July 7, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Joan Baez/It's A Beautiful Day/West (FDGH '69 V)

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For the previous entry (July 4-6, 1969 w/the Flying Burrito Brothers) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

 

Wes Wilson's poster for the two Wild West benefit shows at Fillmore West and the Family Dog on The Great Highway on Monday, July 7, 1969

July 7, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Joan Baez/It's A Beautiful Day/West (Monday) Wild West Festival Fundraiser
On Monday night, July 7, a night when the Family Dog (and almost every other rock venue) was not open, the Dog held a concert to raise funds for the upcoming Wild West Festival. The headliner was folksinger Joan Baez. While Baez was not as critical an artist as she had been a few years earlier, she was still a major star. Raised in Palo Alto, Baez had achieved stardom when she moved to the Boston area in 1958 (her professor father had moved from Stanford to MIT). By 1969, Baez had recently relocated back to the Bay Area. While Baez didn't really tour, she did perform, if not that much, so any appearance by her qualified as an event. On the bill with her was the band It's A Beautiful Day, who had just released their debut album on Columbia. The album featured the classic "White Bird," which was getting FM airplay and would go on to become an iconic hit.

Despite the attractive poster (above), Baez' appearance at the Family Dog seems to have been all but lost to history. The concert was a fundraiser for the proposed Wild West Festival, which was scheduled to be held in Kezar Stadium and Golden Gate Park from August 22-24. The context of the Baez concert at the Family Dog can only be understood in the frame of the debacle of the Wild West Festival.

 

The Wild West Festival
In 1969, San Francisco was one of the capitals of rock music, along with London, New York and Los Angeles. The Fillmore and the Avalon had transformed the live music business, and FM rock radio had done the same for the airwaves. With rock live and on the radio, and a huge audience of baby boomers, rock music was profitable like never before, and with entirely new paradigms. The whole rock music world paid attention to what happened in San Francisco, and how it happened as well, since it was where new things came from.

San Francisco had more or less invented the "free concert in the park model" (for more on that, see Gina Arnold's excellent 2018 book Half A Million Strong: Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella-ok yes, she's my sister but it's a great book). By 1969, the outdoor free concert idea had expanded into the "Rock Festival," a vast multi-day outdoor exercise with dozens of bands and tens of thousands of fans. The Summer of '69 was rock festival summer: there were big outdoor events in Atlanta, Texas, Seattle, Atlantic City and of course, Woodstock, just to name the most prominent. If rock festivals were the thing, then San Francisco had to be the City That Knows How, and throw the biggest and best of them. 

The Wild West Festival was conceived as a three-day event in Golden Gate Park, in the center of San Francisco. Kezar Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, was in the park, and there would be three days of high profile shows with the cream of the Fillmores: the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Quicksilver, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and The Fish, Santana and Sly and The Family Stone. Other cities should have been so lucky. On the grounds of the park, surrounding Kezar, there would be dozens of lesser bands playing for free. The concept was to merge the best of a free and a paid festival in one setting.

The actual subject of the Wild West Festival, and its ultimate cancellation, is too long a story to tell here. Fortunately, the story has been told very well and in great detail by Michael J Kramer and his excellent book The Republic Of Rock: Music and Citizenship in The Sixties Counterculture (2013 Oxford Press). Suffice to say, everybody wanted something different from the Wild West, and no one got anything. To summarize:

• San Francisco, always ahead of its time, showed the rock world that the expectations of fans, bands, promoters and cities could not be met, and the festival was not a lasting model. It took the rest of the country another 18 months to figure that out
• Thanks partially to the cancellation of the Wild West, the Rolling Stones ended up playing a concert at Altamont Speedway in December, and the whole rock world found out how badly an outdoor rock festival could really go (once again, SF ahead of its time)

In early July, however, that wasn't quite clear. In order to pull off the festival, it needed funds, and in those days it wasn't like there could be a corporate sponsor. So the solution was to have the bands play a benefit and the "community" would provide the funds through ticket sales. The compromise was that there would be simultaneous concerts on Monday, July 7, at the Fillmore West and the Family Dog. Jefferson Airplane would headline Fillmore West, and Joan Baez at the Dog. For reasons having to do with Wild West politics, the Family Dog produced the show at Fillmore West, although they hired Grahams' crew in order to do it. 

