand, the San Francisco rock scene was very much like High School, and the Airplane were not part of Chet Helms's "set." They only played the Avalon one weekend (July 22-23, 1966), and while they did play the Denver Dog (November 7-8, 1967) they did not have the long history of regular shows with Helms that some of the other bands did. This fact is another suggestion that the Airplane's show was part of a business arrangement rather than a personal favor.
Even more oddly, the Airplane were not planning a tour and the drummer was about to quit. They had less of an incentive to play a stealth show than they might have at other times.

Still, given the run of shows that followed the weekend of January 30-31, 1970, there is every reason to think that Jefferson Airplane made the shows. Since the show was hardly publicized--it didn't have to be--it never got reviewed, and no flyer or poster survives, but a few thousand people likely heard the last stand of the classic Jefferson Airplane at the edge of the continent in the San Francisco fog.

415 Geary Blvd, San Francisco, CA December 29, 1969: Big Brother and The Holding Company/Youngbloods/Ramblin Jack Elliott/Penny Nichols

2010-06-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

The underground rock explosion in San Francisco in the mid-1960s was critical in turning rock into big business, for good or for ill. With a city full of bands, all sorts of efforts were made to create successful rock promotions. Many of them remain largely mysteries. The above clipping from the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle of Monday, December 29, 1969 is one such mystery. The Geary Theater was and is San Francisco's premiere "legitimate" theater, but in 1969, even the Geary attempted to put on some sort of Holiday Rock Extravaganza. Lacking any other information, I will use the post to speculate on what might have been intended. Anyone with even the most fragmentary memories or information is encouraged to Comment or email me.

The Geary Theater
The Geary Theater, located at 415 Geary Boulevard near Mason Street (just East of Union Square), was completed in 1910, and has a capacity of 1,667 patrons. The great 1906 earthquake had destroyed all of San Francisco's theaters, but they were soon replaced. Although the elegant Geary has a complex and interesting history, in 1967 it became the home of the American Conservatory Theater. I am no historian of American theater, but even I know that ACT is a leading Western Theater company. It seems to have been no accident that a vibrant Theater company was established in the cultural ferment of San Francisco in the 1960s.

I can attest that by the 1970s, at any rate, when I saw their productions, while ACT put on many fine productions of 'classics' (George Bernard Shaw, etc), it also produced more cutting edge playwrights like Tom Stoppard. Today, ACT is still widely regarded, although I suspect it depends a little more heavily on more classic playwrights, like Tom Stoppard.

In any case, ACT took up residence in San Francisco in 1967, presenting year-round theater at the Geary as well as elsewhere. By 1974, ACT's reputation was so sterling that an extraordinary donation from the Ford Foundation allowed them to buy the Geary, which has remained their home ever since. I do not know the exact circumstances of the Geary Theater lease in 1969, but I have to assume that American Conservatory Theater at least generally controlled the facility, and if a rock show was put on there it was with ACT's approval if not outright cooperation. To my knowledge, this show has been the only rock show in the history of the Geary Theater.

The Concerts
The Datebook listing advertises 2 shows, at 2pm and 7pm. Although December 29 is a Monday, it is between Christmas and New Years, so there is a reasonable assumption that people will be free to attend the show. Monday night is also most likely to be the night that the regular ACT productions would be dark, so the theater would be available for a rock show. I can't help but think that the ACT business managers were looking for a chance to make a little extra money by booking a rock show on a Holiday Week Monday.

Although ACT is a well-established program today, in the 1960s all the major players at the Company were probably well shy of 40. Also, part of ACT's strength has always been that besides presenting excellent shows, they always had training programs and workshops for younger actors, so many of the participants at ACT would have been the same age as all the Fillmore rock bands. Actors and musicians always keep the same hours and are naturally inclined to each other, so I don't doubt there were many social connections between the younger theater community and the rock bands.

The Geary was presenting two shows, at 2pm and 7pm, with two different headliners and the same opening acts. The headliners were Big Brother and The Holding Company in the afternoon, and The Youngbloods in the evening. The opening acts were Ramblin Jack Elliott, Penny Nichols and The Zig Zag Follies. The choice of acts suggest a conscious effort to create a kind of "revue," which bespeaks a more theatrical approach to the show than the typical aggregation of rock bands. A look at the listing shows that it just says "Geary Theater" without an address, since the Chronicle assumes that everyone should know where the Geary was located. San Francisco exceptionalism aside, this suggests that this show was intended with more of the trappings an 'event' than a typical rock concert.

While the other performers at these concerts are known--if you're me--the Zig Zag Follies are entirely a mystery. It is self-evident today that 'Zig Zag' refers to a brand of rolling papers popular with pot smokers, but that was hardly self-evident in 1969 to people who weren't hippies. I can't help but think that the Zig Zag Follies were some of the younger members of the ACT Company, who prepared some sort of theatrical entertainment to go along with the rock bands. Even by 1971, "Zig Zag" would have been such an obvious doper reference that ACT may have frowned on (at least publicly), but at the time it was like saying "4:20"--in order to know, you had to know.

To my knowledge, this event was not repeated. I do not know whether this was due to a lack of financial success, or because of some constraint of the facility involving theatrical requirements (ACT may have been between productions, for example). Unlike many 60s stories, however, I doubt that there was any conflict between ACT, their staff and the rock bands, as they were all young, alive and living in San Francisco. Maybe this show was just another gig, but I suspec the Zig Zag Follies were more interesting than they might initially seem. Many famous actors got their start as junior members of ACT, so perhaps there are some celebrities involved in this story as well, but unless someone involved recalls it we may never know.

Notes On The Performers
Big Brother and The Holding Company with Nick Gravenites
Janis Joplin had left Big Brother in December of 1968, and the group had scattered somewhat. In Summer of 1969, the original four members of the band (Sam Andrews, James Gurley, Peter Albin and David Getz) got together again. They were a "name" band in San Francisco, but without their star attraction.

Nick Gravenites had been the leader of the Electric Flag, but his largest contribution to San Francisco rock was as a producer. He produced Quicksilver Messenger Service, and, ironically enough, Janis Joplin among many others. He actually recorded with Big Brother (on their 1970 and 71 albums), and performed with them periodically, but this is one of the few shows I know of where he was actually billed with them. He sounded very good with Big Brother, but the peculiar onus of "replacing" Janis made it difficult for the band to use different lead singers.

The Youngbloods
The Youngbloods had moved to San Francisco in September, 1967, and had established themselves as a San Francisco band. By late 1969, they were at their peak, as the re-release of their 1967 song "Get Together" had become a huge radio hit.

Ramblin Jack Elliott
Legendary folk singer Ramblin' Jack Elliott was actually a doctor's son from Brooklyn, but nonetheless he re-invented himself as a troubadour of the American West. Friend to Woody Guthrie and a huge influence on Bob Dylan and many others, by now he sounds familiar even if you've never heard him. In the 1960s, he was not widely known outside of Folk circles. He is a remarkably engaging, hypnotic performer in a way that does not translate well to recordings and is very difficult to explain to those who haven't seen him.

Penny Nichols
Penny Nichols had been an Orange County folksinger in 1965, who ended up touring Vietnam in 1966 as part of a folk duo. By 1967 she had moved to San Francisco, where she was a regular performer at the Fillmore and elsewhere (she opened for Traffic at Winterland in March, 1968, for example). She recorded a 1968 album for Buddah, and then went to England. By late 1969, she had returned, but for the next few decades she mostly wrote and recorded as a studio player (for more see here). This 1969 performance is the only one I can think of for this period, and leads me to suspect that there may have been some personal connection, as she was not a regular performer around the Bay Area at this time.

Hwy 14, Middleton, WI The Bunny Hop April 25, 1966: The Sir Douglas Quintette

2010-06-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

Some intriguing research finds only lead to more intrigue, which may never be resolved. The above ad is from the April 25, 1966 edition of the Capital Times in Wisconsin. On a Monday night, San Antonio's answer to the British Invasion, the Sir Douglas Quintette (sic) are playing a fairly large venue called The Bunny Hop. The ad says there is seating for 599, and the address is "2 Mi. W. of Middleton-Hwy 14" suggesting a rural rocking roadhouse.

The ad also says "Bring Your Wis. ID Card." I am fairly certain that Wisconsin had a drinking age of 18 rather than 21, and Middleton was a suburb of Madison, so many University of Wisconsin students would be expected. I assume the reference to "Wisconsin ID" cards was to discourage out-of-state drinkers from Northern Illinois, but perhaps there was a different reason. In any case, the musicians of the original Sir Douglas Quintet had been schooled in tough rhythm and blues sounds before the British Invasion arrived, so they knew a little bit about keeping a crowd of beered-up kids dancing all night long.

The Sir Douglas Quintet had scored a huge hit with "She's About A Mover" in Spring 1965, and they had a modestly successful early 1966 follow-up, "The Rains Came," and they had appeared on TV shows like Hullabaloo and Where The Action Is, so they were certainly well known enough to play for University of Wisconsin students on a Monday night. On the other hand, Doug Sahm and other members of the group had been busted for marijuana at the Corpus Christi airport in December, 1965, and as a result their movements were restricted by court dates and probation. If the Quintet was restricted by probation, did they actually play Wisconsin that Monday night?

The answer, apparently, is probably not. The Sir Douglas Quintet were a hugely popular American group in the British Invasion era, when beyond a hit single no one really knew what a group was like. Initially, the Quintet was encouraged to let everyone think they were actually English. However, the Quintet's promoter was a shady, fascinating character named Huey Meaux, and his business dealings were always suspect. It appears there was more than one group touring the country under the name Sir Douglas Quintet, possibly even before the bust. Somewhere on the web (I can no longer find it), there is an hilarious memoir by a group called Larry And The Bluenotes, which includes lengthy memories of impersonating the Sir Douglas Quintet out on the road, under the direction of various doubtful operators.

Of course, its possible that the Wisconsin show was played by Doug Sahm and some Texan variation of the Quintet, but its unlikely. When Sahm moved to San Francisco in about May 1966, it was because his court case was settled with 5 years probation. However, organist Augie Meyers was apparently unable to leave the state for his probation. As a result, by mid-66 there were at least two versions of the Sir Douglas Quintet: Doug Sahm led one in San Francisco, (along with drummer Johnny Perez and saxophonist Frank Morin), and Meyers led the Texas version (along with bassist Harvey Kagan). Then add in Larry And The Bluenotes, and who knows who else, and it appears that the Quintet were movers indeed.

Probably the band that played the Wisconsin show doesn't remember it, and probably had a vested interest in forgetting it: they were impersonating a band, or they were breaking probation, or something. Oh well--as long as the band played "She's About A Mover," and all the UW students got their Monday night beer on, it was probably fine.

Initial Shock Performance List 1967-69 (Work In Progress)

2010-05-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

(a poster for the Steppenwolf/Ace Of Cups/Initial Shock concert at the Sound Factory, Sacremento, CA on July 12-13, 1968. h/t Ross for the scan)

The Initial Shock were one of many bands who moved to San Francisco in 1967, but were more or less alone insofar as having been the only band who moved from Montana. Apparently the group was from Missoula, MT and featured members of local groups The Chosen Few and Mojos Mark IV, and at least one member was assigned to an Air Force base in the area. When the Air Force commitment was over, the band decided to move to San Francisco to be where the action was.

The Initial Shock released two singles, but no albums. The first, "Mind Disaster"/"Its Not Easy" (BFD 036), was recorded in Montana and released in 1966. The second, rarer single "You Been A Long Time Comin'"/I Once Asked" (BFD 2022) was released in 1967. I know nothing about the record label nor details of the recordings.

The Initial Shock was well regarded by those who were there at the time, although unfortunately the only live recorded evidence that circulates (to my knowledge) is an excellent 4-song piece of an Avalon Ballroom concert from 1968. It reveals a driving, bluesy sound, but its hard to know how representative of their material it might be. Members of the group were

George Wallace-lead guitar
William "Mojo" Collins-guitar, vocals
Steve Garr-bass
Brian Knaff-drums, vocals

While relatively little is known about the Initial Shock, they played a number of interesting shows in the Bay Area from 1967-69. I gather from various signs and portents that a journal of great importance (in my tiny Universe) will be doing an extensive article on the Initial Shock, so it seemed like a good time to begin trying to determine a list of Bay Area performance for The Initial Shock. As with most groups, it is easiest to find the most high profile shows, where posters or other evidence survives, and that may be only a small portion of a band's performances. Nonetheless, here is the information I have so far. Anyone who has additions, corrections, insights or recovered memories (real or imagined) about Initial Shock performances in the Bay Area is encouraged to Comment or email me.

Initial Shock Performance List 1967-69

September 24, 1967 Provo Park, Berkeley: Initial Shock
Free Sunday concerts in Provo Park (on Grove and Allston downtown) were a regular occurrence in Berkeley, and provided a good opportunity for new or newly-arrived bands to get heard.

October 4, 1967 Straight Theater, San Francisco: Mad River/Mount Rushmore/Anonymous Artists of America/Initial Shock
October 5, 1967 Straight Theater, San Francisco: Sopwith Camel/Black Swan/Hair/Frumious Bandersnatch/Don Garrett/Initial Shock
This was a benefit for the Haight Ashbury Medical Center. Various poets, dancers and other performers were also part of the show.

October 7, 1967 Western Front, San Francisco: Sons of Champlin/Frumious Bandersnatch/Initial Shock
The Western Front was one of many attempts to open a psychedelic ballroom in San Francisco. The venue, at 895 O'Farrell (at Polk), never managed to find its footing.

Although I can find no Initial Shock shows until December, I assume they were playing around various places--I just haven't figured out where.

December 1-3, 1967 Western Front, San Francisco: Youngbloods/Wildflower/Initial Shock
The Initial Shock returned to The Western Front, although its my belief that there were different promoters at this point.

December 19, 1967-January 15, 1968: Northwest Holiday Tour
Ross Hannan found a remarkable ad in the Berkeley Barb of December 22, 1967, announcing that the Initial Shock would be returning to San Francisco on January 16, "After 28 Consecutive One Night Stands."

I don't know where or how the band played 28 straight nights, including Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. If this is true and not hyperbole, I have to assume they played ski resorts in places like Idaho. Given the band's Montana background, they may have gone as far afield as Montana as well.

I assume that Initial Shock had shows booked when they returned to San Francisco, but we have yet to uncover them.

March 16, 1968 Straight Theater, San Francisco: Flamin Groovies/Initial Shock

May 12, 1968 Civic Center Plaza, San Francisco: Kaleidoscope/Initial Shock/Country Weather/AB Skhy Blues Band
This was a daytime show. It was a benefit for Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic.

May 28, 1968 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco: Crystal Syphon/Phoenix/Indian Head Band/Mint Tattoo/Initial Shock/Loading Zone
“Spring Medicine Show” Benefit for The Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic

June 28-30, 1968 Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco: Steve Miller Band/Buddy Guy/Initial Shock
This show was advertised (a poster exists) but did not take place.

July 3, 1968 Straight Theater, San Francisco: Initial Shock/Allmen Joy/Indian Head Band/Phoenix

July 12, 1968 Cow Palace, Daly City: Iron Butterfly/Creedence Clearwater Revival/Vanilla Fudge/Kai Moore/Canned Heat/Sweet Rush/West/Sandy Bull
Harmony Benefit
A variant poster has Sandy Bull, Canned Heat, Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly, West, Initial Shock, Wedge and Phoenix. Of course, Initial Shock was booked in Sacramento (below), but given that its less than two hours from San Francisco to Sacramento, they could easily have played both shows. However, since absolutely nothing is known about this Benefit, I have no idea who actually played.

July 12-13, 1968 Sound Factory, Sacramento: Steppenwolf/Ace of Cups/Initial Shock
The Sound Factory, at 1817 Alhambra, was a newly-opened venue run by Whitey Davis, the former proprietor of Portland's Crystal Ballroom as well as a critical figure at the Avalon Ballroom. This was one of the earliest shows at the Sound Factory (it appears to have opened on June 28--the July 12-13 poster is up top).

July 14, 1968 Balconades Ballroom, San Jose: Initial Shock/Womb/Phoenix/Freedom Highway/Rejoice/Day Blindness/Fritz Rabyne/Marble Gardens/Pure Funk/Uncut Balloon
The Balconades was on an upper floor of The Lyndon Building (built 1882), at 181 W. Santa Clara St. After time as a printing press for a newspapers, it had been turned into a ballroom (probably in the 1920s). It had been part of a Country and Western circuit for performers like Hank Williams and Bob Wills, back when San Jose was an agricultural center and the biggest radio station (KEEN 1370 AM) played country music. There were a few rock shows at Balconades in 1968, although this appears to be one of the last ones.

Most of the groups at this Sunday event were club bands that played around, but weren't yet at the Avalon level. "Fritz Rabyne" was probably the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band, a Menlo Park band that featured former Menlo-Atherton High School students Lindsay Buckingham and Stephanie (Stevie) Nicks.

July 26-27, 1968 New Orleans House, Berkeley: Initial Shock/Shiva’s Head Band

The New Orleans House, at 1505 San Pablo Avenue, was Berkeley's premier club for rock bands that played original music.

August 16-17, 1968 Sound Factory, Sacramento: Pink Floyd/Initial Shock/AB Skhy Blues Band
Road manager George Crowe (see his Comment) recalls opening for Pink Floyd in Sacramento.

August 2-4, 1968 Fillmore West, San Francisco: Iron Butterfly/Canned Heat/Initial Shock

(the Roger Weil poster for FD135, August 29-31 at the Avalon. h/t Ross for the scan)
August 29-31, 1968 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco: Youngbloods/It’s A Beautiful Day/Initial Shock

October 18-20, 1968 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco: Velvet Underground/Charley Musselwhite/Initial Shock

October 31-November 2, 1968 The Ark, Sausalito Initial Shock/Devil's Kitchen/White Lightning
A flyer recently turned up on eBay. The flyer says "Boogie--Ball." Perhaps the Marin band Boogie was on the bill, or perhaps it was just an invocation. Devil's Kitchen were recently arrived from Carbondale, IL.

The Ark was a grounded steamer docked on Gate 6 in Sausalito. It was a hippie rock club and hangout, mostly open on weekends (Halloween was a Thursday this year).

November 8-9, 1968 New Orleans House, Berkeley: Initial Shock/Orion

November 28-30, 1968 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Sons of Champlin/Initial Shock
The Avalon Ballroom had one more show after these that was still under Chet Helm's aegis, when Big Brother headlined (December 1, 1968), but Helms had to give up the lease on the Avalon due to financial difficulties and a struggle to get a Dance Permit.

The Avalon would reopen in March 1969, and members of Initial Shock were apparently part of the Avalon management team. This is just one of many tantalizing bits of history that makes their definitive story so worth looking forward to.

December 5, 1968 New Committee Theatre, San Francisco: Initial Shock/Aum/Notes From The Underground
December 6, 1968 New Committee Theatre, San Francisco: Initial Shock/Devils Kitchen/Sanpaku
December 7, 1968 New Committee Theatre, San Francisco: Initial Shock/Notes From The Underground/Sanpaku
The New Committee Theatre was at 836 Montgomery. The Committee (an improvisational comedy troupe) was the main performer there, but various rock shows were held as well.

December 20-21, 1968 Sound Factory, Sacramento: Initial Shock/Salloom Sinclair & Mama Bear

Although I recognize that I have only been capturing highlights of the Initial Shock's bookings in 1967 and '68, the trail runs pretty dry in 1969. Given that some members of the group--perhaps all--were involved in the management of the Avalon Ballroom when it re-opened on March 21, 1969, perhaps that had an effect, but the revised Avalon only lasted until April 6, so the final year of the Initial Shock remains vague. I have to assume there were many more shows than are listed here.

January 17-18, 1969 The Matrix, San Francisco: Initial Shock

February 28-March 1, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley: Initial Shock/Welliver Fields

March 26-30, 1969 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco
Jef Jaisun and the Slow Truck, Santana, AAA, It's A Beautiful Day, All Men Joy, Youngbloods, Country Weather, Welliver Fields, Initial Shock, AB Skhy, Linn County, Conqueroo, Frumious Bandersnatch, Fourth Way, Melting Pot, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, Clover, Shades of Joy, Alice Cooper, Pure Funk
The poster lists all the bands who will play over four nights, so I assume Initial Shock played some but not all of the shows, but I do not know for certain.

May 15-17, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley: Ace Of Cups/Initial Shock
The trail runs cold after this point, and future published revelations will be welcome.

Lead guitarist George Wallace apparently went on to work with Janis Joplin. Lead singer and guitarist Bill "Mojo" Collins went on to play in the group Sawbuck with Ronnie Montrose (they helped close the Fillmore West on June 29, 1971), but he relocated to Coastal North Carolina in late 1971. He remains an active and successful performer in the greater Wilmington area today.

This is a work in progress. Anyone with additional information about Initial Shock performances is encouraged to Comment or email me.

