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