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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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."
Chet Helms had opened the Family Dog at 660 Great Highway to much fanfare on June 13, 1969, with a packed house seeing the Jefferson Airplane and The Charlatans. One of the goals was that the Dog would feature mostly San Francisco bands and a variety of smaller community events and groups. Since so many San Francisco bands were successful, and had record contracts, this didn't confine the venue to obscurity. A lot of great bands played the Family Dog in 1969, but the distant location and the gravitational pull of major rock events hosted elsewhere in the Bay Area kept the Family Dog isolated. We know only the most fragmentary bits about music played, events and audiences throughout the year. Despite the half-year of struggle, Helms had kept the Family Dog on The Great Highway afloat. He had entered the new year of 1970 with a new plan.
- For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
- For the previous entry (December 1969) see here
- For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here
January 2-4, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Osceola/Cleveland Wrecking Company/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Fri-Sat)/Devil's Kitchen/Mendelbaum (Sun only) (Friday-Sunday)
After the dramatic benefit at Fillmore West on November 19, 1969, Chet Helms told the Examiner that he was going to concentrate on more lucrative weekend bookings, and avoid the community gatherings that were happening most nights of the week. In December, there had been only two weekend bookings, and no mid-week events. Events would show that a lot was afoot at the Family Dog, and big changes were planned, if not all of them came to fruition. Yet for reasons unknown, the first two weeks of January seemed to be a return to the smaller events that had dominated the Dog for much of the end of 1969.
The opening weekend of the year featured some local bands, with the proviso that most of them had actually relocated to San Francisco from somewhere else. Osceola was a San Francisco band of Florida transplants, led by guitarist Bill Ande. Devil's Kitchen were also regular performers at the Family Dog. They were a bluesy quartet from Carbondale, IL, and at this time they were kind of a "house band" at the Dog, by their own description. Around this time, Devil's Kitchen stopped performing regularly at the Dog, and Osceola seemed to take over the informal role of "house band" at the Family Dog.
Cleveland Wrecking Company was a 7-piece band with a horn section and a female singer. They played original material, but also played a lot of lucrative dances, and weren't apparently that interested in getting a recording contract, in contrast to every other San Francisco band. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, meanwhile, although well known today, were still recently relocated from Ann Arbor, MI to Emeryville. They were playing regularly at the Family Dog because they could get booked there.
Mendelbaum (aka Mendelbaum Blues Band) had recently relocated from Wisconsin to San Francisco, since their favorite bands were all from the Bay Area. Mendelbaum would go on to play the Matrix, the Fillmore West and other local venues. Mendelbaum included guitarist Chris Michie (who later played with Van Morrison, among many others) and drummer Keith Knudsen (who later played with Lee Michaels and the Doobie Brothers). In 2002, the German label Shadoks released a collection of Mendelbaum's live and studio material.
January 5, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Monday Night Class
Stephen Gaskin was a popular literature instructor at San Francisco State, whose campus was not too far down the road (at 19th Avenue and Holloway). Gaskin spoke about what we would now be called "Human Consciousness" or "Self-Help," but at the time he was called a "Hip Guru." I am no expert in this area, but I will say that Gaskin was neither a con artist nor interested in turning a profit, rare for those sort. His "Monday Night" class had been running since at least July. I don't know if the event was held on every Monday night or just some of them, and it was the most popular regular booking at the Dog, save perhaps for the Grateful Dead (the picture at the top of the post is from one of his Monday night events). Admission was free, and Gaskin just lectured, although I think they took donations.
Gaskin had been putting on Monday night shows going back to the late Summer of '69, although exactly when they started isn't certain. By October, at least, they were a certifiable "Big Deal," but I don't think his popularity was ever properly converted into increased paid attendance at other Dog events. As far as I can tell, there were not many more "Monday Night Class" with Gaskin at the Family Dog after this. Sometime in 1970, Gaskin would lead a caravan of 60 vehicles to a commune site Southwest of Nashville known as The Farm, which is still functioning.
January 8, 1970 auditions
We have some trace evidence that the Family Dog held an afternoon audition for local bands on Thursday, January 8. While it was not advertised, it is plausible that the Dog allowed any local hippies wandering by to drop in. The Family Dog had big plans, and they would have been looking for bands who could open shows. It is now largely forgotten that it was very difficult for local bands to make listenable tapes, and the easiest way to let a promoter/club owner hear your band was to lug your gear down the venue and play your music, so such auditions weren't uncommon.
