February 27-March 1, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen [FDGH '70 VII]

 

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."

The Family Dog In 1969
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 (February 20-21, 1970 Big Brother) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

 

February 27-March 1, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (Friday-Sunday)
The Family Dog had a relatively brief but intriguing history from June 13, 1969 through August 22, 1970. Without a doubt, the band that had the most importance to the venue was the Grateful Dead. They played six weekends at the Dog, and Jerry Garcia and the New Riders of The Purple Sage played five other shows when the Dead were not on the bill. No other San Francisco band of any importance played anywhere near that number of shows at the venue. We have tapes of almost all the music the Dead played, and while we have few real eyewitness accounts, the evidence suggests the Dead sold a lot of tickets and did really well at the door. That was probably not as true of other bands, although we can't be sure. We have Owsley's tapes, though, so we know the Grateful Dead played really, really well at the former Edgewater Ballroom.

Hopes must have been high when this weekend was booked. The Dead and Garcia had helped keep the Family Dog afloat in the dark Fall of 1969, and come the Winter of 1970 Chet Helms seemed to have a bright new plan. Gone was the sincere but unprofitable effort to be a "Community Center," and there was a renewed focus on being a weekend rock venue that emphasized San Francisco bands. It was true that Bill Graham Presents had first dibs on all the bands at Fillmore West, but the SF scene was vibrant enough that it didn't really matter. Bands could play a weekend at Fillmore West and follow up a few weeks later at the Family Dog, and everyone could thrive. 

I have written earlier about how things appeared: after being closed for most of January, the Family Dog had re-established itself with a series of weekend bookings featuring top San Francisco bands. Jefferson Airplane had kicked it off (January 30-31), then Quicksilver Messenger Service (February 6-7), then Steve Miller Band (February 13-14), then the re-activated Big Brother (February 20-21) and finally the Grateful Dead to close out the month. Granted, most of these bands had played Fillmore West a few weeks earlier. The Dead, for example, were booked by BGP at Fillmore West the weekend of February 5-8. They were the Dead, though--even back in 1970, four San Francisco Dead shows at Fillmore West just made their fans want to see them even more. 

Chet Helms, by all evidence, had new financial backing for the Family Dog, the kind that gave the bands (and their managements) confidence that their guarantees would be met and that they would get paid. Most importantly, however, Chet Helms had new partners, namely the Grateful Dead. According to Dead historian Dennis McNally (the Edward Gibbon of Deadheads), the Grateful Dead were going to move their operation from Novato to the Family Dog and join forces. The mind reels--imagine the 1970 Dead with their own venue at the edge of the Western World, a permanent home for Alembic, the New Riders and Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck.

It didn't happen. The Grateful Dead offices moved to the Family Dog in the last weekend of January, with the band otherwise occupied down on Bourbon Street, but they did not stay. Chet Helms has been criticized over the years--unfairly in my opinion--for having weaknesses as a businessman, but he was no crook. When Grateful Dead manager Lenny Hart refused to show Helms the Grateful Dead books, Helms canceled the merger. And rightly so--the Dead themselves fired Lenny Hart a few weeks later, and it would turn out that he had absconded with over $150,000 of the band's money, a staggering number in 1970. Lenny Hart quietly returned the Dead office to Novato before January was over.

On Monday, February 23, 1970, with the Dead still on the road, San Francisco bands played a benefit for them to raise cash for legal expenses

So the February 27 show must have been bittersweet behind the scenes. Instead of a triumphal homecoming by the Dead as partners in a glorious new venture, they staggered back from a Texas road trip ready to fire their manager, the looming specter of being broke and a soundman who could no longer travel with them. On Monday, February 23, Bill Graham had helped organize a benefit at Winterland for the cash-poor Dead, as the Airplane, Quicksilver and others played a gig while the band was still in Texas. As to any merger, since both the Dead and Helms had no capital, any agreement would only have been another sinkhole. This weekend's booking was just a gig for cash, which everyone needed.

