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