660 Great Highway, San Francisco Family Dog On The Great Highway July 25-27, 1969 Zoot Money/Poco/Charley Musselwhite

2010-05-15T21:03:00.000-07:00

Chet Helms opened his Family Dog On The Great Highway in June, 1969 as a successor to his legendary operation at the Avalon Ballroom. Helms knew he had lost the battle to be San Francisco's leading rock entrepreneur to Bill Graham, but he also knew that he had a better ear and a different perspective than Graham, so he intended the Great Highway operation to be a sort of cultural center, focusing on rock as a medium for cultural and social development rather than mere entertainment. While the FDGH did not really achieve its goals, it still featured many interesting acts, some of which are worthy considerably more research.

One of the most intriguing bookings for the Family Dog was the July 25-27 weekend show featuring Zoot Money, Poco and Charley Musselwhite. Charley Musselwhite was a fine local blues act, probably featuring Ukiah guitarist Robben Ford by this time, but he was well-known in Bay Area venues. Poco was a new Los Angeles group started by Richie Furay and Jim Messina, formerly of the Buffalo Springfield. Their first album Pickin Up The Pieces (Epic Records) had been released in May 1969. While the album is now seen as a forward looking country rock album, at the time of its release it was not a commercial success. Poco was an excellent live group, although at this time bassist Randy Meisner had left the group, and lead guitarist Jim Messina had temporarily taken over the bass chores (in September, Timothy B Schmidt would take over as bassist, while Meisner would play in Rick Nelson's Stone Canyon Band and then join The Eagles). Poco had played a few dates in the Bay Area by mid-1969, but in general they would have been a new and somewhat unknown quantity to most Northern Californians.

However, the enduring mystery of this weekend's booking at the Family Dog was headliner Zoot Money. Organist George Bruno Money, called 'Zoot' in honor of saxophonist Zoot Sims, had led one of England's leading R&B bands in the mid-60s, Zoot Money's Big Roll Band. When psychedelia hit, Zoot and lead guitarist Andy Somers dropped the horn section and made some amazing psychedelic rock as Dantalian's Chariot. However, the Chariot never found an audience, and by Spring 1968 Money ended up in Los Angeles, joining Eric Burdon and The (New) Animals, effectively taking over as musical director from guitarist Vic Briggs. When Briggs left, Money brought in his pal Somers, and they played in the Animals until that group's demise in late 1968.

The activities of Eric Burdon and his former Animals in the year 1969 are somewhat vague. Eric Burdon brieflyt attended film school (he didn't like doing his assigned work), did a brief tour in support of a Best Of album with an unknown backing group (probably Blues Image) and finally joined the group War by July. Bassist John Weider ended up replacing Rick Grech in the group Family. Somers stayed in Los Angeles, getting a degree at Cal State Northridge and marrying a Californian, but his biography (under his better known name Andy Summers) remains very vague about this year. Zoot Money also remained in Southern California and looked into being an actor, an alternative career that he has continued to this day.

Mysteriously, however, Zoot Money headlined a weekend at the Family Dog. Who was in the group? What kind of music did they play? Was this part of a project that got stalled, or just a creative lark? The newspaper article above, from the San Francisco Chronicle Entertainment section from Saturday, July 26, 1969, offers the only information I have ever found about this venture, and its not much. It says

The Zoot Money Band, a British "classical jazz-rock" group, is making its first appearance this weekend at the Family Dog on the Great Highway

So, from knowing nothing, we now know that they considered themselves a classical jazz-rock group. That's it. At one point, I had considered the idea that the Zoot Money group was some sort of stealth Eric Burdon performance, but the timeline was all wrong, as Burdon was already working with War. I wonder who else was in the group? I have to think Andy Somers was a likely candidate, since he was in Southern California, but it still begs a lot of questions.

I know of one other Zoot Money show in California during this period, at a club called The Comic Strip in Santa Monica (on 120 Ocean Front), from June 6-8. This only adds to the peculiarity--a weekend in a tiny Santa Monica club, then a headlined weekend in San Francisco 5 weeks later, then nothing? Zoot Money did return to England, where he has continued to have a successful career as a musician, bandleader and actor that continues to this day, but his brief sojourn as a Californian band leader remains a cipher. Anyone with helpful information or entertaining speculation is encouraged to Comment or email me.

Winterland, San Francisco "Monster Jam" for Olompali, March 17, 1969

2010-04-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

March 17, 1969 Winterland "Monster Jam"

Rancho Olompali was the Marin County retreat for the Grateful Dead in Spring 1966, before they moved to 710 Ashbury (via Western Marin) in September. It was owned by Don McCoy, who later lived across the street at 715 Ashbury. In 1967, McCoy started a commune called The Chosen Family. A fire caused by faulty wiring burned down the mansion. I assume that this Ralph Gleason column item from the San Francisco Chronicle (from Monday, March 17, 1969), refers to the fire's aftermath. It says "Tonight at Winterland, there's a benefit for Olompali with a monster jam session, light shows by both Jerry Abrams and Glenn McKay and also the Garden of Delights."

I know nothing else about this show except what you are reading here. Nevertheless, a Monday night rock show at the largest rock venue in San Francisco, with three established light shows, suggests that someone interesting was expected to show up at the jam. Given the connections between Don McCoy and the Grateful Dead, it does at least hint that Jerry Garcia and/or members of the Dead might be there. Glenn McKay was the Airplane's light show man, so that hints at some members of the Airplane who might like to jam (as the t-shirt says, if you don't know Jorma, you don't know Jack).

Most San Francisco bands didn't work Monday nights, and both the Dead's and the Airplane's March touring itinerary puts them in town. I don't know how to pursue this any further, but I'd certainly be looking for a Jorma and Jack, Mickey and The Hartbeats kind of thing. [update: As you can see in the Comments, Ross found that my supposition was largely correct].

Rancho Olompali, and the mansion on it, had a long and complicated history dating back to 1843, General Vallejo and Mexican California. The property had ended up in the hands of the University of San Francisco by the 1950s. In the 1960s, they attempted to sell it various times, but when various buyers defaulted, the property kept reverting back to USF. I assume Don McCoy gave up on the property as well. In 1977, the State of California purchased the property from USF, and turned it into Olompali Historic State Park. The address of the park is 8901 Old Redwood Highway, 3.5 miles East of Novato, CA.

Matrix, 3138 Fillmore Street San Francisco, CA Lightnin' Hopkins, JC Burris, Jean Ball: October 1, 1965

2010-04-23T16:07:00.000-07:00

I have posted this review from Rag Baby magazine (Vol 1, No. 2 - October 1965) as it provides a good insight in to the structure of the performances at the Matrix shortly after it opened on August 13. The article is uncredited but I am pretty certain that it was written by ED Denson, who would go on to help shape the careers of Country Joe and The Fish. The only changes I have made to the review are a minor edit to the first paragraph, the addition of the graphics and the amendment of Lightning to Lightnin'. Otherwise the review has stood the test of time for nearly 45 years.

Lightnin’ Hopkins opened at the Matrix, a folk club, to a varied audience. The hippies turned out, and were mixed with the collegiate crowd and a few people who looked society. A few blacks were here and there in the audience - almost all in the collegiate or society categories. The emcee asked Lightnin’ how to introduce him: "just say an old blues singer". But when he hit the stage he was king. He slowly and carefully made certain that everything was set as he wanted it, and between numbers for the first half of the set he had his manager or one of the club owners come up and make adjustments on the amplifier, or move things around on the stage.

The set opened with a fast rocker, and then a Chicago sounding modern blues. Slowing down the pace he played a really fine version of "Baby Please Don't Go" - the audience was beginning to yell now when he hit long notes - and then he dropped into a really slow blues. He was playing flashily: hitting slam chords at the ends of measures, picking the bass strings all the way up the neck, moving his hands all over the gui tar, striking long slow "soul" notes, and mak-ing those incredible long runs which are his trademark. The audience was picking up on it. Cries of "play it baby" rang out, and J. C. Burris - a long time friend of Lightnin's - was whooping and yelling from his seat by Lightnin's wife. When the number stopped the requests began to come in, and he played "It’s Mighty Crazy (how they keep on rubbing at the same old thing)" - a bawdy novelty piece. The next request was for "Rocky Mountain", a blues with mediocre lyrics , and then the set was closed with a fast finger-picking piece Lightnin’ calls "The Old Folks Dance". It is a raggy song in the style of John Hurt or Mance Lipscomb, and is a half-joking put-down. Lightnin’ picked so fast that the notes blended in the amplifier and sounded like a horn. The audience was wild.

During the break the house, which had been jammed, cleared somewhat and Lightnin’ sat at his table talking to his wife, cousin, and J.C. Burris, surrounded by an entourage which had swollen to 12, all drinking free as the performer's party. Jean Ball played, and then J.C. Burris, and the audience was warmed up. When Lightnin’ got back on the stage the house was full and excited. This time he gave them a set with messages in it. He started with a genre song:

I don't want your woman, mister,
please don't mess with mine.
She's bowlegged and knock-kneed
and she sticks out behind,
but she's mine.

and the audience really dug it. They laughed so much they could hardly hear the words. He followed it with a song about J.C. Burris. The audience laughed thru the first half of it before they realized that he was serious when he said they should help J.C. out when they could. "You know when a man got to leave all he's got, that's hard". He was talking between the verses, telling about J. C. losing his house in New York, and his family. J.C. would yell "that's right" periodically and nudge the boy at the next table so that he would give him another glass of beer.

The mood lightened with "Mojo Hand" and you could see people in the audience intently following every note, every twist and turn in these Hopkins runs. They were yelling comments now, and after the song requests came in thick, Lightnin’ joked about wigs for a while and then sang "Deep Sea Diver", the party song for the set. Once the listeners realized what it was about they howled, and then Lightnin’ got serious again.

In the afternoon he had told the reporter that he was born in a field, and had spent his youth travelling in wagons, and now he was afraid of airplanes. Whereas the younger generation had it easy - they had been born into a modern world, and their parents had enough money to send them to college. "If I had gone to college ..." he began. But "some people hold guitars in their hands and some people hold pencils". The gulf had been deeper than Lightnin’ had realized, for the reporter had grown up in Chicago and never heard of Howling Wolf, or Little Walter, or Sonny Boy Williamson - his parents wouldn't let him go into the section of town where the blues clubs were. Anyway Lightnin’ was still thinking about his childhood that evening, and he played a piece that never stopped rocking, and yet was one of the most beautiful blues I have heard. He told about being a child and peeping into his girlfriend's house and seeing her asleep in the moonlight. "Mean Old Frisco" followed, and then Lightnin’ sang another song about his childhood. This time it was about picking cotton in the hot sun and watching his mother tally up the day's wages for the family. When he got up to end the set the audience cheered and called for at least a full minute while Lightnin’ hesitated. He sat down again, played a take-off on Ray Charles, and then left the stage.

On the way back to Berkeley he talked about J. C- Burris.

2629 Bayshore Blvd, San Francisco, CA The Moonrose Forest (formerly George's Log Cabin) November 1969

2010-04-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

Some mysteries seem bound to remain mysterious, but they are no less fascinating for that. I have been reviewing the Entertainment Section (Datebook) for the San Francisco Chronicle for the latter half of the sixties, and each day it would include a brief listing of performances that were opening that day. This included both performers beginning long runs and one-night stands. Because of the way newspapers were constructed back in the day, the paper required a column of variable length for each edition. The Chronicle made a point to feature major events and regular advertisers, but if space needed to be filled, they stuffed in events that seemed interesting in order to fill the column inches.

The rock venues listed in the 60s Datebook are mostly familiar to me, even if they are now obscure, but my eyes are attuned now to curiosities. In September 1969 occasional mentions occurred for a venue called George's Log Cabin, in a distant part of the City. I paid little attention until I reached the November 14 edition, which promoted the opening of "The Deviants and Life at Moonrose Forest (formerly George's Log Cabin), 2629 Bayshore boulevard." The Deviants were perhaps the London Underground's most notorious band, claiming to be the first band to be introduced on stage as punk-rockers (in July 1967) and spawning a host of nefarious progeny. They did one disastrous North American tour in the Fall of 1969--did they end up on the edge of San Francisco?

A brief glimpse at the openings for that Friday are pretty surprising--the Velvet Underground in the midst of a long, intermittent run at the Matrix, soul legend Solomon Burke at Basin Street West on Broadway, and some obscure legends at the newly re-opened New Old Fillmore on Geary (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had opened the night before at Fillmore West and thus did not appear in the Friday list). Yet if the Deviants played, they were unquestionably the rarest sound on tap that night, and that's saying a lot. We may never know the answer--but what can we find out?

The Deviants
The story of The Deviants, also known as The Social Deviants, seems like a work of fiction. Indeed, Deviant lead singer and lyricist Mick Farren is a prolific writer of fiction (and non-fiction), and in some ways The Deviants were like a literary creation, except that they actually existed in the flesh. In the mid-60s, "Deviants" or "Social Deviants" was a scientific term, and not one of praise, so naming a band after a term for troublemaking nonconformists was a threatening proposition. Among many other features, the Deviants were the bad boys in the London Underground scene, friendly with the local Hells Angels and too scary to play the UFO Club (the London counterpart to the Fillmore). I am hardly an expert on Mick Farren, but that hardly matters, since Mick Farren speaks for himself quite eloquently on the story of The Deviants.

By 1969, The Deviants had released three albums, and had a sort of cult following, and they had even made it into the UFO Club. After some personnel changes, the rest of the band (besides lead singer Farren) was guitarist Paul Rudolph, bassist Duncan Sanderson and drummer Russell Hunter. Although no live recordings exist (known to me), the group apparently sounded like Blue Cheer with an agenda, or the MC5 with an accent--loud, angry and on the edge.

The Deviants had set out on a North American tour, which collapsed disastrously when Farren was pushed out of the band in Vancouver. The only known date of the tour (to me) was September 25 through 28 at the Colonial Music Hall in Vancouver, where the band was advertised as "England's Leading Underground Group." Farren has chronicled his own adventures over the years, but the activities of The Deviants in North America after Farren was forced out of the band are unknown. The Deviants apparently continued to tour. Did they wind up in San Francisco six weeks later, to spend at least a week at a venue on the Southern edge of the City, far from the Fillmore West and the Haight Ashbury, and even the Family Dog on The Great Highway?

The next week's Friday Datebook (November 21, 1969) lists a new headliner at the Moonrose Forest: Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks, The Deviants, Life and 20 Dollar Friendship are all booked for the weekend. Dan Hicks was an original Charlatan, whose "psychedelic swing" band had moved from a part-time to a full time occupation with the demise of the Charlatans. The engagingly named 20 Dollar Friendship are completely unknown to me.

The remaining Deviants, if indeed they were the English band, were still a formidably crazy bunch. In early 1970, Rudolph, Sanderson and Hunter had returned to London and joined the infamous John "Twink" Adler to form an even more notorious group called The Pink Fairies. The Pink Fairies favored anarchy, drugs and publicity stunts, and their story is too demented to retell here. Suffice to say, the Pink Fairies played key roles in the future of Hawkwind and Motorhead. If the Rudoph/Sanderson/Hunter trio played San Francisco, even hardened Blue Cheer fans would have been surprised at the jolting sounds of the proto-Fairie Deviants. If it was them, what were they doing at Moonrose Forest, and why would anyone put a rock club on Bayshore Boulevard? That leads us to our next mystery.

George's Log Cabin, 2629 Bayshore Boulevard
The Bayshore Highway was constructed in the 1920s and completed in 1937, designed to accommodate the new flow of traffic created by numerous bridges across the bay (The Dumbarton, San Mateo, Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were all completed during this period). The undivided four-lane road ran from Army Street (now Cesar Chavez) in San Francisco down to San Jose. The section in San Francisco's Visitacion Valley was known as "The Bloody Bayshore" due to the numerous accidents. Increasing traffic required changing the Bayshore from a Highway, with crossings and lights, to an uninterrupted Freeway. The first section of the Bayshore Freeway was completed in 1949. Most of the Freeway replaced the old Bayshore Highway, but in 1957 a section of the freeway was built on a landfill causeway from San Francisco Airport to Candlestick Cove, replacing the most dangerous part of the "Bloody Bayshore." This left the old Bayshore Highway to be renamed "Bayshore Boulevard," and what was once a main thoroughfare from the Peninsula to San Francisco became just another neighborhood artery, separated by a lagoon from US 101 and the new baseball stadium at Candlestick Point.

George's Log Cabin appears to have indeed been a log cabin. The Bayshore Highway (now Boulevard) is at the edge of one of the Southernmost San Francisco neighborhoods, Visitacion Valley. San Francisco is a County as well as a City, and the edge of the City borders San Mateo County. Just before and after Prohibition, Counties had different laws about drinking and gambling. A remarkable artifact from a book on the history of the Visitacion Valley has an old napkin from George's Log Cabin (precise date uncertain)

a patron recalls that there was a

line painted across the floor of George's Log Cabin on Bayshore. "If you were on the South side of the line on San Mateo County, you could gamble and drink to all hours, but on the North side you'd be in San Francisco, where gambling was illegal and their was a time limit on drinking."

The exact date of these doings at the Log Cabin is unclear. San Mateo County capitalized on being looser than San Francisco, and George's Log Cabin depended on that (Brisbane's Seven Mile House, a a short distance away on 2800 Bayshore, and still open for business, was even more notorious).

According to the book, sometime in the mid-1960s the Log Cabin (visible in the photos on the link) was taken over by a statuary company called Silvestri's. Given the peculiar information I have stumbled on in the Chronicle, the Silvestri's takeover was probably a bit later, in the early 1970s perhaps, or perhaps the Log Cabin briefly mixed day and nighttime uses.

Moonrose Forest
The history of Use Permits in California (and most places) made it so that it was always easier to start a rock venue at a place where music, dancing and refreshments were already approved. Many of the most famous rock establishments, not least the Fillmore and Avalon, had been long time venues for music and dancing. It seems plausible that some entity or other looking to start its own joint found an existing club down on its luck and available cheap, and was able to convert it to a rock music club because no additional approval was required.

My only clue about Moonrose Forest is that there was a Bay Area band called Moonrose Forest, started by bassist Michael Husser. Husser had been in a group called Martha's Laundry, a quite fascinating band for one that never recorded and may not have even been that great (per its own members), but some very interesting people were in that group (including Randall Smith and David Kessner, for those who recognize the names). Moonrose Forest backed Buffy St. Marie for a while, in late 1968. Did members of the group decide to start their own nightclub? Its an intriguing possibility, and completely unknown, like everything else in this story.

Speculative Conclusions
What do we know for facts?

There was a club on the San Francisco County Line called George's Log Cabin, that started booking rock music in late 1969
In November 1969, George's Log Cabin changed its name to Moonrose Forest and at least once booked a "name" act (Dan Hicks)
Moonrose Forest also booked a group called The Deviants for two weekends when the infamous English group of the same name may have still been touring North America
Beyond the listing, no firm evidence survives of The Deviants possible visit to Bayshore Boulevard

What can we speculate?

The Deviants, bad boys of the sixties London Underground, ended up in San Francisco in November 1969, proving Oscar Wilde's adage "every one who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco."
Instead of playing the Family Dog, the Matrix or some downtown palace of sin, The Deviants played a newly re-purposed nightclub on the wrong side of the City, far from any Underground, hipsters or artistes
The place they played had a dark and ribald history, well suited for the Deviants and their kind, but lost in the mists of time
Someone is still alive with a recovered memory of a strange night on Bayshore Boulevard with some English crazies who sounded like Blue Cheer and packed an attitude

Today

Mick Farren is more writer than performer, but still alive and well, and still occasionally working with a band called The Deviants, even if they are a different bunch
The remaining Deviants, who became The Pink Fairies, are still out there (in all senses) and recorded as recently as 2008
A. Silvestri's Inc. Home Furnishings moved across the street (to 2630 Bayshore Blvd) in the previous decade, but the Log Cabin is still in use as a showroom. The structure (or some of it, anyway) is visible on Google Street View (2635 Bayshore Blvd, San Francisco, CA, 94134)

View Larger Map

The once moribund Visitacion Valley neighborhood now has a streetcar, for the first time since the 1930s, and the Sunnydale Station, right in front of the old Log Cabin (at Sunnydale and Bayshore) is the terminus for the T-3rd Street line, so the area is predicted to be the next thriving City neighborhood

None of my speculations may be true, or all of them may be. Or somewhere in between. Someone knows--but do they remember?

Update: thanks to Ross's excellent research (in the Comments), we know that the venue was called the Polynesian Hideaway in 1966-67, and as George's Log Cabin it was booking rock bands as early as June 1969. More importantly, we know that the (English) Deviants played The Matrix--a more likely spot for them--in November, so they were definitely in San Francisco, meaning its very likely they were The Deviants who played Moonrose Forest.

W Powell Blvd(US-26) at SE 190th Avenue, Gresham, OR: Springer's Ballroom 1969-72

2010-04-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

(A poster for a Sons Of Champlin/Portland Zoo/Total Eclipse show at Springer's Ballroom, July 4, 1969. h/t Ross for the scan)

Although I know relatively little about Springer's Ballroom, and it only became a rock venue in 1969, it seems like a venue with an intriguing history. Like many 60s and 70s venues, Springer's Ballroom only persists in our consciousness due to the Grateful Dead. For many years, a lively board tape of a January 16, 1970 Springer's show circulated widely in Deadhead collector's circles, complete with the tantalizing announcement that BB King would play soon after (Friday February 6, 1970) and the Dead would return two days after, on Sunday. Just 35 short years later, the Dead released the Sunday night concert (Jan 18, 1970) as Volume 2 of their Download Series. This post will collect what little information I have been able to piece together about the venue, as well as some interesting observations about its possible significance.

