August 15-16, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Mike Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites and Friends/New Lost City Ramblers/Southern Comfort/Devil's Kitchen (plus Tah Mahal) (FDGH '69 XIII)

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 (August 12, 1969 New Riders of The Purple Sage) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

A flyer for the Family Dog on the weekend of August 15-17, 1969

August 15-16, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Mike Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites and Friends/New Lost City Ramblers/Southern Comfort/Devil's Kitchen (15 only)/Taj Mahal (16 only) (Friday-Saturday)
August 17, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Taj Mahal (Sunday)
The weekend of August 15-17 is a textbook example of how difficult it has been to determine who actually played the Family Dog. The Chronicle, the Examiner, the Barb and the Tribe all have variations on who was booked, and they all contradict to some degree. I have posted a few examples here, but I will refrain from demarcating every possible variable, and just try and make my best guess. It seems that the Friday and Saturday headliner was Mike Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites, supported by Southern Comfort and the New Lost City Ramblers. On Friday, Devil's Kitchen opened the show, and on Saturday Taj Mahal replaced them on the bill (though in what order the bands played is unknown). On Sunday, Taj Mahal seems to have been the headliner. Someone else probably may have played on Sunday as well, but it's unclear who. 

Mike Bloomfield was a great musician and America's first great guitar hero. By late 1968, he had already left the powerful and influential Butterfield Blues Band for the Electric Flag, and he then would leave the interesting but unsatisfying Flag in mid-1968. He had also been a major part of Al Kooper's Super Session album, released to great fanfare in July of '68. Bloomfield was a restless soul, striving to make great music and uncomfortable with his own success, yet everything he touched seemed to turn to gold.

Members of the Mike Bloomfield Band casually refer to it by that name, but they were almost never booked under that name itself. The group was usually known as Mike Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites and Friends, or Bloomfield/Gravenites/Naftalin, or variations thereof. The basic band was

    Nick Gravenites-vocals
    Mike Bloomfield-lead guitar, vocals
    Ira Kamin-organ
    Mark Nafatalin-piano
    John Kahn-bass
    Bob Jones-drums, vocals

Kahn, Kamin and Jones had been in Memory Pain together. Gravenites had been in the Electric Flag with Bloomfield, and Naftalin had been in the Butterfield Blues Band. Bloomfield wasn't a bad vocalist, actually, but he wasn't that interested in singing, and in any case Gravenites was a great blues vocalist and songwriter. The first performances of the Bloomfield Band had been at the Fillmore West in late January, 1969. Columbia released a Bloomfield album, It's Not Killing Me, produced by Gravenites, in mid-year.

At this juncture, it's worth pointing out a certain parallel between Nick Gravenites and John Kahn with respect to their professional relationships to Mike Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia. Bloomfield let Gravenites organize his various projects in a way that was comparable to how Kahn would organize the Jerry Garcia Band in the next decade. Bloomfield was only interested in touring on the West Coast, and mostly just in the Bay Area, and he was more interested in playing live than rehearsing. When there was a scheduling conflict with a backing musician, a substitute was found, and the results were part of the improvisational flavor of the music. Substitutes were never a problem, as Bloomfield never rehearsed anyway. Bloomfield was the first SF rock star to play regularly around town, a practice later picked up by Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, Van Morrison and others.

Columbia Records released the Southern Comfort album (produced by John Kahn and Nick Gravenites ) in mid-1970

Southern Comfort had been formed in May 1969. All of the band members were playing regularly in San Francisco studios, mainly on records produced by Nick Gravenites. The idea was that Southern Comfort would both be an established studio rhythm section and a performing band, like Booker T and The MGs. The band members were

Fred Burton-lead guitar [aka Fred Olson, his given name]
Ron Stallings-tenor sax, vocals
John Wilmeth-trumpet
Steve Funk-keyboards
Art Stavro-bass
Bob Jones-drums, vocals

IIn the case of the August Family Dog show, Southern Comfort was sharing the bill with the Bloomfield band, so Jones could play both sets. However, Jones did recall (in an email) that on one night the party got out of hand and he left early, so he can't say who sat in on drums that night in his stead.

Bandleader Bob Jones (1947-2013) had played 12-string guitar and sang harmony vocals in a 60s group called The We Five. They had a huge, worldwide hit in 1965 with Ian and Sylvia Tyson's "You Were On My Mind," which sold millions of copies. Still, the We Five broke up, and Jones formed bands in San Francisco with John Kahn and a few others, first the R&B styled T and A Blues Band in 1967 and then the more bluesy Memory Pain in 1968. In the meantime, Kahn and Jones would go around to local jam sessions. Although Jones was a guitar player, Kahn would always ask him to bring a drum set (they shared a house with drummer John Chambers) and play it. Jones would complain that "he wasn't a drummer," but, as he told interviewer Jake Feinberg in the 21st century, he was "Kahned into drumming."

At a jam session in Novato around late 1968, Bloomfield had stuck his head into the room and enquired who was drumming and who was singing. When he found out that it was the same guy, Bob Jones had a new job. Jones considered himself a guitarist, but Bloomfield liked his drumming, and wanted to use him as a singer as well.

The New Lost City Ramblers had been formed in Greenwich Village in 1958. At the time, string band and “old-timey” music was inaccessible to all but the most determined of record collectors. By performing and recording this music, the New Lost City Ramblers were the essential actors in introducing early American music to serious folk musicians, from Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia to everyone else. The original trio was John Cohen, Mike Seeger (half-brother of Pete) and Tom Paley. Tracy Schwarz replaced Paley in the early 1960s. By 1969, the Ramblers had released over 15 albums. They would stop performing regularly after 1969, but continued to play occasional reunions for decades. The Ramblers were going to play over the weekend at the Family Dog, as well as the Tuesday night show. At this time, their last album was Modern Times, which had been released in 1968 on Folkways.

The Ramblers had played the Family Dog on the previous Tuesday (August 12), paired with the newly-formed New Riders of The Purple Sage. Jerry Garcia and David Nelson had taken great inspiration from the Ramblers when they had started out as folk musicians in Palo Alto in the early 60s. The Ramblers, Garcia and Nelson had jammed together on stage at the end of the Tuesday show (per John Cohen), a passing of the torch only witnessed by only a few. The New Lost City Ramblers would break up later in 1969, although they would occasionally have reunion performances in the ensuing decades. It's hard to know how their old-time folk music might have gone over for a crowd primed for loud electric blues.  Of course, we don't know how many people were even there either night.

Devil's Kitchen were newly-relocated from Carbondale, IL. The band would stay in the Bay Area for about a year, and in late 1969 they were a sort of house band at The Family Dog. What exactly that meant isn't clear--probably that they kept their equipment at the Dog--but they did play the hall regularly. Devil's Kitchen played bluesy rock in the old Avalon style, led by slide guitarist Robbie Stokes and singer/organist Brett Champlin (a distant, distant cousin to Bill Champlin of the Sons). 

 

The Berkeley Tribe listing for The Family Dog on Saturday, August 15

 

 

The SF Examiner for Saturday, August 16 lists Taj Mahal at the Family Dog for Saturday and Sunday (Aug 16-17), with no mention of other acts

Taj Mahal probably replaced Devil's Kitchen on Saturday night, although I don't know what order the bands came on. The logic seems to be that Taj Mahal was the headliner on Sunday night. The Barb implied that Mark Spoelstra was on the bill, too.  Bob Jones didn't recall a third night, and John Cohen didn't refer to one, so the bill was likely a lot smaller in any case, since those bands apparently didn't play.

Taj Mahal (b. Henry Saint Clair Fredericks in 1942) had been raised in a musical family in Springfield, MA. He played in various musical ensembles in high school and in college (at U.Mass). By 1964 he had moved to the West Coast, and he formed a pioneering R&B combo called The Rising Sons, with Ry Cooder on lead guitar (a cd of their recordings was finally released in 1992). By early 1968, Taj had already signed and recorded his debut album with Columbia, with both Cooder and Jesse Ed Davis on guitars, although it would not be released until later in the year. 

