October 23-31, 1970 The Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, 131 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA (Lost Horizons 1970 XIII)

The Berkeley Barb of October 23, 1970 lists Patrick Simmons playing at the Shelter Inn at Miramar Beach in Half Moon Bay. Simmons had probably just joined the Doobie Brothers at this time.

Recently I have been focusing my research on rock shows in the Bay Area in the early 1970s, focusing particularly on the lower tiers. With patience, I have done good research on the Matrix, the Keystone Berkeley, the Long Branch and a few other clubs. Yet I consistently come across tantalizing details of other venues, different untold stories and an insight into the unexplained. Without further information, I am often stuck with just the hint, not anything like the actual story.

My research method focuses on finding dates and venues where bands have performed, and constructing a narrative based on available sources. It sounds simple, but it reaps many benefits. Rather than assume what the motives and goals of different bands or promoters might be, I can let the evidence of actual performances tell me what is desired and what has resulted. The limits of this method, ultimately, are constrained by the limits of my available sources. From the 1960s and '70s, we don't always have that much evidence, so it can be hard to figure out the story. Not all old sources have been digitized, and in many cases a lot of shows were not advertised in any paper. If no local flyers were preserved, or there aren't other sources we can be left with very little. 

Lost Horizons, 1970
The Lost Horizons posts are a series of posts that I can't complete. In some cases I wish someone else would write the post, in other cases I'm hoping someone else has already written it, and in some others I am hoping for more information so I can try and take them on. There's no real connection between any of these topics, save for the device that there was a live performance in 1970 that intrigued my interest. My blogs have an explicitly rock and roll orientation, but my methodological approach veers off in different directions. Fernand Braudel, Reynar Banham, Marcy (emptywheel) Wheeler--it's still rock and roll to me. I'm hoping that the magic of the Internet and eternal Comment Threads will yield up information hitherto unknown to me. If you have any insights, corrections or entertaining speculation, please Comment.

The Berkeley Barb
The Berkeley Barb had been founded by Max Scherr in 1965. The weekly paper made a point of documenting the local counterculture. The readership was distinct from anyone subscribing to the local daily papers (the San Fransisco Chronicle or Examiner, the Oakland Tribune or the Berkeley Gazette). The Barb reported on protests, pot busts, sexual freedom and local rock shows. The ads were for organic foods, head shops or local crafts. The Barb was an alternative paper for an alternative audience. It was sold by hippies to other hippies for a dime or a quarter.  I don't know if the Berkeley Barb was the first such "underground" paper, but it was one of them, and it was a model for such papers all over the country.

By 1970, the Barb was being read well beyond Berkeley. I don't know the exact details, but I believe that even outside of Berkeley the paper was available in Head Shops, espresso joints and other hip places throughout the Bay Area. At the back of every issue of the Barb was "Scenedrome," a summary of upcoming and ongoing events in the next week that might be of interest to its readers. While that would always include shows at Fillmore West, for example, it also included performers at Telegraph Avenue coffee shops, foreign movies, political meetings, self-help groups and all sorts of other gatherings. Getting listed in Scenedrome any week was free--someone just had to call the Barb by Tuesday at noon. So for hippie events that were on a shoestring, or just free, calling the Scenedrome was the cheapest way to get publicity. 

While Berkeley events had always been posted in Scenedrome every week since 1965, by 1970 it was plain that the rest of the Bay Area was paying attention as well. The Friday and Saturday listings in Scenedrome went well beyond Berkeley, a clear indicator that the Barb had a broader readership beyond central Berkeley. So we get tantalizing hints of what was going on around the Bay Area, without really knowing exactly what it might have been. Most of my notices below come from little more than the barest of listings in the appropriate issue of the Berkeley Barb, with occasional supplements from other sources.

 

 

The Ocean Beach Motel, at 131 Mirada Road in Half Moon Bay. This infamous roadhouse was probably the site of the The Shelter Inn in 1970

The Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, 131 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA
October 23, 1970 Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, Half Moon Bay, CA: Patrick Simmons (Friday)
October 25, 1970 Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, Half Moon Bay, CA: Bill Middlejohn (Sunday)
October 28, 1970 Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, Half Moon Bay, CA: Patrick Simmons (Wednesday)
October 30, 1970 Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, Half Moon Bay, Patrick Simmons (Friday)
October 31, 1970 Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, Half Moon Bay, CA Paul Ziegler and Bill Andrus (Saturday)
November 1, 1970 Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, Half Moon Bay, CA: Bill Middlejohn (Sunday)
November 4, 1970 Shelter Inn, Miramar Beach, Half Moon Bay, CA Patrick Simmons (Wednesday) 

For a few weeks during October 1970, the Barb regularly listed shows at some place called the Shelter Inn. The only address listed was "Miramar Beach." Now, Miramar Beach is in Half Moon Bay, and even now the direction "Miramar Beach" would be sufficient. Back then, it definitely would have been all you needed. I'm not certain what building the Shelter Inn was in. I hope it was the former Ocean Beach Hotel (pictured above, at 131 Mirada Road).  In any case, it was some old roadhouse. It turns out that something may really have been going on in Half Moon Bay during the 1960s.

Half Moon Bay, on a rocky coastline 25 miles south of San Francisco, had a lengthy history for a California city. There was settlement as early as the 1840s, and it was San Mateo County's first real town. Half Moon Bay, however, was on the opposite side of the Santa Cruz Mountains from the San Francisco Bay, so it was the Peninsula side of the county that was connected to the Southern Pacific Railroad. There wasn't even a good road over the mountain until 1914. Half Moon Bay's isolation, however, made it an excellent harbor for Rum Runners during Prohibition. So Half Moon Bay had a rowdy tradition, near to San Francisco but a world away.

The Ocean Beach Hotel, right on Miramar Beach, was run by one Maymie Cowley from 1918 until 1955. It was a haven for rum-runners, as well as a speakeasy and a bordello. Ms. Cowley was apparently notorious for getting into knife fights at other bars, so you can only imagine what a tough joint she ran. Although the town of Half Moon Bay was finally incorporated in 1959, like many beach communities it had a streak of--shall we say--non-conformity. There seem to have been plenty of hippies around in the late 1960s. Would I be surprised to find out that boats landed at Half Moon Bay during the 60s with other sorts of contraband? You decide.

As far as 60s music went, I only know of one rock band from Half Moon Bay. Petrus featured Jorma's brother Peter Kaukonen on guitar and singer/songwriter Ruthann Friedmann (she wrote "Windy" for the Association). Nosing around, there seems to have been one bar/coffee shop that presented music, called The Spouter. The Spouter then changed its name to The Shelter Inn. When I have read about the Spouter/Shelter, all of the locals don't identify the building since everyone knew it. That's why I think it was familiar, established building like the Ocean Beach Hotel. 