The electric Grateful Dead would not play another show at the Family Dog on The Great Highway after this weekend. In April, the band would play three nights (April 17-19) billed as Bobby Ace and The Cards Off The Bottom Of The Deck and the New Riders of The Purple Sage. From what we know, this appeared to be a test run for the "Acoustic Dead" and of the new configuration of the Riders, with new bassist Dave Torbert. Miraculously, a tape survived of one of the Acoustic sets, but we actually have no eyewitness accounts of that event either. But as far as plugging in and soaring through the cosmos--the electric Grateful Dead punched their last ticket at the Dog on these nights.

There is a poster for the Grateful Dead Family Dog shows. In 1970, very few Family Dog shows had posters or flyers, that I am aware of. The Dead poster seems to be professionally done. Now, the Dead show was pretty much a guaranteed moneymaker, so spending a little extra on a poster makes sense. Still, I wonder how widely it was circulated. Bill Graham had a deal with various shopkeepers, in that he would give them a poster and they would display it in their window until after showtime, when they could keep the poster. If his team tried to tack up Fillmore posters on telephone poles or public bulletin boards, they would immediately be snatched as collector's items. Since the Family Dog had so few posters, I wonder if they even had any kind of network.

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen had relocated to Berkeley from Ann Arbor, MI in the Summer of 1969. They played some early gigs at the Family Dog, and were soon booked with some regularity. Only a few weekends after they arrived in town, Cody and the Airmen were booked to open for the Grateful Dead on the weekend of August 28-30, 1969. They must have hit it off, since they would open for the Dead and the New Riders many times over the next several years. George (Commander) Frayne ended up playing piano on the NRPS album, and eventually would become Jerry Garcia's neighbor in Stinson Beach. In 1973, when the Riders split off from Grateful Dead management, they shared management with Cody (manager Joe Kerr had been a college classmate of Frayne), accounting for the close working relationship between the bands.

Legend has it that the unassuming Emeryville house on the left was Lost Planet Airmen HQ back in the early 1970s

In February, 1970, however, the Lost Planet Airmen were still just getting their footing in the Bay Area. Their cosmic hippie cowboy rock and roll fit in with the evolution of the Dead that would begin with Workingman's Dead.  The Grateful Dead were in the midst of recording that album during this period. The New Riders were not really available, since they did not seem to have a bass player, so Cody and the Airmen were an appropriate alternative. Owsley taped Cody and the Airmen this weekend, and parts of the show turned up on the 2020 Owsley Stanley Foundation double-cd set Found In The Ozone. Most of the set was recorded in March when the Airmen would open for the Youngbloods, but there were a few tracks from the February shows.

At this time, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were

Billy C Farlow-vocals, harmonica
Bill Kirchen-lead guitar, vocals
West Virginia Creeper (Steve Davis)-pedal steel guitar
Andy Stein-fiddle, tenor sax
Commander Cody-piano, vocals
Buffalo Bruce Barlow-bass
Lance Dickerson-drums

Guitarist John Tichy had been in the band in the Summer, but he had returned to Ann Arbor to finish his PhD in Physics at the University of Michigan.

Appendix: Grateful Dead Setlists
Friday, February 27, 1970
Cold Rain & Snow, Mama Tried, Dancin' In The Streets, Easy Wind, Black Peter, Good Lovin', China Cat Sunflower> I Know You Rider> High Time, Hard To Handle, Casey Jones, Cumberland Blues, Not Fade Away> Turn On Your Lovelight

Saturday, February 28, 1970
I: Turn On Your Lovelight> Me & My Uncle, Cumberland Blues
II: Monkey & The Engineer, Little Sadie
III: China Cat Sunflower> I Know You Rider, High Time> Dire Wolf, Good Lovin', Big Boss Man, Casey Jones, Alligator> Drums> The Other One> Mason's Children> Turn On Your Lovelight, Uncle John's Band

Sunday, March 1, 1970
I: New Speedway Boogie Jam, Casey Jones, Big Boy Pete, Morning Dew, Hard To Handle, Me & My Uncle, Cryptical Envelopment> Drums> The Other One> Cryptical Envelopment> Black Peter, Beat It On Down The Line, Dire Wolf, Good Lovin', Cumberland Blues, King Bee, China Cat Sunflower> I Know You Rider
II: Uncle John's Band, Dancin' In The Streets, It's All Over Now Baby Blue

For the next post in this series (March 6-8, 1970 Lee Michaels), see here

February 20-21, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Big Brother and The Holding Company with Nick Gravenites/Cat Mother and The All-Night Newsboys [FDGH '70 VI]

 

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."