Almost no rock bands worked on Monday nights, so the bands and venues were free. Having the Fillmore West and Family Dog concerts on the same night seems odd, but there must have been some compromise that demanded it. A regular Fillmore West booking was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, July 8 (BB King would headline through Thursday), but nothing appears to have been booked on Tuesday for the Dog. Now, there might not have been much crossover between Jefferson Airplane fans and Joan Baez fans, so perhaps not much was lost, but the scheduling is typical of the strange compromises that fractured the plans for the Wild West.

 

David's Album, by Joan Baez, released on Vanguard in May 1969, but recorded in Nashville in September 1968. Baez's husband David Harris was a country music fan, and the album was all country songs.

Joan Baez had been a huge star when folk music was popular, and she was essential in getting Bob Dylan known to a wider audience. When the Beatles hit, however,  Baez did not "go electric." She didn't have any kind of purist prohibition about electric instruments,  but unlike Dylan, Baez wasn't really a rock and roller. In any case--again unlike Dylan--political activism was at the center of her life. Still, Baez continued to be a popular concert attraction.

At the time of the Family Dog booking, Joan Baez's current record was David's Album, which had been recorded in Nashville in September, 1968. Vanguard Records had sent Baez to Nashville to record a double album of Bob Dylan songs with Nashville pickers. Released in December of '68, Any Day Now had gone to #30 in the Billboard album charts. David's Album had been recorded at the same time, and was an album of country songs.  Baez's husband, David Harris, was a country music fan, and had made her more aware of country music. Harris was a prominent activist, and he would soon go to jail for resisting the military draft in opposition to the Vietnam War. With the title, Baez managed to personalize the recording, promote support for her husband's cause and make a contemporary record all at once. David's Album did pretty well, reaching #36 on Billboard.

Regardless of the backing on any current record, Baez generally performed solo. Sometimes she had additional musicians, as she did at Woodstock (with Jeffrey Shurtleff and Richard Festinger on guitar and harmonies), but she was still a folk performer in concert.

It's A Beautiful Day had formed in late 1967, but they had started playing around the Bay Area in early 1968. They were lead by electric violinist David LaFlamme, who shared lead vocals with Pattie Santos. LaFlamme's wife Linda played organ, and the rhythm section of Mitch Holman (bass) and Val Fuentes (drums) was solid. The band really took off in the middle of 1968 when guitarist Hal Wagenet joined. Wagenet had been in a group called Indian Head Band, which played a hybrid of Indian music and psychedelic jamming. Wagenet's guitar was a good counterpoint to LaFlamme's violin, and gave the band a harder edge that went over well in psychedelic ballrooms.

Already a popular local band, It's A Beautiful Day had released their debut album on Columbia in June 1969. Unlike the first albums of many groups, the band was fully realized. LaFlamme had been in an odd group called Orkustra in 1967 that played around the Haight, so he had learned some lessons from that. It's A Beautiful Day had originally been sent to Seattle by their manager, Matthew Katz, so they had "gotten it together" before they reappeared in San Francisco. The debut album had some great songs, and they got heavily played on FM radio. The most popular was "White Bird," which would go on to become a huge AM hit as well, and sort of 60s classic. 

At the moment of this Monday night at the Family Dog, It's A Beautiful Day was a band on the rise, seemingly another in a long line of bands whose glowing careers began at the Fillmore West and a smashing debut. It wasn't to be--manager Katz was already engaged in long-running lawsuits with his previous clients, Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape. Katz is notoriously litigious: the Airplane suit was not resolved until the 1980s, and Moby Grape's lawsuits were not resolved until the 21st century. LaFlamme lost a significant lawsuit against Katz in the early 70s, and It's A Beautiful Day's career was derailed, as was his. But that was still in the future in July 1969.

[update] fellow scholar Michael J. Kramer unearths a receipt from the Family Dog for the July 7 Wild West benefit. Ticket sales totaling 1579 generate over $2400 for the Wild West after expenses (Berkeley Folk Festival director Barry Olivier had been hired to run the Wild West, so the receipt ended up in those archives).

Bridges, the second album by West, on Epic Records

Opening the show was West, a band on Epic Records who had just released their second album, Bridges. The group was led by Ron Cornelius and Mike Stewart, who wrote and sang, and Cornelius played lead guitar. Mike Stewart had been in the popular band We Five, who had had a huge hit with "You Were On My Mind" back in 1965. Cornelius had been in some local bands, like Justice League Of America. West was together for a few years, but was never really successful. Stewart left the band, and Cornelius fronted the band for the final album before they broke up.

