Rock Archaeology 101: April 2022

Thursday, April 28, 2022

August 29-30, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Rubber Duck [FDGH '69 XVIII]

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."

August 29-30, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Rubber Duck (Friday/Saturday)
By the end of August, 1969, the Family Dog on The Great Highway was widely known to be in poor financial straits. Although some excellent bands had played the Dog since it had opened in June, save for the opening night attendance had not apparently been exceptional. There was so little coverage of Family Dog concerts that we can only infer things like attendance, but all the evidence points to underwhelming crowds. Chet Helms and the Family Dog had significant tax problems stemming from 1967, which had been the Family Dog's most successful year. Helms' public acknowledgement of his tax problems (in the Examiner and elsewhere) was a clear indicator that the Great Highway shows were not selling well enough to resolve his issues.

The Grateful Dead had played the Family Dog at the beginning of the month. The opening Friday night had been undermined by the brief "strike" of the Light Show Guild. The Dead had played the next two shows (on Saturday and Sunday, August 2-3), and the Examiner reported that Saturday, at least, was a "packed house." We have no idea about Sunday's crowd. Still, the Grateful Dead were one of the few bands that returned to the Family Dog over and over, so they must have done alright. Although the Dead did not yet have a traveling circus of Deadheads following them around--which was initially an East Coast phenomenon in any case--the band had a solid core of local fans. Unlike other groups, when the Dead played all around the Bay Area, they increased their demand rather than reduced it. So whoever might have been seeing the Grateful Dead at the Great Highway, returning less than a month after their last appearance was an attraction, not a detriment.

Grateful Dead Touring Plans, August 1969
The Grateful Dead had begun the month of August at the Family Dog, but they were mostly booked at rock festivals for the month. The Grateful Dead's bookings were:

    August 1-3, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
    August 5-6-7, 1969 Fillmore West
    August 16, 1969 Woodstock Festival, Bethel, NY
    August 20, 1969 Aqua Theater, Seattle, WA
    August 22, 1969 Wild West Festival, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA
    August 23, 1969 Bullfrog 2 Festival, Mt St Helens, OR
    August 24, 1969 Vancouver Pop Festival, Paradise Valley Resort, Squamish, BC
    August 29-30, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
    September 1, 1969 New Orleans Pop Festival, Baton Rouge Speedway, Prairieville, LA

Of course, the Dead's actual performance schedule was quite different. They didn't play the first night at the Family Dog (August 1), Fillmore West was canceled, they were rained out at Aqua Theater and played a bar (El Roach, Ballard, WA August 20), and then the Aqua next night (August 21), the Wild West was canceled (so NRPS could play Bullfrog 2), they added an extra date at the Family Dog (August 28) and the band canceled out in British Columbia. Rock concerts were turning into big money, but the market was far from stable.

Still, it's only possible to discern the Dead's touring schedule without knowing what they had planned, even if it didn't work out. The Dead's weekend at the Dog at the end of August did not appear on any schedules or press releases, and wasn't even mentioned in the newspaper. Indeed, the flyer above is the only trace of any advertisement. Now, the Dead were booked as the headliner at the opening night (Friday August 22) of the canceled Wild West Festival. Since Bill Graham was booking the Festival, you can take as a guarantee that no Bay Area Grateful Dead show within 3 weeks of the Festival could be advertised until after the Festival show. So the Dead may have planned to play the Dog all along, but they couldn't have announced it in advance. The fact that there was no mention in the newspapers during the weekend, either, can be blamed on weak operations by the Dog. The way the footer of the flyer is written (with days of the week), it's clear the flyer was made for circulation the next week (August 29-September 4).

The Dead apparently played on Thursday night, even though we only have tapes for the New Riders of The Purple Sage and "The Hartbeats" (a jam with Garcia, Lesh, Kreutzmann, Hart and organist Howard Wales). Given the precarious financial circumstances of the Family Dog, my suspicion is that the Dead did not have a guarantee, like they would have gotten from Bill Graham at the Fillmore West. Rather, they were getting a percentage of the door, and taking the risk or reward of the result. That makes sense of the Thursday night show--if the Dead thought they could get a few more admissions from a casual Thursday night show, they would take it. Since the band and crew could sleep at home, there were no travel costs. Publicity probably came from announcements on KSAN and other fm radio stations. Newspapers and posters actually played only a small role in concert promotion, particularly right around the day of a show.

The New Riders of The Purple Sage
One significant historical note was that this weekend's booking at the Dog was the first time in the Bay Area that the New Riders of The Purple Sage were booked to open for the Grateful Dead, as they would so many times in the forthcoming years. The band had opened for the Dead at Longshoreman's Hall back on July 16, but they hadn't been advertised and the bad didn't have a name. The New Riders name debuted at the Matrix on August 6, and the Riders had been booked to open at the Aqua Theater in Seattle on August 20 (since it was rained out, they actually opened on August 21). The New Riders had played two gigs on Tuesday nights at the Family Dog (August 12 and August 19), but the band was still largely unknown to even the local followers of the Dead. These nights at the Family Dog were the first of dozens, if not hundreds, of times that the New Riders would open for the Grateful Dead.

At this early stage, the New Riders were

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

Bob Matthews was an old Palo Alto friend of the band, and was one of the Grateful Dead's "staff engineers." He had mixed Live/Dead with his girlfriend and partner, Betty Cantor, and the pair would go on to produce Workingman's Dead, among many other albums. Matthews would give up his career as a musician at the end of 1969 to focus full time on being a recording engineer and producer.

During this period, the Grateful Dead were experimenting with a configuration they called "Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck." Bob Weir would duet on a few country covers with John Dawson, backed by the Garcia and the New Riders. Thanks to Owsley, we have a few hints about this idea, even though it was dropped by 1970 ( a few of the tracks from the August 29 and 30 show were released on the Owsley Stanley Foundation 5-disc box Dawn Of The New Riders of The Purple Sage).

A photo of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, ca 1969, published in the August 11, 1969 Berkeley Barb. The photo was probably taken a few months earlier in Ann Arbor, MI

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Ann Arbor, MI 1967-69
University of Michigan graduate students George Frayne (Fine Arts, piano) and John Tichy (Physics, guitar) had formed the group in Ann Arbor in 1967 as Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, as an homage to an obscure movie serial (actually called Kommando Kody). The group was a loose aggregation of local musicians, and was a continuation of a band that Frayne and Tichy had begun as undergraduates. Although the story gets changed and embellished with each telling, it does seem that the band chose the name and then had to “decide” who was “Commander Cody,” since people kept asking. For reasons that changed periodically with each retelling, George Frayne was designated as Commander Cody.

George Frayne had received his MFA in Spring 1968 and got a position teaching Art at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh (the main campus was at Madison—Oshkosh was a satellite). The Commander Cody band continued on with various members throughout the 1968-69 school year. Frayne did come home to play with Commander Cody on weekends, but ultimately the band “fired” him in order to be able to play more gigs. The Commander Cody band was particularly interested in playing “honky tonk” country music, in a Bakersfield style that was distinct from the fashion popular in Nashville, as well as rocked up versions of Texas Swing music, all of which was largely lost on the R&B-oriented fans in Michigan. The band finally ground to a halt in the Spring of 1969 when guitarist Bill Kirchen headed out West to California.

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Summer 1969

Billy C Farlow-vocals, harmonica, acoustic guitar
Bill Kirchen-lead guitar, trombone, vocals
Steve “West Virginia Creeper” Davis-pedal steel guitar
Andy Stein-fiddle, tenor sax
George “Commander Cody” Frayne-piano
Lance Dickerson-drums
Gene Tortora-bass

When some of the Ann Arbor crowd found a gig in San Francisco, the call went out to the rest of the band. The story is somewhat complicated, but fortunately I wrote it all out elsewhere. By July 1969, the Lost Planet Airmen had assembled in Berkeley. They "debuted" on Telegraph Avenue, playing acoustic (Frayne on accordian) in front of Cody's Books, although--in perfect Berkeley fashion--they were soon interrupted by a riot. The band found a house in Emeryville, and started to book gigs.

The Emeryville, CA house on the left was reputedly the "band house" for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, ca 1969

According to an article by Rolling Stone writer Ed Ward (RIP), Cody and The Airmen debuted at audition night at a Berkeley club called Mandrake’s, at 1048 University (near San Pablo Avenue). Mandrake’s was a little beer joint that generally featured blues and danceable rock. The Cody crew had so many friends from Ann Arbor that they managed to pack the place on a weeknight, so they were immediately booked. While the Cody band was a terrific outfit, it was a fact that Ann Arborites moved to Berkeley with their social life intact, so Cody already had a built in fanbase in Berkeley.

The Airmen's integration into Berkeley was so seamless that their audition show at Mandrake's was reviewed in the next week's Berkeley Barb (August 11, 1969). Clearly written by a friend of the band, the article included a photo of the group (above) and the headline "Real Country Rock." However, a waitress who worked at Madrake's at the time thinks that the photo was not from the club, although she recognizes Cody and the Airmen circa 1969. We have assumed the photo was taken in Michigan, and given to the Barb writer for publication, but I would love to know exactly where it was taken.