As for October 1970, the venue had just changed its name to the Shelter Inn, and was probably putting notices in the Barb to let Coastside hippies know there was music going on. There wasn't even a hippie rock club on the Peninsula side of San Mateo County, so there would have been no competition at all on the empty coast. The bookings were fairly repetitive for a few weeks, with the same names playing residencies each night. But the names turn out not to have been quite nobody.

[update 20250324] Cam Cobb's article on Weird Herald in the Winter '24 issue of Ugly Things (UT #67) sheds a little light. The Shelter in Half Moon Bay was a successor to an infamous mid-60s San Jose joint called The Shelter. The Shelter had been at 438 E Williams St in San Jose, not far from the San Jose State College campus. It was open from Fall '64 through mid-66. The principal operator of the San Jose Shelter was guitarist Paul Ziegler, who would be in the band Weird Herald and later in Hot Tuna. 

Thus it is no surprise to see Saratoga/San Jose area musicians like Pat Simmons, Paul Ziegler and Billy Andrus playing at The Shelter in Half Moon Bay.

Bill Middlejohn, who held down Sunday nights, wasn't a major local music figure. Still, he was a guitarist in various Bay Area bands throughout the 1970s. He would end up in a band with Keith and Donna Godchaux in 1979, right before Keith's tragic death. A Half Moon Bay nostalgia site remembers his playing well.

Patrick Simmons, who held down both Wednesday and Friday nights at the Shelter Inn, went on to massive world-wide success. Right around October 1970, Simmons would join a San Jose rock trio to form the Doobie Brothers. Simmons would remain the only constant in the Doobie Brothers for the next 50 years--he's still leading the band--and sell literally millions of albums, selling out thousands of concerts along the way. The timeline is hard to discern, but by October '70 Simmons was probably already hanging out with the future Doobies. They may have started playing their earliest gigs, at Ricardo's Pizza in San Jose (at 218 Willow Glen) and the Chateau Liberte as well. 

This building on Big Basin Way in Saratoga housed the Brass Knocker folk club (photo taken in 2010, the address is next door to 14523 Big Basin Way)

On Saturday, October 31, the bill was Paul Ziegler and Bill Andrus. Ziegler and Billy Dean Andrus had been the two guitarists in the San Jose band Weird Herald. Before that, In the mid-60s, Ziegler had been the Master Of Ceremonies and main performer at a coffee house called the Brass Knocker in Saratoga, just above San Jose. It was Ziegler, in fact, who had given a teenage Pat Simmons his first chance on stage, at the Brass Knocker back in '66. Whatever issues there may have been between Ziegler and Andrus--Weird Herald had fallen apart during 1970--, Billy Dean was back playing with Paul. Billy Dean Andrus, a huge talent, was just as striking playing as a solo acoustic guitarist as he was playing sizzling electric leads. Whatever, their pasts, Paul and Billy Dean were back together at least one time. 

[update 20250324] Per the Ugly Things Winter '24 issue (#67), Ziegler and Andrus were making plans to put Weird Herald back together, so a duo booking at The Shelter makes sense. Dean would die a few days later.

Billy Dean Andrus ca 1969

The SF Examiner of November 6 reported on the funeral of Billy Dean Andrus, who had died on Monday, November 2. On the night before,  the band Mountain Current had played a biker party at the Chateau Liberte. Mountain Current leader Matthew Kelly, later in Kingfish, told me the story. A big blow-out was planned--Kelly's regular drummer (Chris Herold) had a bad feeling and refused to play. Kelly got someone else, but the drummer was right. The party went on all night, with the bikers both encouraging everybody with infinite amounts of crank and discouraging everybody from leaving. Eventually, in the morning, the party died out. Kelly described leaving the event worn to a crisp from too much speed. Billy Dean Andrus, apparently, tried to mellow out with some pretty hard drugs, and overdosed. His friends and family were devastated.

Billy Dean's old pal, Jorma Kaukonen, wrote a song called "Ode To Billy Dean," and Hot Tuna was playing it within a week. They are still playing it today. At least Paul and Billy Dean had played one last gig at the Shelter Inn in Half Moon Bay, the last whiff of the Brass Knocker and Weird Herald, before Billy Dean traveled on. Pat Simmons had one more Sunday night at the Shelter Inn, too, but then he traveled onwards, too, but upwards from Ricardo's Pizza all the way to headlining the Oakland Coliseum Stadium. 

The Shelter Inn changed identities again, to the Miramar Beach Inn. They also "went electric," apparently, although it was probably the same musicians plugged in. But--something was happening at Miramar Beach in the Fall of 1970, and everyone has forgotten or just won't say.

The November 6, 1970 SF Examiner reported on Billy Dean Andrus' funeral. He was buried in Soquel.

 

September 16, 1970 Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Golden Toad/High Country/JJ Mad/Potter's Wheel (Lost Horizons VII)

 

The Lion's Share, at 60 Red Hill Avenue in San Anselmo, sometime in the early 1970s

Recently I have been focusing my research on rock shows in the Bay Area in the early 1970s, focusing particularly on the lower tiers. With patience, I have done good research on the Matrix, the Keystone Berkeley, the Long Branch and a few other clubs. Yet I consistently come across tantalizing details of other venues, different untold stories and an insight into the unexplained. Without further information, I am often stuck with just the hint, not anything like the actual story.

My research method focuses on finding dates and venues where bands have performed, and constructing a narrative based on available sources. It sounds simple, but it reaps many benefits. Rather than assume what the motives and goals of different bands or promoters might be, I can let the evidence of actual performances tell me what is desired and what has resulted. The limits of this method, ultimately, are constrained by the limits of my available sources. From the 1960s and '70s, we don't always have that much evidence, so it can be hard to figure out the story. Not all old sources have been digitized, and in many cases a lot of shows were not advertised in any paper. If no local flyers were preserved, or there aren't other sources we can be left with very little. 

Lost Horizons, 1970
The Lost Horizons posts are a series of posts that I can't complete. In some cases I wish someone else would write the post, in other cases I'm hoping someone else has already written it, and in some others I am hoping for more information so I can try and take them on. There's no real connection between any of these topics, save for the device that there was a live performance in 1970 that intrigued my interest. My blogs have an explicitly rock and roll orientation, but my methodological approach veers off in different directions. Fernand Braudel, Reynar Banham, Marcy (emptywheel) Wheeler--it's still rock and roll to me. I'm hoping that the magic of the Internet and eternal Comment Threads will yield up information hitherto unknown to me. If you have any insights, corrections or entertaining speculation, please Comment.