Taj Mahal's equally excellent second album, The Natch'l Blues, still with Davis but without Ry Cooder, had been released later in '68. Taj Mahal, like many artists who played the Family Dog, had appeared regularly at the Avalon Ballroom. Sometime in 1969, Taj Mahal would release his memorable Columbia electric/acoustic double album Giant Step/De Ole Folks At Home. On stage, Taj Mahal was backed by a killer trio, with Davis on guitar, Gary Gillmore on bass and Chuck Blackwell on drums. Of course, he could have played solo as well. Without any evidence, it's impossible to know.

For the next entry in the series (August 19, 1969-New Riders of The Purple Sage), see here

 

 

August 12, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Lost City Ramblers/New Riders of The Purple Sage/jam (FDGH '69 XII)

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 (August 8-10, 1969 Country Joe and The Fish) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

The New Lost City Ramblers, ca 1960

August 12, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: New Lost City Ramblers/New Riders of The Purple Sage/jam (Tuesday)
It is a peculiarity of the scholarship of 60s rock in San Francisco that much of the history revolves around Jerry Garcia. It isn't just that persistent Deadheads have engaged in enormous efforts to capture Garcia's musical history. And it isn't just that numerous scholars expend huge bandwidth in contemplating what Garcia might have been planning at any point (I acknowledge myself as invested in that as anyone). Sure, Jerry Garcia is famous and important now. But there's no denying that even back in the 60s, long before the Dead had sold any amount of records, long before the band's fans were famous for following them everywhere, and back when the band itself was struggling for enough cash to keep functioning, Garcia's presence was noted and reported by those on the scene. What Garcia did got captured by journalists, even then, so often the surviving reports of many 60s events are told through the Garcia lens, even if he was just a minor participant. And so it was with the Family Dog, and specifically an important but largely forgotten meeting place known as The Common.

A description of a meeting of The Commons at The Family Dog (on August 12, 1969), from the August 22, 1969 Berkeley Tribe underground paper, by staff writer Art Johnson

"The Common" was a weekly meeting held on Tuesday afternoons at the Family Dog on the Great Highway. Everyone was invited. The concept was that everyone on "the scene"--artists, musicians, hippies, whomever--would meet and discuss on an equal footing what was needed. There wasn't membership, or admission, or a litmus test. People just showed up. If you dive deep into San Francisco rock or political history in the late 60s, "The Common" appears on the periphery, just as references to Facebook groups are invoked in modern discussion. And indeed, The Common was as close to a Social Media construct as could be had in those days. Still, I only know of one description of a meeting of The Commons, from the August  22 edition of the underground paper the Berkeley Tribe. And guess what? It seems to be the only meeting of The Common that was attended by Jerry Garcia. Garcia's new band, the New Riders of The Purple Sage, were playing the Dog that night, so Garcia had reason to be there.

The article, by Tribe staff writer Art Johnson, begins

It was Tuesday afternoon at the Family Dog. “Nights? Nights?” Jerry Garcia was shouting, “what about during the day? We got musicians running around looking for a place to jam – why not here?”. It was a meeting of the Common, and all the tribes had come together to discuss the form of what should happen at the Family Dog. About a hundred of the brothers and sisters sat around in a circle, with their dogs and their children...

Johnson describes a discussion that follows about tickets to weekend shows being too expensive. The $3.00 tickets are too much, people say, but if events cost just $1.00 so many more would come. Johnson goes on

The Common is a new form. It is all the people who want to do a trip on the Great Highway: musicians, light artists, impresarios, auctioneers, media people. And most important, the people in the streets who come to goof, and dance, and get high.

It is hard not to see a parallel to Internet economics. Chet Helms was always far more tuned into the hippie scene that Bill Graham, but Graham was the one who consistently found a way to make the economy work. Everyone who is part of "The Common" wants something from the Family Dog, but has no viable plan for its survival. The Family Dog has only been open since June, and it isn't clear how long The Common has been a regular event, but it is apparently already established by August. Johnson mentions another player who has already been established, with no fanfare: Stephen Gaskin.

Steve Gaskin is part of the Common. Steve is a sort of priest of the new age. Every Monday night, 1500 of his friends come out the Family Dog to rap with him, and get stoned together on each others vibrations...

Gaskin was a popular literature instructor at San Francisco State, which wasn't too far from the Family Dog. At the time, Gaskin was called a "hip guru." Now we would say he was trying to "elevate consciousness." There did seem to be a hunger of sorts for his sort of insight, and the "Monday Night Class" was a real thing. The picture on the top of this post is from a Monday Night Class, and it seems that Gaskin could outdraw most rock bands. Of course, his events were free, but they were on a Monday night, too, so he got people to come out. Not nothing.

So something was going on in the Sunset District, and Helms was tuned in to it, but the Family Dog itself was in financial distress. Its most popular event was a weekly free show that generated no revenue. Johnson's article grimly stated "The Family Dog is about bankrupt."

Yet on a more cheery note, the Family Dog held a Tuesday night concert with the legendary folk group The New Lost City Ramblers and the newly-christened New Riders of The Purple Sage. The article describes the event, one of the very few descriptions of a weeknight event at the Dog:

Last Tuesday night, the Common put on a good ol’ hoedown. The dance hall was transformed in to a psychedelic barn with bales of hay, charcoal-roasted corn at ten cents a hit, and the New Lost City Ramblers

Befitting the principles embodied by The Common, apparently there was a barter system that folks with no money could use for entry. The Tribe also gave what I believe to be the first published commentary on the New Riders:

At the square dance Tuesday a new San Francisco band made its debut (sic: not quite a debut but certainly an early show). The New Riders of the Old Purple Sage, with Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, and starring the fair-haired John Dawson on vocal and acoustical guitar. The sound was as smooth as the Dead is, yet it had this sweet country pulse and tune that made you swoon.

The New Lost City Ramblers had been formed in Greenwich Village in 1958. At the time, string band and “old-timey” music was inaccessible to all but the most determined of record collectors. By performing and recording this music, the New Lost City Ramblers were the essential actors in introducing early American music to serious folk musicians, from Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia to everyone else. The original trio was John Cohen, Mike Seeger (half-brother of Pete) and Tom Paley. Tracy Schwarz replaced Paley in the early 1960s. By 1969, the Ramblers had released over 15 albums. They would stop performing regularly after 1969, but continued to play occasional reunions for decades. The Ramblers were going to play over the weekend at the Family Dog, as well as the Tuesday night show. At this time, their last album was Modern Times, which had been released in 1968 on Folkways.

The New Riders of The Purple Sage had arisen from Jerry Garcia's willingness to learn pedal steel guitar by backing his old Palo Alto friend John Dawson when he played his original songs at a Menlo Park coffeehouse. Old pal David Nelson had joined them on electric guitar in mid-May, and they kept playing around. With the some tentative variations involving different players, the band had settled on a lineup by July

• John "Marmaduke" Dawson-acoustic guitar, lead vocals
• Jerry Garcia-pedal steel guitar
• David Nelson-electric guitar
• Bob Matthews-electric bass
• Mickey Hart-drums

Matthews was one of the Dead’s sound engineers, and another old friend from Palo Alto days. The group's first gig was opening for the Dead at Longshoreman's Hall (July 16, 1969), followed by two shows at the UC Berkeley Bear's Lair on Friday, August 1 (when the Dead were booked at the Family Dog, but Garcia was looking to avoid any confrontation with the Light Show Guild picket line). Thanks to soundman Owsley Stanley, there is an excellent tape of both Bear's Lair shows, and they have been released, so we have a pretty good idea of what the band sounded like. They still didn't have a name--at Berkeley, they had been billed as "Marmaduke with Jerry Garcia."

The next week, the band had played Wednesday through Saturday at the Matrix, and they had been billed as The New Riders of The Purple Sage (we have a tape of one of those nights as well). The name was apparently suggested by Robert Hunter. So the Tuesday night show at the Dog was just the band's 7th show, and just their second booking under the New Riders name. To top it off, the band was billed with the New Lost City Ramblers, who were musical heroes and primary influences for both Garcia and Nelson.

Besides the mention in the Berkeley Tribe, we know a little about the event from John Cohen (via a book). Cohen recalled jamming with Garcia and Nelson, so that means that he, Mike Seeger and Jerry Garcia met on equal terms, albeit at different arcs in their careers. Musically, there is a profoundly important through-line from the New Lost City Ramblers to Jerry Garcia, and it's nice to know that the line did not go unnoticed. 