Since their appearance at Mandrake's, the Airmen had hustled their way onto the bill at one of the Wild West Benefit shows at the Family Dog (Saturday, August 23), and then played some sort of "Golf Festival" at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center. Thus their weekend booking with the Dead at the Family Dog was only the second time the band had been advertised in the Bay Area. An eyewitness recalls Cody and the Airmen playing Thursday (August 28) as well, but we have no way of determining that yet.

Rubber Duck featured mime Joe McCord, backed by musicians who improvised behind him. McCord's backing band fluctuated, and on occasion even included Jerry Garcia and Tom Constanten, but it's unlikely (though not impossible) that they performed with him this night. Typically McCord was backed by Berkeley musicians, who often included drummer Chicken Hirsh, bassist Tom Glass (aka poster artist Ned Lamont) and keyboard player Toni Brown (for more on the McCord/Garcia connection, see the Comment Thread here). In 1971, Constanten would perform in the group Touchstone, who released the album Tarot, apparently the music used to back McCord.

What Happened?
As always with the Family Dog on The Great Highway, we don't really know. Thanks to Mr Owsley, we know the shows occurred, because we have tapes for the Grateful Dead and the New Riders. The extant Dead tapes are about 90 minutes, so it seems pretty likely that the Dead played one long set each night. Maybe we are missing an encore or a fragment or something, but the sets seem pretty complete. We have one eyewitness comment, from Saturday night. On the archive, Commenter @cvdoregon says

I was with the Poppycock Light Show company and we did this show. It was fantastic! I spent time with Jerry Garcia backstage and the rest of the band. Loved every minute of it. Great memory...although we were all pretty stoned =)

The Poppycock was a rock club in Palo Alto. The light show's "stage name" was Glare. Other than his comment, however, we don't really know anything. Were the shows packed? Empty? Since the Dead came back regularly, they must have done alright, but we can't tell much beyond that. Some fine music got played, but we are left to wonder what it was really like.

We also have another eyewitness.Earlier, I posted an analysis of this weekend's shows on my Grateful Dead blog. A correspondent wrote in with his recollections of seeing not just August 28, but the weekend's shows as well

I attended these shows. I have no memory of Commander Cody or Rubber Duck playing at all. Rather, there was a group called Phoenix. The line up was Phoenix as the opener, then New Riders, then the Dead with the bonus Hartbeats one night. There were stages at either end of the hall and while Phoenix was playing at one end, the Riders were setting up at the other and then the Dead while the Riders played. God showed up as well in the form of Pig and Jerry tearing it up and leaving we poor mortals smoking wrecks. When it was over, we stumbled out and across the Great Highway to collapse on the sand and let the crashing surf bring us back to earth.

Phoenix was a San Francisco band with roots going back to the Acid Test days (when they were known as Universal Parking Lot). Is the Internet great or what? It's also fascinating to see that two stages were in use, in a complete break from rock concert orthodoxy.

Doug McKechnie and his Moog synthesizer ca 1968

August 31, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Gravity/Transatlantic Railroad/Devil's Kitchen/SF Radical Lab (Sunday)
On Sunday, some local bands performed. Monday, September 1 was Labor Day, so the show wasn't on a school night. The band Gravity is unknown to me. I assure you, if a San Francisco band playing a ballroom in 1969 is unknown to me, they are definitely obscure.

Transatlantic Railroad was a Marin band. Devil's Kitchen was a bluesy four-piece band from Carbondale, IL. They performed regularly at the Family Dog.

The SF Radical Lab represented a performance on Moog Synthesizer by Doug McKechnie. At this time, there was a little bit of awareness about synthesizers, through Walter Carlos' 1968 album Switched On Bach, and George Harrison's 1969 Electronic Sounds lp, but they were pretty mysterious. No one would have seen a Moog Synthesizer live, so in that respect McKechnie would have been quite interesting.

Doug McKechnie's history was unique in so many ways. Around about 1968, McKechnie had lived in a warehouse type building on 759 Harrison (between 3rd and 4th Streets-for reference, 759 Harrison is now across from Whole Foods). Avalon Ballroom soundman and partner Bob Cohen lived in the building, and Blue Cheer (and Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks) practiced upstairs. One day, McKechnie's roommate Bruce Hatch acquired a Moog Synthesizer, and the instrument arrived in boxes, awaiting assembly. At the time, a synthesizer was like a musical unicorn, only slightly more real than a myth. Hatch had the technical ability to assemble the machinery, but he was basically tone-deaf. So McKechnie focused on actually making music on the Moog.

McKechnie and Hatch referred to their enterprise as Radical Sound Labs. Word got around--McKechnie helped the Grateful Dead record the strange outtake "What's Become Of The Baby" on the 1969 Aoxomoxoa sessions in San Mateo (his memories are, uh, fuzzy). Thanks to the Dead, McKechnie and his Moog--the size of a VW Bus--can be seen in the Gimme Shelter movie, providing peculiar music on a gigantic sound system for the anxious masses. When McKechnie opened for rock shows at the Family Dog, he used the name "SF Rad Labs."

Unlike the very few other synthesizer artists, McKechnie was not associated with an academic endeavor, he wasn't trying to sell an instrument, and he didn't have any record company affiliation. None of those things were bad, by the way--it's just that the thoroughly hippie underground McKechnie could do what we wanted. Now, probably, what he played at the Family Dog wouldn't have held up that well over time, if there was a tape. But at the time, a Moog was a Unicorn. If you saw at a Unicorn at a farm, you wouldn't say "it's not a good plow horse, though." So this must have been pretty far out to listeners at the time, even if it would sound less so to us now.

Appendix: Setlists

New Riders of The Purple Sage, August 29, 1969, Family Dog on The Great Highway
To Have the Hurting End (John Dawson original)
Games People Play (Joe South-1968)
All I Ever Wanted (John Dawson original)
Connection (Rolling Stones, from Between The Buttons-1967)
Mama Tried [w/Bob Weir] (Merle Haggard-1968)
Cathy's Clown [w/Bob Weir] (Everly Brothers-1960)
Fair Chance to Know (John Dawson original)
Seasons of My Heart [w/Bob Weir)] (George Jones-1965)

Grateful Dead, August 29, 1969, Family Dog on The Great Highway [[1:19:54]
Casey Jones [5:08] ; [0:10] ;

Easy Wind [7:55] ; [0:18] ;

Me And My Uncle [3:07] >

High Time [7:03] ; [1:03] ;

New Orleans [3:24] >

Searchin' [3:21] >

Good Lovin' Jam [0:26] >

Good Lovin' [4:#00] ; [0:30] ;

Dire Wolf [4:28] >

King Bee [7:38] ; [0:15] ;

Turn On Your Love Light [30:07] ; [0:43]

New Riders of The Purple Sage, August 30, 1969, Family Dog on The Great Highway
Superman (John Dawson original)
Henry (John Dawson original)
All I Ever Wanted (John Dawson original)
Last Lonely Eagle (John Dawson original)
Saw Mill [w/ Bob Weir] (Buck Owens-1963)
Whatcha Gonna Do (John Dawson original)
Cathy's Clown [w/Bob Weir] (Everly Brothers-1960)
Mama Tried [w/Bob Weir] (Merle Haggard-1968)
Six Days On The Road (Dave Dudley-1963)

Grateful Dead, August 30, 1969 Family Dog on the Great Highway [1:27:42]
China Cat Sunflower [2:55] >
Jam [2:43] >
Doin' That Rag [7:42] ; [0:47] ;
Morning Dew [10:47] ; [0:25] ;
Easy Wind [8:20] ; [0:10] % [0:04] ;
Dark Star [28:52] >
St. Stephen [6:26] >
The Eleven [6:35] >
Drums [5:14] >
High Time [5:38] ; [1:04]

For the next entry in the series (September 6 '69, Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead), see here

Sunday, April 24, 2022

August 28, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats/New Riders of The Purple Sage (FDGH '69 XVII)

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

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

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)

August 28, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats/New Riders of The Purple Sage (Thursday)
Prosopographical research on rock shows at the Family Dog on The Great Highway is closer to Archeology. We often have very limited information about what shows were even scheduled, and almost never have information about the bands that actually played or anything that happened. Since the shows were generally--apparently--thinly attended, eyewitness accounts on blogs and message boards are few and far between. For '60s research, Grateful Dead performances are usually our best hope of getting some information, since Deadheads and the Grateful Dead cosmos have made a half-century long effort to document everything.

Initially, Thursday, August 28, 1969 had no provenance save for the Grateful Dead. The Family Dog had advertised the Grateful Dead for Friday and Saturday (August 29 and 30), supported by the then unknown New Riders of The Purple Sage, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen and Rubber Duck. The Dog pretty much never had shows on Thursday night as part of a weekend run. Yet the Grateful Dead vault had a tape labeled "Hartbeats" from the Family Dog, recorded by Owsley Stanley himself, and dated August 28. It should be noted that Owsley's tape labeling was scrupulously accurate.