The Berkeley Barb
The Berkeley Barb had been founded by Max Scherr in 1965. The weekly paper made a point of documenting the local counterculture. The readership was distinct from anyone subscribing to the local daily papers (the San Fransisco Chronicle or Examiner, the Oakland Tribune or the Berkeley Gazette). The Barb reported on protests, pot busts, sexual freedom and local rock shows. The ads were for organic foods, head shops or local crafts. The Barb was an alternative paper for an alternative audience. It was sold by hippies to other hippies for a dime or a quarter.  I don't know if the Berkeley Barb was the first such "underground" paper, but it was one of them, and it was a model for such papers all over the country.

By 1970, the Barb was being read all over the Bay Area. I don't know the exact details, but I believe that even outside of Berkeley the paper was available in Head Shops, espresso joints and other hip places throughout the Bay Area. At the back of every issue of the Barb was "Scenedrome," a summary of upcoming and ongoing events in the next week that might be of interest to its readers. While that would always include shows at Fillmore West, for example, it also included performers at Telegraph Avenue coffee shops, foreign movies, political meetings, self-help groups and all sorts of other gatherings. Getting listed in Scenedrome any week was free--someone just had to call the Barb by Tuesday at noon. So for hippie events that were on a shoestring, or just free, calling the Scenedrome was the cheapest way to get publicity. 

While Berkeley events had always been posted in Scenedrome every week since 1965, by 1970 it was plain that the rest of the Bay Area was paying attention as well. The Friday and Saturday listings in Scenedrome went well beyond Berkeley, a clear indicator that the Barb had a broader readership beyond central Berkeley. So we get tantalizing hints of what was going on around the Bay Area, without really knowing exactly what it was. Most of my notices below come from little more than the barest of listings in the appropriate issue of the Berkeley Barb, with occasional supplements from other sources.

The September 11 Berkeley Barb lists Golden Toad, High Country, J.J. Mad and Potter's Wheel playing the Lion's Share in San Anselmo on Wednesday September 16, 1970

September 16, 1970 Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Golden Toad/High Country/JJ Mad/Potter's Wheel (Wednesday)
The Lion's Share was the rock club in Marin County that booked original rock music, open from 1969 through 1975. It was in San Anselmo, about 10 minutes West of downtown San Rafael. Some touring bands played there, at least for the first few years, but mostly it featured local bands. It being Marin County, the quality of the local music was a little higher than in some places. Wednesday night tended to be a sort of "audition night," a few bands with little or no cover. 

Shows at the Lion's Share often had bands who intersected deeply with the local rock scene, and thus by extension the National one. Many of the bands playing the Lion's Share on any given night had someone on stage who had played at the Fillmore or Avalon, or played with Van Morrison or some other luminary. Despite the obscurity of the bands, this Wednesday night at the Lion's Share had a bill featuring some people with some of the deepest roots of all in the Grateful Dead scene. The cover charge was 50 cents.

For one thing, this night was the last known night-time appearance of the Golden Toad. I have written about the Golden Toad at great length, but I will try and recap it briefly here. An infamous figure named Bob Thomas, personal pal of Owsley, built his own pipes. They were copies of various medieval instruments. He formed a band to play medieval music--as best they could, as they couldn't exactly listen to the tapes--at the newly-formed Renaissance Faires in Los Angeles and California. The Fair Band could have as many as 23 members, depending on availability. There was also a social link between the Golden Toad and The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, in that I think they shared members. Sometimes the two ensembles would do "breakfast shows" in a Berkeley park that somehow involved baking bread. Only in Berkeley (side note: Bob Thomas designed the "skull-and-lightning-bolt" logo for the Grateful Dead, originally so that the band could distinguish its amplifiers backstage at rock festivals).

A ca. 1966 photo of The Golden Toad, in their Renaissance Fair finery

Once in a while, the Golden Toad would appear at a regular rock venue. They opened a few Grateful Dead shows, they played the Freight and Salvage a few times, and so on. But this time at the Lion's Share was the last time I know of them being publicly booked at a club. The Fair Band, in its various forms, may have continued on for quite a while, but this seems to have been the end of the line for the night-time Toad.

For hip Marin musicians, proximity to the Grateful Dead or other Fillmore stars was a matter of pride and clout. So for most bands, much less a bluegrass band, Bob Thomas might seem like the most connected, inside guy in Marin County. But maybe not to Butch Waller.

High Country was a bluegrass band from Berkeley, led by mandolinist Butch Waller. Waller had been an old pal of Jerry Garcia's back in the bluegrass days, long before Owsley or Bob Thomas. Waller, in fact, was Jerry's co-pilot for his first LSD trip in 1965 (as chronicled in Mojo by Jesse Jarnow). High Country had formed in 1968, and plays around to this day. One night in 1969, in fact, High Country had no banjo player available, and Garcia filled in (it's on tape, so there isn't any doubt). So Waller was an insider if anyone was, even if he had made the fiscally unsound career choice of playing bluegrass. In 1971, High Country would get signed to the Youngbloods imprint on Warners, Raccoon Records, and release an album.

Potter's Wheel, meanwhile, was a Santa Cruz band, probably playing a Marin gig in the hopes of getting heard in the central Bay Area. Three members of Potter's Wheel (drummer Ed Levin, guitarist Stan Muther and bassist Warren Phillips), however, had not only been in the San Francisco bands Phoenix and Mt Rushmore, but two of them (Levin and Muther) had been in the predecessor band The Vipers. The Vipers, a Palo Alto band, had played the second Mime Troupe appeal, the first at the Fillmore (December 10, 1965), and both had attended the Palo Alto Acid Test a week later.

It would be difficult to find a bill with more connected musicians than this one, with direct links to Owsley, Jerry Garcia, the first Bill Graham show at the Fillmore and more. Whether the bands played well that night is, of course, unknown, but this was probably the insiderest of insider shows ever, even by Marin standards.

JJ Mad is unknown to me, but by proximity alone I'm definitely intrigued.

1960s and 70s Rock Nightclubs Navigation and Tracker

 

September 4, 1970 The Checkmate Inn, Nairobi Village Shopping Center, 1605 Bay Road (at University), East Palo Alto, CA: Dance Concert with Metropolitan Sound Company 2am-? (Lost Horizons VI)

A cryptical listing in the September 4, 1970 Berkeley Barb for a rock dance at the Checkmate Inn in East Palo Alto. The listing says "2am-?" Was this some kind of all-nighter?