How many people were at the Family Dog that night? A few hundred, at most, if that. And how many stuck around until the end? The few that stuck it out on that Tuesday at the edge of the Western world heard the men who restored Old-Time string band music to the American musical landscape, and heard them play with the man who was most important at spreading that lexicon far beyond the confines of a few eager young musicians.

Footnotes: August 13 and 14, 1969
There is a flyer for this show that is dated August 13 (Wednesday). Either the newspapers had the listing wrong, or the flyer did. At this remove, I am more inclined to believe that this show was on a Tuesday. As a corollary to this discussion, the description of the Tuesday night hoedown could refer to the next week (August 19) when the New Riders also played. For a discussion of this murky topic, see the blog post here, followed by an interesting comment thread (on a different blog) here.

John Cohen's diary also refers to witnessing a jam by the Grateful Dead on Thursday, August 14. As near as I can tell, Family Dog practice at the time was to let fans in if bands were playing, whether the show was "advertised" or not. You can decide for yourself if this counts as a "lost" Garcia show. This may be a response to Garcia's request (above) for a place to jam. In Dead parlance, it may have been a "Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats" show, meaning it was the Dead's equipment, and Garcia and some others were there, but not the whole band. It's not clear whether there was an audience at this event. You can decide for yourself if it makes August 12 or August 13 more likely for the "Hoedown." The Ramblers would play Friday (August 15) and Saturday (August 16) nights at the Dog--unless they didn't play Saturday, but we'll get to that. 

 For the next post in the series (August 15-16, 1969 Mike Bloomfield) see here

August 8-10, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Country Joe and The Fish/Tongue and Groove/Tyrannosaurus Rex (FDGH '69 XI)

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 (August 2-3, 1969 Grateful Dead) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

 

August 7, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Sock Hop with Tony Pigg (Thursday)
On Thursday, the Dog held a dance sponsored by a well-known KSAN dj, Tony Pigg. This was a throwback to the earlier 60s, when AM radio hosts would sponsor high school dances. Since a lot of high school dances were held in the gym, the fear was that dress shoes--particularly women's high heels--would spoil the basketball surface. Thus students were required to dance with their shoes off, hence, a "Sock Hop." I presume records were played, and people were supposed to dance, and it was probably intended as somewhat ironic. In any case, I'm not aware of such an event being repeated at the Dog, so it can't have been very successful. The listing in the paper said "Tony Pigg, Daly Kids--Fuzzy Dice promoted Sock Hop" A few weeks later, the Berkeley Tribe underground paper described it as "a camp trip that parodied the middle fifties." Mike Daly was apparently another KSAN dj.

Tony Pigg went to New York City after leaving KSAN around 1971. He left his last radio gig with WNEW in October 2000. He continues to be (as he has for 20 years or so) the announcer on the Regis & Kelly show, now the Kelly Ripa Show. Pigg continued the role of off-camera announcer for Ripa at least as recently as 2019, but may have retired.

 

August 8-10, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Country Joe and The Fish/Tongue and Groove/Tyrannosaurus Rex/Kevin (Friday-Sunday)
Country Joe McDonald and Barry "The Fish" Melton had been playing fort 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. 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. 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 hooked up 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.

By July 1969, McDonald and Melton had assembled a new lineup of the Country Joe and The Fish band. Melton had headlined the Family Dog back in June, sans Joe, probably as a sort of warmup gig, but this August weekend was the new lineup's maiden voyage for Chet Helms. Mark Kapner had been retained as the keyboard player. On bass was Doug Metzner, who had been part of an infamous hippie bunch in New York called Group Image--a band, an artists collective, a commune, a light show, among other things. On drums was Greg Dewey, originally from Antioch, OH, and from the newly-broken up band Mad River. This was the lineup that would play Woodstock.

It was a sign of the local rock hierarchy, however, that newest Country Joe and The Fish had made their live debut for Bill Graham at Fillmore West a few weeks earlier (July 18-20, supported by Joe Cocker and The Grease Band). However loyal Joe and Barry were to Chet Helms--and I think they were very loyal--Graham had the power, so he booked them first. So the Bay Area had already had three nights to see the new Country Joe and The Fish band. Now, the summer of 69 was the summer of rock festivals, so many rock bands were on tour all over the country, playing auto racing tracks or muddy fields in Seattle, Atlantic City, Texas, Atlanta or Woodstock. So the picking were kind of slim at home--Fillmore West only had Lee Michaels, booked with a soul act (Jr Walker and The All Stars) and a country act (Tony Joe White). Now, I love Lee Michaels, and Junior and Tony Joe seem cool to me now, but it wasn't necessarily first on the hippie wish list. So Country Joe and The Fish were a desirable attraction, but one that had just played.

A huge crowd saw Country Joe and The Fish headline a free concert at 7th and Market in Oakland (this photo from the August 10 Oakland Tribune shows the band Country Weather)

As if that weren't enough, there was a huge street fair in downtown Oakland this weekend. Everyone has forgotten this event (well, everyone but me of course), but on Saturday afternoon (August 9) there were two stages set up at 7th and Market in Oakland. Street fairs were a new thing in the Bay Area, and would become much more popular in coming years. This Oakland street fair was run by Synanon, the drug rehab group, and was probably too successful to be repeated. Synanon had organized the first Street Fairs in San Francisco, in 1967 and '68. The basic Synanon deal was that they provided sound, organization and security, in return for concessions. In the case of the Oakland event, the Tribune said that as many as 75,000 people attended. Even half that number would have been too many hippies for 1969 Oakland.

In any case, if any hippies hadn't gotten to see the new Country Joe and The Fish at Fillmore West, they would have gotten another chance to see them in Oakland for free. Now, Country Joe and The Fish were always a good band, and the Woodstock lineup was great (you can see them in the movie), but how many times did people want to go?

Tongue and Groove was a band featuring singer Lynne Hughes and pianist Mike Ferguson, an ex-Charlatan. Hughes had been sort of an "adjunct" member of The Charlatans. Tongue And Groove had released an album on Fontana in 1968, playing some of the rowdy blues that the Charlatans had done. There was a later album in 1970. I'm not actually sure who was in the live band in 1969. Hughes would go on to join Stonegound the next year.

Tyrannosaurus Rex, meanwhile, was in retrospect a very intriguing booking, although few people probably cared at the time. Most Americans are familiar with Marc Bolan and T. Rex, who had a big hit in 1971 with the catchy rocker "Bang A Gong." T. Rex would be huge in England, shepherding "Glam Rock" into the public eye, and in the UK, Marc Bolan was bigger even than David Bowie. In 1969, however, Bolan's band was called Tyrannosaurus Rex, not T. Rex, and they were a psychedelic folk duo. Bolan played acoustic guitar and sang, joined by bongo-playing partner Steve Peregrine Took (real name Steve Porter). On stage, the pair presented themselves like Ravi Shankar, with just acoustic guitar and bongos, and Bolan singing songs about fairies and such.

Tyrannosaurus Rex' third album Unicorn had been released on Regal Zonophone Recordsin  May 1969. The recording was filled out by overdubbing from both Bolan and Took. It was somewhat successful in the UK. But by this time, Bolan and Took had had a falling out, with Took carrying on with some of the rowdier elements in the underground scene (like the Pink Fairies). Unfortunately, the duo was contractually obligated to do a US tour, which apparently went very poorly. Despite general fascination with English bands in the States, Tyrannosaurus Rex got no traction on FM radio, and their introspective style was poorly suited for loud, Fillmore style ballrooms. The revealing thing about Tyrannosaurus Rex playing the Family Dog was that Bill Graham passed on an English band, in a month when most bands were busy playing festivals.

Kevin is unknown to me--I don't know whether he was a singer, comedian, light show artist, magician or something else.