Springer's Ballroom: Location
Speaking generally, most underground 60s rock scenes began in residential areas near downtown that had been deserted by middle class families for the suburbs (that certainly describes the Haight Ashbury). Once rock became big business, however, the audiences for the music was suburban as well, so the main venues were either suburban or easily accessible from the suburbs via public transit or available parking. This meant that funky downtown venues, like the Fillmore or the Crystal Ballroom, were both too small and too inaccessible to the broadening suburban rock audience. In most cases, the venues of the early 70s were larger Civic Auditoriums and Sports Arenas that had only been used for the likes of The Beatles in the 1960s. In Portland, for example, that meant the Portland Memorial Coliseum, the principal sports and entertainment facility for the region.

What little I know about Springer's Ballroom seems to fit the typical pattern. The initial flowering of the Portland scene, at the Crystal Ballroom, Caffe Espresso and elsewhere was all in the traditional downtown. Springer's, however, was not only about 15 miles East of Dowtown--it wasn't even in Portland. Springer's appears to have actually been in the suburban town of Gresham, OR. I assume that Gresham is one of those towns (like Ballard, WA) that has long been acclimated to being considered part of a larger city next door, but since I know no one from Gresham I can't say that for a fact. All the posters for Springer's Ballroom give directions from downtown Portland--"Powell to 190th, turn right"--which shows the orientation, but in fact Springer's was not in Portland. I doubt that bands such as the Grateful Dead even realized that.

The cityscape of Gresham, OR has changed considerably since the early 1970s, and now you can no longer go on W Powell Blvd and turn right on SE 190th Avenue. It appears that an interchange, a park, and some sort of apartment complex are part of a re-design of the area. In approximate terms, however, the apartment (or condo) at 1124 SW Pleasant View Drive (Gresham OR 97080) appears to be near what must have been the location of Springer's Ballroom. This is only speculation on my part. Anyone who can illuminate this further, whether current or former Greshamites or Google Earth experts (you know who you are), is encouraged to weigh in.

Update: Commenter Troy has the real scoop:

Your location estimate is a bit off... the exact address of Springer's was 18300 SE Richey Rd (Gresham, OR 97080). This is confirmed by some severely outdated search results when you Google the term "springers flea market."

More importantly though, I can confirm the location firsthand. We used to visit the weekend flea market from Portland once every month or so in the 80s. As a kid, I wondered what the building had been previously used for. Definitely a ballroom vibe, with a small elevated platform on one side and a concessions counter in the back as you entered. (The latter was still in use during flea market hours.)

When I lived near Gresham 10 years ago, I was told that the vague directions on many of the posters ("Out Powell to 190th — Turn right") was all that was needed, since there were scattered signs along 190th (now Pleasant View Drive) leading you on to the right turn at Richey.

The building was ultimately razed by a fire in the late-80s. (I could be a tad off on that, but I definitely know it was well before I moved to Gresham in '91.)

Springer's Ballroom: History
This too is a murky subject. A gentleman selling old vacuum tubes on eBay had a lot that came from

a huge old dance hall called Springer's Ballroom in Portland, Oregon. Springer's was famous for some Grateful Dead and Byrds performances in the 60s and 70s. For many many years before that it was a popular venue for big band swing, country and western music. Many famous groups played there

This seems like a plausible story. Some Grateful Dead material suggests that the venue was called "Springer's Inn." It seems plausible that the venue was a riverside resort of some kind, no doubt connected to the Springwater Division Line railroad (also known as The Portland Traction Company), which was essential to the development of communities like Gresham that were directly East of Portland. Powell at 190th was the site of the Linnemann Station (still extant), and the railroad encouraged excursions on weekends. The area was a destination for the first half of the 20th century, but once the automobile replaced the railroads for passenger travel, many travel patterns changed. The Springwater Division stopped passenger service in 1958, and I assume that Springer's Ballroom (and/or Inn) declined with it.

Although the reasons for using Springer's Ballroom may have been one of convenience, in that it was probably a cheap, pleasant old hall without a lot of neighbors who would be bothered by noise, it still parallels the movement of 1960s rock from the City Center to the Suburbs. One intriguing detail of the poster for the January 16, 1970 show is that it says "No Age Limit!" suggesting something restrictive about Portland venues at the time. Since Gresham wasn't in Portland, Portland statutes wouldn't apply, but I don't know if I am reading too much into the statement--perhaps it was just emphasizing that there wasn't a bar.

Springers Ballroom: Owners and Promoters
I do not know the circumstances of the ownership, lease or promotions of Springer's Ballroom. A number of 1969 posters say "Jim Felt Presents." Jim Felt was a regular figure in the Portland concert scene, but I'm not certain if he was some sort of exclusive lessor at Springer's Ballroom, whether he promoted a lot of shows there, or whether he was just one of a number of promoters using the hall. We do know that the Velvet Underground show was promoted by someone who worked for their equipment manufacturer (Sunn), but that show could have been promoted through a sub-lease.

The open historical question is whether there were numerous shows at Springer's in 1969 and beyond, and we only have posters for a few, or whether it was a hall that was only used for somewhat larger touring acts. I am more inclined to believe there were many more shows, if not likely to feature out-of-state headliners, but I can't be sure yet. Jim Felt appears to still be around in Portland, so perhaps there is a lot more to learn.

Rock Shows at Springer's Ballroom

May 30, 1969 Grateful Dead/Palace Meat Market
The earliest record of Springer's comes from a poster advertising two Oregon Grateful Dead concerts: Friday May 30 at Springer's, and the next night at the basketball arena (McArthur Court) at the University of Oregon, about 120 miles South in Eugene. The Palace Meat Market, an Oregon group, appears to have opened both shows.

The poster (above) says "Springer's Hall." At other times, I have seen the venue referred to as Springer's Inn; I take that to mean that the ballroom was associated with a resort hotel, which seems likely. Rather than give a specific address, the poster just gives directions from downtown Portland: "take Powell to 190th, turn right." Powell Boulevard (which is also US Highway 26) is one of the main East-West thoroughfares in Portland, so the simple directions would work. The lack of an actual street address suggests that the venue stood alone, one of the ways I am fairly certain that present-day Gresham has been significantly redeveloped.

A board tape of the show endures. The Grateful Dead always played amazingly well in Oregon.

June 20-21, 1969 Cold Blood/Stoneground
Other dates at Springer's Ballroom are only known through surviving posters. Both Cold Blood and Stoneground were rising Bay Area bands at this time.

July 4, 1969 Sons of Champlin/Portland Zoo/Total Eclipse
The poster (top) calls the venue "Springer's Ballroom." The Sons once again were a popular San Francisco group, in the Northwest to play a festival with the Jefferson Airplane. Portland Zoo and Total Eclipse were popular Portland bands.

July 18, 1969 Youngbloods/Portland Zoo/River/Ron Bruce
The Youngbloods continue the theme of popular Fillmore/Avalon bands headlining Springer's. Its possible that there were only posters for out-of-town headliners, and there may have been considerably more shows, perhaps every weekend. July 18 was a Friday night, so I assume the Youngbloods had another show in the Pacific Northwest Saturday night, but I haven't been able to figure out where.

November 18, 1969 Charlie Musselwhite/Notary Sojac
Chicago blues harmonica ace Charlie Musselwhite had been based in San Francisco since 1967. Notary Sojac was from Tigard, OR, a suburb West of Portland.

November 21, 1969 Velvet Underground/Chapter Five
The Velvet Underground were spending a lot of time on the West Coast during this period. Richie Unterberger's excellent VU chronology White Light/White Heat (Jawbone Books 2009)includes some interesting information, namely that the show was promoted by Don MacLeod, a production manager for Sunn Instruments in Tualatin, OR (VU used Sunn equipment). This suggests, to some extent, that various promoters were using the ballroom. The book reports that about 800 people attended the show.

December 12, 1969 Country Joe and The Fish/Notary Sojac
My assumption is that there were regular shows at Springer's Ballroom, but only some of them featured out of town headliners that justified the expense of a custom poster. I do not yet have any way of confirming my assumption, however--perhaps the venue was only used for more substantial acts. Country Joe and The Fish were an extremely popular band at the time, bigger than contemporaries like the Grateful Dead or the Steve Miller Band.

1970 and beyond
In general I am not pursuing venue research beyond 1969. Nonetheless, I will mention a few high profile dates that I am aware of:

January 16, 1970-Grateful Dead/River
One song ("Easy Wind") was released as a bonus track on the expanded Workingman's Dead cd in 2001. The poster is here.
January 18, 1970-Grateful Dead
The concert was released as Volume Two of the Grateful Dead's Download Series, in 2005.
February 6, 1970-BB King
Known from a stage announcement from the January 16 Dead show
April ?-, 1970 Boz Scaggs
A bootleg tape circulates. This would be one of the earliest Boz Scaggs solo performances in circulation.
July 10, 1971-Brewer and Shipley/Kobolden and Keep
Known from a poster
November 11, 1971-The Byrds/Bill Withers
This show was promoted as "The New Rock And Roll Circus," and was part of a three-date Northwest tour (Springer's, then Seattle, then Gonzaga College in Spokane).

1119 SW Park Avenue, Portland, OR Masonic Temple Rock Performance List 1966-69

2010-04-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

(a poster advertising the Grateful Dead and regional bands Poverty's People, US Cadenza and Nigells, from Tuesday, July 18, 1967)

I have been working through the history of psychedelic rock in Portland, Oregon in the late 1960s. Portland makes an interesting study, as it was very much a part of the West Coast scene, but not quite economically robust enough to create lasting traction. I have made a pretty good start at identifying the history of the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, and I am working on other projects as well (see here and here). However, the nature of the Oregon scene at the time meant that there was relatively little contemporary record of concerts and other events at the time. As a result, some intriguing venues remain somewhat mysterious. Perhaps the most fascinating venue, beyond the Crystal, was the Masonic Temple ballroom.

The Masonic Temple was built in 1925, at 1119 SW Park Avenue at SW Jefferson Street. The Masonic Temple building is now part of the Portland Art Museum (the address is 1219 SW Park). The 4-story building still includes the Grand Ballroom, which is probably a remodeled version of the Ballroom used for rock concerts in the 1960s. The current capacity is about 1000 (per the site), so perhaps up to twice that many could have been squeezed in.The Masonic Temple was a regular, if intermittent venue for Portland rock concerts in the 60s. I do not know if a specific promoter controlled the lease; more likely, the hall was simply for rent. In particular, the Masonic Temple had a number of high profile Fillmore-type bands in the Summer of 1967, exactly when the Crystal Ballroom was at a low ebb since its founding partners (Mike Magaurn and Whitey Davis) were in absentia that Summer. There seems to have been intermittent concerts throughout the end of the 1960s, but our information is spotty.

The definitive work on the Portland music and cultural scene as folk music transformed into electric rock is Valerie Brown's excellent article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly of Summer 2007, Music On The Cusp: Folk To Acid Rock in Portland Coffeehouses 1967-70. However, Brown's superb research is focused more on the musicians themselves rather than the specific concert venues, and while she alludes to the Masonic, that is not the focus of her article. Since there is so little information extant, I am posting what little information is available, along with some informed speculation on my part, in the hopes of finding out more.

The random shreds of information available about rock concerts at the Masonic Temple offer tantalizing hints of out-of-town bands and a thriving local scene. Yet hints can be deceiving--perhaps only the most interesting events are memorialized, and the truth is smaller and duller. I am inclined towards the former possibility, however, and have pursued this on the assumption that Portland's Masonic Temple is an interesting story waiting to be told. Anyone who recalls more about specific shows at Masonic Temple in the 60s, or knows anything about the promoters or economic backdrop, or even just has intriguing speculation, please Comment or email me.

Portland Masonic Temple Performance List: 1966-69

October 29, 1966 PH Phactor Jug Band/US Cadenza/The Weeds/ Inc w/Joe Uris/The Sodgamoli Jug Band/Dave Coffin/Earl Benson
The first rock poster presents a mixture of electric rock bands (The Weeds and US Cadenza) and more folk-oriented acts. The Weeds would have just arrived in Portland at this time, probably the week before, having run out of gas on the way to Vancouver. This show was not the first "ballroom" rock concert in Portland (that is another topic), but it represents a very early event(h/t Ross for the Masonic posters).

July 15, 1967 Battle of The Bands
United Travel Service was one of the bands (which is how we know the date). This suggests that many of the events featured local bands, and were more oriented towards dancing than anything else. I simply have no idea of whether there were many or few concerts at the Masonic Temple between October 1966 and July 1967.

July 18, 1967 Grateful Dead/Poverty’s People/U.S. Cadenza/Nigells
The Grateful Dead had played in Portland before, at the “Portland Acid Test” at Beaver Hall (at 425 NW Glisan) in January 1966 (the exact date has never been satisfactorily confirmed to my knowledge), but this was the first time they played an advertised rock concert. Anticipating future touring, the Dead had played the weekend in Seattle and Vancouver, and played a Tuesday night on their way back to San Francisco.

In the 1960s, while many bands flew from concert to concert, their equipment traveled by truck, and most major engagements were on weekends. Many medium sized cities thus featured mid-week rock concerts on weeknights, as bands migrated from city to city. This touring schedule was particularly prominent for cities on major Interstate Highways. Thus bands playing California and then Chicago might play weeknight shows in Salt Lake City, Omaha or Des Moines, because they were intermediate stops on I-80.

In the case of Portland, even the limited information available to us now suggests that the relatively small Masonic Temple could host weeknight shows by Fillmore headliners who were in between California and Seattle or Vancouver. Portland (particularly in the 1960s) was considerably smaller than any of those cities, but was more or less halfway from San Francisco to Seattle on I-5.

July 26, 1967 The Doors
At this time, although The Doors were extremely popular on the strength of their debut album and the single “Light My Fire,” they were still considered an “underground” band. The Doors would never play an Oregon venue as small as the Masonic Temple again. This was a Wednesday night show, and once again Portland fans benefited from being in the middle of the West Coast (besides the obvious inherent advantages of living in Portland).

August 11, 1967 Moby Grape/Peanut Butter Conspiracy
This date comes from The Peanut Butter Conspiracy list of shows, which refers to a double bill with Moby Grape. The Moby Grape list does not confirm this booking. However, while Moby Grape was billed at The Avalon (August 10 thru 13), on at least one or all of those shows they did not play. Supposedly it was because Skip Spence was unavailable, but perhaps it was because they had a gig in Portland.

In any case, although not widely regarded today, the Conspiracy were a popular band amongst hippies, and whether or not Moby Grape played, the Masonic Temple seems to have had another interesting show by an out-of-town band (or two). There is a chance that the Conspiracy and Moby Grape actually took place at the Crystal Ballroom, but concerts during the Summer of Love in Portland seems to be a murky subject indeed.

December 29, 1967 Family Tree/Gentlemen Wild/Poverty’s People/Sound Vendor/Echoes/Epix “Grand Opening”
The poster says “Grand Opening”, but its not clear what that means. Presumably new promoters had taken over, but of course its unknown whether there were concerts at the Masonic Temple since the Summer. I will note that while our information about Portland rock concerts stems almost exclusively from surviving posters, it does seem that Masonic posters pop up when there was little or no known activity at the Crystal Ballroom. I know of no Crystal concerts between December 3, 1967 and February 2, 1968, and while I wouldn't read too much into those dates, there may not have been room for two concert halls in Portland. The Crystal was the leading rock venue in Portland until July 1968, when it closed, and no Masonic Temple posters seem to have endured from that specific time period.

The Family Tree was a Northern California band with a great live reputation who were very popular in Oregon. Lead singer Bob Segarini went on to lead both Roxy and The Wackers, among other bands.

June 1, 1968 “Rock Festival”
25 bands including Portland Zoo/The Epix/Stone Garden/Brigade/Soundvendor/Music-Box/The Redcoats/The Echoes/The Mod’s/The Wom-Bats/The Quents/The Phantoms/Fringe Benefit/Peppermint Express/The Le-Sabres/Back Street Electric Band/C.C. Riders/Dark Ages/Peace Corps/The Grail/The Band of Angels/US Cadenza/others
It seems surprising that all the bands played in one day, but then there are multiple floors at the Masonic Temple, so perhaps this took place in multiple rooms. Once again, I have no idea how much or how often there were concerts at the Masonic after the December "Grand Opening."

July 10, 1968 Kaleidoscope/Crazy World of Arthur Brown
The Kaleidoscope, who invented "World Music" about 25 years before most of the world (Jimmy Page and a few others excepted) were ready for it, had played some well received shows at the Crystal Ballroom in May. It seems surprising that the Kaleidoscope wouldn't play the Crystal again, but I take it that the Crystal was on very shaky financial footing and may have already closed by this time. The City of Portland officially closed the Crystal on July 12, 1968, but the venue may not have put on shows for some weeks prior to this.

Arthur Brown is best known for his hit single "Fire," and the band was reputed to have a wild stage show in an era when bands usually just stared at their amplifiers while they jammed. Both the Kaleidoscope and Arthur Brown had records and a following, so once again the Masonic seems to be stepping into a breech left by the (imminent) demise of the Crystal Ballroom.

November 8, 1968 Thundering Heard/Muddy Valley/Crawdad Band
This date comes from a poster or flyer or advertised for auction. It suggests that many local bands played regular gigs at Masonic Temple, but of course its hard to say for sure.

March 16, 1969 Paul Butterfield Blues Band/Pulse
The poster says “Temple Dance”, but the venue is not actually the Masonic Temple. The show took place a few blocks away, in one of the ballrooms at the Governor Hotel at 614 SW 11th Street (at Alder). The Governor Hotel was built in 1909 (as The Seward Hotel), and has several ballrooms. The Hotel and the ballrooms are still in use.

The term “Temple Dance” suggests that it is a “Brand Name” (to use a modern term) that would be a self-evident reference, another sign that there were many more Masonic Temple events than we have posters for. The same bill, with Butterfield Blues Band and Pulse, had played Seattle’s Eagles Auditorium the night before (Saturday, March 15 1969). Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop had long since left the Butterfield Blues Band (in 1967 and 68 respectively), but guitarist Buzzy Feiten and a horn section supported Butterfield admirably.

The Light Show was provided by PH Martin's Magic Medicine Show, which presumably was Gary Ewing's popular light show at the Crystal Ballroom. The hip Portland music scene was small, so its reasonable to assume that there were many more connections between the Masonic Temple and the Crystal Ballroom.

April 13, 1969 Deep Purple
This was the original version of Deep Purple (with Rod Evans on vocals), touring the West Coast behind their hit single “Hush.” It’s possible that Deep Purple was not the headliner. As this is a Sunday night show, one is left to speculate whether this performance was actually at the Masonic Temple or at the Governor Hotel, as for the Butterfield show above.

June 25, 1969 Steve Miller Band/Total Eclipse/United States Cadenza
June 25 was a Wednesday night. The random assortment of dates that we have found for the Masonic Temple makes it hard to guess whether weeknight gigs were typical or rare. However, we know that the Steve Miller Band were on their way to Seattle, where they played the next night (June 26), and probably elsewhere, so once again Portlanders were treated to a weeknight headliner by virtue of their location.

The Steve Miller Band would have just released their excellent third album, Brave New World, in June of 1969. Boz Scaggs and organist Jim Peterman had left the group, and I'm not certain if guitarist Bobby Winkelmann would have joined by this time. The group may have just been a trio with Miller, bassist Lonnie Turner and drummer Tim Davis.

July 29-30, 1969 Steve Miller Band/Alice Cooper/Total Eclipse
These gigs were for a Tuesday and Wednesday night. Alice Cooper had recently signed with Frank Zappa’s Straight Records label, and would have been touring in conjunction with their first album (Pretties For You). There were major events in the Pacific Northwest the previous weekend, including the Seattle Pop Festival in Woodinville, WA (July 25-27) and the one-day Eugene Pop Festival (Saturday July 26). Alice Cooper was playing both events, and I assume that Steve Miller Band played at least one of them, although they weren't billed for either of them.

Aftermath
I have only vague information about rock concerts at the Masonic Temple after 1969. That in itself does not mean anything, given the scattered nature of our sources, but the concert business changed considerably after 1969. I do know of a Sons Of Champlin poster that is probably from the early 1970s (on the PNW Band site). In Portland, in particular, an old rule outlawing music at venues that served alcohol was changed in 1973, allowing bars and taverns to compete in the music business, so its unlikely there was a substantial music history to the Masonic Temple after that. In 1992, the building was purchased by its next door neighbor, the Portland Art Museum, and it was rechristened the Mark Building.

(The former Masonic Temple today, at 1119 SW Park Avenue, now known as the Mark Building at the Portland Art Museum. photo: wikimedia commons)

The scattered evidence of Portland's Masonic Temple in the 1960s suggests a number of very interesting stories, just beyond my current reach. Anyone with information, corrections or interesting speculation is encouraged to Comment or email.