Recently I have been focusing my research on rock shows in the Bay Area in the early 1970s, focusing particularly on the lower tiers. With patience, I have done good research on the Matrix, the Keystone Berkeley, the Long Branch and a few other clubs. Yet I consistently come across tantalizing details of other venues, different untold stories and an insight into the unexplained. Without further information, I am often stuck with just the hint, not anything like the actual story.

[update 18 February 2023: thanks to fellow scholar David Kramer-Smyth, I have a pretty good idea of the story of The Checkmate Inn. See below]

My research method focuses on finding dates and venues where bands have performed, and constructing a narrative based on available sources. It sounds simple, but it reaps many benefits. Rather than assume what the motives and goals of different bands or promoters might be, I can let the evidence of actual performances tell me what is desired and what has resulted. The limits of this method, ultimately, are constrained by the limits of my available sources. From the 1960s and '70s, we don't always have that much evidence, so it can be hard to figure out the story. Not all old sources have been digitized, and in many cases a lot of shows were not advertised in any paper. If no local flyers were preserved, or there aren't other sources we can be left with very little. 

Lost Horizons, 1970
The Lost Horizons posts are a series of posts that I can't complete. In some cases I wish someone else would write the post, in other cases I'm hoping someone else has already written it, and in some others I am hoping for more information so I can try and take them on. There's no real connection between any of these topics, save for the device that there was a live performance in 1970 that intrigued my interest. My blogs have an explicitly rock and roll orientation, but my methodological approach veers off in different directions. Fernand Braudel, Reynar Banham, Marcy (emptywheel) Wheeler--it's still rock and roll to me. I'm hoping that the magic of the Internet and eternal Comment Threads will yield up information hitherto unknown to me. If you have any insights, corrections or entertaining speculation, please Comment.

The Berkeley Barb
The Berkeley Barb had been founded by Max Scherr in 1965. The weekly paper made a point of documenting the local counterculture. The readership was distinct from anyone subscribing to the local daily papers (the San Fransisco Chronicle or Examiner, the Oakland Tribune or the Berkeley Gazette). The Barb reported on protests, pot busts, sexual freedom and local rock shows. The ads were for organic foods, head shops or local crafts. The Barb was an alternative paper for an alternative audience. It was sold by hippies to other hippies for a dime or a quarter.  I don't know if the Berkeley Barb was the first such "underground" paper, but it was one of them, and it was a model for such papers all over the country.

By 1970, the Barb was being read all over the Bay Area. I don't know the exact details, but I believe that even outside of Berkeley the paper was available in Head Shops, espresso joints and other hip places throughout the Bay Area. At the back of every issue of the Barb was "Scenedrome," a summary of upcoming and ongoing events in the next week that might be of interest to its readers. While that would always include shows at Fillmore West, for example, it also included performers at Telegraph Avenue coffee shops, foreign movies, political meetings, self-help groups and all sorts of other gatherings. Getting listed in Scenedrome any week was free--someone just had to call the Barb by Tuesday at noon. So for hippie events that were on a shoestring, or just free, calling the Scenedrome was the cheapest way to get publicity. 

While Berkeley events had always been posted in Scenedrome every week since 1965, by 1970 it was plain that the rest of the Bay Area was paying attention as well. The Friday and Saturday listings in Scenedrome went well beyond Berkeley, a clear indicator that the Barb had a broader readership beyond central Berkeley. So we get tantalizing hints of what was going on around the Bay Area, without really knowing exactly what it was. Most of my notices below come from little more than the barest of listings in the appropriate issue of the Berkeley Barb, with occasional supplements from other sources.

September 4, 1970 Checkmate Inn, Nairobi Shopping Center, East Palo Alto Dance Concert with Metropolitan Sound Co (Friday) 2am-?
Palo Alto looms large in 60s rock and countercultural history, laying claim to Jerry Garcia, LSD, the Grateful Dead and the Internet, among other things. Of course, Palo Altans makes everything about Palo Alto--we roll that way--but there's always more to the story. Some years ago I laid out the issue that many of the seminal events in Palo Alto had really occurred next door in Menlo Park, and were simply claimed by Palo Alto. The Veterans Hospital where Kesey was an orderly, the Warlocks first show, and so on, were all actually in Menlo Park. But that's not how Palo Alto likes to reflect upon itself.

East Palo Alto was yet another community written out of the Palo Alto narrative. East Palo Alto wasn't even a town until the 1980s, just a community. Palo Alto was the Northern end of Santa Clara County, and the unincorporated area of San Mateo County between Santa Clara County and San Francisco Bay was known as East Palo Alto. Just North, and right next to it, was next to the town of Menlo Park, and that area was know as East Menlo Park or Belle Haven. By the mid-60s, the two areas had grown into each other, and were referred to generally as East Palo Alto.

When my Mother moved to the Bay Area in 1950, she initially lived in East Palo Alto. It was fairly rural, and people kept goats and chickens in their yards. Over time, more and more cheap housing was built in East Palo Alto and Belle Haven, serving people who couldn't afford Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Up through the early 1970s, East Palo Alto was cheap housing for new arrivals. In the early 1960s, for example, Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter lived in East Menlo Park (not actually East Palo Alto), because that was where hardly-working folk singers could find a cheap enough place.

On February 20, 1961, 18-year old Jerry Garcia got his name in the San Mateo Times when the paper reported on a fatal auto accident. One of Garcia's best friends, Paul Speegle, was killed. Garcia was a passenger and had to run to the nearby Veterans Hospital to get help. The Times gave Garcia's address as 1339 Willow Road in Menlo Park. Leaving aside that it was probably the address of a couch Garcia was sleeping on, a look at Google Maps tells us 1339 Willow was nearer the Bay, pretty far from Palo Alto proper, so very much the poor side of town. Today, of course, we see that 1339 Willow is opposite of Facebook, but that is the story of Silicon Valley, and outside of this blog.

East Palo Alto and Belle Haven became more and more African American throughout the 1960s. The borderline was San Francisquito Creek, which was both the county dividing line and the city limits for Palo Alto and Menlo Park. The farther East one got from the Creek (towards the Bay), the fewer white residents there were. Bohemian white people lived near the Palo Alto border, but that didn't extend far. The Bayshore Freeway (CA-101) was another dividing line, further cutting off East Palo Alto.

There were so many liquor stores on University Avenue in East Palo Alto, all serving comparatively dry Palo Alto, that the locals called it "Whiskey Gulch," without irony. Pictured is A1 Liquors, sometime in the 1960s (my father preferred Berrone's Liquors, right nearby).