Cornelius would move to Nashville, where he had a long career as a producer and session man (he played on Bob Dylan's New Morning album, for example). Stewart would become a successful producer in Los Angeles, for Billy Joel ("Piano Man") and others.

A San Francisco Examiner write up from July 6, 1969 for Joan Baez and the Jefferson Airplane, the next night at Family Dog and Fillmore West

July 7, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Ace Of Cups/Fourth Way/Phoenix (Monday) Wild West Festival Fundraiser Family Dog Productions
The Fillmore Auditorium and the Fillmore West are the fabled wellsprings of San Francisco rock. Of course, great music was played there, great times were had, and such memories that were not obliterated remain glowing. For all that, what made the name "Fillmore" iconic was the posters. Long after the concerts, the posters from the Fillmore and Fillmore West were on the walls of bedrooms and dorms, and later framed in living rooms. The posters were reprinted, promoted and sold by Bill Graham (and to a lesser extent Chet Helms did the same for the Avalon). As a result, shows that may have been thinly attended took on an afterlife if it had a colorful poster featuring the likes of the Grateful Dead.

Paradoxically, San Francisco rock posters have formed a sort of canon, and a canon that excludes certain artifacts. Knowledgeable poster collectors have always been aware of the Wes Wilson poster up top, but it has never been considered part of the "official" Bill Graham or Family Dog series. In Paul Grushkin's 1987 book Art Of Rock, which was critical in establishing widespread knowledge of 60s posters, the numbered series for Graham (BG) and the Avalon (FD) doesn't include the July 7 poster, so it's as if the poster didn't exist. What few lists there are of Fillmore concerts (save for ours) are just transcribed lists of posters, so the concert effectively disappeared from history for all but the most determined scholars.

The Jefferson Airplane were the most popular live concert attraction amongst the San Francisco bands. Although the Family Dog would have effectively hired Bill Graham's crew to run the Fillmore West show, and turned over any profits to the Wild West, Graham still wanted to make sure he got paid. I don't think it's an accident that the biggest band in town was the one playing for Graham, ensuring that his production fees were covered.

Ace Of Cups was a fascinating all-female band that should have made it, but never did. At this time, the Aces were under the wing of Quicksilver manager Ron Polte, who himself was a key player in the Wild West saga. The Fourth Way was an interesting jazz-rock quartet, but not in a hypersonic fusion style. They would release their second album on Capitol sometime in 1969. Phoenix was an interesting local band, but they never managed to get themselves over the top. Yet because the show was a Family Dog production at Fillmore West, we seem to have no eyewitness account, recording or review of this likely very appealing event.

For a link to the next entry in the series (July 11-13, 1969 with The Youngbloods), see here

July 4-6, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Big Mama Thornton/Flying Burrito Brothers/Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band (FDGH '69 IV)

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For the previous entry (June 27-29, 1969 w/Barry "The Fish" Melton) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

A notice in the July 3, 1969 SF Examiner describes the upcoming weekend of shows at the Family Dog, as well as optimistic plans for a free concert at the venue

July 4-6, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Big Mama Thornton/Flying Burrito Brothers/Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band (Friday-Sunday)
For the July 4th weekend, The Family Dog booked acts that seem very attractive today. At the time, however, they weren't particularly well known. The more interesting notice is the description in the July 3 San Francisco Examiner (above) that "free rock concerts will be held tomorrow [Friday July 4] from 1 to 5 pm and a free-style kite fly will take place on the beach opposite." This intriguing proposition marks the Family Dog as very different from the Fillmore West. Nothing was free at Fillmore West, nor was there a beach opposite. At this time, the Sunset district (nearest to Playland) was full of families, and there would have been plenty of teenagers. Daly City, too, wasn't that far away, and there would have been plenty of teenagers there as well. A free concert and some fun on the beach is a unique way to build a rock scene, a sign of Chet Helms' perceptiveness at recognizing that 60s rock was as much about community as music.