Some Notes About Whitey Davis

2010-04-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

(A late 1966 poster from the Caffe Espresso in Portland, OR, when Whitey Davis was booking the venue. h/t Ross for the scan)

Coleman "Whitey" Davis was an important figure in West Coast psychedelic rock music in the 1960s, but he has been largely forgotten today. As I have begun working on the history of the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, and Oregon psychedelic venues in the 1960s in general, I thought a brief overview of what is known about Davis's fascinating career would be useful, as he will keep re-appearing at a variety of interesting junctures.

Whitey Davis had been the Assistant Manager at the Avalon Ballroom in 1966. He then moved to Portland, where he owned a coffee shop with music called The Folksinger, at 409 SW 13th Ave (at Burnside Street). Thanks to Valerie’s Brown exceptional research, the confusing timeline of Portland coffee house music venues can be clarified. There had been an earlier coffee shop named Caffé Espresso, at SW 6th and Harrison, and it was a famous Portland beatnik hangout, but it had closed in 1965, its owner bought out of his lease for an urban renewal. A popular folk music club called The Folksinger had moved from its original site on SW 10th (across from the Country Library) to 409 SW 13th at W. Burnside.

The Folksinger had a capacity of about 100, and in 1966 manager Whitey Davis began to experiment with blues, jazz and rock bookings as well as folk. Since Davis had worked with Chet Helms and The Family Dog in San Francisco, he was connected to the underground music scene. At some point in late 1966, the Folksinger changed its name to Caffé Espresso, in part probably to avoid the by-then somewhat stale “folk” association.

By early 1967, Davis was promoting rock bands, complete with light shows, on weekends at the Caffé Espresso. Weekdays still featured local folk performers, in a variety of styles. In Portland, somewhat uniquely, clubs that served alcohol were effectively barred from hiring bands (until 1973), so coffee houses did not face competition from conventional rock clubs. The small capacity of Caffé Espresso was frustrating, however, and in January 1967, Whitey Davis found a partner and started to book shows around the corner at the much larger Crystal Ballroom. The booking for the Caffe Espresso was taken over by Larry Howard, but given the close proximity to the Crystal, it is likely that there were at least social connections to Whitey Davis.

In 1967, Davis was also became the manager of a rock band called The Weeds, who had literally run out of gas in Portland (on their way to Vancouver), and played the Folksinger to earn money to travel on. The group ended up staying in Portland. By 1968, however the Weeds had gone to Los Angeles to record, and a new manager changed their name to The Lollipop Shoppe.

Davis and partner Jim Magaurn took over the Crystal Ballroom in January 1967 and managed it through early 1968. In the beginning of 1968, there was an effort to merge the Crystal with Chet Helms’ Family Dog operation, and around that time both partners left the Crystal, albeit on friendly terms. Davis returned to San Francisco to manage the Avalon Ballroom, with a particular emphasis on booking groups throughout the West Coast, at the Crystal Dog in Portland as well as the Avalon. While a Family Dog 'circuit' was an excellent idea, Helms and Davis were about a year too late, and more powerful associations (such as between Bill Graham and Frank Barsalona's Premier Talent Agency) were able to outbid the Dog. Davis left the Family Dog around June 1968.

(the first known poster from The Sound Factory, 1817 Alhambra, Sacramento, June 28-29, 1968. h/t Ross for the scan)

Davis went to Sacramento, California, where he ran a ballroom called The Sound Factory (at 1817 Alhambra). The Sound Factory opened in June, 1968, with great bands and great posters. In return for advertisements on the local underground rock station, KZAP-fm, Davis was a Saturday afternoon dj on the station, so he is fondly remembered in the Sacramento area. However, the Sacramento area was not really big enough to support an ongoing venue, and the Sound Factory was always on shaky financial footing. After various fits and starts, it closed in Spring 1969.

Whitey Davis appears to have become Miles Davis’s road manager from about 1970-72. The surreality of Miles Davis having a white road manager named Whitey Davis can hardly be imagined, and I find it unlikely that it was a different Whitey Davis. However, Whitey Davis died prematurely—I think in the late 1970s—but he seems to be fondly remembered by those that worked with him. The West Coast 60s rock underground was a considerably smaller universe than it might appear, and Whitey Davis seems to have been a surprisingly important figure. Its unfortunate that there is so little information about him.

The Emerald Tablet, Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco June 25-July 16, 1967

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Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso's poster for the June 22-25, 1967 13th Floor Elevators/Charlatans bill at the Avalon [FD67]--h/t Ross for the scan

Ralph J. Gleason's San Francisco Chronicle column for Friday, June 23, 1967, listing the Emerald Tablet as an additional opening act on Sunday, June 25

The history of San Francisco rock music in the 1960s has in many ways been an outgrowth of the fantastic poster art of the era. The legendary Fillmore and Avalon posters, along with other famous ones from the era, were reprinted many times, and have been displayed on dormitory walls and living rooms for decades. Many posters are now more well-known than the bands who actually appeared on the bills they advertise. As a result, the starting point for most 60s San Francisco rock prosopography is a transcription of the performers advertised on the most well-known posters. I myself started my research some years ago by making lists of this sort.

However, as I have done considerably more research in the meantime, I have learned that what was advertised on Fillmore and Avalon posters was at best only part of the story. The complexity of the art work and the practical issues associated with printing meant that the posters had to be commissioned, designed and produced before the show's details were finalized, and many Fillmore and Avalon shows featured somewhat different bills than were advertised. Speaking generally, the headline acts on almost all the Fillmore and Avalon posters usually performed as advertised, there were periodic substitutions for the secondary acts, and there were numerous bands who performed on Fillmore and Avalon bills who were not advertised at all on that weekend's poster. It is the third category that interests me the most, and is the subject of this post.

I have been doing newspaper research (via microfiche) on the 1967 San Francisco Chronicle. The Datebook entertainment section often included detailed information about local "Dance Concerts," as they were referred to, in both the regular listings and in Ralph J. Gleason's Ad Lib columns (on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday). The Chronicle listings were usually based on press releases that were more current than the posters. As a result, when there are differences between a poster and the Chronicle, the Chronicle was more likely to be correct, since the press release was more recent than the poster. In most cases, the principal difference for Fillmore and Avalon bills was the addition of another act, usually a lesser known band, to fill out the bill. In some cases, there were changes to the bands billed on the poster.

However, while the additional bands added to the Fillmore and Avalon bills that have been revealed in the Chronicle are obscure by any normal standards, they are familiar to scholars of 60s San Francisco rock: The Daily Flash, The Other Half, Salvation Army Banned, and so on, while not well known today, were regular bands on the scene, so its not unexpected that they would play the major venues. From my point of view, however, this begs an important question: who were The Emerald Tablet?

The Emerald Tablet, whoever they were, seemed to have played 11 shows at the Avalon between June 25 and July 16, 1967. All of these were mentioned in press releases sent to Ralph Gleason at the Chronicle, so the performances weren't completely ad hoc. The Avalon was a prime San Francisco venue, and bands always welcomed paying bookings. Every band in San Francisco wanted to play the Avalon, so there wouldn't have been any lack of choices. Plus, Helms always had hip ears and found interesting bands, so a band that got a couple of weekends at the Avalon was more likely to be an interesting group than not--how come there is no trace whatsoever of The Emerald Tablet? I am presenting what little evidence I have here, in the hopes someone may shed some light.

June 25, 1967 13th Floor Elevators/The Charlatans/Emerald Tablet
As shown by the clip above, the Emerald Tablet seem to only be playing on Sunday.

June 29-30, 1967 Quicksilver Messenger Service/Mt. Rushmore/Emerald Tablet
This clip from Ralph Gleason's June 28, 1967 Ad Lib column shows the Tablet opening on a Thursday night.

June 1-July 2, 1967 Big Brother and The Holding Company/Blue Cheer/Emerald Tablet
This listing from the Chronicle's entertainment section on Saturday July 1 shows Emerald Tablet opening for Big Brother. Incidentally, these two listings clarify the poster that suggested that Quicksilver and Big Brother played 4 nights together at the Avalon (June 29-July 2): in fact they each headlined two nights, while the mysterious Emerald Tablet apparently opened all the shows.

July 6-9, 1967 Steve Miller Blues Band/The Sparrow/Emerald Tablet
This listing from Gleason's July 5 column has Emerald Tablet opening for Steve Miller Blues Band and The Sparrow (note that the poster, Wes Wilson's FD70, has Miller and Siegal Schwall). I suspect the Sparrow had just broken up, but its hard to be certain. If they had in fact broken up, then perhaps there was yet another band on the bill, possibly Siegal Schwall.

July 14-16, 1967 Charlatans/Youngbloods/Emerald Tablet
This listing from the Sunday Chronicle Datebook (the "Pink Section") of July 9, 1967 lists the Youngbloods and Charlatans along with the Emerald Tablet. Yet Bob Fried's poster (FD71) lists the Other Half as opening the show. Leaving aside that we know that the Youngbloods were replaced on Sunday July 16 by The Wildflower (the Youngbloods were playing a benefit in the tiny Berkeley Hills town of Canyon), we are left hanging. At this point, the Emerald Tablet disappear without a trace, just as they appeared, after a dozen shows at The Avalon during the Summer Of Love. Who were they?

Some Speculation
Helms tended to work with the hippie underground, both in San Francisco and elsewhere, and less so with established record industry booking agents. Helms also had good ears, and knew who to trust if someone told him to give a chance to a band, which is why the Avalon was so good at discovering acts, even if the Fillmore ended up making them big. Given Helms connections, and importance as a scenemaker, I feel safe making a couple of assumptions about the mysterious Emerald Tablet.

I don't think the Emerald Tablet would have been an unknown group pushed by a record company, as Helms was on the opposite side of that world
While the Emerald Tablet may have been unknown, they wouldn't have been inexperienced musicians, as too many good (if obscure) bands were lining up to play the Avalon in the Summer of Love

My most likely guesses for the identity of the Emerald Tablet are

A popular band in some obscure region where Helms had a connection. Helms might have offered the band some gigs and a place to stay, trusting his friend's instincts. Its a good idea--but why isn't there some story floating around about a band from Fort Worth or Kansas City who spent three weeks at the Avalon during the Summer of Love? Did they all go into the Witness Protection Program?
A band that is known to 60s scholars, but who changed their name right before they broke up. The most likely candidates here might in fact be The Other Half, who had moved to San Francisco around this time and then broke up. There are almost no records of The Other Half's time in San Francisco, so a final name change might have gone unnoticed. If not The Other Half, then perhaps another local band that was otherwise familiar used this name for a while--why?--before moving on in some fashion.

1805 Geary Blvd, San Francisco: Fillmore Auditorium, December 10, 1965 SF Mime Troupe Appeal II

2010-03-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

The second benefit concert for the San Francisco Mime Troupe has passed into legend as the first rock concert that Bill Graham produced at the Fillmore Auditorium. The history and background of the show is a well-told story, so I will not repeat it here. The interesting part about the above ad, from the San Francisco Chronicle of December 5, 1965, is that it may be the first published advertisement--as opposed to a poster or flyer--for a Bill Graham rock concert. In any case, I have never seen a reproduction of this ad, and I would be surprised if it was widely known.

Publishing technology in 1965 was considerably more primitive than it was later (much less today). Many entertainment ads were typeset and laid out by the newspaper itself, based on copy provided by the advertiser. The format of this ad was identical to numerous ads that I have seen in the Chronicle in the 1965-67 period, with identical fonts, the venue name in larger type, and the phone number in the bottom border. It was difficult and financially prohibitive for a venue to provide different art each week, and they wouldn't have reproduced well in the newspaper anyway. The fact that the Great Society is listed as The Great Societt is merely a sign that the layout man couldn't read someone's (probably Bill's) handwritten copy.

Everyone also forgets that the John Handy Quintet was the biggest name on the bill for "Appeal II". The Jefferson Airplane were a popular local group, but they had been performing for a total of four months, and most pop groups had a half-life of about two years in those days. Handy had been a San Francisco State student in the mid-1950s, had gone to the East and made his name with Charles Mingus and others, and had returned to San Francisco as an important local jazz figure. Now, of course, the Jefferson Airplane and The Great Society (with Grace Slick) outrank Handy, and among the "many, many others" were a Palo Alto band called The Warlocks (not to mention a lesser-known Palo Alto band, The Vipers, who evolved into Mt. Rushmore). However, the idea that these groups would outshine an established jazz figure like Handy was probably unthinkable at the time.

Note also that in the lower left hand corner of the clipping it says "Ad Donated." The Mime Troupe case was seen as a Freedom Of Speech issue, and newspapers in the past were generally always concerned about defending Free Speech. The rather conservative Chronicle publishers would not necessarily have approved of the Mime Troupe's actual performances, had they ever seen them, but newspapers used to be jealous of their right to speak freely. Marty Balin's roommate was Bill Thompson, who worked as a Copy Boy (gofer) for Chronicle columnist Ralph Gleason, who was a supporter of the Mime Troupe and Free Speech, so its not hard to see a direct line to how the Chronicle came to contribute an ad. Nonetheless, given the Fillmore history, its surprising to see a simple black and white text ad promoting a Bill Graham show with the Airplane and "many, many others," only the barest hint of what was to come.

660 Great Highway, San Francisco September 4, 1969 The Playland Girls Of 1969

2010-02-17T19:24:00.000-08:00

Chet Helms's succesor for his legendary Avalon Ballroom was The Family Dog On The Great Highway, located at 660 Great Highway, where the Pacific Ocean meets San Francisco (or "The Edge of The Western World" as it was known). The Family Dog was a venue with a rich and complicated history, and the project was fraught with possibilities, most of which were only partially realized. The biggest factor was the dramatic changes in the live rock concert market, so that the Family Dog was too small to compete with the major venues nearer to downtown San Francisco and Oakland, while a few years too early to benefit from being near the suburbs.

While the list of Family Dog shows at the Great Highway location from 1969-70 is interesting, it also represents an unsuccessful, undercapitalized enterprise. Ironically, it turns out that many of the events at the Family Dog which were not, in fact, Family Dog events hold a lot more historical interest, even if they were not economic successes. At various times, I have written about a Light Show performed to unreleased live tapes from The Matrix club (August 26, 1969) and an unannounced Grateful Dead/Jefferson Airplane show at the Dog (September 6, 1969), and there are a number of other intriguing events as well.

The most widely known of the "non-Dog" events was a TV special called A Night At The Family Dog, featuring The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Santana and recorded on February 4, 1970. While a tad misleading--the Airplane rarely played The Dog, and Santana never played any other time at the Great Highway, much less all three bands together--it still gives a nice flash of the wide-open, free flowing San Francisco scene. Probably more people saw A Night At The Family Dog than ever attended a show there (you can rent the DVD from Netflix--I did).

Another intriguing event at The Dog was something called "Monday Night Class," a series of lectures by a local figure named Stephen Gaskin. Up to 1500 people would attend these events, which featured lectures and questions from the audience about topics like philosophy, drugs, sex and love (really, 1500 people--I'm not making this up). Granted, the events were free, but there was an interest in this sort of thing that was not being served by other sources. Gaskin would go on to start a successful commune in Tennessee called The Farm that was another story entirely, well outside the scope of this blog, but interesting in its own right.

Chet Helms had a monthly bill to meet, and on a personal level felt that The Family Dog should serve as a sort of hip Community Center. Although commercial hippiedom was in full flower in 1969 San Francisco, it was still focused on enterprises like head shops, rock concerts and t-shirts. There weren't many spaces for new ideas. That left the Family Dog as one of the few substantial buildings that welcomed somewhat untypical propositions. It does appear right now that the most interesting presentations at the 1969-70 Family Dog were those events that were not explicitly Family Dog concert productions.

As a result, I am now very interested in "Non-Dog" events at The Family Dog On The Great Highway, even when I know very little about them. The ticket above is for an event apparently called The Carnival Ball and Coronation Honoring The Playland Girls of 1969. It was sponsored by Playland-At-The-Beach, the amusement park right next door to the Family Dog ballroom. The ticket was sent to me by a member of the band Devil's Kitchen, who provided music for the show. Apparently it was fairly conventional fashion show/beauty pageant, and the two bands provided dance music. In this case, Helms was simply renting his hall, but it was still an interesting intersection of cultures.

Devil's Kitchen was a band from Carbondale, IL, who had moved to San Francisco in Spring 1968. They became the "house band" at The Family Dog, opening many of the shows there, even ones for which they did not appear on the bill. They also played other clubs around the Bay Area. The band members were guitarist Robbie Stokes, keyboardist/vocalist Brett Champlin, bassist Bob Laughton and drummer Steve Sweigart. While Stokes remained in the Bay Area for a dozen years or so, the rest of the band members ultimately returned to the Midwest later in 1970. Ironically, a recording of the group's performance at The Family Dog on March 22, 1970, promulgated by Wolfgang's Vault, roused the band back to life, and that is how I got in touch with them (Brett Champlin responds very kindly to emails, and to answer the obvious question, he is a 4th cousin of Bill Champlin but they had not met prior to the band arriving in SF).

According to Brett Champlin, Devil's Kitchen were just another dance band at this show, providing music after the pageant was complete. The Metropolitan Sound Company was a soul band from Oakland, playing original soul music with a Hendrix touch, and the bands probably alternated. While the ticket rather enticingly says "Dress Optional," I take that to mean that guests were not obligated to dress formally, rather than at all.

Brett Champlin only vaguely recalls the event, since he still has the complimentary ticket, so it was probably just another night for a working band. From an archaeological perspective, however, it points out that considerably more seems to have occurred at The Family Dog On The Great Highway than the limited run of Family Dog posters would suggest, and suggests that there are probably interesting events, hitherto unknown, waiting to be dug up.

Update: Judith Vacek Crowned Queen Of Playland

The September 6, 1969 San Francisco Chronicle reports

Judith Vacek shoots a good game of pool, measures a classic 36-26-36 and is "Playland Girl '69."
The 20-year old Tiburon girl was officially crowned as the Queen Of Playland At The Beach Thursday. The contest was conducted all summer and decided by popular vote of the public.
Miss Vacek, who aspires to be an airline stewardess, received a 1970 Ford Maverick that went along with her new title.

While a new world was dawning in the 1960s, the casual sexism of this news item is a reminder that the world of 1969 was a lot closer to 1959 than 1979. In any case, a pretty girl who can play pool sounds a like a lot of fun, and an apt ruler for Playland.

While its easy to chuckle today at Ms Vacek's aspiration to be a stewardess, its important to remember that many of the fun things that women aspire to today--whether Firefighter, Fighter Pilot or Futures Trader--were effectively if not legally barred to women, and stewardess was actually one of the most exciting options available. Anyway, here's to hoping that Judith Vacek had a happy reign, and had some fun driving to the pool hall in her new Maverick.

660 Great Highway, San Francisco August 26, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway: Great SF Light Show Jam

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This paragraph from Ralph J. Gleason's column in the August 25, 1969 San Francisco Chronicle says

Tomorrow night at the Family Dog on The Great Highway there will be a lightshow spectacular--The Great SF Light Show Jam--with 13 different light shows and taped music from three years of unissued tapes from the Matrix including tapes of Big Brother, Steve Miller, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service

I had seen the Great SF Light Show Jam listed on various obscure flyers and thought little about it, since Light Shows are inherently of the moment. The idea that the Light Shows were performing to years of unissued live shows recorded at the Matrix--well, that's something else entirely.

Now, various Matrix tapes have circulated over the years, and I wouldn't be surprised if the ones that were used for the Family Dog show were the ones that we have already heard. Still, its a really intriguing thought. And the tapes must have sounded awfully good, not degraded (since so little time had passed) and blasted over a real concert sound system.

Sic transit gloria psychedelia.

Update: The event seems to have been repeated a month later (on Thursday, September 25, 1969). Given the description, I don't think new tapes were added to the mix (since other, non-Matrix, tapes were used also), but its still interesting to think about (the clip is from Ralph Gleason's SF Chronicle column, September 24, 1969).

345 Broadway, San Francisco August 1-2-3, 1969 Headhunters Amusement Park: Phanangang/Indian Puddin' 'N' Pipe/Quicksilver

2010-02-14T20:28:00.000-08:00

This post is more about process than substance, but no less interesting for that. Did Quicksilver Messenger Service play an obscure venue on Broadway in San Francisco on the weekend of August 1-2-3, 1969?

The Evidence
Reviewing the entertainment listings in Berkeley's Tribe from August 1, 1969 reveals some surprising listings. The listings for Friday August 1 (above) and Sunday August 3 list the following

Phanangang, Indian Puddin' Pipe, Quicksilver, lights Optic & Illusion. Headhunters Amusement Park, 345 Broadway, 8 pm $2.

(The listing for Saturday, August 2 is the same but excludes Quicksilver. Whatever the status of this listing, I am as inclined to assume that the absence of Quicksilver in Saturday's listing is simply a typo, although that says nothing about whether or not the band actually played)

Quicksilver Messenger Service
In Summer 1969, Quicksilver Messenger Service was San Francisco rock royalty by any standard. Their classic second album Happy Trails had received massive FM airplay, and was a favorite on turntables all over the Bay Area. Gary Duncan had in fact left the group, and it only barely existed, even though they were ostensibly recording an album on Capitol (which would eventually be released as Shady Grove). Although Quicksilver only consisted of John Cipollina, David Freiberg and Greg Elmore, plus any possible guest musicians, they were still a hugely popular group in San Francisco.