For the next entry, (August 12, 1969-New Riders), see here

Loading Zone Performance List 1971 (Loading Zone cont II)

 

The debut album of The Loading Zone was released by RCA in June, 1968

The Loading Zone-Performance List 1971
The Loading Zone, while obscure, are a uniquely important group in Bay Area music history. The Zone had a singly dizzying history. Loading Zone had initially been formed out of the ashes of a Berkeley group called The Marbles (who played the first Family Dog Longshoreman’s Hall Dance on October 16, 1965). The two guitarists from The Marbles then joined with organist/vocalist Paul Fauerso (formerly of Oakland’s Tom Paul Trio, a jazz combo) and played a hitherto unheard mixture of psychedelic blues and funky R&B.

Loading Zone were based out of Oakland, in a house on West 14th Street, and while they had played the original Trips Festival and many dates at the Fillmore and Avalon, they also played many soul clubs in the East Bay. They added horns, and after some false starts, a powerhouse vocalist named Linda Tillery, and released an under-rehearsed album on RCA in 1968. The band also had a brief national tour, and played all the clubs in the Bay Area.

The Loading Zone thus laid the blueprint for the progressive soul music of Bay Area bands like Sly and The Family Stone and Tower of Power. Indeed, a Zone roadie, high school student Steve Kupka, played baritone sax with the band’s horn section, when there was room on stage and he was allowed in the club. At one such gig, he met a Fremont band called The Motowns, and they joined forces to create Tower Of Power.

The Loading Zone, ca. 1968

The unique status of the Loading Zone led to a major research project on their history. Besides creating a log of all known performances, based on the information available to us at that time, Ross created a spectacular Loading Zone Family Tree. The Tree gives a well-articulated picture of how the band was formed, and what it created. In retrospect, we did a really good job on the 1960s Loading Zone. Our information on the band in the early 1970s, however, was very limited, and some of it was actually incorrect.

With new information sources easily available, I am beginning a series of posts about the performance history of the Loading Zone from 1970 through their breakup in September 1972. The logging of the band's gigs, large and small, also acts as a survey of the different types of bookings available to a working rock band in the Bay Area at the time. I have previously published a post on all the known performances of the Loading Zone during 1970. This post will focus on all the known performances of the Loading Zone from 1971. Anyone with updates, corrections, insights, recovered memories or flashbacks with respect to the Loading Zone is heartily encouraged to put them in the Comments.

 

Loading Zone guitarist Pete Shapiro on the front porch of the Loading Zone house on 14th Street in West Oakland, sometime around 1967 (the house was identified by Shapiro's then-girlfriend)

The Loading Zone-1960s
1966-The Loading Zone were formed out of the ashes of the Tom Paul Jazz Trio and The Marbles, a British Invasion-styled rock band. They debuted on January 14, 1966. The band pioneered a blend of rhythm and blues with psychedelic guitar solos, showing that the blend worked in both hippie ballrooms and regular R&B dance gigs. The Loading Zone played the Trips Festival and many other foundational ballroom events, while playing dance clubs at the same time.

1967-The Loading Zone expanded their membership, experimenting with a female vocalist, and adding a horn section on occasion. The band played gigs all over the Bay Area, particularly in the East Bay.

1968-In early 1968, the Loading Zone added the dynamic young vocalist Linda Tillery. Female lead vocalists for San Francisco bands were hot, and the Zone was signed to RCA. The band recorded their debut album, probably too soon, and went on a National tour when the album was released around June. The band continued to improve and got better and better notices, although the album did not reflect that (for a good representation of the '68 Loading Zone, here is a mis-dated tape from September '68).

1969-At the end of 1968, Linda Tillery was signed to a solo contract by Columbia Records. The Loading Zone marched on, with Paul Fauerso taking over the lead vocals from the organ chair. In May '69, some original members left the band and the group was reorganized around Fauerso. The new members had more sophisticated jazz backgrounds. The mid-69 model of the Zone mixed the original funky drive of the band with some advanced jazz sounds. Tillery, meanwhile, released the Sweet Linda Devine album on Columbia, produced by Al Kooper in mid-July. She toured around the Bay Area with a trio.

The Loading Zone's second album, One For All (Umbrella Records early 1970)

1970-1970 was a year of change for the Loading Zone. The band had taken on a much jazzier approach by the end of 1969. Yet Linda Tillery, despite her talent, had been dropped by Columbia and had returned to the Zone in early 1970. In June, however, founder and organist Paul Fauerso dropped out of the music business, and the Loading Zone disintegrated. Shortly afterwards, however, Linda Tillery and some new band members reorganized the band. Tillery was the voice and face of the band, and they probably played much of the same material, so it wasn't invalid. Still, it was a new band. Only bassist Mike Eggleston remained from any earlier incarnations.

In my previous post, I reviewed all the known information about every show that the Loading Zone played during 1970.

Al Kooper had produced the Sweet Linda Devine album for Columbia in 1969, but by 1970 the label had dropped Linda Tillery, so she re-activated the Loading Zone

The Loading Zone-Known Performances, 1971

At the beginning of 1971, the members of the Loading Zone were: 

Linda Tillery-vocals
Tom Coster-Hammond organ
Mike Eggleston-bass
Al Coster-drums

The Coster brothers had been regulars on the Oakland jazz scene. They had played in a regular trio with saxophonist Jules Broussard in downtown Oakland, as well as backing other jazz musicians. Tom Coster, later to become well-known in Santana, was an amazingly versatile Hammond organist, able to play creatively in a wide variety of styles. Bassist Mike Eggleston had joined the Zone back in 1969.

January 8-9, 1971 Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Chet Baker/Loading Zone (Friday- Saturday)
The Keystone Korner was at 750 Vallejo Street, near Columbus. The club mostly featured blues and rock, but it veered into jazz as needed. Owner Freddie Herrera would start up the Keystone Berkeley in 1972 (taking over a club called The New Monk), and Keystone Palo Alto in 1977 (taking over a club called Sophie's). By mid-72, Herrera would sell the Keystone Korner to Todd Barkan, who turned it into a legendary (if perpetually financially struggling) jazz club.  Back in '71, however, it was still run by Herrera and was more oriented towards rock and blues.

The Loading Zone's year began with a booking supporting jazz legend Chet Baker. Baker was at perhaps the lowest ebb of his career. Baker (1929-88) had been a brilliant, original trumpeter in the early 1950s. He had played with Charlie Parker, and made some creative and influential records with saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. Baker also turned out be a fine singer, and seemed tagged to have a great pop career in tandem with his considerable jazz talents. As if that wasn't enough, his good looks made him appealing to Hollywood, but Baker had declined a 1955 studio contract in order to continue being a musician.

Baker, however, had serious issues with heroin. As a result, in the latter 50s and early 60s, he had numerous legal run-ins that hampered his career, and he was known to be unreliable. In 1966, outside the Trident club in Sausalito, he was attacked during an attempted robbery, possibly related to an attempt by Baker to buy drugs. Baker's tooth was cracked, and it ruined his embrochure, leaving him unable to play trumpet. For the next several years, to the extent he performed Baker was just a singer (he also worked in a gas station at some point). Jazz was at a low commercial ebb, and he had not recorded since '66. 

It's likely that Baker was booked at Keystone Korner just as a singer. It's also at least plausible that the Loading Zone was backing Baker as well as playing their own set. If that was the case, then it was most likely that it was the Costers and bassist Eggleston, with Linda Tillery stepping aside for Baker's set (although a duet would have been awesome). Even in his reduced state, a giant like Baker could easily have sung standards with pros like the Costers. 

Baker would ultimately get dentures and re-learn to play the trumpet, and his career was appropriately revived in the late 1970s. He remained very popular in Europe until his death in 1988.

The Montclair Recreation Center at 6300 Moraga Way in Oakland was used for local rock concerts from 1970 through 1972. Loading Zone were regular performers there.

January 9, 1971 Montclair Recreation Center, Oakland, CA: Loading Zone (Saturday)
As the 1970s dawned, many Bay Area parents didn't really object to rock music, but weren't necessarily enamored of the idea of their children traveling to San Francisco or Berkeley at night just to see rock bands. In the Fall of 1970, the parents in the Montclair district of Oakland arranged to have rock shows on Saturday night at the local recreation center. The idea was to give kids something fun to do in their own neighborhood. There were rock shows most Saturday nights for the next year. The bands were local, but they were good ones. Many of them had played the Fillmore West, and a few of them even had albums.