Still, those people who have never been to Ocean Beach might not realize the limitations here. The world thinks of beautiful people relaxing on sunny California beaches, but that's a Southern California trope. The Bay Area isn't like that, really, and Ocean Beach really isn't like that. I have posted the Examiner weather report for July 4, 1969. While inland--which to a true San Franciscan, starts at Berkeley--will have highs in the upper 80s to low 90s, the coast will have no such weather. It predicts "Fair through Saturday except patchy fog and low clouds near coast this afternoon...[high temperatures will be] in the mid-60s..Northwest wind 10 to 20 mph becoming westerly 12 to 25 mph Saturday afternoon." 

So July 4 weather at Ocean Beach will never get higher than 60ish, with fog into the afternoon, and windy. Great for kite flying, but not bikini weather. Of course, every day at Ocean Beach has always been like this, and every local teenager would have known it. But that's why the free concert will be indoors, because it will be too cold to hang out on the beach for long, even in July. Of course, we have no idea who might have played on Friday afternoon. My guess would be local bands like Devil's Kitchen, as the Flying Burrito Brothers weren't going to be playing any lunchtime gigs. I'm not aware of Helms trying this idea again, so it must not have worked. Building audiences through free concerts was a proven San Francisco tradition, but the unique location of Ocean Beach made that hard to pull off.

A rare print ad for the Family Dog. The SF Good Times (July 3 '69) advertises the upcoming Big Mama/Flying Burritos/Cleanliness and Godliness triple bill over the holiday weekend

As for the regular concerts, Big Mama Thornton (1926-1984) had been a popular and important blues singer since the early 1950s. She originally recorded “Hound Dog” in 1952, years before Elvis Presley, and her 1968 version of “Ball And Chain” was a huge influence on Janis Joplin, who did the more famous cover version. However, Thornton’s popular records did not lead to her own financial success, and despite being a fine performer she was notoriously difficult to work with. Big Mama had played a number of weekends at the Fillmore in 1966, including opening for both the Jefferson Airplane (October 1966) and the Grateful Dead (December 1966). Unlike many blues artists who played the Fillmore, she had not reappeared. There's no explanation as to why she hadn't been seen at rock venues since.

Big Mama was booked at the Family Dog this weekend, and she would play a week at the Poppycock in Palo Alto in October 1969. From today's perspective, Big Mama Thornton seems like a very interesting performer, and no doubt she was, but in 1969, to the mostly teenage audience, she would have just seemed old (of course, in 1969 she would have been just 42).

The Flying Burrito Brothers had just released their now-legendary debut album The Gilded Palace Of Sin in February of 1969. The initial Burritos lineup had been fronted by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, supported by pedal steel guitarist Sneaky Pete Kleinow, bassist Chris Etheridge and ex-Byrd drummer Michael Clarke. Although the Burritos are legends today, and rightly so, they were initially a sloppy and under-rehearsed live band. The group had played the Avalon in April, opening for the Grateful Dead (Chet Helms was not running it at the time), and the sound of Sneaky Pete Kleinow over Owsley's sound system inspired Jerry Garcia to buy himself a pedal steel guitar the very next week. So there's no doubt about the impact of the Burritos on those who listened.

The fact was, however, that country rock wasn't yet popular. A few major acts like Bob Dylan (Nashville Skyline) or The Byrds (Sweetheart Of The Rodeo) had succeeded with countrified albums, but in general hippies saw country music as antithetical to their values. No one really bought Gilded Palace Of Sin until many years later, when the world caught up to it. We know what the Burritos sounded like back then (their April Avalon shows were released, and a Seattle show in July '69 can be obtained), and for all its sloppiness, it's country rock in its seminal form. Unfortunately, San Francisco hippies weren't ready for that. I doubt many of them showed up at the Family Dog to see the Flying Burrito Brothers, even though in retrospect they might have regretted missing them.

Berkeley's Cleanliness And Godliness Skiffle Band opened the shows. The CGSB had formed out of the same community of musicians that had given rise to Country Joe and The Fish. Initially, the CGSB did actually play skiffle music, which was a sort of New Orleans Jug Band style. By 1969, they were playing a sort of swinging country rock, no longer acoustic but not fully electrified either. They released one album in 1968 on Vanguard, The Cleanliness And Godliness Skiffle Band's Greatest Hits (back when such a title for a debut album was still clever).

The CGSB had been playing around Berkeley since 1966, but they hadn't gotten beyond local success. They would fade away in early 1970. Infamously, the CGSB were the primary musicians for an album called The Masked Marauders. In October 1969, two Rolling Stone writers would write an obviously fake review of a "Supergroup" album called Masked Marauders. When people started calling record stores, they rushed into a Berkeley studio, and the CGSB and some friends mimicked the review, recording songs like the touching "I Can't Get No Nookie." A strange legacy for a band.