I speculated about the tape and the mysterious performance in a blog post many years ago. My speculation at the time, reasonable but in the end incorrect, was that the Dead had set up their equipment in advance of their weekend show, and had taken the opportunity to jam a little bit. My blog Commenters and I generally speculated that this may have been a response to Jerry Garcia's request at a meeting of The Commons (on Tuesday, August 12) for the Dog to host jam sessions during the day. There was no flyer, no advertising, no trace of the event, so the general assumption was that the hour long tape was members of the Dead having some fun with some friends.

The lineup for the tape was Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, organist Howard Wales and a brief appearance by a flute player. Starting back in 1968, Garcia, Lesh, Hart and Kreutzmann had played some gigs at the Matrix as Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats, sometimes joined by some guests. They typically played some instrumental Dead jams and a few blues numbers, which is exactly what transpired on the tape. It all seemed to fit--a weeknight jam for Garcia, for a few random hippies, when the Dead's equipment was already set up.

Yet one anonymous Commenter said:

I was there for the concert on the 28th and remember all the bands playing, the Dead, New Riders, and Commander Cody. There was also a short set from Mickey and the Heartbeats which played either during or after the normal Dead set. The hartbeats did High Heeled Sneakers and maybe even Schoolgirl. It was a fantastic night.

Memories are a tricky thing, and it was always possible that the Commenter was remembering Friday or Saturday, or combining Thursday and Friday. But guess what? Its looking like he remembered pretty well, whoever he (or she) was.

Eventually, I posted a version of this analysis elsewhere, and a fellow scholar found a contemporary poster. While it seems the Family Dog had initially advertised a Friday and Saturday booking for the Dead, a Thursday ad in the San Francisco Good Times underground paper listed a show on that night as well. So the Dead show was scheduled, and at least somewhat publicized.

The post on my Grateful Dead blog netted some other information as well. A correspondent wrote in with his recollections of seeing not just August 28, but the weekend's shows as well

I attended these shows. I have no memory of Commander Cody or Rubber Duck playing at all. Rather, there was a group called Phoenix. The line up was Phoenix as the opener, then New Riders, then the Dead with the bonus Hartbeats one night. There were stages at either end of the hall and while Phoenix was playing at one end, the Riders were setting up at the other and then the Dead while the Riders played. God showed up as well in the form of Pig and Jerry tearing it up and leaving we poor mortals smoking wrecks. When it was over, we stumbled out and across the Great Highway to collapse on the sand and let the crashing surf bring us back to earth.

Dawn Of The New Riders
In early 2020, the Owsley Stanley Foundation released a great 5-disc set called Dawn Of The New Riders of The Purple Sage. One of the discs had a complete New Riders set from Thursday, August 28 (see below for the list). As if that wasn't enough, Bob Weir joined the New Riders for several numbers, previewing a never-fulfilled concept called Bobby Ace And The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck. So that means Weir was at the Family Dog that night, so a Grateful Dead set suddenly seems very likely. It remains to be seen whether the Dead set was recorded by Owsley, and whether that tape can surface, but given the paucity of evidence we typically deal with for the Family Dog, I'm going with the likelihood that the Dead played a set, along with the "Hartbeats" jam and the New Riders.

Howard Wales and Jerry Garcia, from the back cover of their 1971 Hooteroll? album. Tame as it may seem now, passing a joint on the back cover of your album was A Statement at the time.

Howard Wales
Over the years, the most intriguing part about the Family Dog "Hartbeats" tape was the presence of organist Howard Wales. In a much later interview, Tom Constanten complained that Wales had "a bigger stack" (of Lesley Amplifiers, presumably) than him, a whiff that there was some competition involved. I had always assumed that Wales was sitting in when TC wasn't there, but now it seems more likely that the whole band was there, and the Hartbeats jam was something extra.

Now, Howard Wales was an experienced musician and a brilliant player. Wales was from the Cincinnati area, where he had backed guitarist Lonnie Mack in the mid-60s. Wales then ended up in El Paso, TX, working in a jazz trio with tenor saxophonist Martin Fierro, and after that in Seattle. By 1968, Wales had made landfall in San Francisco. He joined a blues trio that had just moved from Milwaukee, The New Blues. They became a quartet called the AB Skhy Blues Band. The band's debut had been released on MGM in 1969, and they performed regularly around the Bay Area.

Howard Wales was part of A.B. Skhy when they released their 1969 debut on MGM Records

Wales must have met Garcia somewhere. I'm not aware of AB Skhy opening for the Dead prior to this, and Garcia in general did not "hang out" at the Avalon or in bars, so it's mysterious how they connected. The geography of the Family Dog isn't irrelevant here. I don't know where Wales lived, but it's a safe bet it wasn't out in the essentially suburban Sunset district. Wales wouldn't have come to the Family Dog at all, and even less likely if he brought his own organ, without the guarantee of jamming. The Great Highway was a long way from anywhere, and nobody jammed with the Dead in '69 unless they were invited, which means they had received the Garcia seal of approval. So how Wales ended up at the Family Dog this night is not just a mystery, but part of a larger puzzle that may never be solved.

Of course, we now know the story that Wales and drummer Bill Vitt were managing the Monday night jams at the Matrix in the Spring of 1970, and Jerry Garcia started showing up. Garcia showed up because he wanted to jam with Wales. Vitt, in turn, would invite bassist John Kahn, and Garcia and Kahn's partnership would begin there. But the roots of it seem to trace back to the Family Dog. Somehow, Wales was invited to jam with the Hartbeats configuration, and we even had a tape. A few years later, we had the Howard Wales/Jerry Garcia album Hooteroll? (released on Douglas/CBS in 1971, but recorded in October 1970, yet it all seems to have started for undetermined reasons at an unpublicized Thursday night at the Family Dog. It's distinctly possible that Garcia had somehow previously jammed with Wales at the Matrix, a regular jamming site, and invited him out to the Dog for a more serious go at it. No wonder TC had some anxiety even years after the fact.

Known Facts

Knowledge of the show comes from a Bear cassette master of the show labeled "Hartbeats," with the date of the show and the location.
Although there are some tape flips and some resulting missing snippets of music, the tape seems to be 81 minutes and sounds like a complete set.
The band lineup appears to be Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart and organist Howard Wales.
A flute player joins in at the beginning of "Dark Star," just shy of the 10-minute mark, but he is hard to hear and seems to drop away
This is the first time I am aware of Howard Wales playing with Jerry Garcia

Unknowns

Did anyone other than Owsley use the name "Hartbeats" for this show? Was that just convenient shorthand for a jam, or were they introduced that way? It wasn't actually used in 1968, and although I'm aware that it appeared on a 1969 bill at the Matrix and 1970 at the Dog and the Matrix, we don't have have tapes of any "Hartbeats" sets at those shows
It's plausible but uncertain that Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen would play a set. They were new in town, and would not have been socially connected to the Dead at this point, so an invitation to a stealth event isn't as likely. In any case, they probably appeared on the next two nights, but we don't positively know that either (see the next Family Dog post for a more thorough discussion of Cody and the Airmen)
My personal correspondent recalls Phoenix rather than Commander Cody. It may be that the Internet commenter was confusing one of the nights
Who played flute? I discuss that a little bit here--one possibility is Steve Schuster, another is Andy Kulberg of Blues Project, both socially connected enough to be invited

Setlist: New Riders of The Purple Sage, August 28, 1969, Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA

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

Six Days On The Road (Dave Dudley-1963)
I Am Your Man (John Dawson original)
Last Lonely Eagle (John Dawson original)
Whatcha Gonna Do (John Dawson original)
[introducing the famous Bobby Ace]
Mama Tried [w/Bob Weir] (Merle Haggard-1968)
Cathy's Clown [w/Bob Weir] (Everly Brother-1960)
Old, Old House [w/Bob Weir] (George Jones-1965)
Me And My Uncle [w/Bob Weir] (Judy Collins-1964)
Seasons Of The Heart [w/Bob Weir] (George Jones-1965)
Slewfoot [w/Bob Weir] (Porter Wagoner-1966)

note: save for the Dawson songs, I have listed the best known cover versions, not the songwriters

Setlist: Hartbeats, August 28, 1969, Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, C

Jerry Garcia-guitar, vocals
Howard Wales-organ
Phil Lesh-bass
Bill Kreutzmann-drums
Mickey Hart-drums
#unknown-flute ("Dark Star Jam")

It's A Sin
High Heeled Sneakers
Dark Star Jam#>
The Eleven Jam>
Dark Star Jam

For the next entry in the series (August 29-30 '69, Grateful Dead), see here

Friday, April 15, 2022

August 26, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: The Great SF Light Show Jam (FDGH '69 'XVI)

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

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

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)

Ralph Gleason's Chronicle column from Monday August 25, 1969

August 26, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: The Great SF Light Show Jam (Tuesday)
This paragraph from Ralph J. Gleason's column in the August 25, 1969 San Francisco Chronicle says

Tomorrow night at the Family Dog on The Great Highway there will be a lightshow spectacular--The Great SF Light Show Jam--with 13 different light shows and taped music from three years of unissued tapes from the Matrix including tapes of Big Brother, Steve Miller, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service.

At the beginning of the month, many of the Light Shows in the Bay Area rock fraternity had joined together as the "Light Show Guild" and tried to strike rock venues by picketing and withholding their services. The sole real attempt was Friday, August 1 at the Family Dog, for a Grateful Dead concert. Jerry Garcia purposely showed up late, the Dead did not play, and the "Guild" folded. Bill Graham had simply laughed them off, threatening to do without light shows. Graham was ultimately correct, as Light Shows were no longer an important part of the attraction of rock concerts.