Although the band was regularly referred to as "Quicksilver," for obvious reasons, they were never billed that way (just as The Grateful Dead or The Jefferson Airplane were never formally billed as "The Dead" or "The Airplane"). From that point of view, it makes no sense whatsoever that a major San Francisco band that could easily headline a weekend at Fillmore West would be billed for two or three nights at a bar on Broadway, and not listed first to boot.

On the other hand, after several months of complete isolation, Quicksilver Messenger Service had started to play a few gigs. They had played near Monterey (at the Resurrection Theatre in Seaside) on July 18-19, and they played a few gigs in support of the Wild West Festival on August 22 and 23 (Fillmore West and Family Dog, respectively). All the reports suggested a tentative working out of a new lineup, and a low-key gig at a North Beach club is not so far fetched as it might initially seem.

The Venue
345 Broadway was the former site of a North Beach club called Goman's, which I have written about earlier. Initially it was known as Goman's Gay 90s, and it was owned by an old Vaudeville family. The club had mostly presented Vaudeville style reviews, in some sort of modified fashion befitting its name. In early 1967, at least, it did have "Breakfast Shows" from 2-6am, featuring the likes of The Sparrow, but that seems to have been an afterthought.

Starting in April, 1967, however, Goman's Gay 90s became Goman's Gay 60s, and featured Topless Dancers, a Light Show and rock bands. Topless clubs provided paying gigs to new bands in town who weren't yet of the status of a Fillmore or Avalon gig (like New Salvation Army Banned or West Coast Natural Gas). While not a great gig, necessarily, club owners were usually tolerant of whatever the band played as long as they kept the beat going, so it was a chance to get started in a new city.

By late 1969, however, the Topless craze had subsided. It wasn't unknown on North Beach, but it wasn't the auotmatic moneymaker it had been. I have to assume that the Goman family gave up on Goman's Gay 60s Topless club, which wasn't their style anyway, and operated a psychedelic nightclub instead. Whether the Goman's actually owned the building, subleased their club or simply let the property owner lease it is unknown to me. It is a fact of city life, however, that Use Permits tend to remain in effect, so a building licensed both to sell liquour and put on musical performances was likely to remain a nightclub.

Did Quicksilver Play Headhunters?--The Parameters
If Quicksilver Messenger Service did play Headhunters Amusement Park, it would have been because they felt they needed the work. The group had experimented with Nick Gravenites as lead singer and rhythm guitarist, and legendary pianist Nicky Hopkins had just joined, but a description of one of the Seaside shows (July 18) showed them to be quite ragged. An eyewitness account of the August 22 Fillmore West show (from diarist Faren Miller) suggests a much more together band, without Gravenites, but with occasional appearances by engineer Dan Healy on guitar and bass (yes, the once and future Dead soundman). Perhaps Quicksilver got it together by playing a few stealth gigs, and Headhunters may have been one of them.Phangangang and Indian Puddin and Pipe, while not well known, were common in Bay Area club listings at the time and would be typical of the groups one might expect to play Broadway.

I have no more information than I have presented here. What I am left with is a list of possible choices, that I have to consider in light of any future evidence (however slender) that may come to light. I am presenting them here so that readers can consider the sparse evidence that Rock Prosopography contends with.

Alternative Explanations
1. There was another group named 'Quicksilver.'
This proposition is a self-evident "no" in 1969 San Francisco. It's like suggesting there was a band called "The Airplane" that was somehow different than Jefferson Airplane. I am dismissing this possibility out of hand.

2. The listing was a mistake, and 'Quicksilver' was a misreading of something else.
This proposition is the most likely. Generally entertainment listings had a deadline (usually something like Tuesday for the Friday edition), and some functionary at a venue made a phone call or sent in a list to various papers. Given that many flyers back in the day were psychedelically lettered and hard to read, some well meaning office clerk could simply have confused some unreadable thing as "Quicksilver" when it was something else entirely.

3. Some stealth Quicksilver gigs were planned, and they got inadvertently publicized.
This is the most intriguing proposition, though the likelihood is still well under 50%. Quicksilver was starting to play around, but didn't even have a stable lineup, and a gig or two at a low-key club would have given the band a chance to try themselves out at low risk. Following the logic here, if they had agreed with the club owner that they might show up, the band's name may have been on some internal log not meant for dissemination, and a well-meaning functionary may have simply phoned in the listing and read off their name, without realizing the implication.

From that point of view, the common shortening of the name to "Quicksilver" makes more sense. Also, the odd configuration of playing Friday (Aug 1) and Sunday (Aug 3) but not Saturday makes an odd kind of sense. The band may have listed nights they might show up, rather than having booked real gigs.

For the third and most interesting proposition, two future pieces of research might be of interest:

Who were the owners or operators of the Headhunters Amusement Park? If they were someone associated with Quicksilver Messenger Service or their management (West-Pole), then this hypothesis becomes more plausible
Fragmentary memories of seeing Quicksilver in North Beach or Broadway. It is common to read vague stories from old hippies who say things like "once I wandered into a bar on Broadway and found Quicksilver rocking the joint," and to dismiss them as acid-tinged memories of no value. However, there may be an element of truth to such a memory in this case.

My analysis stops here, as I have no further information. In the end, all I can suggest is that Quicksilver Messenger Service may have played a few stealth gigs at a Broadway nightspot on August 1, 2 or 3, 1969. Or not.

505 Parnassus Avenue, Steiniger Auditorium, UC Medical Center Auditorium, San Francisco, CA March 4, 1967: Big Brother and The Holding Company/Steve Miller Blues Band/Robert Baker

2010-02-12T17:35:00.000-08:00

March 4, 1967 Steiniger Auditorium, University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, CA
Big Brother and The Holding Company/Steve Miller Blues Band/Robert Baker

This relatively obscure Spring 1967 event is interesting mainly for its venue. One recurring theme of San Francisco underground rock was how sympathetic fans of bands found gigs for them in unlikely places, which could not be repeated once the long-haired bands were revealed in the flesh. In particular, many educational institutions had an "entertainment budget" that allowed students (usually on some school appointed committee) to hire acts that were popular with the student body. In 1960s California, this generally meant folk or jazz music, and perhaps some Beatles-style rock bands for a dance. It did not usually include psychedelic weirdness.

This specific instance is interesting because the University of California at San Francisco was and is strictly a medical and professional school. While part of the University of California system (then including Berkeley, UCLA, Davis, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Riverside and Irvine), UCSF had no undergraduate component. All the students were studying for advanced degrees in medicine, to become doctors or other professionals. It was still the 1960s, however, and somehow some aspiring doctors managed to get the Med school's auditorium for a Benefit concert. Big Brother and The Holding Company were rising stars, and had been Fillmore and Avalon headliners for some time. The Steve Miller Blues Band, while based in Berkeley, were also up and coming (Robert Baker was a hip comedian).

UC Medical Center was within walking distance of the Haight Ashbury. While I am unable to determine the current name of Steiniger Auditorium (which may in fact have been remodeled or replaced), I am fairly certain that it was at what is currently known as "The Parnussus Campus" at 505 Parnassus (at 2nd Avenue). This is just up the hill from The Panhandle and The Haight. As a result of some peculiar features of Haight Ashbury geography, if Janis Joplin was coming from the apartment she shared at the time with Joe McDonald on Lyon Street, it would have been quicker for her to walk rather than drive.

I do know of one other rock show at UC Medical Center, at the Student Union on Arguello and Parnassus (which don't precisely intersect, but close enough). Sopwith Camel and The SF Mime Troupe played a show there on May 27, 1967, but even then that was a smaller deal than Big Brother. Still, the Med School seems to have caught on, and after 1967 aspiring doctors seemed to have had to go the Fillmore and Avalon like everyone else.

135 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA November 8-14, 1969 The Poppycock

2010-02-05T16:04:00.000-08:00

Palo Alto had a thriving bohemian scene in the early 1960s, spawning both Ken Kesey's acid tests and The Grateful Dead, among other things. However, the tiny scene centered around Dowtown Palo Alto and nearby Menlo Park (where Kepler's Books was located) rapidly scattered to San Francisco and Santa Cruz when things got interesting. Palo Alto was a college town, liberal and progressive, but oddly sleepy--one San Francisco columnist (a former resident) accurately called it "a hotbed of social rest," which it remains today. By the late 1960s, Palo Alto was in a funny niche--a town whose residents were tolerant of long hair, funny smelling smoke and new ideas, but not particularly interested in exploring it themselves.

The net result was that Palo Alto had a thriving if small concert scene in the late 1960s, which hardly bothered the tolerant residents, but at the same time not large enough to develop any traction on its own. The town of Palo Alto had a very odd history, the essence of which was that railroad mogul Leland Stanford founded the town on the basis of being anti-liquor, in contrast to sinful Mayfield just a few miles away (California Avenue to any locals from this century). Although the history of alcohol and Palo Alto had undergone some twists and turns, by the mid-1960s you could buy beer at a restaurant Downtown, but there were still no bars. Thus any local beer joints had a surprisingly important status in Downtown Palo Alto, since a frosty Budweiser was the closest thing you could get to a drink.

I have written previously of the epic 1967 Palo Alto Be-In and the surprising series of free outdoor concerts that followed. Along with a willingness to allow the local hippies to put on free concerts in the city park nearest downtown (El Camino Park), Palo Alto also had its very own rock club, The Poppycock, a peculiar little venue all but forgotten by everyone except Ross and me. It was located near the train station, on University Avenue and High Street--could you make this up?--and next door to the pizza parlor where Jerry Garcia and other folkies had honed their chops to tiny audiences in the early 1960s. The building is still intact: here is a 2006 photo, and while it has been remodeled it gives a sense of the modest scale of the structure.

(for former or current Palo Altans, the building is at 135 University at High Street. The Tangent (and The Top Of The Tangent) was next door at 117 University. At the time of this photo, it was a branch of Stanford University Bookstore, who has since vacated, but the building is still for lease last I checked. The building has been substantially remodeled since its Poppycock days).

Downtown Palo Alto had kind of died in the mid-1950s, thanks to the opening of the nearby Stanford Shopping Center. The moribund real estate market allowed some hippie types to buy the three story 135 University building in about 1967. While offices were rented upstairs, the owners (whose names remain inaccessible to me) opened a Fish "N' Chips take out shop on the ground floor, with a beer joint/night club, complete with light show providing nightly entertainment. A couple of historic facts stand out about The Poppycock at this time

English readers of this blog will be startled to know that Fish And Chips was exotic enough in California to count as "ethnic cuisine", and
With no bars downtown (because they were against the law), a hippie beer joint was exactly the only place the local longhairs over the age of 21 could go hang for a drink

In 1967 The Poppycock was sort of like a lounge, as near as I can tell, with regular entertainment but not "names" (a local jazz trio did play there regularly, featuring Woodside High School student Mike Shrieve on drums). By 1968, however, the club had switched to a more rock-oriented format, albeit with some folk and Theater mixed in. The Bay Area was the place to be for rising rock bands, and a circuit was developing for working bands, that included The Matrix in San Francisco, The New Orleans House in Berkeley and The Poppycock. Bands on the road could "tour" the Bay Area, in between more high profile gigs opening at The Fillmore and The Avalon. At the same time, local bands had a place to build their audiences.

The audience of The Poppycock was slightly at odds with the town. The hippest people in Palo Alto were the local High School students, but of course they couldn't get into a bar, and were "forced" to go the Fillmore or whatever other concerts were nearby. Conversely, long-haired 20 somethings from Santa Clara to San Mateo had few choices for nighttime entertainment, since while there were plenty of bars in the South Bay, they didn't always play original rock music nor were they necessarily sympathetic to hippies. While a hippie in the South Bay was rarely subject to physical violence (it being a hotbed of social rest, after all), the point of going out was to meet like minded people, preferably of the opposite gender, and for hippies in the South Bay that meant The Poppyock.

As a result, the hip Palo Alto residents couldn't get into The Poppycock because they were minors. Most young working people didn't live in Palo Alto, however, because it was too dull and expensive, but paradoxically for those who lived in in the nearby counties the Poppycock was a destination, particularly on weekends, because the cheaper suburban towns weren't tolerant enough of longhair hippie establishments.

November 8, 1969 Poppycock Calendar.
Ross found this poster somewhere, I don't know where, but in any case only he and I would care. Its actually a pretty good snapshot of the kind of acts who played The Poppycock.

Saturday, November 8, 1969 John Fahey/Billy Joe Becoat
John Fahey was Berkeley's legendary pioneer of acoustic guitar, a huge influence on both Country Joe and The Fish and Leo Kottke. If that makes sense to you, you'd like John Fahey. Billy Joe Becoat apparently recorded an album for Fantasy this year, but I know nothing else about him.

Sunday, November 9, 1969 The Rhythm Dukes
The Rhythm Dukes at this time featured former Moby Grape members Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson, along with bassist John Barrett and drummer John Oxendine, both formerly of the group Boogie. Stevenson had played drums in Moby Grape, but he switched to guitar for this group. This promising group lived in Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and were a good example of the type of band that played The Poppycock because there were few other South Bay outlets for original music.

Monday, November 10, 1969 Open Mike-Auditions
Tuesday, November 11, 1969 Folk-Blues Workshop
The Poppycock was professionally connected to The Top Of The Tangent, next door, although it may have been called The Trip Room by then. The Folk Blues Workshop was a kind of "Best Of The Hoots" ensemble that played different clubs around the Bay Area. The best known graduate of this process was folksinger Jim Page (no, not him), now based out of Washington State.

Wednesday, November 12, 1969 Canterbury Fair
Although I know nothing of Canterbury Fair, they were a familiar name on Bay Area rock venues at small clubs during this period.

Thursday, November 13, 1969 New Riders Of The Purple Sage
At this time, Jerry Garcia had recently helped establish The New Riders Of The Purple Sage as a vehicle for him to play pedal steel guitar. Old Los Altos pal John Dawson wrote and sang the songs, and David Nelson provided the electric guitar licks, Buck Owens style. Phil Lesh played bass and Mickey Hart played drums. During this period, the New Riders played a lot of Bay Area clubs on weeknights, as long as the Dead were not on tour.

The Grateful Dead had formed in Palo Alto, as The Warlocks, but to my knowledge they never had a paying gig in the town. They played The Big Beat Acid Test (in South Palo Alto, at 998 San Antonio Road), and they had even auditioned at Palo Alto's first folk club, St. Michael's Alley, at 436 Hamilton (they flunked). But there were no gigs in Palo Alto for long hair bands, to my knowledge, and they had to start playing various clubs in the South Bay along the El Camino Real Strip, which ultimately led them to San Francisco.

The Grateful Dead had played the Palo Alto Be-In on June 24, 1967, but of course that was a free concert. I believe the November 14, 1969 Poppycock gig to be the first time Jerry Garcia got paid for a show in downtown Palo Alto since the days of Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band Champions in 1965.

It very well may be that the New Riders appeared again the next Thursday--the band definitely were scheduled for Thursday November 20, and the poster seems to imply multiple Thursdays.

Coming Soon
November 28-29 Cal Tjader
[undated] San Francisco Mime Troupe
December 31 Charlie Musselwhite

Jazz musician Cal Tjader, a critical figure in Latin jazz, was actually born in the South Bay and of Swedish extraction. As such, he was a popular local figure, independent of local rock currents.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe had been a popular counterculture attraction for some years. The Poppycock had a fair amount of theater events, particularly on weeknights.

Charlie Musselwhite had taken a month's leave from his job in a Chicago steel mill in 1967, and he stayed for over 30 years. It is possible that his band already featured Ukiah guitarist Robben Ford.

We are working on a complete Poppycock venue history, but it remains in progress. Anyone with insights, corrections or recovered memories (real or imagined) please Comment or eMail.

100 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA June 23, 1968 Free You Be-In

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El Camino Park in Palo Alto, bordered by Alma Street, Palo Alto Avenue and El Camino Real, was Palo Alto's first park. Built in 1914, it was just across the street from El Palo Alto, the "tall tree" that gave the city its name, as well as across another street (El Camino Real) from the Stanford Shopping Center that revitalized Palo Alto after the 1950s. The park was also midway between Perry Lane, where Ken Kesey's first parties took place in the early 1960s, and downtown Palo Alto, where various folkies like Jerry Garcia were playing above a pizza parlor. In the Summer of 1967, it was the site on June 24 of a substantial Be-In featuring the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and The Holding Company, The Sons of Champlin and other groups. This event was the culmination of a series of Be-Ins that had taken place from January onwards, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, San Jose and elsewhere.

After the Monterey Pop Festival, however (held on June 16-17-18, 1967), rock concerts started to turn into big business. Many cities grew uneasy about free concerts in public parks, as much for the size of potential crowds as concern about "the hippie element." Cities such as Fremont, which had had a successful event in the Summer of 1967 (the June 18 Banana At Noon event), nonetheless felt uneasy about large groups of long-haired kids congregating in a park to hear loud music. Berkeley, being a lively college town, not surprisingly encouraged the free concerts in the main park (Provo Park at Grove and Allston), but Berkeley prided itself on not being typical. While Palo Alto was a considerably smaller town than Berkeley, it was still a college town, and there was a regular concert scene there too from 1967 onwards, which has been all but forgotten. In particular, the city of Palo Alto regularly allowed free concerts at El Camino Park, with fairly substantial San Francisco bands.

After the June 24, 1967 Be-In, I know for certain of a Fall 1967 concert with the Steve Miller Band and The New Delhi River Band. This June 23, 1968 event with Charley Musselwhite, The Sons of Champlin and Notes From The Underground also stands out for the fact that it was publicized with a mail order flyer. While none of these three bands were major acts, they all were regulars at Bay Area rock clubs and had appeared further down on the bill at places like The Fillmore and The Avalon, so they weren't without appeal. I also know of an August 1968 El Camino Park event (probably August 11) with The Steve Miller Band and Frumious Bandersnatch. The World Historical significance of that pairing was that the Frumious (from lovely Lafayette, CA) met Steve Miller, and 4 of 5 members of the the group ended up in the Steve Miller Band over the next few years (one of them, David Denny, is still in it). There was also evidence of a Sepember 29, 1968 show with Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Youngbloods (and Ace Of Cups/Cold Blood/Freedom Highway/Frumious Bandersnatch/ Flamin Groovies), another Free You event.

While five concerts in the park in two years may not seem like a lot, it was about four more than any city besides San Francisco and Berkeley. While the Sons, Charley Musselwhite and Notes From The Underground were hardly the Dead and Big Brother, they were groups with albums and followings, and none of them were local. Cities like San Jose tolerated free concerts by local groups, but they were very uneasy about substantial events featuring out-of-town bands. Charley Musselwhite, from Chicago but relocated to San Francisco, had a fine album on Vanguard, however, and Marin's Sons had been signed to MGM and then Capitol (although their debut album would not come out until early 1969). Berkeley's Notes were also on Vanguard.

I only know about this event through the flyer. The MidPeninsula Free University, known colloquially as "Free You" was an alternative education establishment based at a Menlo Park storefront. Their headquarters was walking distance to El Camino Park (at 100 El Camino Real) as well as to Kepler's Books (and not coincidentally, to Perry Lane). This concert was advertised on the back of a monthly flyer mailed out to interested students, meaning that the show had been scheduled some time in advance. Palo Alto had had a sort of hip bohemian scene from about 1960-66, spawning the Acid Tests, the Grateful Dead and a few other things, but most of the interesting people had moved North to San Francisco or South to the Santa Cruz Mountains by this time. Those who remained, however, while somewhat straighter, were also of the liberal, open-minded persuasion who didn't fear loud music and new things on the Village Green.

I don't know anyone who went to this specific event, although I do know people who went to the first Be-In (me, for one--age nine) and both Steve Miller events. Although a Steve Miller concert may have seemed like just another event to the locals, I know of a 14-year old from New Jersey who went to the 1968 Steve Miller concert and as a result he moved to the Bay Area as soon as he turned 18, so the events could still be powerful (particularly if you were from Piscataway).

El Camino Park events were just a small part of the interesting, if forgotten, rock scene Palo Alto in the 1960s. There was a club called The Poppycock (at 135 University Avenue), and a variety of other intriguing if minor events, including a series of sort of guerilla performances in Downtown Palo Alto itself, at a place called Lytton Plaza. I have been doing research on this history for some time, and I am looking into presenting all of it. In the meantime, however, we can contemplate a sleepy college town, not necessarily hip but tolerant of oddballs, where free concerts in the city park could be organized and promoted with the casual assent of the community.

Washington and Murphy, Sunnyvale, CA Whisky A Go Go, August 1965 The Leaves

2010-01-31T15:34:00.000-08:00

Recently we had been conducting archaeological digs into the little known San Francisco branch of West Hollywood's Whisky A Go Go. At the same time, I had commented in passing about a curious venue in suburban Sunnyvale (between San Jose and Palo Alto) called Wayne Manor. Wayne Manor was rock and soul dance club modeled on a Batman theme, with the club outfitted as the Bat Cave and the waitresses dressed like Bat Girl.