For a link to the next post (July 7, 1969 with Joan Baez), see here

June 27-29, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Barry Melton and The Fish/Kaleidoscope/Los Flamencos de la Santa Lucia (FDGH '69 III)

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For the previous entry (June 20-22, 1969 w/Sons Of Champlin) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

 

June 27-29, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA:  Barry Melton and The Fish/Kaleidoscope/Los Flamencos de las Santa Lucia (Friday-Sunday)
Barry "The Fish" Melton had been playing for Chet Helms since October 21, 1966, when Country Joe and The Fish had first opened for Seattle's Daily Flash at the Avalon. The band had played there many times since. Back in Fall '66, they had been an underground Berkeley band with a self-released EP available at a few Berkeley shops. By Summer '69, Country Joe and The Fish were nationally known, with two best-selling albums on Vanguard that were staples of FM radio and college dorms nationwide.

Country Joe and The Fish had a new album, too, their third for Vanguard, Here We Are Again. The official release date was July, but the record had already been reviewed in the SF Chronicle and was probably available in stores. So, why, with a new album, was Barry Melton headlining the Family Dog without Joe McDonald? While the exact details aren't known, it's pretty likely that Country Joe and The Fish did not really exist as a functioning band in June, 1969, even with a new album.

Now, in fact, Joe McDonald and Barry Melton had always considered themselves a duo, not a band. The advice they were given in late 1966, however, when they signed with Vanguard, had made the other members of the group (David Cohen, Bruce Barthol and Gary "Chicken" Hirsh) equal partners. When Joe and Barry wanted to move on early in 1969, they had to buy out the other three. Joe and Barry would find new people to play with them live, but Country Joe and The Fish was a duo that had an electric supporting cast. No fans knew this at the time, nor would they have probably cared. As far as fans were concerned, Country Joe and The Fish were a band.

The last tour of the "original" Country Joe and The Fish had ended January 12, 1969 at Fillmore West. All their friends showed up to jam--Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and Steve Miller--and it even got recorded (and released in 1994). A new English band called Led Zeppelin had opened for them, however, so no one really recalled the event. In March 1969, Country Joe and The Fish had toured Europe with a new lineup. Peter Albin and Dave Getz, formerly of Big Brother, were on bass and drums, respectively. The new keyboard player was East Coaster Mark Kapner (how Kapner had hooked up with the duo isn't quite clear). That lineup toured the States in April and early May, but it was a one-time thing, as Big Brother had their own plans to reform.

Country Joe and The Fish would kick off their Summer tour a few weeks later, on July 18, 1969 at Fillmore West, with Joe Cocker and The Grease Band opening. By mid-August, the new lineup would be playing Woodstock. As far as I know, however, that band did not exist in June. The Woodstock lineup would be

• Country Joe McDonald-vocals, guitar, harmonica
• Barry "The Fish" Melton-lead guitar, vocals
• Mark Kapner-organ, keyboards
• Doug Metzner-bass
• Greg Dewey-drums

Metzner was from the Greenwich Village band Group Image. Greg Dewey had been in the Berkeley band Mad River, who had only recently broken up. So who was playing at The Family Dog? We don't actually know--there isn't a review, there isn't a picture or a tape, and I'm not aware of eyewitness accounts. 

Joe McDonald and Barry Melton periodically played separately. The band had nearly broken up in late 1967. Joe had gone solo, and considered hiring a Vancouver band (the United Empire Loyalists). Melton, meanwhile, had toured with the other three members as "The Incredible Fish." In the nomenclature of local rock billing, if Melton was appearing as with "The Fish" it meant he would be playing electric, but without Country Joe. I think the Family Dog was a warmup gig for the new Fish lineup, and I suspect that Melton played with Kapner, Metzner and Dewey. 

Did Country Joe show up? Very likely not. McDonald had a two-week engagement with a satirical performance troupe called The Pitschel Players. He was appearing as part of their revue at The Intersection on Union Street, and it was widely advertised. As if that wasn't enough, on Sunday afternoon (June 29), Country Joe was headlining a show at the Frost Amphitheater in Stanford. So Joe was booked, and The Fish would be swimming without him. 