Light Show operators saw themselves as Artists, however, and fairly enough. This Tuesday night show at the Family Dog attempted to make Light Shows an attraction in themselves. Bill Ham had tried this at a place called The Audium, but that hadn't really worked either. This effort would fail, too, after one more try in September. I don't actually know of an eyewitness to either event. This blog has a different interest.

I had seen the Great SF Light Show Jam listed on various obscure flyers and thought little about it, since Light Shows are inherently of the moment. The idea that the Light Shows were performing to years of unissued live shows recorded at the Matrix--well, that's something else entirely. In the previous week's Berkeley Tribe, in an article about The Common and the Family Dog, there was some explanation:

Next Tuesday night Howard Wolfe (sic) will be playing tapes of some of the classic San Francisco rock concerts of the past few years. Wolfe, who worked with the Family Dog for two and a half years, wants to get together a musical and pictorial history of what went down in San Francisco. Nobody is better qualified to do it, he feels, than the people who created it in the first place.

Howard Wolf, based mostly in Los Angeles, had been the Avalon's booking agent in the 60s, as well as the booking agent for the Kaleidoscope. Wolf still had some involvement with the Family Dog on the Great Highway, although I'm not sure exactly what. However, with a little sleuthing, I'm pretty confident I've figured out what tapes Wolf was playing. For Deadheads, it's pretty interesting, with the caveat that the tapes were destroyed later and were never heard since [I have written about this recently from the perspective of the Grateful Dead, rather than the Family Dog--see this link].

Old Deadheads are familiar with Vintage Dead, a 1971 Grateful Dead album on MGM/Sunflower. The album featured Dead tapes recorded at the Avalon Ballroom in 1966, with a vintage Avalon poster (from September 16-17, 1966) on the cover. Vintage Dead was raw, but back in the pre-cassette days it was literally the only window into the lost Grateful Dead world prior to the first album, the only hint of what the original Grateful Dead sounded like. But how had early Dead ended up on MGM Records 5 years later? Ben Fong-Torres explained the story in the October 28, 1971 Rolling Stone (reproduced at the wonderful Deadsources site):

NOT-SO-GOOD OLD DEAD RECORDS
SAN FRANCISCO - All Bob Cohen knows is that he didn't mean for it to happen, and he wishes the Grateful Dead wouldn't give him such weird looks whenever he's around them.
Cohen is a sound man, and he was half-owner, with Chet Helms, of the Family Dog, back in the days of the Avalon Ballroom. As such, Cohen made, saved, and owns a pile of tapes of most of the bands that played there - the Grateful Dead among them.
And when Cohen was approached, in spring of 1969, by a Los Angeles record company to sell some of his tapes for an anthology of circa-hippie San Francisco bands, he could see no problem. It was Howard Wolf doing the talking, and Wolf's immediate past included the two Great Society albums Columbia had issued. And he was representing Together Records, a frisky new label headed by Gary Usher, former producer of the Byrds and Firesign Theatre, among others. In fact, the Dead saw no problems either when they were asked to sign releases for nine cuts. "We didn't dig the tapes, the quality that much," said Rock Scully, "but we thought it'd be nice to have this anthology of all the bands." With the Dead set, all Together had to do was get releases from enough of the other groups, like Big Brother, Moby Grape, Steve Miller, Quicksilver, Great Society, and Daily Flash. The idea was a three-LP package.
But, Cohen said, "they had trouble getting those releases." Then, "all of a sudden I find out that in one day Together ceased to exist! To settle everything, Gary Usher should have told me to get my tapes; I assumed the deal was off. My tapes are sitting there. But when I try to get them, I can't. MGM bought them."
A year later, out of the blue, there's an album on the market, Vintage Dead, on another new label, Sunflower (with MGM Records taking manufacturing and distributing credits) - not an anthology but, rather, a Dead album featuring five cuts, all Cohen's, along with, strangely enough, liner notes signed by Cohen. The Dead are wondering.
Then, three months ago, another album, Historic Dead, four cuts, two credited to Cohen, two to Peter Abram, owner and tape machine-operator at the old Matrix club. It is absolute bottom of the bag, the four songs totalling 29 minutes. Warner Bros., trying to sell contemporary Dead, are pissed. ("The Dead were freaked out because of the timing," Cohen said.
Vintage was released in fall of 1970, just after Warners had put out Workingman's Dead. Vintage Dead has sold more than 74,000 according to the latest word from Rick Sidoti, general manager of Sunflower Records.) The Dead, not knowing what's happening and not wanting to sound like they're being milked by the phone company, are pissed. And Cohen is suffering from this persecution complex, spinning around dizzily, wondering where to point his finger [for the complete article, see below or follow this link].

With the Berkeley Tribe's mention of Howard Wolf, and the timing described here, it seems plain that the live concerts from the Avalon and the Matrix were the ones intended for Wolf's 3-album anthology. Fellow scholar runonguinmess tracked down Jerry Garcia's comment on the origins of the Vintage Dead material.

Jerry is asked about the Sunflower LPs in a KSAN interview from 1972-06-13 and comes up with a different angle. He says it was originally intended to be a fundraiser for the Family Dog on the Great Highway / The Common. Here's a transcript from fanzine "Hot Angel" No 9.

KSAN: What did you think - I don't want to get into areas of controversy but - what did you think of the live Dead? A couple of albums that were done for MGM - one I think and maybe another one in the works or something?
Jerry: There's the Historic and the Vintage.
KSAN: Bob Cohen asked for your permission I recall.
Jerry: Yeah well, see the thing was it was originally gonna be a whole different thing. It was originally gonna be - this was back in the days when there was a sort of a - an attempt to sort of communityise the Family Dog. It was after the - in the wake of that whole light show strike and all that stuff that was going on, and originally that record was gonna be made - the proceeds were gonna go toward keeping the Family Dog running at the time, and it was originally a whole different record company. But that - the record company that was originally doing it was bought up by MGM, there was some weird swindle went down and actually, as far as the music goes, well it's what we were doing in 66 and we weren't as good then of course as we are now, and - you know, but it is what it is.

Both of these sagas make sense--a record company mining historic material, for which there was a genuine market, while the Family Dog is one of the beneficiaries. Since the material had all been recorded back in 1966, none of the bands would have signed contracts, so the music was available for licensing. Using the tapes to finance the new Family Dog venue was a very hippie San Francisco concept, and one that was clearly not to be.

In the saga, the Dead are quick to give their consent, but no one else does. It's hardly surprising in retrospect. By Summer '69, Moby Grape was in litigation with their manager Matthew Katz--litigation that would go on throughout the balance of the 20th century--so no approval was likely there. Janis Joplin had a high-powered manager, Albert Grossman, who managed Bob Dylan among many others, and he wasn't giving away historic product to support some hippie ballroom. Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Steve Miller Band had ambitious management, too, and they weren't going to cheerily sign away any rights any quicker than Albert Grossman. So the enterprise was never going to reach fruition.

It seems pretty clear, though, that 1966 music from the Avalon and the Matrix, recorded by the Dead, Big Brother, Quicksilver, Moby Grape, Daily Flash and Great Society was blasted out over the Family Dog sound system, while the Light Shows did their thing on a Tuesday night. For those few who went, it would have been a genuine flashback to a recent era that was already long gone.

Historic Dead, released on Sunflower/MGM in 1971, and recorded at the Avalon and the Matrix in 1966

Which Dead Tapes?
All Deadheads always have the same questions: which tapes were they, and where are the reels? Vintage Dead and Historic Dead had a total of 9 tracks, although only about sixty minutes of music. The five tracks on Vintage Dead were recorded by Bob Cohen at the Avalon. Because the cover of the album is the poster from September 16-17, it has generally been presumed that represented the show on the record. Scholar LightIntoAshes looked into the subject in detail, however, and determined that the most likely date was December 23 and/or 24, 1966 (not least because Weir sings "Winter's here and the time is right/ For dancing in the streets"). Historic Dead, much more poorly recorded, seems to be a mix of material from the Matrix (Nov 29 '66) and the Avalon. The Avalon date can't really be determined.

But what of the source tapes? Deadheads should brace themselves: Fong-Torres continues his story. Bob Cohen had discovered the tapes were sold to MGM, and tried to wreck the project:

[Cohen made] one desperate attempt at sabotage. He had given Together a set of mix masters, keeping the original tapes himself. "I went to their studios," ostensibly to identify tapes for MGM. "I looked at each box, and I had a big magnet with me and erased the tapes." To no avail. "They had quarter-track dubs made, too, and they were going to release those." Still, he contributed the liner notes for the Vintage album. He said he refused to do anything on the second one, which carries no information on recording dates or places.

So Bob Cohen went and destroyed the tapes, but MGM had made safety copies and they released those. So there were some vintage Avalon tapes from 1966 played at the Family Dog in 1969, never heard before in the outside world. Some were probably played again in September (when a similar show was held on September 25). And then the tapes were destroyed, with only some dubs remaining, released on Vintage and Historic Dead. What else did the Grateful Dead play on December 23 and 24 1966? We won't ever hear.