Of course, Palo Alto benefited enormously from the proximity of East Palo Alto. An old charter from Stanford University ensured that there were no bars downtown, nor any liquor stores within a mile of campus. Hardship? No, not really. Just across the Creek was East Palo Alto, in another county. That section of University Avenue was known un-ironically in Palo Alto as "Whiskey Gulch," since there was a line of liquor stores serving downtown residents. There were also bars, but as a child I didn't notice them.

In 1970, Palo Alto and Menlo Park were hardly as wealthy as they would become with the rise of Silicon Valley, but they weren't exactly poor. You can't escape the fact that the middle class residents of Palo Alto benefited from the cheap housing next door, where all the janitors, house cleaners and service workers lived. East Palo Alto wasn't incorporated, so it always got the least benefit from San Mateo County, lacking the political clout of the established towns.

Nairobi Village Shopping Center, 1675 Bay Road (at University Avenue) in East Palo Alto, ca 1970

In the late 1960s, East Palo Alto tried to establish some identity of its own. It's a complicated story, well-covered by Kim-Mai Cutler's 2015 article in Tech Crunch. In 1968, some residents wanted to change the community name to "Nairobi," but it was voted down by a slim margin. Yet until the mid-70s, East Palo Alto was often called Nairobi in various contexts. I recall the Nairobi Shopping Center, at 1675 Bay Road (at University). It was a conventional strip mall, at a main intersection in the center of East Palo Alto. 

The Barb listing is intriguing. In the parlance of the time, "Dance Concert" meant "all-ages hippie event with no tables." The Metropolitan Sound Company was an Oakland band, African American teenagers from an Oakland High School (I think Tech or Skyline--I read about them in a 1968 Tribune), who played rock music with a soul twist. I presume they were broadly in the vein of Sly And The Family Stone. The Checkmate had been a long-time establishment in East Palo Alto, although I don't know if it had always been at the Shopping Center. From second hand sources, I think the Checkmate was one of the places that teenager Ron "Pigpen" McKernan used to visit in the early 60s (no doubt somewhat illicitly) to hear authentic blues music. 

Lending even more intrigue is the notation of "2am-?" Most Barb concert listings said "8pm" or "7:30-midnight," but this one seems to suggest that it will begin at 2am. An all-nighter? Pretty wild. Now back in early 1968, the Poppycock in downtown Palo Alto would have "breakfast shows" from 2:30-6:30 on Friday and Saturday nights (or, more precisely, Saturday and Sunday mornings). Since the bars closed at 2:00am, officially no beer would have been served. Weekend "Breakfast Shows" were a jazz tradition, because all the musicians who had finished gigs would show up to jam and hang out. It's a little different here, but it is following a somewhat known pattern.

At the time, few white Palo Alto teenagers would have ventured into the largely African American neighborhood of East Palo Alto, other than to go to Whiskey Gulch with their older brother's ID. Even fewer would have ventured over after 2am. Yet the listing in the Barb indicates someone's desire to get the word out to white hippies. Whatever the plan was, it didn't seem to lead to much, but I think there's a lost story there.

 

Checkmate Inn, 1605 Bay Road (at University Avenue), East Palo Alto, CA
[thanks to David Kramer-Smyth for uncovering the story of East Palo Alto's Checkmate Inn]
Per the Palo Alto Times, the Checkmate Inn opened Halloween 1969, at 160 Bay Road (at University Avenue). It was owned by Robert Stevens and his brothers, who lived in East Palo Alto. Stevens was from Fort Wayne, IN, and sang with the popular soul group The Checkmates. The Checkmates played Redwood City (at The Embers) in 1964 and Stevens ultimately bought a house in East Palo Alto. By 1969, his mother and brothers lived there as well, running a janitorial service as well as opening the nightclub. The goal of the club was to bridge the hitherto separate white and black entertainment world.

The February 6, 1970 Palo Alto Times had a feature article on The Checkmate Inn: "East Palo Alto club bridges racial gap with top stars"

In February, 1970, the Checkmate Inn expanded its offerings to include major names. Singer Lou Rawls opened on the weekend of February 4. Upcoming shows included BB King and Mongo Santamaria. It makes sense that a rock group was booked in September, no doubt in an effort to expand the club's audience. It seems that early morning weekend "breakfast shows" were standard fare.

An article in Summer 1972, however, reviews the Checkmates themselves performing at the Inn, and suggests that business is going poorly. The Nairobi shopping center never found traction in the community, and ultimately closed.

August 7, 1972 review in the Palo Alto Times of The Checkmates performing at the Checkmate Inn

The Odyssey, 1606 S. El Camino Real, San Mateo, CA: Performance List June-August 1970 (Lost Horizons V)

 

 

Recently I have been focusing my research on rock shows in the Bay Area in the early 1970s, focusing particularly on the lower tiers. With patience, I have done good research on the Matrix, the Keystone Berkeley, the Long Branch and a few other clubs. Yet I consistently come across tantalizing details of other venues, different untold stories and an insight into the unexplained. Without further information, I am often stuck with just the hint, not anything like the actual story.

My research method focuses on finding dates and venues where bands have performed, and constructing a narrative based on available sources. It sounds simple, but it reaps many benefits. Rather than assume what the motives and goals of different bands or promoters might be, I can let the evidence of actual performances tell me what is desired and what has resulted. The limits of this method, ultimately, are constrained by the limits of my available sources. From the 1960s and '70s, we don't always have that much evidence, so it can be hard to figure out the story. Not all old sources have been digitized, and in many cases a lot of shows were not advertised in any paper. If no local flyers were preserved, or there aren't other sources we can be left with very little. 

Lost Horizons, 1970
The Lost Horizons posts are a series of posts that I can't complete. In some cases I wish someone else would write the post, in other cases I'm hoping someone else has already written it, and in some others I am hoping for more information so I can try and take them on. There's no real connection between any of these topics, save for the device that there was a live performance in 1970 that intrigued my interest. My blogs have an explicitly rock and roll orientation, but my methodological approach veers off in different directions. Fernand Braudel, Reynar Banham, Marcy (emptywheel) Wheeler--it's still rock and roll to me. I'm hoping that the magic of the Internet and eternal Comment Threads will yield up information hitherto unknown to me. If you have any insights, corrections or entertaining speculation, please Comment.

The Berkeley Barb
The Berkeley Barb had been founded by Max Scherr in 1965. The weekly paper made a point of documenting the local counterculture. The readership was distinct from anyone subscribing to the local daily papers (the San Fransisco Chronicle or Examiner, the Oakland Tribune or the Berkeley Gazette). The Barb reported on protests, pot busts, sexual freedom and local rock shows. The ads were for organic foods, head shops or local crafts. The Barb was an alternative paper for an alternative audience. It was sold by hippies to other hippies for a dime or a quarter.  I don't know if the Berkeley Barb was the first such "underground" paper, but it was one of them, and it was a model for such papers all over the country.