The Kaleidoscope were from Los Angeles, and they were decades ahead of their time. They pretty much invented World Music, and pretty much no one was ready for it. In June 1969, the band had released their third album on Epic, Incredible! Kaleidoscope. It lived up to its name. While the band was still fronted by guitarist/multi-instrumentalist David Lindley, multi-instrumentalist Solomon Feldthouse and organist/multi-instrumentalist Chester Crill, they had a new rhythm section. Paul Lagos was the drummer and Stuart Brotman played bass. Anyone who ever saw the band live was lucky.

The Avalon had a reputation for finding cool bands before anyone else. If Helms booked a band at the Avalon, and they got good notices, Bill Graham wasn't far behind, offering them more money and a higher profile. Kaleidoscope had played the Avalon various times since early '67, and while they were too far ahead of their time for most listeners, other musicians just about lost their minds. When Kaleidoscope had played the Avalon on May 24-26, 1968 (booked between the Youngbloods and the Hour Glass, with Duane and Gregg Allman), the Yardbirds were booked at the Fillmore West the same weekend. Jimmy Page has told the story of taking time out between sets to walk the 12 blocks over to the Avalon just to catch the Kaleidoscope, and then walking the 12 blocks back to play his late night set with the Yardbirds.

In August 1968, the Kaleidoscope had finally played the Fillmore West, opening for the Grateful Dead (August 20-22), but they had never gotten over the hump. The hippie rock world--nor anywhere else--was just not ready for them. By 1969, they were back with Chet Helms, second on the bill at the Family Dog. David Lindley and Solomon Feldthouse had played the Jabberwock club in Berkeley, back in 1966, when Country Joe and The Fish were getting their start--Brooklynite Melton would play solo gigs as "Blind Ebbets Field"--so I wouldn't be surprised if some jamming took place. But we have no record of these shows, so we don't know.

Los Flamencos de Las Santa Lucias were a troupe of local Flamenco performers, but beyond recognizing their name I know nothing about the group.

For a link to the next post (July 4-6, 1969 Flying Burrito Brothers), see here

 

June 20-22, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Sons Of Champlin/Congress Of Wonders/Elvin Bishop Group (FDGH '69 II)

 

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For the previous entry (June 13-15, 1969 w/Jefferson Airplane) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

June 20-22, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Sons Of Champlin/Elvin Bishop/Congress Of Wonders (Friday-Sunday)
After the very successful opening weekend with the Jefferson Airplane, the Family Dog settled back to more conventional fare. Unlike the Avalon or the Fillmore West, the Family Dog on the Great Highway did not have posters for each show. I believe some hand-drawn flyers have circulated, but I have not been able to find very many examples. In any case, to my knowledge they were neither large nor artistically interesting, so they didn't get tacked up on dormitory walls. Truthfully, the rock market had changed, and by 1969 posters were more about what we now call "Branding." Most Fillmore and Avalon posters had been immediately pulled off telephone poles and shop windows as soon as they were put up. Both Graham and Helms made good money selling reprints of the posters, which was fine, but other than in the early days, the posters weren't really intended to directly entice patrons to the next show.

In 1969 San Francisco, live music was mainstream enough that fans expected to see upcoming shows listed in the two daily papers, the morning San Francisco Chronicle and the afternoon Examiner (as well as the Oakland Tribune). Rock fans also looked in the weekly Berkeley Barb, and when colleges were in session, there would be ads or notices in the student papers. The role of a promoter was to make sure that all the papers had notice of upcoming shows, since the papers in turn wanted the events listed--without charge--in the entertainment section. Publishers knew that young people would read a paper to see who was playing live (as well as for movie times, tv schedules and sports events), so advertising was only necessary for bigger events. Helms almost never advertised the FDGH shows, partially out of shrewd recognition that it wasn't required, and partially because the venue was run on a shoestring.

The key to live success for a rock band in San Francisco, or any city, was radio airplay. KSAN-fm was the dominant music station in the Bay Area, and djs could play what they wanted. If the djs liked the bands, and played the records, people would come. Every night, certainly every weekend, KSAN djs would announce who was playing at the different venues. One reason that posters for big rock shows dropped away after the Fillmore and Avalon was that they were a needless expense that did not improve attendance. Radio ads and announcements were critical, with newspaper listings and ads a close second. I don't know if Helms ever advertised the FDGH on KSAN. My guess is not (any insights or Comments welcome).