The Montclair Recreation Center was at 6300 Moraga Way, on the main road through Montclair, but just outside the district shopping area. The Rec Center was just above a Fire Station, and there was even a light show. The shows were listed in the Oakland Tribune, and supposedly there were flyers as well (although I've never seen any of them). The shows seem to have started on September 19, 1970 and the Loading Zone played five weeks later, on October 30. Just over two months later, the Zone returned to Montclair, so it must have gone well.

Since the Montclair Rec Center was for suburban teenagers, it would have ended early. There would have plenty of time to load out and take the short half-hour drive to San Francisco to make the Keystone Korner gig.

A photo from the January 8, 1971 San Mateo Times shows a 4-piece Loading Zone. They would begin a month-long residency on Monday and Tuesday nights at The Beach House in San Mateo

January 11-12, 1971 The Beach House, San Mateo, CA: Loading Zone  (Monday-Tuesday)
For prosopographical purposes, we are lucky that the suburban San Mateo Times has been digitized, since the suburban daily gives us some unexpected insight into the life of a working band like the Loading Zone. The Zone was without a recording contract at this point, but their goals would have been to play and record the music of their own choosing. Ultimately, records and radio play led to financial success and a chance for musicians to play what they desired. But bands had to eat, and for a band like Loading Zone, that meant playing residencies in bars. I believe the band played weeknights at dance clubs and lounges throughout their career (1966-72) but thanks to the San Mateo Times we actually get a snapshot of that in the first part of 1971.

The Beach House was a recently-opened establishment at 1875 S. Norfolk Avenue in San Mateo. For those that know the geography, the location was right next to the CA-92 entrance to the San Mateo Bridge, and just opposite the canal to Foster City. The location was quite suburban. San Mateo was 20 miles South of San Francisco, in between the City and Palo Alto. Many residents commuted to San Francisco for work, and there was a long string of towns along the Peninsula that were similar. Any nightlife was going to be somewhat suburban, likely for younger people, but also people who lived in a suburb rather than a college town or cool city neighborhood. By 1971, however, there were 20- or 30-somethings in suburbs who fit that description, but liked rock and soul music. So rock bands like the Loading Zone were no longer exclusively confined to hippie joints, like they might have been in the 60s. 

The listing in the San Mateo Times (above) says that the Loading Zone were one of the "most original" bands on the West Coast, which I think was code for saying they weren't a Top 40 copy band. The Zone would be playing Monday and Tuesday nights "indefinitely," with "no cover, no minimums." The pitch here was that patrons could drop in to listen to music, maybe buy a drink or some food, but not have to plan for a night out. The Loading Zone could probably play what they wanted, as long as they kept a groove going, and maybe played a familiar cover once in a while. Since that is what the Loading Zone did anyway, it probably worked out fine. Making a little money on Monday and Tuesday was better than not doing it, and they wouldn't be missing out on better nightclub gigs on those nights.

January 17, 1971 Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Loading Zone (Sunday)
The Lion's Share, at 60 Red Hill Avenue in San Anselmo, was about 10 minutes from downtown San Rafael. Marin County's population was tiny, but a lot of musicians lived in Marin. So the Lion's Share, with a capacity of about 250-300, always had good bands during this period. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen had arrived from Ann Arbor, MI in the Summer of '69 and had built a solid local following around Berkeley. The Lion's Share generally paid local bands a percentage of the door, to discourage them from letting every single patron in for free, since the bands knew so many people.

No doubt the Loading Zone had plenty of weekend bookings that I have not been able to find, or else they would have folded. Many of those gigs, however, would have just been dance gigs that would not have advertised in the paper. Some of the dance gigs may have been better paying than nights at a rock club, but a band would have been constrained from jamming too much, as well as under pressure to cover popular songs.

January 18-19, 1971 The Beach House, San Mateo, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)
Most Bay Area residents don't think of San Mateo having a beach, but actually it does. The beach is at Coyote Point Recreation Area, on the San Francisco Bay. So the name "The Beach House" was a play on the location, since it was only a few miles away.           

January 25-26, 1971 The Beach House, San Mateo, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)            

January 29-30, 1971 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA: Loading Zone/Foxglove (Friday-Saturday)
The Loading Zone had been playing the New Orleans House since 1967. The North Berkeley club, at 1505 San Pablo Avenue (near Hopkins), had been one of the first clubs in the Bay Area to book original rock music. Initially, there were so many bands and so few places to play that the New Orleans consistently had good, interesting bands. By 1971, there was a lot of concert activity around the Bay Area, particularly out in the suburbs, and bookings at the New Orleans House were not as impressive. Still, the Loading Zone played there every other month, so things must have gone well for them at the club.

A listing in the  January 29, 1971San Mateo Times for the Loading Zone's Monday and Tuesday residency at DeeJay's in Belmont. The paper used the same promotional photo as the previous month.

February 1-2, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)  
The Loading Zone continued to play on Mondays and Tuesdays on the Peninsula, but they moved over to a Belmont club called DeeJay's. DeeJay's was at 210 El Camino Real, between East Hillsdale Boulevard and Ralston Avenue. The club seemed to have live music seven nights a week. Once again, it is a peculiar accident that the San Mateo Times has been digitized, and that Deejay's regularly advertised in that paper. Who knows what happened at The Beach House, but it must have at least gone well enough that a different club hired the Loading Zone for those nights.

February 3, 1971 Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Loading Zone/Mike Finnegan-Lane Tietgen Group (Wednesday)  
The Loading Zone returned to the Keystone Korner for another Wednesday night. In 1970, organist Mike Finnegan had been in the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, an interesting band who had released an album on Columbia. Most of the songs on the album were written by one Lane Tietgen. Tietgen and Finnegan were both from Kansas (as was Jerry Hahn, in fact), and they had made an album with a band called The Serfs. By 1971, Tietgen had moved out to San Francisco, and played regularly, if informally, with his old bandmate.

February 7, 1971 Presidio Theater, San Francisco, CA: "Roseland" Premier
By a series of machinations unknown to me, the Loading Zone provided some music for a movie called Roseland. There is a peculiar video sequence in circulation, kind of like a rock video. I have no idea if this is indicative of the rest of the movie or anything else. Still, when you google "Loading Zone"+1971, this often comes up. I think--I am not much good on film history--that Roseland was rated R or X and was supposed to be an "Art" film. Anyway, the San Francisco premier at the Presidio Theater (2340 Chestnut, at Scott) was advertised in the February 7, 1971 San Francisco Examiner.

February 8-9, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)   

February 11, 1971 [venue], Skyline High School, Oakland, CA:  Loading Zone/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Crystal Gardens/Grootna  (Thursday)
A Thursday night may seem like an odd choice for a High School gig, but at this time Lincoln's Birthday (February 12) was a separate holiday from Washington's Birthday (February 22). Ultimately, these were merged into "President's Day," a Federal  Holiday on the third Monday of February. Of course, that merger ensured that celebrating Abraham Lincoln's Birthday would not anger those who wanted to enshrine supporters of the Confederacy as "sincere" rather than "Traitors." In any case, this Thursday night was effectively a Friday.

Skyline High School, at 12250 Skyline Boulevard in Oakland, was up in the Oakland Hills. I don't know why there was a commercial rock concert there, but certainly the gym or auditorium at Skyline (I'm not sure which) could draw on a different pool of teenagers, since it was so far from downtown Berkeley. Commander Cody and Grootna were Berkeley-based bands, and Loading Zone was based in Oakland, so this would have been a convenient gig. At this time, neither Cody nor Grootna had yet released their debut albums (both would do so by year's end).

The Loading Zone must have had regular shows on Friday and Saturday, and likely almost every weekend, but I have been able to find no trace of them yet.

February 15-16, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)      

February 18, 1971 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: Loading Zone (Thursday)   
The Inn Of The Beginning, at 8201 Old Redwood Highway in Cotati, had opened in 1968. It only held about 200, but most Bay Area bands liked to play there to fill in the gig sheet. Calling beautiful Cotati, in Sonoma County, "bucolic" does it a disservice. Since Sonoma State College had opened in nearby Rohnert Park in 1966, the area was starting to move from purely agricultural to somewhat suburban.   