You can hold out hope, if you want, that Cohen kept his own copies of the Grateful Dead tapes, as he implies that he had. But they have never turned up, and Cohen himself says he has no Grateful Dead tapes in his basement, although he has lots of other stuff. So the 1966 Dead, from the Avalon, was played at the Family Dog in 1969, never to be heard again. Sic transit gloria psychedelia.

Appendix: Vintage Dead article in Rolling Stone (complete transcript)

NOT-SO-GOOD OLD DEAD RECORDS-Ben Fong Torres, Rolling Stone, October 28, 1971
SAN FRANCISCO - All Bob Cohen knows is that he didn't mean for it to happen, and he wishes the Grateful Dead wouldn't give him such weird looks whenever he's around them.
Cohen is a sound man, and he was half-owner, with Chet Helms, of the Family Dog, back in the days of the Avalon Ballroom. As such, Cohen made, saved, and owns a pile of tapes of most of the bands that played there - the Grateful Dead among them.
And when Cohen was approached, in spring of 1969, by a Los Angeles record company to sell some of his tapes for an anthology of circa-hippie San Francisco bands, he could see no problem. It was Howard Wolf doing the talking, and Wolf's immediate past included the two Great Society albums Columbia had issued. And he was representing Together Records, a frisky new label headed by Gary Usher, former producer of the Byrds and Firesign Theatre, among others. In fact, the Dead saw no problems either when they were asked to sign releases for nine cuts. "We didn't dig the tapes, the quality that much," said Rock Scully, "but we thought it'd be nice to have this anthology of all the bands." With the Dead set, all Together had to do was get releases from enough of the other groups, like Big Brother, Moby Grape, Steve Miller, Quicksilver, Great Society, and Daily Flash. The idea was a three-LP package.
But, Cohen said, "they had trouble getting those releases." Then, "all of a sudden I find out that in one day Together ceased to exist! To settle everything, Gary Usher should have told me to get my tapes; I assumed the deal was off. My tapes are sitting there. But when I try to get them, I can't. MGM bought them."
A year later, out of the blue, there's an album on the market, Vintage Dead, on another new label, Sunflower (with MGM Records taking manufacturing and distributing credits) - not an anthology but, rather, a Dead album featuring five cuts, all Cohen's, along with, strangely enough, liner notes signed by Cohen. The Dead are wondering.
Then, three months ago, another album, Historic Dead, four cuts, two credited to Cohen, two to Peter Abram, owner and tape machine-operator at the old Matrix club. It is absolute bottom of the bag, the four songs totaling 29 minutes. Warner Bros., trying to sell contemporary Dead, are pissed. ("The Dead were freaked out because of the timing," Cohen said. Vintage was released in fall of 1970, just after Warners had put out Workingman's Dead. Vintage Dead has sold more than 74,000 according to the latest word from Rick Sidoti, general manager of Sunflower Records.) The Dead, not knowing what's happening and not wanting to sound like they're being milked by the phone company, are pissed. And Cohen is suffering from this persecution complex, spinning around dizzily, wondering where to point his finger.
Actually, the Dead are more upset with Sunflower/MGM than with Cohen. "We feel they've perpetuated a hoax on us," said Scully, once a manager of the band. "At the very least, it was a misrepresentation." The Dead just recently got hold of copies of the contract, the original having vanished with Lenny Hart, the ex-manager they recently filed embezzlement charges against. Hart was the Dead representative in the deal, Scully said. "We found that those masters they said we'd signed for had all been penciled in," he said. "Everybody who signed swears there were three masters in there now that weren't in there before." But the fact is, they signed, and there's little, legally, that they can do.
Sunflower Records actually paid royalties to the band, $3650.51 in April for 51,683 albums sold between September 1st, 1970, and February 8th, 1971.
Another statement to Cohen, citing identical sales figures, didn't include a check, instead claiming that a $5000 advance cancelled out any money owed. Which got Cohen further upset. "I haven't got any money from them," he claimed, and when he wrote to Sunflower about it, "they called me up and said they're putting out another album. Now they've told me they're going to take both of them and put them together as a two-LP package for Christmas!"
So Cohen was thinking about legal action. His friend and attorney, Creighton Churchill, exchanged letters with Sunflower, and he learned that the advance promised to Cohen was contingent on releases being secured from all the bands on the 37 cuts Cohen had provided, and that Sunflower, in the middle of the Together-to-MGM transaction, thought a payment had been made. "So he can get the royalties," Churchill said, "if he's lucky." Churchill also said that Cohen had in fact been paid a separate fee of $1500 for giving the tapes to Together.
Cohen himself says Howard Wolf got the most money - "about $10,000 in fees and expenses." But Cohen did more than his share of work. After learning about Sunflower's plans for the Dead cuts, he said, "I talked them into at least making it groovy. I put together the Vintage album, because they would've put it out anyway, with or without me. They were gonna put it out as a bootleg. There was no way I could stop them."
So he joined them - after one desperate attempt at sabotage. He had given Together a set of mix masters, keeping the original tapes himself. "I went to their studios," ostensibly to identify tapes for MGM. "I looked at each box, and I had a big magnet with me and erased the tapes." To no avail. "They had quarter-track dubs made, too, and they were going to release those." Still, he contributed the liner notes for the Vintage album. He said he refused to do anything on the second one, which carries no information on recording dates or places.
"We had no liner information," Sunflower's Sidoti claimed, "because we didn't want to take away from the artwork."
Sidoti said he couldn't help Cohen point fingers. "There was nobody involved in the Dead albums from the executive standpoint," he said. "This was a deal made by Together and we just picked up the contract. When Together was disbanded or whatever, the tapes were laying around in the Transcontinental office, and Mac Davis [the veteran songwriter and president of the eight-month-old Sunflower label] bought the tapes from Transcon."
Transcontinental Investment Corporation is the holding group that formed Transcontinental Entertainment Corporation and hired young Mike Curb, now president of MGM Records, to be its head. Curb in turn, hired Gary Usher to form "an avant-garde artist-oriented record label, a division of TEC," as Usher put it. "They made a lot of promises - $1 million to work with, total autonomy, and a three-year minimum. TEC owned 40 percent of the racks in the country; they had lots of money." Usher had been successful with the Beach Boys, co-writing some tunes with Brian Wilson, as well as with the Byrds and Chad and Jeremy (as a producer). He was looking to do something different.
"I always wanted to do a series called 'Archives.'" In fact, Together put out two interesting collections, one of the Pre-Flyte Byrds, and one of various L.A.-area artists and bands. "Pre-Flyte sold well, it got the company off, and other people started bringing me tapes - Lord Buckley and good material like that." That's when he told Howard Wolf about "Archives" and sent him off to San Francisco.
But six months into Together's existence, Usher said, "Transcon started fudging with money, saying, 'We think the San Francisco scene is bullshit and we don't know who Howard Wolf is.' [Wolf, Usher said, had been advanced $5000 on the project.] I took Howard over there, he explained it, and they bought the idea of one full album from the Grateful Dead." Transcon stock then dropped, Usher said, and Curb split. "I simply walked out of there and went to RCA. I signed all my rights and interest over to TEC, who then sold out of the record business, and MGM took over all the properties."
So now you have MGM Records, whose president had so loudly announced a purge of all MGM artists who "advocate and exploit drugs," squeezing out every acidic second of Grateful Dead music that they can.
Sidoti says Sunflower is "a solely-owned label owned by Mac Davis." But MGM, it says on the liners, manufactures and distributes, and even the lion head appears on the two Dead albums. "Well, it's a joint venture with MGM." Watch your choice of words.
"Mike Curb has nothing to do with it," Sidoti continued. "There's lots of controversy surrounding whatever he does. God bless Mike Curb, whatever his thing is."
But how do you justify putting out shit and misrepresenting a group at the same time?
"There was no motive of hurting the Grateful Dead," Sidoti said. Earlier in our conversation - and this helps explain the motive - he had said, "Since the first one sold well, we decided to go ahead with another. We had four masters left over - they were decent tapes. There were a lot of dropouts on the tape, but we got rid of all those. I really think this helped the group. Actually the record buyer would have to be a Grateful Dead freak to be interested, and there's an X amount of people who otherwise couldn't buy the LP and compare."

For the next post in the series (August 28, 1969-Mickey Hart and The Harbeats), see here

Friday, April 8, 2022

August 22-24, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Wild West "Makeup Shows" (FDGH '69 XV)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Per the poster, the main acts for the nighttime shows at Kezar Stadium would have been:

Friday, August 22: Janis Joplin/Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Turk Murphy
Saturday, August 23: Jefferson Airplane/Mike Bloomfield & Nick Gravenites/Edwin Hawkins Singers/Sons of Champlin/Fourth Way
Sunday, August 24: Sly and The Family Stone/Santana/Country Joe and The Fish/Steve Miller Band/The Youngbloods

The week of August 10, the Wild West Festival was canceled. Everyone was ultimately better off for it, although it didn't seem that way at the time. San Francisco being San Francisco, it was somehow agreed that instead of the Wild West, there would be a weekend of "Benefit" concerts at the Fillmore West and Family Dog. The idea was to pay for the costs already incurred for the canceled festival. A lot of bands were available, of course, because not only was the Wild West canceled, but there had been no other gigs in town either, since every walking rock fan was expected to be at Golden Gate Park.