The Sons Of Champlin had played the Avalon for Chet Helms many times, going back to 1966. In the intervening years, they had been signed by Capitol Records. Their debut, the double album Loosen Up Naturally, had been released in May 1969. The Sons were finally looking to get the reward for having played all over the Bay Area for the previous three years. They were a great live band, and they had built a solid local following. Their current lineup was

• Bill Champlin-Hammond organ, guitar, lead vocals
• Terry Haggerty-lead guitar
• Tim Cain-tenor sax
• Geoff Palmer-piano, Hammond organ, vibes, baritone sax
• Al Strong-bass
• Bill Bowen-drums
  

All of the members, save for Palmer, had been in the Sons since the band had formed in mid-66. Palmer had joined in 1967, so he was a band veteran by this time as well. Trumpeter Jim Beem had been a member of the band, and still may have had some involvement, but he had some health issues. During the 1969 period, the Sons also had a second drummer (John "Fuzzy" Oxendine), but he only lasted about 4 gigs, and no one quite recalls which ones they were.

At this time, the Sons live set was pretty much the contents of Loosen Up Naturally, along with a few choice covers. The Sons had played so many dances that they knew all the classic James Brown songs, and "Turn On Your Lovelight, " and so on. There's every reason to think that the Sons Of Champlin put on great shows on the second weekend at the Family Dog, but we don't have any accounts. 

Elvin Bishop, from Tulsa by way of Chicago, had joined the Butterfield Blues Band in the early 60s. Bishop had initially shared guitar duties with Michael Bloomfield on the bands' first album. Bishop had graduated from wingman to lead soloist for the next two Butterfield albums (1967's Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw and '68's In My Own Dream), and then left the band to move to San Francisco in 1968. He had been leading his own group in the Bay Area since early 1969. The likely lineup of the Elvin Bishop Group at the time was

• Elvin Bishop-lead guitar, vocals
• Applejack (Jack Walroth)-harmonica, vocals
  
• (Stephen Miller-organ, vocals) when available
  
• Art Stavro-bass
• John Chambers-drums, vocals
  

Organist Stephen Miller (not the more famous guitarist) was a full time member of the band Linn County, who had relocated to the Bay Area from Cedar Rapids, IA. Linn County recorded for Mercury, but Miller played gigs with Bishop when he could (he would join the Elvin Bishop Group permanently when Linn County broke up in 1970). On this weekend, Linn County was playing the Poppycock in Palo Alto on Friday and Saturday, so Miller probably only sat in on Sunday night. Bishop was signed to Bill Graham's new Fillmore Records label, distributed by Columbia. Bishop would release his own debut album Elvin Bishop Group sometime later in 1969.

Congress of Wonders were a comedy trio from Berkeley, initially from the UC Berkeley drama department and later part of Berkeley’s Open Theater on College Avenue, a prime spot for what were called “Happenings” (now ‘Performance Art’).  The group performed at the Avalon and other rock venues.

Ultimately a duo, Karl Truckload (Howard Kerr) and Winslow Thrill (Richard Rollins) created two Congress of Wonders albums on Fantasy Records (Revolting and Sophomoric). Their pieces “Pigeon Park” and “Star Trip”, although charmingly dated now, were staples of San Francisco underground radio at the time ("Pigeon Park" is from their 1970 debut album Revolting). The duo was one of a number of comedy troupes to take advantage of the recording studio, overdubbing voices and sound effects in stereo, to enhance the comedy.

For some photos of The Congress of Wonders, see here (Earl Pillow (actually Wesley Hind) was the original third member) and here.  

 

For the next post in the series (June 27-29, 1969), see here. 

June 13-15, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Charlatans/Pulse/Devil's Kitchen (FDGH '69 I)

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, ca. 1969

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

June 13-14, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Charlatans/Pulse/Devil's Kitchen/Jim Rinehart (Friday-Saturday)
June 15, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Charlatans/Pulse/Devil's Kitchen/Jim Rinehart (Sunday)
Chet Helms opened his new Family Dog venue with the first two San Francisco psychedelic bands, the Jefferson Airplane and The Charlatans. The two bands had played the very first Family Dog dance at Longshoreman's Hall on October 16, 1965. Of course, Helms was not part of the Family Dog at the time, as he did not take over until January, 1966. And while the Jefferson Airplane were now one of the most popular, hip rock bands in the country by 1969, the truth is they had not played much for Chet Helms. They had played the Fillmore for him once (February 22, 1966), a weekend at the Avalon (July 22-23, 1966) and a weekend at the Denver Family Dog (November 7-8, 1967), but that had been it. I don't believe Helms liked dealing with their former manager Matthew Katz, and Katz of course had been replaced by Bill Graham, who was hardly looking to book them at the Avalon. It was San Francisco, though, so everyone was still friends.