February 22-23, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday) 

February 27, 1971 Auditorium, Chabot College, Hayward, CA: Loading Zone/American Canyon (Saturday)
Chabot College was a junior college in the lower Oakland hills, at 25555 Hesperian Boulevard. Junior colleges had entertainment budgets in those days, and made it easy for student groups to put on rock concerts. The show was in a school auditorium, because the gym was most likely in use for a sports event.  American Canyon was community in Napa County, but also the name of a local band (probably from American Canyon).

An ad for Deejay's, at 210 El Camino Real in Belmont, from the February 25, 1971 San Mateo Times. "Live Music 7 Nites A Week." The Loading Zone played Monday and Tuesday, with Sound Barrier the other nights.

March 1-2, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)

March 4, 1971 Mandrake's, Berkeley, CA: Loading Zone (Thursday)
The Loading Zone played a Thursday night show at Mandrake's, where they had been playing since 1969. The club, at 1048 University Avenue in Berkeley, was near the corner of University and San Pablo Avenue, nearly two miles from campus. During World War 2, with the Oakland and Richmond shipyards booming, tired workers with money in their pockets needed to relax. San Pablo Avenue was known as "Music Row," with clubs from one end to another. Mandrake's was a remaining legacy. The 200-seat room had opened in 1965, initially a pool hall that sometimes booked music. It focused on blues and jazz, initially, but rapidly expanded to include rock. The little club served beer, wine and food, and was a good place for bands to fill out their gig sheet.

March 8-9, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)

March 13, 1971 University of Nevada at Reno, Reno, NV: Loading Zone/Wilderness/Good Life (Saturday)
The Loading Zone played two shows in Reno. Reno had lots of work for musicians, for obvious reasons, but there wasn't much in the way of original rock bands. San Francisco bands played Reno regularly, and Reno bands playing original music often gigged in the Bay Area. Reno to San Francisco is about a 5-hour drive (if you step on it). The opening act, Good Life, was probably the band previously known as Johnathan Goodlife, who had played a little in San Francisco in 1970.

The University of Nevada at Reno was actually the main campus of the University of Nevada, but it has since been eclipsed by the campus in Las Vegas. UNR was located at 1664 North Virginia Street. I assume the bands played at the gym. Many of the University students may not have been old enough to get into casinos (legally, anyway), so a campus rock show made fiscal sense. A picture in the Reno Evening Gazette showed the same four members of the Loading Zone.

March 14, 1971 Washoe County Fairgrounds, Reno, NV: Cold Blood/Stoneground/Loading Zone (Sunday)
Sunday's Washoe County Fairgrounds (at 1011 Wells Avenue) probably drew a slightly different crowd than the University. Since all three bands were from San Francisco, the radio ads could say "straight from the Fillmore West" or words to that effect. In a place like Reno, without a real local rock scene, "Fillmore" was a mark of quality. All of the bands had albums, if not well-known ones, and all of the band names would be recognizable from famous posters on dorm walls and in head shops. And, in fact, all three were really good bands, so no one should have gone home disappointed.

March 15-16, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)

March 20, 1971 Montclair Recreaction Center, Oakland, CA: Loading Zone (Saturday)         

March 22-23, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)

March 27, 1971 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA: Loading Zone/Stuart Little Band (Saturday)
The Loading Zone returned for a night at Berkeley's New Orleans House.  Opening the show was a Stockton band called Stuart Little. Stuart Little came close to making a record, but never got over the hump. A member of Stuart Little wrote a book about the band's experiences, an interesting chronicle about being an aspiring rock band in the Bay Area during the early 1970s.

March 29-30, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)

April 2-3, 1971 Friends and Relations Hall, San Francisco, CA: Aum/Loading Zone/Flamin Groovies (Friday-Saturday)
Friends and Relations Hall was the new name for the former Family Dog At The Great Highway, Chet Helms' operation from June 1969 to August '70. The locals had called the hall, at 660 Great Highway, "Playland," and probably still did. There were a fair number of shows put on at the hall in 1971, but I think the room was just for rent. The Flamin' Groovies, a San Francisco band from the mid-60s who had stuck with their British Invasion sound, were likely the promoters.

April 5-6, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)

The Lion's Share, at 60 Red Hill Avenue in San Anselmo, sometime in the early 70s

April 9-10, 1971 Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Loading Zone/Sorry Muthas (Friday-Saturday)
The Sorry Muthas were a Marin county jug band. 

April 12-13, 1971 Deejay's, Belmont, CA: Loading Zone (Monday-Tuesday)
The exact ending date of the Deejay's residency is unknown, but this was the last date I could confirm.

May 2, 1971 Noe Valley Street Fair, San Francisco, CA: Loading Zone/others (Sunday) Afternoon show
The "Street Fair" seems to be another 60s San Francisco innovation, rapidly adopted throughout San Francisco, and then the United States and now probably everywhere. Now, of course, there had been street fairs as long as there had been cities. The 60s San Francisco version, however, was that some streets were closed off to traffic, loud rock bands played on a stage, for free, and vendors sold food, drinks and stuff. Meanwhile, all the bars and shops would be packed. San Francisco had a lot of rock bands, and vendors, and everyone understood "free concerts," so it caught on fast. 

The first major 60s "Street Fair" in San Francisco was a three-day event organized by Synanon, the charitable drug rehab organization (generally speaking, in Synanon rehab addicts did "good works" as part of their therapy). The fair was held at Embarcadero and Lombard from June 24-27, 1967. Embarcadero and Lombard is near downtown and the waterfront and the Financial District. The Financial District was a ghost town on weekends, and there weren't that many residents down there. Thus closing off the streets for a few days wasn't too inconvenient.

Synanon's innovation was to take on all the expense of building the stage, providing a sound system, organization, security, and so on, in return for the rights to be the vendors. Numerous San Francisco rock bands played, the most famous of which was Big Brother and The Holding Company. Everyone had a roaring good time, and lots of money was made. The city liked it because there was little or no city expense and businesses liked it (at least bars and restaurants) because they made money. In effect, the Free-In-The-Park concert had been monetized. 

Haight Street had its first Street Fair in March, 1968. There wasn't supposed to be a band, but two flatbed trucks arrived on Haight from opposite directions, creating a stage, and plugged their mounted amplifiers into the Straight Theater power grid, while Jerry Garcia walked out of 710 Ashbury with his guitar and the Grateful Dead jumped on the makeshift stage. It's still going strong to this day. Fairs have spread to neighborhoods all around the city. 

The Noe Valley neighborhood is next to the Mission District, and also next to (and below) Bernal Heights and Diamond Heights, as well as the Castro District. At this time, Noe Valley was just developing an identity as a neighborhood. The Fair was anchored around Sanchez at 24th Street. A Street Fair both drew outsiders to the neighborhood, and gave some identity to the residents. For a band that headlined a street fair, this would have very likely been a paying gig, and on a Sunday afternoon at that.

May 13-15, 1971 Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Sopwith Camel/Loading Zone (Thursday-Saturday)
The weekend at the Lion's Share may have been the opportunity to break in new guitarist Bruce Conte. Conte, from Fresno, would later end up joining Tower Of Power for a few years, after Loading Zone broke up in late 1972. Since Tower and the Zone apparently shared a rehearsal studio, the changeover would have been easy. An advertisement in the May 16 SF Chronicle (below) showed a five-piece Loading Zone, so Conte had to have joined beforehand. Hypothetically, the last indication of the Zone lineup was during March in Reno (see March 13 above), when the paper used a photo of the quartet. Conte could have joined anytime in-between.

Sopwith Camel had been an original Fillmore band, way back in 1966. They had been one of the first to sign a record contract, one of the first to have a hit ("Hello Hello") and one of the first to have been accused of being "sellouts." They had broken up in 1968. In Spring 1971, they had gotten back together with four of their five original members, and had just started to play around the Bay Area.

The Sunday, May 16, 1971 SF Chronicle Datebook had a promotional photo of the Loading Zone with 5 members. Fresno guitarist Bruce Conte had recently joined the band.