There were eight concerts scheduled, three nights at Fillmore West and three nights and two afternoons at the Family Dog. The final press release listed the scheduled bands, although it remains murky what actually transpired. It's also notable which bands did not play any of the "Wild West Benefits."

The Grateful Dead had been booked for Kezar on Friday night. In fact, the Dead were going to play Seattle Wednesday (August 20), return for a Kezar show Friday, and then headline a rock festival outside of Portland on Saturday (August 23). In the end, the Dead stayed in the Pacific Northwest, playing a rained out date in Seattle on Thursday (August 21) and then having the New Riders play the Portland rock festival on Friday night (August 22). The band probably saved a bunch of money on travel, in any case.

Notably, however, the acts that sold the most records were not playing the Benefits: Janis Joplin and Sly and The Family Stone. Joplin, though pals with all the Fillmore bands, was far more ambitious than them, and was managed by the shrewd Albert Grossman. Janis had played for free many times, when there was good reason to, but the Wild West was a failed business venture that--presumably--neither Janis nor Albert saw as requiring their bailout. As for Sly, he didn't play for free--that wasn't how he rolled.

Steve Miller, while still a sort of middle-level Fillmore act at the time, was a lot more like Janis. Miller had played for free many times in the 60s, but when it was in his interests, and usually when it was fun. The '70s would show what a level-headed operator Miller could be, and this time his level head seems to have suggested not getting involved.

The absence of Santana is significant here as well. The first Santana album had just been released, and was getting major airplay on KSAN. Santana had been a popular act in the Bay Area for some time, even before the release of the album. And Carlos, of course, loved to jam, loved to hang out, and would be seen (and very welcome) at many a benefit in the future. But the Santana band was effectively managed by Bill Graham, and Bill seemed to be keeping his own band from these Wild West shows. It's hard not to draw the conclusion that the most career-minded San Francisco bands were not going to help the organizers of the Wild West make back their expenses.

Thanks to Prof. Michael Kramer for unearthing this hitherto-unseen Wild West Benefit press release from the Berkeley Folk Festival archives

August 22-24, 1969 Wild West Benefits
When we compare the bookings of the Fillmore West and The Family Dog for the Wild West Benefit weekend, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that Graham made sure that the headliners were playing the Fillmore West. Jefferson Airplane was undeniably the biggest act, and they were headlining the Fillmore on Saturday night (August 23).

Quicksilver Messenger Service was a substantial band, too, and while they had a new hit album (Happy Trails, released in May), they had hardly played live in 1969. Quicksilver was playing both venues, but they were playing Fillmore West first, on Friday night. The Youngbloods had a hit, too, with "Get Together," and they were booked with the Quick on Friday night, before they played the Dog on Sunday. So Graham got first bite of both those apples. Country Joe and The Fish had recently played both Fillmore West (July 18-20) and the Family Dog (August 8-10), but they were a major band with a new album (Here We Are Again, released in July). They were headlining Fillmore West on Sunday night.

The Family Dog got some interesting bands this weekend--It's A Beautiful Day, Buddy Miles Express (the reconstituted Electric Flag) and the Sons, for example--but Fillmore West had the spotlight. Graham was Graham--the whole enterprise was shaky, and Bill was going to make sure that he made back his expenses. Also, it's worth noting that, "Benefit" or not, the bands had expenses too, just for playing a gig. They probably figured they could get those expenses covered by Graham, rather than take their chances with the Family Dog. Remember that all the major bands were out a payday to start with, so requesting a few hundred dollars to cover their costs was probably a minimum.


Berkeley's Congress Of Wonders would release their Fantasy Records debut Revoling in 1970

August 22, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Freedom Highway/Seatrain/Congress of Wonders/Flamin Groovies/Phoenix/Rubber Duck Co (Friday) 7pm
The Friday night show at the Dog was up against Quicksilver at Fillmore West. I know nothing about this show. It was probably thinly attended. All of the bands playing this night at the Dog would have been part of the free concerts in the Park, not likely the paid gigs at Kezar.

Freedom Highway was a Marin band, booked by Quicksilver manager Ron Polte's West-Pole agency
Seatrain was the new name of the re-formed Blues Project. They had just released an album on A&M, and played a sort of baroque progressive rock, featuring Richard Greene on electric violin. At this time, the balance of the lineup was probably John Gregory on guitar, Don Kretmar on saxophone, and former Blues Projecters Andy Kulberg (bass) and Roy Blumenfield (drums).
Congress Of Wonders was a popular Berkeley comedy duo, who had played the Dog before
The Flamin' Groovies were a San Francisco band who played in a British Invasion style (like The Who) rather than jamming the blues Fillmore style, so although local they hadn't really found a niche yet
Phoenix had a long, complicated history that is hard to summarize. They went all the way back to the Acid Tests in 1965 and '66, but the band had evolved (see the Phoenix Family Tree here).
Rubber Duck featured mime Joe McCord, backed by musicians who improvised behind him. McCord's backing band fluctuated, and on occasion even included Jerry Garcia and Tom Constanten, but since the Dead were out of town we know they weren't involved.

From what we know, these groups were pretty interesting, but there wasn't anyone on the bill with a following that would draw a crowd.

Guitarist Joe Tate had been in the group Salvation, who had released their debut album on ABC in 1968

August 23, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Tree Of Life/Phananganang/Marble Farm/Joe Tate's Desperate Skuffle Band/Lazarus/Flying Circus/Sebastian Moon/Bicycle (Saturday) noon
This noon Saturday event seems to feature bands who would have played the free concert part of the Wild West, outside of Kezar. Most of them are pretty obscure.

Tree Of Life were a San Jose band, but I don't know much else about them.
Phananganang was a band that was managed by former Moby Grape manager Matthew Katz. Katz was very entrepreneurial, but his former clients never had good relations with him afterwards. The peculiarly named Phananganang was led by Ross Winetsky and included keyboardist Leila Kells. The band was playing around the Bay Area at this time.
Marble Farm is a familiar name from old 60s flyers, but I don't know anything about them.
Joe Tate's Desperate Skuffle Band: Guitarist/singer Joe Tate had led the band Salvation, previously the Salvation Army Banned (until the actual Salvation Army objected). They had released two albums on ABC in 1968, and played Fillmores on both coasts, but never got over the hump.
Lazarus was a Berkeley band, formed out of the remains of a Berkeley High band called Haymarket Riot. In the 1970s, Guitarist Dave Carpender would end up in the Greg Kihn Band, drummer Steve Nelson would be in Earth Quake, and the Barsotti Brothers (Pete-vocals, Steve-bass) were key operations people for Bill Graham Presents.
Flying Circus had formed in June 1966 in Marin County. They had won a Battle of the Bands at Mount Tamalpais and a recording contract with Golden State Recorders, and recorded two singles. Since that time, Flying Circus had gone through many personnel changes. By 1969, they were sharing rehearsal space with the Marin band Clover. It wasn't surprising: Flying Circus lead guitarist Bob McFee was the brother of Clover lead guitarist John McFee.
Sebastian Moon, like Marble Farm, is familiar to me from various concert listings, but I know nothing about them.
Bicycle was actually Bycycle, but the name was perpetually spelled wrong. Previously, they had been Hofmann's Bicycle, a wink to LSD that local hippies would have gotten, but the band shortened their name. The intriguing historical thing about Bycyle was bassist Dan Healy, who was also a freelance engineer and producer for Mercury, Capitol and other labels. He had been the primary engineer for such albums as the Grateful Dead's Anthem Of The Sun and the Sir Douglas Quintet hit Mendocino. From the 70s onward, Healy was the principal soundman and engineer for the Grateful Dead, a position he would retain well into the 1990s. At this time, however, Healy was wearing two hats, a freelance engineer who also played bass in a band. For decades, Healy never mentioned Bycycle, but in recent years at the prodding of Jake Feinberg and others he has shared some details.
At this time, Healy was the engineer for Quicksilver Messenger Service, helping them record Shady Grove at Pacific High Recorders. Quicksilver was very popular, as Happy Trails was getting massive play on FM radio. Unfortunately for the band, however, guitarist Gary Duncan had quit the group and that lineup of the band no longer existed. Duncan had been replaced by, of all people, English pianist Nicky Hopkins, a brilliant musician who didn't sing or write.
The other members of Bycycle were singer Stephen Fiske, guitarist Richard Treece and organist Al Rose. I'm not certain who was the drummer at this point. Bycyle came on last probably because Healy was going to play with Quicksilver.

August 23, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Mt Rushmore/Sons of Champlin/Jimmy Witherspoon/Devil's Kitchen/Hindu Folk Band/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Saturday) 8pm
For the Saturday night show, Quicksilver headlined the Family Dog. Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen had only recently arrived in Berkeley from Ann Arbor, MI. Their participation in this event (they are not on the press release) comes from an interview somewhat later. According to members of the Commander Cody band "two people showed up," at least when the Airmen were playing. Although the Airmen are notorious for exaggerating for comic effect, it's a good indicator that it was hardly a packed house.