The significance of this obscure bit of trivia was that one of the bands auditioning this Thursday was Steel Mill, a quartet newly arrived in New Jersey, trying to make it in San Francisco, just like Commander Cody, Mendelbaum or Devil's Kitchen. The band had played a New Year's Eve show at Big Sur, and then headed North to San Francisco. Steel Mill was not offered a future gig at the Family Dog, not an auspicious start to the band's trip to San Francisco.
Fortunately for Steel Mill, they talked their way into opening for Boz Scaggs at the Matrix the next week, for which they would barely be paid. Boz was sick one night, and didn't show, and fortunately Examiner reviewer Phil Elwood gave a glowing review of Steel Mill's extended Matrix set. Elwood made a particular point of naming and praising Steel Mill lead guitarist and singer Bruce Springsteen. Bill Graham heard about it, and gave Steel Mill a chance at his Tuesday night auditions. Bill offered the band a contract, but the money wasn't good enough for Bruce's manager. So, in a rare instance, Chet Helms whiffed on the next thing, while at least Bill recognized that Bruce had something going.
The detailed source for this is the exceptional Bruce Springsteen Killing Floor database. The actual quote identifies the location as the Avalon Ballroom, and says "Steel Mill audition in the afternoon (along with two other bands) for
the right to play a series of open dates at the venue - but they don't
get the job. " The Avalon was not open, so it seems pretty likely that it was the Family Dog on the Great Highway. While one show was produced at the Avalon on the weekend of January 24, and a few intermittent shows in February, no promoter undertook a "series of shows" until March. It seems more likely that the Steel Mill crew recalled auditioning for the Family Dog, and recalled it as auditioning for the Avalon Ballroom (which, remember, none of them had ever been to).
January 9-10, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Chambers Brothers and Friends (Friday-Saturday)
January 11, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Jam with 5 bands (Sunday)
The Chambers Brothers family had originally been from Mississippi, but they had relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s. The four brothers had been singing gospel and folk music since about 1954, and were distinctive in that they had roots in both streams. When folk music evolved into folk-rock, the Chambers Brothers were better placed than many to "go electric." In 1966 the group would release People Get Ready on Vault Records. At this time, the Chambers Brothers had transcended their folk and gospel roots and were touring as a self-contained rock band. All of the brothers sang, while Willie and Joe Chambers played guitar, George Chambers played bass and Lester played harmonica. Drummer Brian Keenan (who was white) filled out the band.
At the end of 1967, after another album on Vault, the Chambers Brothers would make their Columbia debut with the nearly 11-minute long psychedelic soul classic "The Time Has Come Today" (with the immortal shout "my soul's been psychedelicized!" (summing up 60s music in 4 words). The experienced Chambers Brothers were already a solid live act, so they played many shows at some of the first psychedelic venues, like the Boston Tea Party.
The Chambers Brothers never recaptured the buzz of "The Time Has Come Today." Various repackages of older material on Vault and Folkways didn't help, but their next two Columbia albums didn't really make an impact (1968 's A New Time, A New Day, and 1969's Love, Peace and Happiness/Live At Bill Graham's Fillmore East). So by early 1970, the Chambers Brothers weren't really a hot item. Anyone who had seen them had probably enjoyed them, but for most listeners they had only had a single hit nearly three years earlier.
As it happens, we can safely infer that the Chambers Brothers were still a popular concert attraction, because Bill Graham had them headlining four nights at the Fillmore West from December 11-14 (Thursday through Sunday, supported by The Nice and King Crimson). What this meant, however, was that any pent-up interest in seeing the Chambers Brothers accrued to Graham at the Fillmore West, and the Family Dog only got leftovers. This pattern would repeat itself in early 1970, with Family Dog headliners only playing after a weekend at Fillmore West.
We don't know who else was on the bill ("And Friends"). And the Sunday night show was just 5 unnamed bands, typical of the kind of community events that had been typical of the Family Dog in late 1969. This Sunday event, however, was pretty much the last such at the Family Dog. The venue would stay dark until the last weekend of the month, and then it would return with a focus on weekend shows by established bands with albums. The first phase of the Family Dog on The Great Highway, intriguing as it may have been, was now finished, and the next chapter awaited.
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