We were startled to receive email from the son of the Wayne Manor operator, the late Joe Lewis. Besides a treasure trove of information on the Wayne Manor itself, which had opened in February 1966. He startled us with the information that the venue had actually opened in Summer 1965 as a Sunnyvale branch of the Whisky A Go Go, offering as proof an amazing photo of the Joel Scott Hill Trio (with Bob Mosley, Johnny Barbata and Joni Lyman) playing the club, right underneath the logo.

The younger Mr. Lewis was also kind enough to send along some other promotional photos, one of which I am publishing here. These photos appear to have been promotional photos taken during or right after the club was opened, probably between July and September 1965. While I think this photo was staged for the cameras, since the real club was much darker, its nonetheless the real band and the real physical setup. I have posted this not only to marvel at it, but to consider a few things about the 1965 rock era:

The group is The Leaves, who were a popular Hollywood club band signed by Pat Boone. Their logo was a marijuana leaf, to the amusement of the few who recognized it. I assume the band members at this time were Jim Pons (bass), Bill Rhinehart (guitar), Robert Lee Reiner (guitar), John Beck (vocals) and Tom Ray (drums, not visible, possibly not even in the photo).
Note the tiny amount of equipment. There appear to be two amps for both guitars and the bass, and I don't see any drum mikes. I assume there was some sort of house PA for the vocals.
Note the dj booth. Whatever records were stacked up there would probably be an eBay goldmine now.
Check out the Go-Go girl fashions, a style originally made popular by the Hollywood Whisky. Both of the women are quite attractive, but neither the clothes nor the hairstyles look particularly flattering today

The Sunnyvale Whisky A Go Go was only open under that name until February 1966, when it became Wayne Manor.

(h/t Garth for the photo)

807 Montgomery, San Francisco-Roaring 20s May 1967

2010-01-18T15:02:00.000-08:00

San Francisco always prides itself on being cutting edge, and it favors The New over everything else. This was never truer than the psychedelic 60s, when the eagerness to see bands trying new things often exceeded the bands' ability to do anything new. As far as music went, however, 60s psychedelia was part of a change of interesting if not always memorable entertainment options in San Francisco.

San Francisco's principal entertainment district for white people had always been the North Beach area, the heart of which was on Broadway and Columbus. The Beat Poets had found a home at City Lights bookstore in the 1950s, and cutting edge jazz was the order of the day. The jazz musicians themselves played (and often lived) in the Fillmore district, but North Beach had the best paying gigs. By the early 1960s, the happening music in North Beach was Latin jazz, where San Francisco was a critical outpost. While a very distant second to New York City, of course, San Francisco had played a surprisingly important role in Latin music, and a very important role in jazz as well. While the jazz scenes in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago (and probably Detroit) had more great players, San Francisco was a great incubator for new jazz talent. Throughout the 1950s, San Francisco had been a source of new entertainment for the country, with comedians, folk musicians, jazz and Latin musicians breaking out of the North Beach clubs.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, the early 1960s North Beach club scene came to be dominated by Topless dancers. The most prominent of these (haha) was Carol Doda, the first and for some time only Topless dancer to use silicon implants, who appeared nightly at The Condor. Soon almost all of North Beach had followed suit with topless revues of different types. By 1965, except for a few jazz clubs, almost all the North Beach establishments featured topless dancers.

Topless clubs were an evolution of the existing circuit of Burlesque clubs, which had existed on the West Coast but in a sort of underground fashion for many years. In the 1960s, they came out into the mainstream as Topless clubs. While the attraction of a Topless club was women dancing with their tops off--just to be clear about it--they generally featured a floor show with some combination of musicians, comedians and costume to go with the dancers. Topless clubs were considerably less raunchy than today's Strip Clubs, although it was a somewhat more innocent time. By the 1960s, going to a Topless club was a racy thing for urban adults to do, like going to an R-Rated movie today (which did not in fact exist at that time), but still respectable.

When the Jefferson Airplane started The Matrix in 1965, some blocks away from North Beach, they were establishing a very different kind of entertainment than what was currently available (as I have discussed previously). By 1967, while Topless clubs still ruled North Beach, there were Topless clubs up and down the El Camino Real and San Pablo Avenue on both sides of the Bay, so suburbanites hardly needed to drive into the City for it. San Francisco is always looking for the next thing, and by 1967 what was happening was psychedelic rock. What had been an underground phenomenon in 1966 was wide out in the open by the next year, and the North Beach clubs immediately picked up on it.

The ad above is for a club at 807 Montgomery Street (one block from Columbus and two from Broadway) called The Roaring 20s. Their calling card was a naked girl on a swing who, indeed, swung over the entire building. The club had briefly gone away from Topless in 1966, but had rapidly returned. From looking at the ad (in the May 6, 1967 San Francisco Chronicle) its clear that they have borrowed the iconography of the Fillmore posters, with the wobbly letters and the promise of a light show. Their house band at the time was a group called The New Salvation Army Banned, a Haight Street group who had been playing there almost every night since at least March.

On Sunday, May 14, The Roaring 20s had a special event, promoted in that day's Chronicle (above), The Artists And Models Bal Masque. The blurb helpfully points out that tickets will be available to the public. Another listing says that the Jerry Hahn Trio (a jazz group) and Notes From The Underground (a Berkeley Folk-Rock group) would also be playing.

The New Salvation Army Banned eventually released two albums on ABC, under the name Salvation. For struggling rock bands, Topless clubs were fairly good gigs, if not exactly something to write home about. A band who wanted to work out on "Smokestack Lightning" with some modal jamming was free to do so as long as the drummer kept the beat going, and no one in North Beach cared if your hair was long or if you smoked pot (well, as long as you shared). In cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver (that I know of) many psychedelic rock acts got their start keeping the beat behind topless dancers, and then cheerfully left that out of their resume when they got better known. I'm fairly certain that a band like NSAB, with a seven-nights-a-week gig, could skip out for a Fillmore gig when it was available, and show up later in the evening to finish out the night, so it didn't impede any progress.

Many tourists who came to San Francisco, whether from the suburbs or from out of town, were just looking for some fun, and probably merged the idea of Topless dancers and braless hippies anyway. A number of other North Beach clubs followed the lead of Roaring 20s. Most prominent in the Chronicle ads was a club called Goman's Gay 90s, which was run by an old showbiz family who had run a Vaudeville-type review at the club for many years, although they had 2am weekend rock shows. In April 1967, they caved in and went modern.

Goman's Gay 60s invokes a whole series of images, all of which are in fact incorrect, since "Gay" as a metonymy for homosexuality was not in common usage (if at all). the club was purposely inverting the previous name, and borrowing the psychedelic motif with the light show. No doubt many light show operators got their starts at Topless joints like these as well, although the half-life of light shows was very brief. Goman's Gay 60s did not advertise bands, so whatever combos played there were probably pretty raw, but with musicians moving to San Francisco every day, it was a paying gig. For the club, it gave visiting tourists a chance to get both of San Francisco's entertainment attractions with no cover charge.

Ironically, however, another effect of the Fillmore and Avalon was to reduce Broadway's role in the San Francisco entertainment spectrum. Up until the mid-1960s, entertainment in The City equaled Broadway, but afterwards it was spread all around downtown and the nearer neighborhoods. Broadway remains an important neighborhood for nightlife in San Francisco, but hardly the only one.

update: it appears that soon after the New Salvation Army Banned moved on from The Roaring 20s to greener pastures, their residency was taken up by a band called West Coast Natural Gas, newly arrived from Seattle. For a description of the experience, see here.

(807 Montgomery became the rock club The Orphanage for awhile in the 1970s. Currently neither 807 Montgomery or 345 Broadway appear to feature entertainment venues)

3138 Fillmore Street, San Francisco The Matrix pre-opening

2010-01-16T22:58:00.000-08:00

This paragraph from Perry Phillips's Night Sounds column in the August 13, 1965 Oakland Tribune may be the earliest listing of The Matrix in print--at the minimum it was one of the first. Phillips's column was a typical sort found in Daily newspapers at the time. On Tuesdays and Fridays, Phillips would survey the week's entertainment options, covering nightclubs, restaurants and special events. While the major focus was on Oakland and nearby towns, he also made some mention of goings on in San Francisco, Lake Tahoe and Reno. The coverage was generally positive and skewed heavily towards Tribune advertisers, but someone like Phillips clearly enjoyed going out most nights and liked a wide variety of music, entertainment and food. Obviously hoping to encourage the Matrix to become a Tribune advertiser, he wrote

A new nightclub opens tonight in San Francisco, the Matrix. It will feature a combination of folk and rock-and-roll music. Matrix' owners are opening the club for the specific purpose of promulgating the folk art but will divert occasionally to jazz and comedy. When I asked about the unusual name, they told me Matrix means "a place where something of value originates and develops." If the club lives up to this definition, it will be a huge success. The Maitrix [sic] is at 3138 Fillmore Street.

Although this prose is typical of Entertainment columns in daily newspapers at the time, in this specific instance there was a large amount of truth. The Matrix was founded by Marty Balin and his father Joe, and they intended the pizza-and-beer joint primarily as a place for Marty's new group The Jefferson Airplane to perform. As the first "long-hair" joint in San Francisco, it featured the San Francisco debuts and critical early performances of many great bands, like the Great Society, Quicksilver Messenger Service (under another name) and Big Brother and The Holding Company.

Although the rock market rapidly outgrew the Matrix, it was still a primary stop for new bands, and a hangout for established groups on weeknights. The list of performerances at The Matrix reads like a Who's Who of San Francisco rock bands of the time. While The Matrix was never the financial success that Perry Phillips suggested, it was indeed "a place where something of value originates and develops," and its legendary status is assured. In the context of the page of advertisements where Perry Phillips column appeared so many years ago, I thought I would highlight some of the other establishments, to show how different the Matrix truly was at the time. All of these scans are from the same page as Phillips column in the August 13, 1965 Oakland Tribune.

Ann's New Mo, a club that has utterly mystified me for some time, was a few miles from downtown and seemed to feature Swing Dancing and Jazz. I cannot fathom what "New Mo" referred to, and the iconography only became stranger later in the 1960s.

The Ali Baba (at Grand and Webster) and The Sands Ballroom (at 19th and Broadway, near what is now the BART Station) had persisted since the Swing Era. In fact, had any promoter been willing to put on rock shows at either venue, Bill Graham and Chet Helms would have had formidable competitors, but it was not to be. The Sands, at 1933 Broadway, had been known as McFadden's when Benny Goodman rolled into town in August 1935, and the club made his career.

Cal Silva's Hitchen Post, on the Northern edge of Oakland at San Pablo and 61st St (1850 San Pablo), had a sort of Western Swing motif (connected to his similar venue in Hayward), but at this time it featured Go Go dancers, apparently in bikinis. Performing were the rockin' Au Go Gos. Although the place was probably a fun joint to go to, the iconography suggests a kind of rocked up Cowboy bar, with twanging Telecasters and a lot of honky tonk gals.

The It Club, much farther North on the other side of Berkeley in low-down El Cerrito (on San Pablo and Central Avenues, near the Bay), was presenting an "All Bosom Revue," with "Girls direct from the PLAYBOY CLUB in L.A." Song stylist David Thornton appears to have been providing the music.

If you were thinking of food, why not go to Zombie Village? "Lunches-Dinners, Cantonese and American Cuisine," per the ad. Mmm--Zombies! 6485 San Pablo was near San Pablo and Alcatraz, close to Emeryville and Aquatic Park (and the Hitchen Post). The place advertised in the Tribune for years--no one has ever explained the appeal of a Chinese restaurant called "Zombie Village," but there are many things we don't understand about the 60s.

Ravazza's was an Italian restaurant that had been across from the old Oakland Oaks (Pacific Coast League) baseball park, at 41st and San Pablo in Emeryville. Alone among the advertisers listed here, it actually survived until the 1980s, and I actually ate there. It was mostly a pizza place by then, but it was like stepping into a time machine, with pictures of PCL players like Joe DiMaggio and Billy Martin on the walls, smiling in pictures from the very same tables (with the same decor) that you were sitting at. Ravazza's was torn down to provide a parking lot for the Card Club across the street (The Oaks Club, on the site of the old stadium), although the last three letters of its sign were used by Zza's Tratoria. Zza's opened in the mid-1980s, and it was a fine place--and no doubt still is--located at 552 Grand Avenue in Oakland (across from Lake Merritt), a final tenuous link to its predecessor.

This was the context of The Matrix, on August 13, 1965. To a Tribune reader, its competitors would have been The All Bosom Revue, a Cowboy Go Go joint, some old Swing Music, a Zombie Village, an ancient Italian restaurant across from a long-gone landmark. Knowing what we know now, the Matrix was far and away the best choice that week, a place where something of value would originate and develop. Ironically enough, this was the only mention (to my knowledge) of The Matrix in the Tribune, as they did not advertise in the paper and were thus ignored in future columns, but Perry Phillips got it right the first time. Right across the bay, something of value was originating and developing, starting with the Jefferson Airplane and followed closely by the rest of the sixties.

Research continues on the Zombie Village.

Cafe Au Go Go, New York City 152 Bleecker Street Rock: Performance List 1964-65

2010-01-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

The Cafe Au Go Go, at 152 Bleecker Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, was a critical venue for aspiring rock bands in the 1960s. Whatever the indisputable charms of the West Coast, the commercial and cultural capital of the United States has always been New York City, and bands had to make a good showing in New York if they expected to make it. Perhaps because the venue had no collectible poster art, the club has been somewhat unfairly left out of many rock chronicles, when in fact it played a crucial role in introducing new bands to New York City, and by extension to the whole country.

Thanks to my friend Marc, I have had an excellent list of performers at the Cafe Au Go Go from 1965 to 1969, when it closed. I was lacking much of a context, however, but now that I have discovered the excellent New York City site prosopography blog Its All The Streets You Crossed Not So Long Ago, and its exceptional post on the Cafe Au Go Go, my performers list can be put into some kind of context. My goal for this series was to list all the rock performers at the Cafe Au Go Go from July 27, 1965 through late 1969, when the club closed.

As a footnote to all of this, however, Marc's fantastic research included performers from when the club opened on February 7, 1964 onwards. Although it is way out of my time period, I thought I would include the information on the performers for the first 16 months without comment, in the service of prosopographers everywhere.

Cafe Au Go Go Rock Performers List
Part I July 27, 1965-December 1965
Part II January 1966-June 1966
Part III July 1966-December 1966
Part IV January 1967-June 1967
Part V July 1967-December 1967
Part VI January 1968-June 1968
Part VII July 1968-December 1968
Part VIII January 1969-June 1969
Part IX-July 1969-October 1969

Cafe Au Go Go Performers List February 1964-July 1965

February 7-March 15, 1964 Professor Irwin Corey

March 17-22, 1964 Grecco & Willard, "Vikings Three"

March 25-29, 1964 Josh White Jr.

March 31-April 7, 1964 Lenny Bruce, Shawn Phillips, Tony Hendra & Nic Ullet
Lenny Bruce was arrested before the 10m show on the 3td and again on the 7th for obscenity.

Writer Tony Hendra may be best known as manager Ian Faith in the movie This Is Spinal Tap.

April 10-11, 1964 Lionel Shepard

April 13-19, 1964 Prof Irwin Corey, Tony Hendra & Nic Ullett

April 21-May 3, 1964 Jimmy Witherspoon & Coleridge Parkinson Trio

May 8-31, 1964 Stan Getz w/Astrud Gilberto, Adam Keefe, George Carlin, Sema Marcus, w/Ben Webster on May 26-28.
The show on May 22 was recorded for the Getz a Go Go lp.

June 2-12, 1964 Bob Gibson, Jose Feliciano, George Carlin

June 14, 1964 Benny Powell Quartet

June 16-July 12, 1964 Mort Sahl

July 14-25, 1964 Vaughn Meader w/ Reynolds, Eduardo Sasson

July 27-August 4, 1964 George Carlin, Tobi Reynolds, Eduardo Sasson
Mon nights Ed McCurdy’s Hootenanny

August 5-30, 1964 Vaughn Meader

September 1-27, 1964 Bill Evans Trio, Nancy Harrow, George Carlin

Sepember 29-October 18, 1964 Bill Evans Trio, Oscar Brown Jr. (Stan Getz on 6th)

October 20-November 8, 1964 Vaugn Meader’s The Populace with Renee’ Taylor
Originally they were scheduled for November 20-31 as well, but seem to have been replaced by other artists.

November 9, 1964 Alison Knowles (performance artist)

November 12, 1964 Anita Sheer, Adam Keefe, Lydia Wood

November 14, 1964 Alison Knowles (performance artist)

November 17-22, 1964 Muddy Waters featuring Otis Spann

November 24-29, 1964 Olatunji

December 1-6, 1964 ClaraWard Singers, Olatunji

December 8-31, 1964 Oscar Brown Jr. with Floyd Morris Trio

January 21-24, 1965 Shunna Pillay, Dave Astor, Olatunji

January 25, 1965 Monday Night Letter
A series of happenings events and music presenting the works or Emmett Williams

January 26-28, 1965 Shunna Pillay, George Carlin

January 29-30, 1965 Shunna Pillay, George Carlin, Olatunji

January 31-February 6, 1965 Shunna Pillay, George Carlin

February 7, 1965 Coleman Hawkins, John Coats Jr.

February 8-18, 1965 Shunna Pillay, Olatunji

February 19-22, 1965 Woody Herman and his Swinging Herd, The Bomb and Swing

February 25-March 1, 1965 Shunna Pillay

March 2-7, 1965 Shunna Pillay and The Legend of Charlie Parker with Jim Mendehall, Paula Shaw and others

March 14, 1965 A Tribute to the Memory of Charlie Parker w/Jackie McClean, Hank Mobley, Le Konitz, Joe Henderson, Fredde Hubbard, Walter Davis Jr., Lucky Thompson and others.

March 24-31, 1965 Lord Burgess

April 1-4, 1965 Lord Burgess, Olatunji

April 5-11, 1965 Lord Burgess, The Au Go Go Singers
Apparently the Au Go Go Singers still included Stephen Stills or Richie Furay at this point,although I think they left soon after.

April 15-17, 1965 Chico Hamilton

April 21-25, 1965 Stan Getz

April 27-May 30, 1965 Max Roach, Abby Lincoln

June 16-23, 1965 Monti Rock III with Lester Young

June 23-30, 1965 Monti Rock III with Richard Pryor and Lester Young

July 3-10, 1965 Ian and Sylvia

July 13-19, 1965 Bob Gibson

July 20-25, 1965 Bob Gibson, John Lee Hooker

for the beginning of the Cafe Au Go Go rock's booking, on July 27, 1965, see here

York Farm, Poynette, WI April 24-26, 1970 Sound Storm: Grateful Dead/Illinois Speed Press/Mason Profitt/others

2009-12-23T16:06:00.000-08:00

Sound Storm was a rock festival held on the York Farm in Poynette, WI on the weekend of April 24-26, 1970, and attended by about 30,000 people. Poynette is a small community 30 miles North of Madison and 100 miles West of Milwaukee. Although the "hippie invasion" was not welcomed by the community, greeted with great trepidation by the police and subject to numerous risky variables like the weather, in fact the whole weekend was a relaxed celebration of Woodstock Nation in its day. I have written recently on the Grateful Dead's participation in this event, but the entire story of Sound Storm will be forthcoming in the Wisconsin Magazine of History's March 2010 issue, in a scholarly article by Michael Edmonds.

As an adjunct to Edmonds's forthcoming article, the Wisconsin Historical Society has posted numerous hitherto unpublished photos by co-organizer Bob Pulling of many of the bands who played Sound Storm. In honor of that, I thought I would list what is known about the bands who played Sound Storm. I am not familiar with most of the local bands, but I do know something about the regional bands. I have provided links to the Pulling's photos where available. There are many unidentified performers, so if you would recognize some of the bands who played--like for example it was your band--take a look in the Unidentified Performers pages.

According to the poster (above), the scheduled performers for Sound Storm were

Grateful Dead/Ken Kesey/Crow/Illinois Speed Press/Rotary Connection/Mason Profitt/Fuse/Baby Huey/Soup/The Sorry Muthas/Spectre Inc./Captain Billy's Whiz Bang/Django/Bowery Boys/U.S. Pure/The Soul Asylum/Bliss/Brown Sugar/Ox/Northern Comfort/Tayles/Sargasso/Wheezer Lockinger/Manitoba Hugger/Wingfield/Tounge/Groove/Woodbine/Strophe/Ice/Omaha/Staph/Hope/Fly-By-Night Blues Band/Mother Blues/Don Gibson/Wilderness Road

A different ad also lists Biff Rose, Soup and Bethlehem Boogie Band. What follows are some brief comments on the bands known to me.

The Grateful Dead were, in fact, the Grateful Dead, and I have written elsewhere about their participation .

Ken Kesey, although a friend of organizer Peter Obranovich, was not in fact present. I suspect that his name was a sort of code for "Acid Test," which was not misunderstood by those attending.

Crow were a hard rock band from Minneapolis. Their 1969 debut album Crow Music (on Amaret) included a modest hit single, "Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me)," later covered by Black Sabbath.

Illinois Speed Press were a Chicago band, but they were signed by CBS and moved to Southern California along with another band, the Chicago Transit Authority. The ISP featured guitarists Paul Cotton and Kal David, and they released two excellent if little-noticed albums. Cotton went on to some fame in Poco, and Kal David was in the excellent Fabulous Rhinestones.