Ralph Gleason of the Chronicle went to both the Family Dog and Fillmore West on Saturday night, and described the events in his Monday column (on August 25, excerpted here). Quicksilver Messenger Service had headlined at the Friday night show at the Fillmore West. Teenage diarist Faren Miller, beloved of rock prosopographers everywhere, provided a detailed description of the show. At the time, Quicksilver was recording what would become the Shady Grove album with Dan Healy at Pacific High Recorders. Nicky Hopkins had joined the band, but the group had never been much for songwriting anyway, and without Gary Duncan they didn't even have a front man. Per Faren Miller, Dan Healy had joined Quicksilver for a few numbers on bass and guitar. David Freiberg was the regular bassist, but he was also the lead singer, so when Healy played bass it would free Freiberg up for some singing duties. Given that Bycycle was on the bill earlier, it would have been convenient for Healy to sit in. Gleason (below) confirmed Healy's presence at the Dog.

Gleason wrote:

The Quicksilver Messenger Service, absent from public performance (except for a couple of brief unannounced shots in the park) turned everybody on Friday night at the Fillmore and repeated it at Saturday night at the Family Dog. David Freiberg, certainly the most improved singer in the city, was in magnificent voice and led the group through a whole program of new material, when I heard them at the Dog, which was exciting and fascinating.

Once again the Quicksilver, quiet almost deferential in the face of other bands, turned out to be a leader itself. Nicky Hopkins' piano, in a series of syncopated exchanges with the guitars in one number, created a sizzling excitement of a level and nature previously done here only by the Dead and the Airplane. The songs are very good, one ballad by Denise Jewkes is a moving song, and the whole band (occasionally joined by Dan Healy on bass) was inventive and cohesive, with Greg Elmore's drumming and John Cippolina's lead guitar working together better than I have ever heard them.

Gleason makes some interesting points in passing: apparently Quicksilver played a few hitherto unknown stealth gigs in Golden Gate Park. Gleason also observes that Dan Healy plays occasional bass, presumably to free up Freiberg to sing . The "Denise Jewkes" referred to is the married name of Ace Of Cups member Denise Kaufman, who wrote some songs used on the Shady Grove album. One of the new songs he describes was almost certainly Hopkins' classic "Edward (The Mad Shirt Grinder)."

Jimmy Witherspoon, an Oakland-based blues singer, seems to have been backed by the Sons Of Champlin. The comparatively unheralded Sons were among the very best musicians on the Fillmore scene, and could play authoritatively in any style. The Anonymous Artists of America, by contrast, originally a Santa Cruz Mountains band, had a reputation for being fun yet sloppy, so when Gleason says they "surprised me by the way they swung," it is because they had not done so in the past. From what I know, they had moved to San Francisco and got a hot young drummer from Texas (Richard something), so that probably improved matters.

Mount Rushmore was another band booked by Quicksilver manager Ron Polte's agency, West-Pole (as were the Sons). They had two albums on Dot.

Devil's Kitchen were a recently arrived quartet from Carbondale, IL, and acted as a kind of "house band" at the Family Dog.

The Hindu Folk Band was an intriguing booking. I have no idea who that might have been.

August 24, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Faun/Cold Turkey/Nazgul/Alice Stuart and Minx/Mendelbaum/Mother Bear/Transatlantic Railroad (Sunday) noon
The Sunday afternoon booking at the Dog featured bands generally even less well known than the ones who had played the noon Saturday show.

Faun had released an obscure album on Gre Gar Records around 1968 or 69. I'm not aware of the band playing live very much. The album included guitarist George Tickner, who would go on to play with Jerry Garcia and Journey, and bassist Ross Valory, who would play with the Steve Miller Band and then Journey.

Cold Turkey is unknown to me.

I recognize Nazgul from various listings, but I know nothing about them.

Alice Stuart and Minx was a bluesy Berkeley quartet, featuring Stuart and John Shine on guitars and vocals. Audie DeLonge (later better known as Austin DeLone) played piano and Jack O'Hara played bass. I don't know of a drummer, but maybe there was one. Due to a complicated series of unexpected events, DeLone and O'Hara ended up in a band called Eggs Over Easy, migrated to England and popularized "Pub Rock" at the Tally Ho in Kentish Town.

Mendelbaum were newly arrived from Wisconsin. They featured lead guitarist Chris Michie, who went on to play with Van Morrison and others, and drummer Keith Knudsen (who played with Lee Michaels and then the Doobie Brothers).

Mother Bear had originally featured singers Roger Saloom and Robin Sinclair, and the band had released an album on Cadet Concept called Saloom Sinclair and Mother Bear in 1968. Saloom and Sinclair had split off, but Mother Bear had continued under the leadership of guitarist Tom Davis. Mother Bear had played the Family Dog back on the weekend of July 11-13.

Transatlantic Railroad was a Marin band.

August 24, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Its A Beautiful Day/South Bay Experimental Flash/Youngbloods/Shag/Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band/Buddy Miles Express (Sunday) 7pm
Some pretty good bands played the Family Dog on Sunday night, and some of them were well-known. Already a popular local band, It's A Beautiful Day had released their debut album on Columbia in June 1969. Unlike the first albums of many groups, the music was fully formed. LaFlamme had been in an odd group called Orkustra in 1967 that played around the Haight, so he had learned some lessons from that. It's A Beautiful Day had originally been sent to Seattle by their manager, Matthew Katz, so they had "gotten it together" before they reappeared in San Francisco. The debut album had some great songs, and they got heavily played on FM radio. The most popular was "White Bird," which would go on to become a huge AM hit as well, and a sort of 60s classic. It's A Beautiful Day had played one of the fundraisers for the Wild West, back on July 7.

The South Bay Experimental Flash were a jazz-rock band that had been founded in the San Jose area. Sometime in 1969, they had moved to Richmond, in the East Bay. The main soloist was sax and flute player David Ladd, who was a South Bay presence for many years. As an oddity, when the South Bay Experimental Flash first moved to Richmond, a teenager who lived across the street helped them unload their gear. The teenager turned out to be harmonica wizard Norton Buffalo, so Ladd and the Flash were big influences on Buffalo's unique style.

The Youngbloods were regarded as an "Avalon band," for good reason. As it happened, in July 1969 the Youngbloods ship had finally came in. Their third album, Elephant Mountain had just been released in April, and songs like "Darkness, Darkness" were getting good airplay on FM radio. More importantly, in Spring, 1969 the National Council of Christians and Jews created a Public Service Announcement that used the Youngbloods' version of “Get Together.” The band had recorded the old Dino Valenti song on their February 1967 debut album, when it was already somewhat of a chestnut, having been recorded by the Jefferson Airplane and others. Yet the PSA had caused RCA to release the song as a single, and by August it would enter the Top 40 chart on Billboard.

The Youngbloods had headlined the Family Dog on the weekend of July 11-13. This weekend, however, the Youngbloods had already played Friday night at Fillmore West. So the Dog was getting a great group, but on the less advantageous night.

Shag was a local band, but I don't really know anything about them.

The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band had formed out of the same community of musicians that had given rise to Country Joe and The Fish. Initially, the CGSB did actually play skiffle music, which was a sort of New Orleans Jug Band style. By 1969, they were playing a sort of swinging country rock, no longer acoustic but not fully electrified either. They released one album in 1968 on Vanguard, The Cleanliness And Godliness Skiffle Band's Greatest Hits (back when such a title for a debut album was still clever). The CGSB had been playing around Berkeley since 1966, but they hadn't gotten beyond local success. The band had already played the Family Dog a few times (July 4-6 and July 22). They would fade away in early 1970.

The Buddy Miles Express had arisen out of the ashes of the Electric Flag. When Mike Bloomfield had left the Flag in Summer '68, followed by Nick Gravenites, Buddy Miles became the frontman. Miles had released the oddly influential Expressway To Your Skull in late '68, on Mercury, complete with liner notes by Jimi Hendrix. Most of the players had been in the Electric Flag, with the exception of guitarist Jim McCarty (ex-Mitch Ryder, future Cactus). Miles Davis, among others, found Miles' mix of rhythm and soul promising, even if the songs weren't great.

In July 1969, the Express's second album Electric Church had entered the charts. The band was stripped down a little bit, with Duane Hitchings replacing Herbie Rich on organ, and fewer horns, but the basic soul-rock configuration remained intact. Miles was booked by Ron Polte's West-Pole agency, and Polte had played a big part in the planning of the Wild West Festival.

Fillmore West Wild West Makeup Shows, August 22-24, 1969
For those who consume 60s rock history, the Fillmore West is one of the most revered and minutely studied venues of the era. As far as I can tell, there are no direct references to this weekend's Fillmore West shows anywhere on the web save for my blogs. Anyone with more information, please share it in the Comments.

August 22, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Youngbloods/The Committee/Ace Of Cups/West (Friday)
This show was described in some detail by then-teenage diarist Faren Miller (accessible to determined googlers). Quicksilver, largely invisible in concert in 1969, made the public debut of their new lineup, with pianist Nicky Hopkins effectively in place of Gary Duncan. The description by Ralph Gleason above, of the Saturday night Quicksilver show at the Dog, was confirmed in detail by Miller's observations about Friday night at the Fillmore West.