By 1970, the Barb was being read all over the Bay Area. I don't know the exact details, but I believe that even outside of Berkeley the paper was available in Head Shops, espresso joints and other hip places throughout the Bay Area. At the back of every issue of the Barb was "Scenedrome," a summary of upcoming and ongoing events in the next week that might be of interest to its readers. While that would always include shows at Fillmore West, for example, it also included performers at Telegraph Avenue coffee shops, foreign movies, political meetings, self-help groups and all sorts of other gatherings. Getting listed in Scenedrome any week was free--someone just had to call the Barb by Tuesday at noon. So for hippie events that were on a shoestring, or just free, calling the Scenedrome was the cheapest way to get publicity. 

While Berkeley events had always been posted in Scenedrome every week since 1965, by 1970 it was plain that the rest of the Bay Area was paying attention as well. The Friday and Saturday listings in Scenedrome went well beyond Berkeley, a clear indicator that the Barb had a broader readership beyond central Berkeley. So we get tantalizing hints of what was going on around the Bay Area, without really knowing exactly what it was. Most of my notices below come from little more than the barest of listings in the appropriate issue of the Berkeley Barb, with occasional supplements from other sources.

The first listing in the Berkeley Barb for the Odyssey Club in San Mateo, at 1606 El Camino, presenting the Joy Of Cooking on Friday, July 17, 1970

Berkeley Barb Scenedrome Listings for The Odyssey, San Mateo, CA, July-August 1970

July 17-18, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Joy Of Cooking (Friday-Saturday)
July 19, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA:  Chris Williamson (Sunday) 3-8 pm
July 20, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: open mike (Monday)
July 21, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Devil's Slide (Tuesday)
July 22, 1970 The Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: South Bay Experimental Flash (Wednesday)
July 23, 1970 The Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Thompson Brothers (Thursday)
July 24-25, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA:  Cleveland Wrecking Co (Friday-Saturday)
July 26, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA:  Chris Williamson (Sunday) 3-8 pm
July 28, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Devil's Slide (bluegrass) (Tuesday)
July 29, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA:  Shubb, Wilson and Shubb (Wednesday)
July 30, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Mountain Current (Thursday)
July 31-August 1, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA:  Cook (Friday-Saturday)
August 7, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA:  Loading Zone (Friday)

In the July 17th, 1970 Scenedrome, the Barb listed the Berkeley band Joy Of Cooking headlining Friday and Saturday nights at a club called Odyssey, in San Mateo. The Odyssey was at 1606 S. El Camino Real, at 16th Avenue, near Highway 92. It was on the way to the San Mateo Bridge, so the club would have been very near two major commuter roads. There was clearly an element of some fledgling hippie club making sure they were seen in the Barb. Yet the bookings listed over the next few weeks indicate a substantial effort to establish an original rock club on the Peninsula, far more organized than a pizza parlor bringing in a popular band on a Friday night. 

At this time, there was not a club booking original rock bands on the Peninsula or in the South Bay, from Daly City down to San Jose. The Poppycock in Palo Alto had been the original rock club for the area since 1967, but by mid-1970 it had either closed or was about to do so. Palo Alto, progressive as it was, didn't mind long hair, weed or rock music, but was very much Not OK with noise and trouble downtown. Bikers and speed freaks congregating to hang out just wasn't going to fly on University Avenue, so the kind of bands playing Mandrake's, the New Orleans House or Keystone Korner had nowhere to play south of San Francisco.

Hillsdale Blvd and El Camino Real (running l. to r.), San Mateo, CA about 1963

El Camino Real was a divided, six-lane road running from South San San Francisco all the way to the edge of San Jose. Its route paralleled the Bayshore Freeway (CA-101), and El Camino was the major commercial area for every Peninsula town. By day, El Camino and its nearest side streets was a destination for washing machines, car dealerships or insurance agencies, and office workers could find lunch there. At night, all the commercial parking could be used for the movie theaters, restaurants and bars. There had been nightclubs on El Camino Real, in every town, since at least the 1950s. Only now, however, was the rock audience old enough to drink. San Mateo wasn't a college town like Palo Alto, but there were young people everywhere. I have to assume that the Odyssey was a typical restaurant/beer joint, since the zoning for those was easy to come by. The rock audience at the time did not have the money nor taste for hard liquor, but cracking open a cold one while listening to music wasn't foreign.

For about three weeks after July 17, the Odyssey made sure that their bookings were listed in the Barb for each night, even "open mike night." This indicates a concerted effort. There were also a few notices in the San Francisco Examiner, starting as early as June 19 (for a complete list of what I found, see the Appendix below). It was harder to get into the Examiner, so the presence of any listings implies a certain amount of effort. Now, the earliest reference I found to the Odyssey was back in January, in the San Mateo Times. It mentioned a sort of "Hoot Night" called The Folk And Blues Workshop that had moved from The Poppycock. So we know the Odyssey was open back in January, and presenting folk music at least. My guess is that in the Summer the club decided to try and fill a hole left by the demise of the Poppycock.

The Berkeley band Joy Of Cooking would release their debut album on Capitol in 1971

Joy Of Cooking were booked for the Friday and Saturday night when the Odyssey first listed themselves in the Barb. The Joy Of Cooking was a Berkeley band, founded in 1969. The leaders were guitarist Terry Garthwaite and pianist Toni Brown, both of whom sang and wrote, with roots in the 60s Berkeley music scene. What distinguished Joy Of Cooking was that while Garthwaite and Brown were fine singers and songwriters, they rocked pretty hard as well. Joy Of Cooking had long improvised sections between verses, just like bands with boys in them.  Joy Of Cooking had established themselves at Mandrake's, playing weeknights. By 1970 they were playing other clubs, and the record companies were coming around (their debut album would be released on Capitol in 1971).

Cris Williamson, originally from Deadwood, SD, but by now living in the Bay Area, would release an album on Ampex Records in 1971, recorded in New York and San Francisco

The Sunday afternoon slot was covered by singer/songwriter "Chris" Williamson. Williamson would become better known in the mid-70s, using the name Cris Williamson, and for founding Olivia Records. Olivia was a label for women, run by women--a novel concept. Williamson (b. 1947) was from Deadwood, SD, of all places.  She had released three obscure solo albums on Avanti Records in 1964-65. By 1970, she had resurfaced in the Bay Area. In 1971, she would release a fairly typical singer/songwriter album on Ampex Records, recorded with session pros in San Francisco and New York.