Rotary Connection were a Chicago "psychedelic soul" band on Cadet Records, Chess Records rock imprint. They featured lead singer Minnie Ripperton, who achieved fame as a solo artist in the seventies. Sometime in 1970, Rotary Connection had released their fifth album Dinner.

Mason Profitt was led by two brothers John Micheal and Terry Talbot, originally from Indianapolis, but based in Chicago by 1969. The first of their five albums, Wanted, had been released in 1969.

Fuse was a band from Rockford, IL, featuring guitarist Rick Nielsen and bassist Tom Peterson. They released one self-titled, poorly produced album for Epic in 1968. The band broke up in 1971, and Nielsen and Peterson went on to form Cheap Trick.

Baby Huey and The Babysitters were a legendary soul-rock band from Chicago, somewhat in the mold of Sly And The Family Stone. Lead singer "Baby Huey" (James Ramey) was reputedly a dynamic performer, but he had many health problems and he died in October 1970.

Luther Allison, not on the poster, but appearing in Pulling's photos, was a Chicago blues guitarist who had played in Howlin Wolf's band.

Ox were a Milwaukee band that featured guitarist Bob Metzger. Metzger has had a lengthy professional career, and is currently playing guitar for Leonard Cohen.

Captain Billy's Whiz Bang (with a G), according to bassist Michael Pontecorvo,

were a blues/rock 'n roll band out of Madison and played on the Library steps (first Earth Day) on Saturday and then at Sound Storm Sunday morning. It was Bob Schmitdke (Guitar), Michael Pontecorvo(Bass-myself), Larry Robertson(Organ) and god help me I can't remember our drummer's name.

Hopefully the drummer will surface soon (thanks to Michael for writing in).

Biff Rose (if he played) was a comedian and songwriter, somewhat different than most of the rock bands on the bill.

The rest of the bands are unknown to me, although there are photos of Northern Comfort, Bowery Boys and Wheezer Lockinger. Anyone with information about the other bands, particularly if they are in the Unidentified Performers photos, please contact me or mention them in the Comments.

January 29, 1967 Glide Memorial Church, San Francisco (Taylor & Ellis) Gallery Opening

2009-12-20T22:40:00.000-08:00

Part of San Francisco's schizophrenia about the Summer of Love is easily viewed in the 1967 San Francisco Chronicle. While the news sections were full of almost daily reports about LSD freakouts, drug busts and runaways, the Arts and Entertainment section cheerily reported the doings of the San Francisco psychedelic underground. The major San Francisco rock bands were definitely Art and Entertainment, and worthy of the paper's attention, even if the News section implicitly scolded their fans for being menaces to society.

This brief listing from the January 27, 1967 edition of the Chronicle offers a tantalizing taste of something that would be quite valuable now. Many of the members of SF rock bands saw themselves generally as Artists, with music being just one part of their self-expression. Glide Memorial Church, with its forward looking minister, the Rev. Cecil Williams, was always sympathetic to the hippies, so its not surprising that the church temporarily became an art gallery. The article reports

A showing of painting and photography by members of San Francisco rock bands is now open to the public at Glide Memorial Church, Taylor and Ellis.

The exhibition, open to 6:30 pm, includes works by members of the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and The Holding Company, the Sopwith Camel, the Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Loading Zone.

My limited knowledge in this area suggests that the likely artistes from those groups would include Grace Slick from the Airplane and James Gurley (RIP) from Big Brother. I don't know who the artists might have been in the other groups. While not exactly lost vase paintings from the city of Troy, to whatever extent they may have been great art in their own right, I'll bet all of it would fetch a pretty penny now--here's to hoping that one way or another all the artifacts did indeed do so, and the band members or their family members are enjoying the fruits of that.

Washington at Murphy, Sunnyvale, CA Wayne Manor January 22-February 19, 1967 Bobby Taylor and The Vancouvers

2009-12-20T16:41:00.000-08:00

I have written earlier about how while rock music was becoming "serious" at the Fillmore and Avalon, it was still just teen entertainment elsewhere in the Bay Area. The best example of this was Sunnyvale's Wayne Manor, a rock and soul nightclub modeled on the very popular Batman TV show starring Adam West. Inside Wayne Manor, apparently, it was got up like the Bat Cave, and the staff was dressed in various costumes. For a long time, the house band was a Fremont band called The Gotham City Crimefighters, and they wore capes and tights.

Besides the Crimefighters, Wayne Manor also featured live touring bands, who generally played several nights a week, at least according to the ads. Different groups cycled through the club, and were advertised in the papers. The ad featuring The Thunderbirds ("Direct from Reno") was from the October 21, 1966 San Mateo Times. More interesting to me is the presence of Bobby Taylor and The Vancouvers, who played Wayne Manor from January 22, 1967 through at least February 19. They were advertised every week in the San Francisco Chronicle (the above is from Saturday, February 4), so they were definitely seen as an attraction.

Lead singer Bobby Taylor had been born in North Carolina, but raised in Washington State. In the early 1960s, his band (The Four Pharaohs) met another group (Little Daddy And The Bachelors) while they were in San Francisco, and they merged. They relocated to Canada, and in Calgary they were known as the Four Shades in reference to their multi-racial band members. By 1965 they were based in Vancouver, and mostly performed Motown covers, which is how they came to the attention of Motown Records, who signed them. I'm not sure if they had been signed to Motown by early 1967, but by 1968 they had a modest hit on Motown with "Does Your Mama Know About Me," which reached #29, and their sole album cracked the top 100 (#85).

Still, the history of a modestly popular soul band from Canada isn't the point of this post. Musicians are usually pretty hip, even if their band plays mainstream music, and their home base of Vancouver was a happening place in many ways. If the Vancouvers spent a month in San Francisco playing most nights of the week, they must have spent some time hanging out in hip San Francisco, Berkeley or Santa Cruz. It must have been pretty weird to go hear far out, free thinking stuff with light shows and LSD, and then go back the next night to a club modeled on a TV show with a house band of teenagers dressed like Batman and Robin. It can hardly have been clearer that music was changing, even if they were making good money.

Because I am in the precise age bracket that thought Cheech And Chong was the funniest thing a 14-year old had ever heard ("Dave's not here, man"), I am always interested in Bobby Taylor and The Vancouvers because the band's rhythm guitarist was Tommy Chong. I guess if he did a comedy routine where he said "we played in this club, man, where it was like the Bat Cave, and the waitresses dressed like Bat Girl," everyone would have thought it was just a drug-fueled fantasy. The idea that the Vancouvers had really done that, for a month, and got paid for it, would have been beyond my thinking at the time.

There are actually many interesting things about Bobby Taylor, not least that the Jackson 5 opened for them in Chicago in July 1968, and Taylor was so impressed he brought them to Motown for an audition. The Vancouvers broke up shortly afterwards, and Taylor ended up producing much of the first Jackson 5 album. As for the Gotham City Crimefighters, they ultimately returned to Fremont, dropped their uniforms and changed their name to The Motowns, and subsequently became Tower Of Power. Yet for all that, I am still stuck in 1972, thinking how Cheech and Chong's stoner musings were actually more conventional than what Chong, at least, had actually done as a musician.

49 Wentworth Alley, San Francisco Drag'on A' Go-Go January-February 1967

2009-12-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

Rock music in the 1950s and 1960s was essential in creating a distinct category of American human called "Teenager." Up until the mid-1960s, rock was seen as fun to dance to, but too trivial for adult attention. The Beatles, Bob Dylan and the San Francisco changed that, but even into 1967 many rock clubs were still directed exclusively at teenagers. The Drag'on A' Go-Go was in San Francisco's Chinatown, at 49 Wentworth Alley near the intersection of Grant and Washington.

Although Chinatown was a genuine and long-standing community of immigrant Chinese and Chinese-Americans, commercially Chinatown was geared towards tourists. In the 1960s, Chinese restaurants were not common in most places, and good ones were even less common, so Chinatown made San Francisco an exotic and attractive destination. Since Chinatown was in walking distance of both the Financial District and North Beach (if you don't mind a few hills), it was accessible to the majority of San Francisco visitors. Chinatown was an appealing destination for families from the suburbs looking to spend a fun evening in the City, because it was exotic and fun, but easy to get to.

The Drag'on A' Go Go seems to have been open from about 1965 to 1967, at the height of both teen clubs and "Go Go" clubs. As far as I can tell, the Drag'on pushed cokes and hot dogs, and the like, although it may have sold beer, to, and directed itself at the 18-20 year old segment. For a couple of years it seemed to make money, too. While no truly legendary bands played the Drag'on, a few good groups appear to have played there, including the Beau Brummels and The Frantics (who evolved into Luminous Marsh Gas and then Moby Grape). The club's name (spelled Dragon) comes up in various chronologies of Bay Area rock.

The Liverpool Five were actually from England, though not from Liverpool, and had two albums on RCA in 1966 and 1967. They toured America pretty steadily and were apparently a pretty good live band. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, from which the above ad comes, the Liverpool Five engagement had started on January 17, and continued at least through February 26, so they must have been packing them in. Drag'on owner Lou Chin was quoted in the Chronicle as saying they had to turn people away, and while that may be hyperbole, they would not have been extended for nothing.

I do not know how long the Drag'on A' Go-Go lasted, but I doubt it made it to 1968. Go-Go music seemed pretty unhip to teenagers by '68, when they were listening to FM radio and going to the Fillmore and Avalon. In any case, Wentworth Alley (known as Salty Fish Alley in the early 20th century) was at a central location for restaurants, and it would have been a desirable place for many establishments, so once they stopped turning people away I assume it must have become another restaurant. I am unable to determine the current use of the building.

150 Bleecker Street, New York, NY The Infinite Poster Company (1967)

2009-12-16T16:16:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco underground rock scene that began at the Fillmore and The Avalon in 1966 had ramifications far beyond the scene itself. Like all underground phenomenons, its status as legend superseded its status as music. Many of the famous groups were legends before they had albums, and many of the albums were hardly hits, and with little or no FM radio can hardly have been widely heard. Yet young people all over the country had heard of the Fillmore and the Avalon, and it helped define 60s rock even for people who had never been there and hardly heard the music.

One of the reasons that the legend of the Fillmore spread so far was the ubiquity of the famous posters by Mouse and Kelly, Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso and the rest of the fine San Francisco artists. Just one of those posters on a dormitory wall in a cold winter might act as a beacon to the entire floor, as they gathered in the room to amuse themselves in appropriately 60s fashion. Seeing known and unknown bands on posters, with wild colors and weird found art, and the promise of light shows and strange occurrences made San Francisco a place of promise and mystery.

It is not widely known today by non-collectors that the San Francisco rock posters had a distribution well beyond telephone poles and store windows in The City. This ad (from the September 9, 1967 Village Voice) for a store called The Infinite Poster Company, on 150 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village (next door to the Cafe Au Go Go), includes the following offers

San Francicso Fillmore Auditorium (F Series 20 Different Posters 14 x 22 in full color [reg. $1.25] now 75 cents each
San Francisco Avalon Ballroom (T Series 20 Different Posters 14 x 20 in full color [reg $1.25], now 75 cents each
Cafe Au Go Go (60 cents)

L20 Mothers
L24 Blues Project
L30 Dave Van Ronk
L33 Gordon Lightfoot
L34 Grateful Dead
L38 Butterfield Blues Band

The store also sold numerous travel, auto racing and other posters. While the Avalon and Fillmore posters were reprints, and not originals, and thus worth less today from a collectable point of view, from the point of view of someone at SUNY Binghamton buying a poster for his dorm room, they would have looked just as good.

The history of the Filmore and Avalon posters is well known amongst those who collect and analyze such items. Ross has found the history of the Avalon reprints on-line, for those interested in the exact history.

The Cafe Au Go Go posters are less known, at least to me. The Grateful Dead poster is accessible on-line. Interestingly, the dates are actually wrong, as the poster has the band playing June 1-10, when in fact it was June 1-11. This has been discussed at length elsewhere, so it leaves open to speculation why the poster was incorrect. One possibility is that the Cafe Au Go Go posters listed in the ad were made up after the fact to commemorate famous groups that had played the Au Go Go. Certainly, given the numbering system in the ad, it shares nothing with the chronology of shows at the club (I have an exact and complete list). Also, the known poster has no information about show times, the club address or anything else, not typical of posters used to advertise real events.

This is just speculation on my part, but while this ad shows at the minimum that underground rock artifacts were already commodities, it may be that as early as 1967 venues were making up mementos of recently past events in order to have something to commodify. Now, of course, commemorative posters are a common business, but I had no inkling that it may have started this early.

Convocation Center, Ohio University, Athens, OH May 19, 1969 Junior Prom Jose Feliciano/Led Zeppelin

2009-12-09T15:29:00.000-08:00

This event is well documented in the history of Led Zeppelin, but its still striking to come across the article. In the 1960s, most American colleges and Universities had substantial budgets for student entertainment, and major entertainers performed regularly. Outside of the two coasts, many schools still had "Prom" dances, just like High School. Ohio University in Athens, OH is a major public University, so their Junior Class dance would have been a fairly large event. The headline in the April 29, 1969 edition of the local Athens Messenger says "Jose Feliciano Heads OU's J-Prom Concert." The first paragraph cheerily begins

The 1969 J-Prom Concert at Ohio University will feature singer-guitarist Jose Feliciano and Led Zeppelin, a British rock group.

Jose Feliciano was a popular artist, in what today would be called a "crossover" style. He was popular in Las Vegas type places, but he also had some radio hits, including a sort of Brazilian version of The Doors "Light My Fire." He would have appealed to a broad swath of the Midwestern student body, talented enough for the hipsters, but catchy enough for everyone else.

This show was probably booked in March or so, if not earlier, and Led Zeppelin's first album was only released in January 1969. The thinking of the booking agent was probably to have an enjoyable artist for everyone, supported by someone a bit louder for the hip kids. Led Zeppelin was booked as an opening act on most dates of their first American tour from December 68 through May 69, and this was no exception. There were various English bands touring around America at the time, trying to build an audience: Ten Years After, Family, The Nice, John Mayall, Savoy Brown and so on. Some made it, and some didn't.

None of them were Led Zeppelin however. Its well worth a read of the concert memories on the Zep concert site. By May, everyone had memorized the first Zeppelin album, and they charged the stage while Zeppelin showed everyone that the first album was just a taste of the metal madness that awaited. They blew everyone's brains out, and much of the crowd simply split, leaving Jose Feliciano to play to a half-empty hall.

I've got to think 1970's Junior Prom Concert was kind of a letdown.

(oh yes: Has The Monster Returned? refers to the so-called Mason County Monster, supposedly a giant bird that ate pets. Its not a Led Zeppelin reference, but perhaps it ought to be)

26220 Moody Road, Los Altos, CA Adobe Creek Lodge June 24-25, 1967 Sopwith Camel/The Wildflower

2009-12-08T19:44:00.000-08:00

This tantalizing poster has piqued my curiosity over the years, mainly as a talisman of what might have been. The venue site was remarkable, and the South Bay was ripe in 1967 for a viable venue, and the superior weather of the South Bay would have made an outdoor venue appealing indeed. All my research came up dry, however. Eventually, I discovered that "Sopwith Camel Productions" was the business identity of Camel manager Yuri Toporov. A Fremont band called The Wakefield Loop, about whom I have written extensively, were also Toporov clients, and according to some band members the Camel were on the verge of splitting with Toporov around this time, so I think this show never actually occurred. Since The Wildflower don't recall it either, I think its simply a case of what might have been.

Nonetheless, the venue site was very intriguing. The South Bay in the 1960s featured prosperous suburbs, but prior to Silicon Valley it was not a gold mine, so there were plenty of unused land in the hills behind the various towns. Initially just a Summer Resort, Los Altos is just Southwest of Palo Alto, and the town had only incorporated in 1952, primarily to prevent annexation from larger towns. Foothill Junior College (birthplace of The Chocolate Watch Band) had opened its new campus in 1961, but the town was still undefined in the mid-1960s.

The Adobe Creek Lodge, at 26220 Moody Road, had originally been built as the summer estate for San Francisco industrialist Milton Haas in 1934. The Lodge was located above what is now Foothill College (El Monte Road turns into Moody Road), and even today is quite a rugged, inaccessible area. It included not only a substantial mansion but cottages for the 27 servants in residence. In the 1940s and 50s, the Lodge became a commercial resort, with a restaurant and summer camp. It was a place to “see and be seen” in the wealthy South Bay hills. Big Band stalwarts like Harry James and Jimmy Dorsey performed under the stars on the grounds, and major corporations sponsored huge corporate picnics for thousands of employees.

By the 1960s, the Lodge had become The Los Altos Hills Country Club, and at its peak in the late 60s the club had 1,000 memberships. Many South Bay “society” events featured local rock bands (the Dead played Bob Weir’s sister’s Debutante Ball, for example), often alternating with a big band for the older members, so rock groups were not unknown in Peninsula Society. Nonetheless, the June, 1967 event, which advertises “To The Woods: Dancing Amongst The Trees, Grass and Colored Lights and Moons” appears to be a fully commercial event.

The weekend of June 24-25, 1967 was the week after the Monterey Pop Festival, and it featured many great rock shows all over the Bay Area (Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore and the 13th Floor Elevators at The Avalon among the most prominent) and—quite a rarity—direct competition in Palo Alto itself. The Palo Alto Be-In was on Saturday, and Country Joe and The Fish had just played at Gunn High School (on Thursday June 23) just a few miles down from Foothill. Whether the show was canceled due to weak ticket sales or because of a dispute between Sopwith Camel and their manager isn't clear, but in either case the result seems the same. No one recalls the event because it probably didn't occur.

The Adobe Creek Lodge show appears to have been lost in the shuffle, and a fascinating potential rock venue was never used again. The city of Los Altos Hills ended up taking over the property in the late 1970s, and eventually the mansion and many of the grounds were incorporated into a private residence.

3626 Doniphan, El Paso, TX The Kingsmen Lounge May 9-10, 1969 Deep Green

2009-12-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

Cultural information did not travel as quickly in days of yore as it does now. The famous Humbead's Map Of The World, which suggested that Berkeley, CA and Cambridge, MA were right next door to each other, was not so far wrong. Anyone not in that nexus got their information a little bit later.

This ad is from the El Paso Herald-Post of Friday, May 9, 1969, advertises the Deep Green at the Kingsmen Lounge. They are described as "fabulous" exponents of "The San Francisco Steppenwolf Sound." It is easy to look at this from the perspective of San Francisco or Chicago and chuckle at the naivete of local rubes who didn't realize that Steppenwolf were a bunch of Canadians who lived in Los Angeles, who only had a peripheral connection to the so-called "San Francisco Sound," which in any case was some years prior when the band was called The Sparrow.

El Paso wasn't a place for hippies, and the Deep Green were probably the most hip guys in town, with all the latest records and hot licks to boot (Texas doesn't take kindly to second rate musicians in any genre). Its not their fault that the club they played at needed to push the latest California band to make them sound cool. They probably played a smoking version of "Don't Step On The Grass, Sam," which was pretty dangerous stuff for 1960s Texas.

The location of the venue at 3626 Doniphan Drive (at the intersection of Racetrack Dr), is just between Interstate 10 and the Texas-New Mexico border. At the same time, it is just about two miles from the Mexican border, near Jaurez. At the time, it was probably a hopping joint. According to the Google Satellite photo, no buildings are currently visible at the site.

"Where Its At" TV show, Vancouver, BC late 1960s

2009-11-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

All of the interesting rock scenes of the 1960s were fundamentally underground scenes. While some of the more famous groups ultimately had substantial recording careers, the initial scenes all stemmed from word of mouth, as a few hipsters would see a local band, and in turn tell a few of their friends, and the word would pass from person to person. Bands were only popular in their local scenes, because they had no recorded output and they were never heard on the radio. The famous psychedelic posters (of varying artistic qualities) would appear on local telephone poles, perhaps spreading a name around town, but even well-known San Francisco bands like Quicksilver Messenger Service were just a rumor to each person until they saw them in person. By the 1970s, DIY cassettes were a feature of underground scenes (like Punk), but in the 60s bands had to survive on reputation alone. If you couldn't find out where a show was, and go down and see it yourself, you had no way of knowing what a group sounded like, much less if they were any good. Every 60s scene had various legendary local bands, which all but a few people ever heard in their nascent form.

There was one startling exception to the history of psychedelic music: Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver was an important part of the West Coast "Circuit" of psychedelic ballrooms, from the Cheetah and the Kaleidoscope in Southern California, to the Fillmore and Avalon in San Francisco, the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, to Eagles Auditorium in Seattle and finally to the Retinal Circus in Vancouver, along with many smaller or temporary venues in every city. The recorded history of all the Vancouver bands was very minimal, just a few singles for the most part. The welcome explosion of archival releases has meant that many of the Retinal Circus bands have released cds featuring some of their 60s work, usually live or demos: groups like the United Empire Loyalists, My Indole Ring, Papa Bear's Medicine Show and Mock Duck can now be heard by modern audiences. Yet the burst of archival releases is not what set the Vancouver scene apart from the rest of the West Coast.