May 15, 1971 Brooks Hall, Civic Center, San Francisco, CA: Loading Zone/Ice Earth Quake/others World Premiere of Arts And Industry (Thursday)
Brooks Hall was the exhibition hall underneath the San Francisco Civic Center, connected by underground tunnel to the nearby SF Civic Auditorium.  It was built in 1958 (closed 1993) and generally used for trade shows. Bands would sometimes play there as part of events. There was plenty of room for a stage, although the low ceilings probably didn't make for great sound. There was a 10-day event called the World Premiere of Arts And Industry. The idea, apparently, was to have a continuous exhibition of music, plays and art in the same, vast space. A number of bands were listed as performers. In a (Friday) May 14 review, Examiner critic Phil Elwood mentioned that Loading Zone was scheduled for Saturday. He commented that "a mostly empty Brooks Hall is a bleak and hostile cement tomb."

May 22, 1971 Montclair Recreation Center, Oakland, CA: Loading Zone  (Saturday)

May 27, 1971 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: Loading Zone (Thursday)  

May 28-29, 1971  New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA: Loading Zone/Maze (Friday-Saturday) 

May 30, 1971 Football Stadium, Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, CA: Youngbloods/Good Thunder/Loading Zone/Wildwood Monterey Music Festival (Sunday) noon-dark
Monterey Peninsula College was just across the road from the Monterey County Fairgrounds, where the Monterey Pop Festival had been held in 1967. I think the football field had been used during the Festival as an emergency hippie campground, and the Grateful Dead and others played for free on a makeshift stage. The Football Stadium would have been quite small, by football standards.

Although Monterey is quite famous, the city and County are actually very thinly populated. Monterey Peninsula College was the best place locally for rock shows. The Millard Agency regularly used the gym for concerts in 1969 and 1970. The Youngbloods were a well-known band by now, since the success of the single "Get Together."

June 11, 1971 Longshoreman's Hall, San Francisco, CA: Loading Zone/Gold/Urge/Marlow Mayday Defense Fund Benefit (Friday)
Longshoreman's Hall was a building available for rent. It was located at 400 North Point, near the Pier 43, between Mason and Taylor. Since it was owned by a Union, it was often used for benefits. I'm not sure what the Mayday Defense Fund was.            

June 13, 1971  Tiki New Moon, Palo Alto, CA: Loading Zone/Tonto Basin Band/Kidd Africa  (Sunday)   
While Downtown Palo Alto had no bars, and had chased out the only rock club (the Poppycock), there were a lot of hotels on the El Camino strip, south of town. They had lounges and bars, and booked music. Most of them did not book rock bands, aiming instead for an older crowd. In this case, the Tiki New Moon, at 3740 El Camino Real, seems to have been booking what would now be called an "All Ages Show" for Sunday afternoon. 

Tonto Basin Band is unknown to me. I recognize the peculiarly-named Kidd Africa from various bills, but I have no idea what kind of music he (or they) played.

Cubberley High School, at 4000 Middlefield Road in Palo Alto, sometime in the 1960s

June 17, 1971 Gymnasium, Cubberley High School, Palo Alto, CA:  Loading Zone  (Thursday)
The date is not precise, but I am certain of the booking. A 1971 Cubberley High graduate confirmed that the Loading Zone played his graduation dance. Cubberley High had been Palo Alto's second high school, and was located at 4000 Middlefield Road (the school was closed in 1979, but it is now a Community Center)     

June 18, 1971 Center Theater, Fremont, CA: Loading Zone (Friday)
The band played a midnight show at a movie theater in suburban Fremont.             

July 2-4, 1971 Frenchy's, Hayward, CA: Loading Zone (Friday-Sunday)
Although it was in Southern Alameda County, Hayward was not the upscale, upper-middle-class commuter town that it is today.  As noted above, much of the area East of Mission Boulevard was unincorporated farm land, and the biggest employer was the GM factory in Fremont. Frenchy's, way out on Mission Boulevard (at 29097 Mission, near Tennyson Rd), had been a big nightclub since the 1960s. Frenchy's had been through every fad, Go-Go dancers, topless, the British Invasion and all sorts of things. At different times, Frank Zappa and Sly and The Family Stone had played there. The club sold a lot of drinks and was one of the primary destinations for that part of the County.  

Frenchy's periodically booked rock bands, and the Loading Zone had played there before (definitely on September 4-6, 1970). Sometime later in 1971, Frenchy's would lose their liquor license as a result of getting caught serving underage patrons. The club recovered, however, and remained open into the 1980s.  

July 4, 1971 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Santana/Creedence Clearwater Revival/Tower Of Power (Sunday)
Bill Graham closed the Fillmore West this week, with much fanfare (in the Bill Graham fashion). The Loading Zone did not play the closing week, most likely because they did not have a record company to insist that they get on the bill. Their mates Tower Of Power got on the final bill because they were on Bill Graham's record label (San Francisco Records, distributed by Warners). Nonetheless, after hours on the final night, there was a big jam session, all broadcast on FM radio. Along with the likes of Carlos Santana and Mike Bloomfield, Linda Tillery can be heard belting out a few songs, a sign of her status with her musical peers. Presumably the band dropped by after the Frenchy's gig. 

[update 20230516: scholar David Kramer-Smyth found footage of the Loading Zone from an obscure movie called "Alabama Ghosts," directed by Fred Hobbs, who had also directed "Roseland." Tom Coster composed the soundtrack music, and here's some footage of the band, probably miming. The lineup appears to be Linda Tillery, Tom Coster, Tony Smith, Bruce Conte. Tillery playing bass. The movie was released in 1972. Kramer-Smyth reports that the movie is "not good."]

July 23-24, 1971 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: Loading Zone (Friday-Saturday)

August 19, 1971 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: Loading Zone (Thursday)          

August 27-29, 1971 The Warehouse, San Jose, CA: Loading Zone (Friday-Sunday)
I know nothing about The Warehouse. There were essentially no venues booking original rock in the San Jose area. Every now and again, a club or promoter would try and do something, but I have never seen another reference to the venue (honestly, I can't even figure out where we found this reference). 

September 3-4, 1971 Long Branch, Berkeley, CA: Loading Zone/Staton Brothers (Friday-Saturday)
Berkeley's Long Branch, at 2504 San Pablo Avenue (at Dwight Way), had opened in May of 1971. The site had been a music club since at least 1962, and had gone through various incarnations. From 1969 to early 1971, it had been called The Babylon. The club sold beer and booked local original rock bands. Owner Malcolm Williams decided to expand the club. He doubled the capacity to about 350, and was able to book higher profile bands. They were still largely local, but many of them had albums, so they had bigger followings. At this time, the somewhat larger New Monk, nearer to campus, was still largely a Fraternity beer joint. In 1972, The New Monk would start booking bands full time and turn into the Keystone Berkeley.

The Staton Brothers were an East Bay band from Hayward who had been signed by the Monkees' management around 1967. Jeff and Mike Staton were both singing guitarists, broadly in the style of Buffalo Springfield. The band had toured with the Springfield and others in the 1960s. In late 1972, the Staton Brothers had released an album on Epic, but there was a problem with distributors, so the album did not sell. Ultimately both Staton brothers worked with Stephen Bishop and many others as guitarists and songwriters, mostly based in Nashville. Since "Staton" was often misunderstood, and just an adopted name anyway, they used different names.

September 8, 1971 Long Branch, Berkeley, CA: Loading Zone/Mike Finnegan (Wednesday)
Organist and singer Mike Finnegan was from Wichita, KS. Unlike most musicians, the 6'6" Finnegan had gotten a basketball scholarship to the University of Kansas. He had moved to the Bay Area around 1969, and he had been a member of The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, who had put out a highly regarded 1970 album on Columbia. Unfortunately, the album went nowhere, and Finnegan had left the band. At this time, Finnegan had another band with singer Jerry Wood, and he worked with the re-activated Big Brother and The Holding Company as well. For club gigs, Finnegan pretty much played blues. He was a powerful vocalist as well as a great organ player, so he could play with any combination of musicians. Some of his "friends" might have been had notable musical pedigrees and would definitely have been good players. 