The Cleveland Wrecking Company, a seven piece band with a horn section, nightclub regulars in the Bay Area, were booked for the following weekend (July 24-25), with Williamson returning on Sunday night. Midweek seemed to feature folk or bluegrass acts, a good compromise when there isn't yet an audience for weeknight rock gigs. The actual Devil's Slide was a dangerous section of Highway 1, on the San Mateo County coastline, so a band of that name was almost certainly local. Devil's Slide seemed to be holding down a regular Tuesday slot. On Wednesday, July 28, the Odyssey featured Freight And Salvage regulars Rick Shubb (banjo), Bob Wilson (guitar) and Markie Shubb (bass). The trio played acoustic swing music, sort of.

Thursday night featured a Santa Cruz Mountains band called Mountain Current. Mountain Current was a predecessor of what would now be called a "Jam Band," playing long-but-danceable numbers, often improvised. Since the membership was kind of fluid, it helped that improvising was part of their sound. The leader of Mountain Current was harmonica player Matthew Kelly, later well-known as one of the founders of the band Kingfish. From the mid-70s onwards, Kelly would play with Bob Weir (in Kingfish and other bands) for some decades. Kelly and Weir had actually gone to junior high school together in nearby Atherton, but would not meet again until late 1972. 

Mountain Current mostly played in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and mostly at an infamous biker hangout called The Chateau Liberte. The Chateau was on the Old Santa Cruz Highway, far off the road, where anything went. Membership varied, but it often included singer John Tomasi and drummer Chris Herold, both formerly of the New Delhi River Band. The lead guitarist was sometimes the Los Altos teenage sensation Robbie Hoddinott (Los Altos High class of '70), who was Kingfish's first lead guitarist. Sometimes, instead of Hoddinott, Kelly used one of the best lead guitarists in the South Bay, Billy Dean Andrus. Andrus, an old pal of Jorma Kaukonen's, had led a San Jose band called Weird Herald. He was a difficult character, however, and Weird Herald pushed him out right before they broke up, so he played with Mountain Current. When Andrus was with the Mountain Current at the Chateau Liberte, he would often jam with other bands that played there, including Hot Tuna.

The last weekend in July featured Cook, who appeared to be a folk band. On the next Friday (August 7), Oakland veterans Loading Zone were the headliners. The Odyssey then abruptly disappeared from the Barb listings. I found one more listing in the Examiner (Wednesday, August 12), and then the Odyssey in San Mateo seemed to vanish for good.

Or did it? Around 1974 or so, there was a club at 799 East El Camino Real in Sunnyvale (near S Wolfe Rd), about 25 miles South of San Mateo, called The Odyssey. Similar to The Bodega in nearby Campbell, it was a Silicon Valley beer joint on weekends, but it had original bands during the week, mostly on Monday nights. The only constraint was that they had to play music that was good to dance to, but for bands like the Sons Of Champlin or Stoneground that was never a problem. Was there a connection between the short-lived San Mateo Odyssey and the more durable club in Sunnyvale, which lasted throughout the 70s? Here's to hoping the internet finds an answer for me.

Appendix: Odyssey Summary Listings
The Odyssey, 1606 S El Camino Real (at 16th Avenue), San Mateo, CA. All listings from the Berkeley Barb Scenedrome except as noted.

June 19-20, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA; Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks (Friday-Saturday) (SF Examiner)
June 23, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Brown Rice (Tuesday) "Country Rock" (SF Examiner)
July 3-4, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Frontier Constabulary (Friday) (SF Examiner)
Frontier Constabulary was a Berkeley band that played Western music (as distinct from Country and Western), featuring Mitch Greenhill and Mayne Smith.
July 17-18, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Joy Of Cooking (Friday)
July 19, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Chris Williamson (Sunday) 3-8 pm
July 20, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: open mike
July 21, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Devil's Slide (bluegrass) (Tuesday)
July 22, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: South Bay Experimental Flash (Wednesday)
The South Bay Experimental Flash were a jazz-rock band featuring saxophonist David Ladd. They had been based in San Jose, but paradoxically lived in Richmond (in the East Bay) by this time.
July 23, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Thompson Brothers (Thursday)
July 24-25, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Cleveland Wrecking Company (Friday)
July 26, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Chris Williamson (Sunday) 3-8 pm
July 28, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Devil's Slide (bluegrass) (Tuesday)
July 29, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Shubb, Wilson and Shubb (Wednesday)
July 30, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Mountain Current (Thursday)
July 31-August 1, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Cook (Friday)
August 7, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Loading Zone (Friday)
August 12, 1970 Odyssey, San Mateo, CA: Cook (Wed) "Folk" (SF Examiner)

 

March 20, 1970 The Prune Pit, 30 S. Central Avenue, Campbell, CA: Ship Of The Sun (Lost Horizons 1970 IV)

Recently I have been focusing my research on rock shows in the Bay Area in the early 1970s, focusing particularly on the lower tiers. With patience, I have done good research on the Matrix, the Keystone Berkeley, the Long Branch and a few other clubs. Yet I consistently come across tantalizing details of other venues, different untold stories and an insight into the unexplained. Without further information, I am often stuck with just the hint, not anything like the actual story.

[update 18 February 2023: fellow scholar David Kramer-Smyth has uncovered at least some of the Prune Pit backstory--see below]

My research method focuses on finding dates and venues where bands have performed, and constructing a narrative based on available sources. It sounds simple, but it reaps many benefits. Rather than assume what the motives and goals of different bands or promoters might be, I can let the evidence of actual performances tell me what is desired and what has resulted. The limits of this method, ultimately, are constrained by the limits of my available sources. From the 1960s and '70s, we don't always have that much evidence, so it can be hard to figure out the story. Not all old sources have been digitized, and in many cases a lot of shows were not advertised in any paper. If no local flyers were preserved, or there aren't other sources we can be left with very little. 

Lost Horizons, 1970
The Lost Horizons posts are a series of posts that I can't complete. In some cases I wish someone else would write the post, in other cases I'm hoping someone else has already written it, and in some others I am hoping for more information so I can try and take them on. There's no real connection between any of these topics, save for the device that there was a live performance in 1970 that intrigued my interest. My blogs have an explicitly rock and roll orientation, but my methodological approach veers off in different directions. Fernand Braudel, Reynar Banham, Marcy (emptywheel) Wheeler--it's still rock and roll to me. I'm hoping that the magic of the Internet and eternal Comment Threads will yield up information hitherto unknown to me. If you have any insights, corrections or entertaining speculation, please Comment.