Throughout 1967 and 1968, once a week, initially on Fridays and later on Wednesdays, at 5:30 pm the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had a half-hour show called Where Its At, and every Vancouver psychedelic band appeared on the show many times. The show was broadcast across the country, so every single Canadian teenager who wanted to hear Vancouver underground bands simply tuned in Fridays at 5:30. None of these groups had recording contracts initially, and few of them released albums in their bands lifetimes, yet each of them appeared many times on National TV.

The clipping above is from Alberta's Lethbridge Herald on Wednesday June 26, 1968: we can see that Tom Northcutt, My Indole Ring, The Collectors, The Poppy Family, Papa Bear's Medicine Show, The Northwest Company, Wiggy Symphony and Jason Hoover and The Epics, just about all of them underground Vancouver psychedelic bands, were playing on that night's episode. Although the shows were videotaped, the performances were live. The "house band" had been a group called The Classics, who evolved into The Collectors (and later Chilliwack) and they provided backing for any solo performers like Tom Northcutt. At this time, to my knowledge only Northcutt had an album and a Canadian hit (a cover of a Donovan song called "Sunny Goodge Street"). The rest were simply local bands. As far as I know, this was a typical episode.

Most of my information about this startling feature of Canadian music comes from a 2005 Guess Who cd called Lets Go. Where Its At was actually part of a nightly CBC series called Music Hop, had begun during the British Invasion in the mid-1960s, and which broadcast from a different region of Canada each night. By 1967, the lineup looked like this:

Mondays-Halifax, Nova Scotia Frank's Bandstand
Tuesdays-Montreal, Quebec
Wednesdays-Toronto, Ontario
Thursdays-Winnipeg, Manitoba Let's Go
Fridays-Vancouver, British Columbia Where Its At

All sorts of Canadian figures appeared on the shows. The Guess Who were the house band at Winnipeg's Thursday night feature, playing hits of the day, backing visiting singers and playing their own material (the basis of the cd). Anne Murray was a regular in Halifax, Alex Trebek had been the original host in Toronto, and so on: every figure in Canadian rock seems to have appeared on TV at 5:30, some of them numerous times. Seemingly every underground Vancouver band was on TV constantly, playing just a song or two perhaps, but nonetheless it insured that Vancouver teenagers knew what they were getting if they went to the Retinal Circus or anywhere else. Would that American underground scenes (then or now) would have such support, although it does cause me to rethink my definition of "underground" somewhat.

A diligent historian could go through the TV listings for Canada throughout 1967 and 1968 and document the appearance dates of every Vancouver psychedelic band. It won't be me, however. According to John Einarson's excellent liner notes on the Lets Go album, while a producer saved copies of the Music Hop shows with the Guess Who from 1967 and 1968, in general all copies of all shows were taped over by the CBC. This was standard television practice at the time, as videotape was expensive and bulky, and in any case who cared about recordings of soon-to-be-forgotten longhairs?

I can't bring myself to document a whole history of fascinating shows that I know have been lost. Nonetheless it is just one of many fascinating aspects of the Vancouver scene that most of the obscure bands whose names are on Retinal Circus posters performed live on Canadian Television, some many times. Fans of the music of other regions no doubt would be just as fascinated by the different performers of other regions, but save for some of the Music Hop shows in 67-68, they too are lost. Nothing would make me happier to find that some of them survived in some form, but I think that is too much to hope for.

Sic Transit Gloria Psychedelia, as the Romans would say.

The Firehouse, 3767 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA

2009-11-21T08:40:00.000-08:00

Located north of the Haight-Ashbury district on Sacramento Street and the home of number 10 fire truck and number 26 fire engine from 1910 to 1956, the Firehouse was operated as a concert venue for an all too short period of time in the early spring of 1966.
The building was owned by George Eby and his dog Potpan and had been known as the Theater for the World prior to The Firehouse. Eby and Potpan let the upper floor for rehearsals to the newly formed Sopwith Camel who were breaking in new bass player Martin Beard. The Firehouse was notable for showcasing a number of local bands in addition to the Sopwith Camel and for featuring some of the very first light shows to be performed in the city.

12 February 1966: The Amazing Charlatans, Sopwith Camel
Advertised as Lincoln's Birthday Party. After a month of rehearsals and much of the time living in the Firehouse, the Sopwith Camel made their debut performance backing The Charlatans for the Lincoln's birthday bash. Entry was a mere $2 donation and shows were from 9 to whenever. The Charlatans had already established their place in history following their six week run at the red Dog Saloon in Virginia City the previous summer. By the time of this show, the Charlatans’ set was beginning to come together and they had put a failed Autumn Records audition behind them as they prepared to sign with Kama Sutra Records.

19 February 1966: The Wildflower, Sopwith Camel
It was from the handbill that advertised this show that we know that the Firehouse was once the home of number 10 fire truck and number 26 fire engine. For this evening’s events the Sopwith Camel are joined by The Wildflower in the first of their three performances at the Firehouse. In late 1965, The Wildflower began at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland with Stephen Ehret on rhythm guitar, Tom Ellis on drums, John Jennings on bass, Teddy Schneider played percussion, Lee Chandler played guitar and the whole band sang. Stephen wrote the songs for the band and also collaborated with poets, Michael McClure and Michael McCausland. Lee Chandler soon left, probably around the time of this show, to pursue an acting career and Michael Brown joined on lead guitar. The band was soon playing venues all around the Bay Area and has recently released the album that should have hoisted them to fame in the 1960s.

26 February 1966:
I have never been able to find any record of a show taking place on February 26.

05 March 1966: Jesse Fuller One Man Band, The Amazing Charlatans, The Wildflower
Most of the shows were advertised by large format handbills, each containing humorous notations, such as the March 5 handbill which entices attendees by promising Sensual Titillations and Mind Diddlers with the extra added attraction of the Lately Painted Lady. March 5 sees the return of Firehouse Jesse Fuller who was playing regularly in the Bay Area coffee shops and clubs. A week before Fuller’s seventieth birthday, he crossed the bridge from his Oakland home and brought his fotdella and unique style of San Francisco Bay Blues to the Firehouse.

12 March 1966: The Charlatans, Sopwith Camel, Duncans Blue Boy and His Cosmic Yo-YoBy all accounts the Alligator Clip welcome all heads of state for this show. The Charlatans and the Sopwith Camel return, but the intriguing thing about the boxing style handbill is the third act on the bill – Duncans Blue Boy and His Cosmic Yo-Yo (I know there is a missing apostrophe by the way). Anyway – the only known show by Duncans Blue Boy – was it a briefly used name of another band, was it a joke? I don't know.

19 March 1966: Big Brother and the Holding Company, A Moving Violation, Movies Projections by Elias Romero, Assorted Effects by Ray Andersen
Big Brother and the Holding Company need no introduction here – they had been playing regularly for a couple of months and had established themselves at the Fillmore and Matrix. Jim Gurley, Sam Andrew and Peter Albin had just been joined by drummer Dave Getz. The arrival of Janis Joplin was still three months away although there is a chance that this was one of the performances where Ed Bogas joined the band on violin. I know nothing of A Moving Violation, but the poster is annotated a discover in Movement and Light For Them and you and us which leads me to believe that they were possibly a dance troupe accompanying the in house light show – a multi-media extravaganza so to speak. The light shows at the Firehouse featured Elias Romero and Ray Andersen (who was also the manager of The Matrix at the time). Although he never went on to work the ballrooms, Romero was a long-time light artist with his own distinct approach utilising a unique, all-liquid show. Andersen went on to form the Holy See Light Show and to feature prominently at San Francisco ballrooms, such as the Fillmore. Since the late 1990s, Andersen has run Grooves Vinyl Attractions on Market Street in San Francisco.

26 March 1966: The Outfit, Great Society
The Outfit were formed in San Francisco during late 1965 as the Four Letter Outfit and the line-up at the time of this show, which is perhaps their first, included Johnny Ciambotti, Steve Bonuccelli, Cousin Robert Ressner and a female guitarist called Judy playing her only show. The group played regularly at Bay Area venues through 1966 despite several changes in personnel. They would go on to become part of the tangled staory that is the overlapping history of The Outfit, The Tiny Hearing Aid Company, The Flying Circus and Clover. I have plans for a family tree at some point. Support acts for this show remain unknown.

02 April 1966: The Wildflower, Ale Extrom and His Conceptina, Movies [Final Show]
Seven shows had been held each Saturday through to April 2, 1966 when The Firehouse presented The Wildflower supported by Ale Extrom and His Conceptina at The Wreckers Ball. Advertised as For our parting event, we present ... see this grand old firehouse in its last days before it becomes a parking lot …. Ale Extrom was a purveyor of sea shanties and had appeared at the Jabberwock and Cedar Alley Coffee House. Ale remains a water-bound neighbor of Wildflower member Stephen Ehret to this day.

Sadly George Eby's dog Potpan is no longer with us.

4742 Mission Blvd, San Francisco The Rock Garden 1967 Sunday Dinner Shows

2009-11-20T11:22:00.000-08:00

This intriguing clipping from the entertainment column in the San Mateo Times of December 8, 1967, has the following intriguing quote

Making a big hit with the early Sunday evening dancing crowd is the special $1.25 dinner at the Rock Garden on Mission near Ocean Avenue, in San Francisco. The dinner and dancing to the great Tracy Brothers combo begins at 6 p.m., with minors welcome. Talent auditions for recording contracts are another popular Sunday Rock Garden feature

Although the location is not precise, this is almost certainly the same Rock Garden that was briefly a psychedelic rock venue for several weeks in March and April 1967, featuring Big Brother, The Grateful Dead and the Buffalo Springfield, among others. An April show featuring Country Joe and The Fish seems to have been canceled, and nothing surfaced afterwards about the club. Further research revealed that it turned into a club called The Ghetto, featuring Soul and Latin music, and that it was a foundational venue for the Latin Rock explosion in San Francisco that culminated with Santana and Malo breaking out onto the National scene.

When I wrote about the venue earlier, I made the point that when a Use Permit is in force, its easier for a promoter to use an existing entertainment venue rather than create a new one. Whoever the owners or promoters behind the original Rock Garden might have been, the club seems to have had a post-psychedelic period before it became The Ghetto. The Tracy Brothers are unknown to me--I wonder if anyone got a recording contract from the auditions? I am still searching for who might have been performing at The Rock Garden on nights other than Sunday.

While the San Mateo Times was a suburban newspaper, the Rock Garden was more accessible to much of the South Bay suburbs than it was to downtown San Francisco. The South Bay's main "strip," El Camino Real, turned into Mission Boulevard in San Francisco. A South Bay resident could drive up El Camino to Mission without having to go over the substantial hills between the Excelsior District and Downtown, so it makes sense that the interregnum Rock Garden was aiming for a suburban appeal.

2850 19th Avenue, San Francisco, CA September 10, 1966 The Mothers/Oxford Circle

2009-11-18T21:32:00.000-08:00

The Scottish Rites (Masonic) Temple at 2850 19th Avenue in San Francisco is the least known of all Bill Graham's 1960s San Francisco venues. It was only used once for a rock concert, to my knowledge, and I know nothing about the event itself. Nonetheless this building is always forgotten in chronicles of the 1960s in San Francisco, so I thought I would address what little is known about it.

Bill Graham's famous Fillmore Auditorium on 1805 Geary Blvd (at Fillmore Street) was next door to a Synagogue. I have written about the peculiar place in rock history of Temple Beth Israel (at 1839 Geary Blvd) elsewhere. Suffice to say, Bill Graham faced various political problems with his new underground rock venture, and one of them was a rabbi who was not sympathetic to Graham's desire to have weekly rock concerts. Honoring the concerns of his neighbors, Graham moved two Saturday night concerts in 1966. The April 16, 1966 show with the Jefferson Airplane and Butterfield Blues Band was moved to Harmon Gym at UC Berkeley, while the Friday and Sunday shows remained at the Fillmore. Similarly, on the weekend of September 9 and 10 in 1966, with a bill of The Mothers and Oxford Circle, Graham moved the bill across town on Saturday (September 10) to the Scottish Rites Temple at 2850 19th Avenue, near Sloat Boulevard and Stern Grove.

19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard is very far from the Fillmore District, almost as far from the Fillmore as one could get and remain in San Francisco. For those familiar with San Francisco geography, it is near Stern Grove and San Francisco State University, between the Sunset District and West Portal. This interesting experiment was not repeated, suggesting that it was not a worthwhile location for a rock performance at the time. While San Francisco State had many rock fans, many of the hippest ones lived in the Haight Ashbury, so they were nearer the Fillmore than the College. No record survives of the show itself, whether as a tape, a review or an eyewitness account.

The Concert
By September of 1966 The Mothers had released their groundbreaking debut album Freak Out. However, it was their nervous record company (MGM) that had added "Of Invention" to their name. The group had been playing the San Francisco Bay Area with some regularity since late 1965, and they were known by their original name, The Mothers, which is how they were billed on the poster (BG27).

It is difficult to determine for certain the membership of the Mothers for these shows, as the band’s personnel was in flux. The poster shows 7 people, but the poster probably came from a Verve promo photo and some of them aren't even band members, so it doesn't really represent anything about the band's lineup. I am reliably informed that the Mothers at this time were Zappa and Elliot Ingbar on guitars, Ray Collins on vocals, Roy Estrada on bass and Billy Mundi and Jimmy Carl Black (The Indian of the group) both on drums. While the other members had been on Freak Out, Mundi had recently joined, having recently played as part of a group called Mastin And Brewer (featuring Michael Brewer, later of Brewer and Shipley) and then briefly in Lamp Of Childhood.

The Oxford Circle, the most exciting band in Davis, CA at the time, were a hard rocking quartet styled on the Yardbirds. Although the band released very little during its existence, 1997 saw the release of a great live cd recorded around this time (Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1966, on Big Beat), so we know how they sounded. Members of Oxford Circle went on to join Blue Cheer and Kak, among other groups.

The Venue
It is difficult to find out much about the venue. It does appear that the venue is still there. I suspect it is unlikely that a new building has replace the old one, but it is plain that the auditorium itself has been remodeled in the intervening years. It does appear that the capacity was smaller than the Fillmore Auditorium, though not by that much. The Free Masons have a long history in California, dating back to the mid-19th century, but that is well outside the scope of the blog here.

It does appear that the Scottish Rites Temple at 19th and Sloat was a much more recent building than other Masonic Temples in San Francisco. There were Masonic Temples right next to both the Fillmore and The Avalon--conspiracy theorists take note--but both of them (at 1859 Geary, dating to the 19th century, near the Fillmore, and 1300 Sutter, next to the Avalon) had long since been devoted to other uses by the 1960s. There was also a Masonic Auditorium on Nob Hill (at 1111 California) but that was a large (3200 capacity) and fairly conventional theater.

The building appears to be in active use today, and the auditorium remains available for rental.

1839 Geary Blvd, San Francisco, CA July 29-30, 1977 Theatre 1839 Jerry Garcia Band

2009-11-18T17:35:00.000-08:00

Most scholarly Deadheads are aware that the Jerry Garcia Band played two shows at Theatre 1839 in San Francisco on July 29 and 30, 1977, not least because a fine double-cd set was released from those shows. I attended the second show on July 30, and it was a truly wonderful performance in an inspiring venue. I was sorry that Jerry never played there again. It was only later when I found out some of the interesting historical aspects of the building, and I thought I would pass those on.

There were three significant buildings on the South (odd numbered) 1800 block of Geary Boulevard. The most famous to rock fans is of course the Fillmore Auditorium at 1805 Geary, on the corner of Fillmore and Geary, built in 1912 (as The Majestic Hall and Dancing Academy) and still operating today. Next door was the former site of the synagogue for Temple Beth Israel, an early Jewish congregation in San Francisco, founded around 1860, which began constructing its fifth building at 1839 Geary in 1905, although its completion was interrupted by the April 1906 earthquake . Next to the synagogue was the Scottish Rites (Masonic) Temple Building, known as the Alfred Pike Memorial Temple, at 1859 Geary, which dated back to the 19th century. A remarkable photo exists from right after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, showing a damaged Beth Israel synagogue and the equally damaged Masonic Temple, with an empty lot where the future Fillmore would be built a few years later. Although there were a number of different addresses on the block, these three buildings were the main structures on the block until the 1980s.

I have written an extensive post about The Geary Temple (1859 Geary) elsewhere, but 1839 Geary deserves some attention of its own. A striking photograph from 1964 of Temple Beth Israel can be seen at the San Francisco Public Library site. The edge of the Fillmore Auditorium is visible just to the left (East) of the building. It is a striking and beautiful building, which in 1964 would have been 58 years old (it was completed in 1906, after the earthquake). In 1964 the Fillmore Auditorium, after some time as a roller skating rink, had become an important venue for African-American music, promoted by Charles Sullivan, who was one of the principal promoters of black music on the West Coast.

When Charles Sullivan retired at the end of 1965, after renting the facility a few times, Bill Graham took over the lease of the Fillmore Auditorium, starting on February 1, 1966. The venue was an immediate success, but Graham was not without troubles. In particular, he had particular difficulty with the status of his "Dance Hall Permit," a left over bit of bureaucracy from the post-Prohibition era. While initially Graham had used Sullivan's license, he had considerable trouble procuring a license from the City of San Francisco, and at one point was even arrested. This made Graham particularly susceptible to challenges from the community.

Apparently the rabbi at Temple Beth Israel was not a fan of Graham's use of the Fillmore (whether he appreciated Sullivan's promotions is unknown). Graham took a bitter relish in relaying the story of how the rabbi accused him of not knowing the suffering of the Jews, in response to which Graham pulled up his sleeve and showed the rabbi the number the Nazis had tattooed on his arm as a child (I heard Graham tell this story in person at a lecture in 1976, and he was still angry at the rabbi). Twice in 1966, Graham moved events at the Fillmore to other venues to accommodate Jewish religious celebrations: on April 16, 1966 the Jefferson Airplane/Butterfield Blues Band show was moved from the Fillmore to Harmon Gym at UC Berkeley, and on September 10, 1966 the Mothers Of Invention/Oxford Circle show was moved to the Scottish Rites Temple across town (at 2850 19th Avenue and Sloat Blvd).

Graham eventually received a Dance Hall Permit, and apparently by 1967 conflicts with the neighboring Synagogue were no longer an issue. Whether Graham was no longer concerned with political pressure, whether he moved key dates to Winterland or there was some other solution is not clear to me (I have not been able to determine which would have been the relevant dates in 1967). In any case, Graham was so successful he looked to move out of the Fillmore to the Fillmore West, and by mid-summer 1968 Graham had moved to Market and Van Ness.

Temple Beth Israel was on the move as well, as its Congregation merged with another Congregation, becoming Congregation Beth Israel-Judea in 1969. The Congregation moved to 625 Brotherhood Way in San Francisco, where it remains today. The Temple at 1839 Geary seems to have been temporarily used for other functions and then sold around 1971, as near as I can tell. The building's history from 1971 to 1977 is obscure to me.

Theatre 1839
Ads for the shows above abruptly appeared in 1977. The promoters were unknown to me. Older folks must have recognized the building, but all I knew at the time was that it was near Winterland (at Post and Steiner), then the principal rock and roll concert venue in the Bay Area. I knew the Fillmore Auditorium had been somewhere around there, but when we went to see Jerry Garcia (hi Geoff) at Theatre 1839, we had no idea that the fully intact Fillmore was right next door. Although the venue had "festival seating" for the most part, probably different than its synagogue functions, the elegant ceilings and decorations were intact, and it was not only a beautiful building but beautiful sounding as well.

The Garcia Band show on July 30, 1977 was fantastic, and when I later acquired tapes of that night and the night before I learned that I had not imagined it. The Hot Tuna show on August 5 was used for the 1978 Hot Tuna live album Double Dose, so all the shows at Theatre 1839 were turned into live albums. I talked to someone who went to the Hot Tuna show, and he confirmed my feeling that it was a wonderful venue.Whatever the finances behind the Theatre, however, it was not used for another show in that incarnation, and more's the pity for that.

Right next door, however, was the converted Alfred Pike Memorial Scottish Rites Temple, which by this time was the headquarters of Jim Jones's infamous Peoples Temple. Jones and his followers left for Jonestown, Guyana and their tragic mass suicide took place on November 18, 1978. While Theatre 1839 was not directly connected to those events, it did add to the strange mojo of the block.

Temple Beautiful
Theatre 1839 did arise as a performance venue, however, known as Temple Beautiful in early 1979 and hosting a number of punk rock shows. The Clash in particular played a warmly remembered gig there, as well as many more local bands. While this is outside the scope of this blog, it is worth noting that once a Use Permit has been defined, venues are more likely to remain in use. Once again, I do not know the finances behind the concerts, nor why the building stopped being used for music after about 1980. At some point the building became "The Duquette Pavilion," hosting the work of artist Anthony Duquette.

The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 damaged the Fillmore Auditorium, Temple Beautiful (1839) and the former People's Temple (1859), and all the buildings were damaged by fire. The Fillmore was fully refurbished, but the two other buildings were torn down. After some time as vacant lots, the 1859 Geary address is now a newly constructed Post Office, and I do not know the fate of the lot at 1839.

Cross posted at Lost Live Dead