At this time, the current Jefferson Airplane album was their live record, Bless Its Pointed Little Head, recorded at Fillmores East and West in late 1968. It had reached #17 on the Billboard charts. Their most recent studio album had been Crown Of Creation, released in September 1968, and reaching #6. The band had just finished recording their Volunteers album. It would be released in November, and would go on to become an iconic classic for the band. The Airplane had their most famous lineup, too, with Grace Slick, Marty Balin and Paul Kantner on vocals, Jorma Kaukonen on lead guitar, Jack Casady on bass and Spencer Dryden on drums. The band could be unreliable in performance, but when they hit their marks they were formidable indeed, and Grace Slick had as much star power as any rock figure. It was only appropriate that an important new San Francisco rock venue would be opened with San Francisco's most important rock band.

The Charlatans had the almost precisely opposite arc to the Airplane. The Charlatans were an original San Francisco band, arguably the original San Francisco psychedelic band. The group got noticed in the Summer of 1965, playing at a hotel called the Red Dog Saloon, in the deserted Silver mining town of Virginia City, NV. Only about 5 hours from San Francisco, the Charlatans spent several weeks playing there. Many of the folks who attended were from the city. The Charlatans dressed in cheap Edwardian clothes they got from thrift shops, they jammed the blues while tripping on LSD (which was legal) and there was a light show behind them. This was the model for the first San Francisco Family Dog dances. The Charlatans even popularized colorful, mysterious posters promoting their shows. 

By 1969, the Charlatans had been eclipsed by every band they inspired. They had broken up, reformed, never released an album and undergone numerous personnel changes. Former drummer Dan Hicks had switched to guitar and was now the lead singer. Lead guitarist Michael Wilhelm and bassist Richard Olsen were still in the band, but the other members (drummer Terry Wilson and pianist Darrel DeVore) were new. The Charlatans were a legendary San Francisco underground rock name, but few had actually heard their music, and by 1969 they weren't that exceptional.

Pulse was a unique solo act featuring one Brent Lewis playing congas and other drums, which in turn triggered strobe lights and other effects. It might have been entertaining in concert, but it wasn't a lasting model.

Devil's Kitchen was a band from Carbondale, IL, that had relocated to San Francisco in the Spring of 1968. They would become a sort of house band at the Family Dog, whatever exactly that meant. I think it meant that Devil's Kitchen kept their equipment at the venue, and played a lot of gigs there when they weren't officially on the bill.

Jim Rinehart was a juggler.

SF Examiner headline for Phil Elwood's review in the Saturday June 14, 1969 edition

The opening night was a huge success. Phil Elwood reviewed the show in the Saturday (June 14) Examiner. He said that 1500 were packed into the hall, and nearly as many were outside and couldn't get in. He also mentioned that the hall was smaller than the old Fillmore, which had an official capacity of 1500, so that means the FDGH must have had an even smaller official (Fire Dept approved) capacity.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was an opening night success. Unfortunately, the venue never got beyond its initial peak. I don't know anything about the following night. Given that it was Saturday, and the Airplane were headlining, I'm sure it did well, and probably sold out. But for the FDGH to succeed, its location required that it had to be a destination. Without the high flying Jefferson Airplane, that was rarely the case. Elwood reported that the Airplane began their set in a rather ragged fashion, which was common for them. He left at 12:30 am, as the Airplane started their third number, but he acknowledged that they seemed to be finding their mojo.

I am fairly certain that the Airplane set was broadcast live on KSAN-fm, the city's leading rock station. Since Airplane tapes are not documented like Grateful Dead tapes, I can't say that with absolute assurance. This too, was an anomaly--there was never another live FM broadcast from the Family Dog on The Great Highway. Nothing is known about the Sunday night show, with just the Charlatans topping the bill. Given that it was Sunday night, it was likely very thinly attended.

Next Week's bookings:
June 20-22, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Sons Of Champlin/Congress Of Wonders/Elvin Bishop Group (Friday-Sunday)