The Berkeley Barb
The Berkeley Barb had been founded by Max Scherr in 1965. The weekly paper made a point of documenting the local counterculture. The readership was distinct from anyone subscribing to the local daily papers (the San Fransisco Chronicle or Examiner, the Oakland Tribune or the Berkeley Gazette). The Barb reported on protests, pot busts, sexual freedom and local rock shows. The ads were for organic foods, head shops or local crafts. The Barb was an alternative paper for an alternative audience. It was sold by hippies to other hippies for a dime or a quarter.  I don't know if the Berkeley Barb was the first such "underground" paper, but it was one of them, and it was a model for such papers all over the country.

By 1970, the Barb was being read all over the Bay Area. I don't know the exact details, but I believe that even outside of Berkeley the paper was available in Head Shops, espresso joints and other hip places throughout the Bay Area. At the back of every issue of the Barb was "Scenedrome," a summary of upcoming and ongoing events in the next week that might be of interest to its readers. While that would always include shows at Fillmore West, for example, it also included performers at Telegraph Avenue coffee shops, foreign movies, political meetings, self-help groups and all sorts of other gatherings. Getting listed in Scenedrome any week was free--someone just had to call the Barb by Tuesday at noon. So for hippie events that were on a shoestring, or just free, calling the Scenedrome was the cheapest way to get publicity. 

While Berkeley events had always been posted in Scenedrome every week since 1965, by 1970 it was plain that the rest of the Bay Area was paying attention as well. The Friday and Saturday listings in Scenedrome went well beyond Berkeley, a clear indicator that the Barb had a broader readership beyond central Berkeley. So we get tantalizing hints of what was going on around the Bay Area, without really knowing exactly what it was. Most of my notices below come from little more than the barest of listings in the appropriate issue of the Berkeley Barb, with occasional supplements from other sources.

The tallest of the Pruneyard Towers (at 1875 S. Bascom Ave, Campbell) is a familiar landmark on CA-17

March 20, 1970 The Prune Pit, Campbell, CA: Ship Of The Sun (Friday)
In this case, the Barb listing in Scenedrome is a one-off. A club in a San Jose suburb phoned in a listing to the Scenedrome. Ship Of The Sun appears to have been an original rock band--I recognize their name from other listings--but other than that I know nothing about them. It's entirely possible that the band themselves phoned the gig into the Scenedrome. I don't really know anything else about the club or the band, leaving only hypothetical speculation about the venue or the circumstances. Fortunately, I excel at that.

Let's start with the club name: The Prune Pit.  Who thought that "The Prune Pit" was a great name for a nightclub? Now, for those who know South Bay history, this isn't quite as odd as it seems. Campbell, CA is now just a suburb of greater San Jose, but back in 1878, founder William Campbell had sold some of his land holdings to a railroad company. The area became a railroad stop, and a location for dried fruit processing. Farmers would deliver their fruit to the local canneries for drying and processing. So the connection to prunes was native to Campbell (not incorporated as a town until 1952).

In fact, the essential mid-20th century engine of Campbell was The Pruneyard Shopping Center, at 1875 South Bascom Avenue, founded in 1964. The huge, multi-use development, includes three office towers. The tallest of them, visible from CA-Highway 17, is the tallest building outside of downtown San Jose. So the "Prune" reference was local to Campbell. The listing in the Barb (above) also says DANCE/CONCERT and FREE. In 1970, "Dance/Concert" was code for "hippies." It meant no tables, or not many anyway, and loud rock where the crowd could sway to their heart's content. "Free," of course, meant no cover charge, a whiff that perhaps this was a promotion by a new club, trying to encourage first-timers. In early 1970, there weren't any clubs in the San Jose area booking original rock music. One club near the San Jose State campus, the Red Ram (at 444 E. Williams St) had attempted it, but seemed to have rapidly given it up.

The address of the Prune Pit has a bit of rock history to it as well. 30 South Central Avenue in Campbell was ultimately the site of a club called The Bodega. The Bodega, starting about 1974, was basically a Silicon Valley beer joint, with Top 40 bands providing the music. On Thursday nights, however. the Bodega had original rock bands, so groups like Elvin Bishop and Kingfish would play there, but only on Thursdays. One of the partners in The Bodega would open a similar club in Palo Alto called Sophie's in 1975, with a broader booking policy. The Jerry Garcia Band,among others, played Sophie's with some regularity. Ultimately Sophie's became the Keystone Palo Alto. 

I should add, as a teenage radio listener in the Bay Area back in '74, no white people in the Bay Area had any concept of what a "Bodega" might be, at least none of us outside of San Jose. It was just the name of a club mentioned on FM radio. So the one-off listing in the Barb of the oddly-named Prune Pit in Campbell reflects Campbell's historic past and hints at the Keystone Palo Alto. If you stretch it.

An ad for the Prune Pit at the Wrinkled Prune Annex, 30 S CentralAvenue in Campbell, from the January 21, 1970 Los Gatos Times/Saratoga Observer

The Wrinkled Prune Annex, 30 South Central Avenue, Campbell, CA
[Thanks to fellow scholar David Kramer-Smyth for uncovering some history of the venue]
Per an article in the January 9, 1970 Los Gatos Times/Saratoga Observer:

The Wrinkled Prune Annex, a professional showcase for fresh, new talent, has opened in Campbell.

Stan Becker has bought the massive building, part of the old prune processing plant m Campbell, and has converted the structure into four bistros--the first of which is called "The Prune Pit"...

Centered in the "Pit" is a pavilion stage, with four small triangular stages located in the corner of the room. ON these stages, performances occur every half hour intermittently with dancing to the Wilbur Brown's "Mello Tones."

An entrepreneur of "new venture theater, Becker's purpose is to encourage the new talent waiting in the wings of "hope" theater. He does not want the ear-crashing noise makers who vainly call themselves musicians.

Ship Of The Sun, whatever they may have sounded like, played the sort of places that booked loud rock bands, and its listed as a "dance/concert". So that suggests that owner Becker's dreams of promoting new theater was not so successful, and he ended up having to book vain noisemakers anyway.

Stoneground celebrated the Bodega's second anniversary on August 24, 1972 (Los Gatos Times/Saratoga Observer 19720824)

In any case, Becker's conversion shows how the Prune Pit became the venue for The Bodega. The Bodega seems to have opened shortly afterwards, apparently around August 1970. It proudly featured ear-crashing noisemakers. 

Los Gatos Times/Saratoga Observer January 9, 1970

 

Prune Pit owner Stan Becker (r) and entertainment director George Costa (Los Gatos Times/Saratoga Observer January 23, 1970)