September 18, 1971 Montclair Recreation Center, Oakland, CA: Loading Zone (Saturday)

September 25, 1971 Friends And Relations Hall, San Francisco, CA: Jef ferson Airplane/Black Kangaroo/One/Ace Of Cups/Jack Bonus/Grootna Grunt Records Party (Saturday)
The Jefferson Airplane had been the first really big rock band to come out of the San Francisco scene. Since their initial breakout, other local bands like Sly And The Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Santana had come along, selling more records and having a wider cultural reach. Nonetheless, the Airplane had special status by virtue of being first. In 1971, RCA Records had renewed the Airplane's record deal by giving the band its own label. In record company lingo, Grunt Records was an "Imprint," financed, manufactured and distributed by RCA, but with creative decisions made by the Airplane members. Of course, the band immediately signed all their friends, some of who were talented and some not so much.

On September 7, 1971, Grunt Records had its first release. Bark was the new Jefferson Airplane album. It wasn't that good an album, in fact, but the Airplane were local heroes. A few weeks later, the Airplane decided to have a party to celebrate, and invited 1000 friends or so to the former Family Dog at the Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, known colloquially by the locals as "Playland." It was just a venue for rent now, using the name Friends And Relations Hall. The Examiner's Phil Elwood reported on the huge party that the Airplane had to celebrate their new album and their new label. Jefferson Airplane headlined the show, but came on very late and were not in terrific performing shape (ahem).  

Opening the show were a few bands who would release albums on Grunt. Black Kangaroo featured guitarist Peter Kaukonen, Jorma's brother. Grootna was associated with Marty Balin, who had left the band but was still part of the record company. Ace Of Cups were a long-standing San Francisco band, friends with the Airplane, who unfortunately never got to record anything for Grunt. "One" featured a Bolinas neighbor of Paul Kantner's, who used the stage name of Reality D. Blipcrotch. I have no reports on his (or their) performance. "One" did release an album on Grunt. 

Another Grunt artist was songwriter Jack Bonus. Bonus' background is somewhat mysterious, but he seems to have been friends with Peter Rowan and David Grisman (he played on an Earth Opera album). Based on his album, Bonus was both a singer/songwriter and a decent sax and flute player. His 1972 Grunt album is mainly known for the original version of his "Hobo Song," made somewhat famous by Peter Rowan when he played it with Jerry Garcia in Old And In The Way. Tom Coster, Bruce Conte and Tony Smith played on five tracks on the album.

Elwood's review mentions a big jam session, after the Airplane set, where Jack Bonus was backed by members of Loading Zone. I assume that Bonus was playing sax or flute, and Tom Coster and some other Zone members were on stage (Elwood would have recognized Coster). Bonus had a number of health issues that prevented him from performing in support of his album, so he largely disappeared.

September 30, 1971 Long Branch, Berkeley, CA: Loading Zone/In Your Own Backyard (Saturday)
The Loading Zone were back again at the Long Branch, so things must have gone pretty well.

October 7, 1971 Bo Jangles, San Francisco, CA: Loading Zone (Thursday)
Bo Jangles was a new music club in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, at 709 Larkin (near Ellis). It was near to the site of what would become the Great American Music Hall (at 859 O'Farrell). 

At some point in late 1971, Santana drummer Michael Shrieve invited his friend, New York bassist Dougie Rauch, to move to California. Rauch (1950-79), the son of an opera singer, had played with numerous bands. He was part of a group called Voices Of East Harlem, a choir of mostly school kids singing over a funky rock band. The Voices had opened for Santana a few times, and Shrieve and Rauch were friends. Now, the Santana band had serious problems at this time--at one point in 1971, Carlos himself had actually quit the band--and among other things were looking for a new bass player.

By early 1972, Dougie Rauch had joined Loading Zone as their bass player, replacing Mike Eggleston. I do not actually know when Rauch joined the Loading Zone. I do know that Santana was using bass player Tom Rutley (an old jazz pal of Shrieve's from San Mateo) through October. Rutley was just a fill-in, however, and Santana needed someone stronger. Still, Santana would not go on tour until September 1972. 

Since the Santana and Loading Zone groups went way back--the Santana Blues Band's first Fillmore performance was substituting for the Loading Zone in June 1967--Shrieve must have hooked Rauch up with the Zone. Rauch was a fantastic bass player, and since both Tom Coster and Rauch would ultimately join Santana, we know they played well together. I am still searching for evidence as to when Rauch moved to California and joined the Zone.

Another new addition to the Loading Zone would be singer Wendy Haas. Haas had once been the bassist in an "all-girl" semi-psychedelic rock band from the Atherton called the Freudian Slips. They had played various hip venues in 1966-67, and even got their picture in Life magazine. Of course, the band broke up when most of the members went to college. Haas, who had been the bass player for the Slips, soldiered on as the lead singer for an R&B band called Western Addition. Western Addition broke up, and somehow Haas would end up in the Loading Zone by the beginning of 1972.

It's not clear to me why Haas got added to the Loading Zone. Of course, she is a great singer and a talented musician, so that isn't in question, but the Zone already had Linda Tillery. The band must have killed it with two singers, but no tapes survive. I think Haas played keyboards as well, but I'm not sure if she played them with Loading Zone. Just like Dougie Rauch, it's uncertain exactly when Haas joined.

October 8, 1971 Gym, Cal State College at Hayward, Hayward, CA: Loading Zone/Bittersweet (Friday)
Hayward State was part of the California State College system (separate from the University of California). It had been founded in 1959 as Alameda State College, and had moved to Hayward in 1961. By 1963 it had been re-named California State College at Hayward, although everyone called it "Hayward State," following the naming conventions of other colleges in the system. Hayward and Southern Alameda county were booming. This Saturday night event was probably a start-of-quarter dance. Bittersweet was a rock band from Chico, CA, who moved to the East Bay. Rock historian Bruno Cerriotti has a detailed history of their adventures.  The Hayward State campus was (and still is) at 25800 Carlos Bee Boulevard, off Hayward Boulevard, nestled in the Hayward Hills. After some evolution, the school is now California State University of the East Bay (CSUEB).

October 21, 1971 Long Branch, Berkeley, CA: Loading Zone/Wormwood (Thursday)

8201 Old Redwood Highway in Cotati, the site of the Inn Of The Beginning, as it appeared in 2010

November 10-11, 1971 Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: Loading Zone (Wednesday-Thursday)

November 20, 1971 Montclair Recreation Center, Oakland, CA: Loading Zone (Saturday)

November 24, 1971 Serra High School, San Mateo, CA: Loading Zone/Gropus Cackus/Felix (Wednesday)
Serra High School was (and is) a Catholic High School for boys at 451 W. 20th Avenue (near Alameda de las Pulgas, if you know the area). This would have been the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I don't think that, strictly speaking, it was a school event, since it was noted in the paper. Serra had a student body of only about 600. During this period, it wasn't uncommon for private schools to have "multi-school" dances that were open to any teenager with a student ID. So the shows were publicized, and tickets were sold, but there were some restrictions on who could actually attend.

A multi-school event would be more likely to afford a real working band like the The Loading Zone. The oddly-named Gropus Cackus were a very popular band on the Peninsula throughout the early 1970s.

December 16, 1971 Gym, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, CA: Tower Of Power/Loading Zone/Labrynth (Thursday)
Diablo Valley College (or "DVC" as it is known) was a junior college for southern Contra Costa County, at 321 Golf Club Road (which tells you about Pleasant Hill). This would have been an end-of-term dance, directed at students but open to the public.

December 16, 1971 Bo Jangles, San Francisco, CA: Loading Zone (Thursday)
Once again, the Zone was booked at a school dance, and still had a nightclub booking. It's a sign of a hard-working band that they would open for Tower in Pleasant Hill, load out and head straight to the city.

The Loading Zone ended the year somewhat as they began it. The band was working steadily, both at dance gigs and original rock clubs. They had some status since they had played the Fillmore and released an album, but they no longer had a record contract. They must have been playing good music, since they kept getting re-booked where they had played before, but the band seemed to be treading water. The band had added Bruce Conte on guitar, and probably another singer (Wendy Haas), so they were expanding their sound, but they hadn't expanded their footprint beyond San Francisco and the immediately surrounding counties.