As noted, The Youngbloods were riding a wave of popularity at the time because of the hit re-release of their single "Get Together."

The Committee was a popular counterculture Improv troupe, founded in San Francisco in 1963. The founders were alumni of Chicago's famous Second City troupe. The Committee had their own theater, but stepped out to perform at Fillmore West this weekend.

Ace Of Cups were an all-female psychedelic rock band that wrote and performed their own material. The band was a unique ensemble worthy of their own history, which conveniently I have already written. Ace Of Cups were also managed and booked by Ron Polte's West-Pole outfit, but he overplayed his hand and they never recorded or released an album in the 60s.

Thanks to the ever-reliable Faren Miller's diary entry, we have a detailed report about the Ace of Cups performance at Fillmore West. Guitarist Mary Simpson had left the group by this time. Miller attended and wrote down her usual detailed observations:

“The Cups evoked strange thoughts in me, because the group has gone through a situation paralleling the early Quicksilver. Mary Simpson (who always reminded us of folksy Jimmy Murray) has left, just as Jimmy left. The result is the same too: a revitalized group. The Cups have improved remarkably, however, while the Quick mainly recouped. At last the Cups’ cycle of good-show-then-bad-show has been broken. Their set was glorious! The theme of the benefit [as I should have mentioned above] was “Let’s Get It Together”, and that’s just what the girls have done.

Their set opened with a driving song worthy of any top S.F. group. Mary Gannon seems to have a new Fender bass with a great tone, and it boomed while Denise rasped out lead guitar and Marla played some fine organ. Diane is less tentative on the drums. By their sound, the Cups could have been a seasoned male group, though their appearance seemed really incongruous. [Oops ... even a female diarist could make such casually sexist remarks in the days before Women’s Lib! Sorry gals.] Mary G. had along red dress tied at the waist with a dangling sash -- she was barefoot, and the dress kept slipping off one shoulder as she jerked wildly with the bass. Diane’s long hair (lighter at the edges now) hung over the drums, unlike any shaggy-haired male drummer‘s. Tiny bespectacled Denise hopped about, also barefoot, wearing jeans and a red velvet tunic, her frizzy hair flying. Marla leaned over her electric organ, a long ribbon in her hair. Between songs, the Cups were the picture of disorganization: -- retuning, saying “I forget the chords” or “What’ll we do now?” -- but once they began to play they were excellent. The music was strong, the lyrics feminine (if a bit one-track-minded). On “I’m Looking for a Path”, Mary sang with Denise chiming in on choruses. Next they did a song about looking for a man (a great screamer blues by Denise). Then a song about hoping for a man to return -- with fresh-baked bread, candles, and love waiting for him. (A real house-and-hearth number.) Then the lovely “Welcome, Jolina” about birth, followed by “Gypsy Boy” (“I wanta have your baby”).

A few songs later, the set closed with a spoof(?) about having an empty bed. See the thread here? The “Jolina” song was in two parts, moving from fast and rocking (about the pregnancy -- “your daddy’s here and your mother’s waitin’ on you”) to sweet and choral, while the lyrics nicely linked the seasons, birth and death, and renewal. It got a very good reception, as did all the set. Besides that marvelous screamer by Denise, they had some great shouters. On one number, Marla used a wailing voice, creaking with emotion, that was really effective. The instrumental breaks were “all fine” (as Ralph Gleason would say). For “Gypsy Boy”, a big, Barry-Meltonish fellow called “Earthquake” was called upon to blow harp, and he did it quite well. During the upbeat numbers, good old Frank Polte was jogging about at the far left of the stage, a big grin on his face. Meanwhile, Denise was dancing all over the place banging on a tambourine -- she got over to the right of the stage where a crazy guy had been dancing in a freaked-out manner all through the set.; a wispy blonde occasionally danced there too, though she and the guy never seemed to be aware of each other.

The last number was one that they evidently hadn’t done in ages. Marla protested that she couldn’t remember it at all. Denise just had everybody crowd together, so Marla came out from behind her organ. (She’s amazingly tall, maybe even taller than Mary, and both girls dwarf little Denise.) This last song was a slow, ‘50s-style ballad with silly lyrics: “It’s just no fun (da da da da) when you sleep alone (da da da da)” and “What use are two pillows/ When I’ve only got one head?” Mary delivered a brief monolog in the middle, in true antediluvian rock fashion. Marla kept breaking up, when not chiming in on the choruses. It seemed like a burlesque version of the earlier “please come home” song. So the Ace’s set ended without a single bad number. Maybe losing a member forced them to come of age.”

Womb was a local band, previously known as Birth.

August 23, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/AUM/Los Flamencos de la Santa Lucia/Sanpaku/Marvin and The Uptights (Saturday)
After catching Quicksilver at the Dog on Saturday night, Gleason headed across town to the Fillmore West on Saturday night to catch the Jefferson Airplane.

At the Fillmore, the Airplane was on when I arrived (later I heard AUM had done a terrific set which I missed) and Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady were doing their acoustical guitar and electric bass duet which now provides a very effective interlude in the Airplane's program. They did several new songs, including their upcoming single "Revolution" and a long instrumental jam which blew everybody's minds by its intensity.

The audience, packed against the lip of the stage at the feet of the musicians, didn't want to go home. They screamed for more just as the audience at the Family Dog had done for Quicksilver earlier in the evening. And the Quicksilver itself had rushed on down to the Fillmore to stand on stage listening to the Airplane until the last notes died away in the hall and everybody moved slowly towards the exits, the spell still working.

Just a few weeks later, Jack and Jorma would record their first album as a duo at Berkeley's New Orleans House, dubbing their band Hot Tuna, but at this time it did not yet have a name. Jorma and Jack had played around The Matrix and elsewhere in 1969, but the name Hot Tuna was invented for the record.

Gleason describes Quicksilver, having finished their set at Family Dog, stopping by the Fillmore West to hear the Airplane. While its a fact that the Fillmore West was on the way home to Marin, the band still had no obligation to stop and hang out. Yet it was a sign of the vitality of the scene that the bands were still friends and enjoyed socializing, a fact of life that would slowly fade away over the next few years.

The Saturday night booking at Fillmore West tells us that the Airplane didn't need any help to sell tickets. AUM was a hard rocking trio led by guitarist Wayne Ceballos, and booked by Bill Graham's Millard Agency. They had released an album called Bluesvibes, on Sire, earlier in 1969.

Sanpaku, a seven-piece band with horns, was another Millard act. Graham made sure that his own acts got the high profile opening gigs.

Los Flamencos de la Santa Lucia were a dance troupe.

I believe Marvin and the Uptights were an R&B act.

August 24, 1969 Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Country Joe and The Fish/Sons Of Champlin/Elvin Bishop/Freedom Highway/Fast Buck (Sunday)
Country Joe and The Fish had just released their third album on Vanguard, Here We Are Again. They had also recently headlined the Fillmore West (July 18-20) and the Family Dog (August 8-10). This lineup of the band was the Woodstock lineup, with Mark Kapner on keyboards, Doug Metzner on bass and Greg Dewey on drums.

The Sons of Champlin and Freedom Highway were booked by Ron Polte's West-Pole agency, and Elvin Bishop and Fast Buck were booked by the Millard Agency. It is little realized that even by 1969, booking agencies played a big part in what bands got booked to open for popular acts. Elvin Bishop had moved to San Francisco in 1968, after leaving the Butterfield Blues Band, and had formed his own group. The lead guitarist of Fast Buck was one Ronnie Montrose, who would go on to play with Boz Scaggs, Van Morrison ("Tupelo Honey"), the Edgar Winter Group ("Frankenstein") and finally his own group with Sammy Hagar.

And so the weekend of Wild West "Benefits" receded quietly into history. Only Ralph Gleason wrote about it, as far as I know, re-upped by me somewhat in an old blog post. But since the Wild West left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, no bands ever talked about it. Since there were no posters, the shows were never included in any histories of the Avalon or Fillmore West (which is telling).

The Family Dog had been central to the whole Wild West enterprise, and when the Festival collapsed it was yet another tolling bell for the struggling venue.

For the next entry in the series (August 26, 1969-Light Show Jam), see here

Rock Archaeology 101

Thursday, April 28, 2022

August 29-30, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Rubber Duck [FDGH '69 XVIII]

Sunday, April 24, 2022

August 28, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats/New Riders of The Purple Sage (FDGH '69 XVII)

Friday, April 15, 2022

August 26, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: The Great SF Light Show Jam (FDGH '69 'XVI)

Friday, April 8, 2022

August 22-24, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Wild West "Makeup Shows" (FDGH '69 XV)

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Rock Archaeology 101

Thursday, April 28, 2022

August 29-30, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Rubber Duck [FDGH '69 XVIII]

Sunday, April 24, 2022

August 28, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats/New Riders of The Purple Sage (FDGH '69 XVII)

Friday, April 15, 2022

August 26, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: The Great SF Light Show Jam (FDGH '69 'XVI)

Friday, April 8, 2022

August 22-24, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Wild West "Makeup Shows" (FDGH '69 XV)

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