The Family Dog In 1969
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 (February 13-14, 1970 Steve Miller Band) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

 

The Rhythm Dukes (with Jerry Miller and Bill Champlin) were originally booked to open for Big Brother on February 20-21, 1970, but they were replaced by Cat Mother

February 20-21, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Big Brother and The Holding Company with Nick Gravenites/Cat Mother and The All-Night Newsboys (Friday-Saturday)
No band was more synonymous with Chet Helms and the Family Dog than Big Brother and The Holding Company. Back in the Fall of '65, Helms would host jam sessions in the basement of a big boarding house at 1090 Page Street. Some bands formed out of the jams, and a list of potential names was made up. Chet took two of the most promising--"Big Brother" and "The Holding Company"--and combined them for the group he would manage. The band's first gig under their new name was at Berkeley's Open Theater (at 2976 College Avenue, near Ashby).

Big Brother and The Holding Company would go on to play all the hippest, most underground shows in the thriving but still somewhat invisible underground rock scene. The band was a quartet with two guitarists (Sam Andrews and James Gurley), a converted folkie on bass (Peter Albin) and a former jazz drummer (Dave Getz). Big Brother was still figuring things out, but they weren't a cliche nor a copy of any other band. Their weakness was their vocals, compounded by the fact that they didn't really have a compelling figure to be the center of attention on-stage.

Manager Chet Helms had a solution. Back in 1963-64, Helms had become friendly with another expatriate Texan, a folk singer from Austin by way of Port Arthur with a big voice. She had returned to Austin by 1965, as some of her excesses were getting the better of her. So Helms commissioned his friend Travis Rivers to fetch Janis Joplin, and she joined Big Brother and The Holding Company. She made her debut with the band at June 24, 1966 at the Avalon. An eyewitness described her singing as "like tape being rewound," but Janis was compelling. Big Brother and The Holding Company were breakout stars from San Francisco, and Joplin became a one-name celebrity: even today, when we just say "Janis" we know it's her.

Helms was the manager of Big Brother and The Holding Company until late 1966. He had opened the Avalon Ballroom in April 1966, and Big Brother would be regular attractions. Even when Big Brother split with Helms--somewhat amicably--they were still booked at the Avalon. When the Avalon finally folded, Big Brother and The Holding Company had played the final show there on December 1, 1968. It was also Janis Joplin's final show as a member of the band, as she had left for stardom on her own. Big Brother disintegrated after her departure. 

Big Brother Members-1969
Big Brother still had a warehouse for their equipment, and thus a place to rehearse, but they didn't have a band. Guitarist Sam Andrew had joined Janis' Kozmic Blues Band, and James Gurley had retreated to the desert. Peter Albin and Dave Getz were jamming in the warehouse with Albin's old friend David Nelson and others. They even played a one-off gig at the Matrix in January of 1969. In late February, however, Albin and Getz joined up as new members of Country Joe and The Fish, for a National tour that went through May.

By the Fall of '69, the original members of Big Brother were ready to reconstruct themselves. They had been a band prior to Janis, and they would be one afterwards, even if the expectations were now forever changed. Janis Joplin had changed her band, so Sam Andrews was available. David Nelson could have thrown in with Big Brother, but chose a different option: starting the New Riders Of The Purple Sage with another old folkie friend, Jerry Garcia. James Gurley had returned, too, but only wanted to play bass, rather than lead guitar. The versatile Peter Albin could switch to guitar, so that was no problem. They re-debuted, if you will, at the Family Dog benefit at Fillmore West on November 19, 1969. Big Brother and The Holding Company were back.

Big Brother and The Holding Company, 1970
Big Brother and The Holding Company was still a famous name in rock and roll, even without Janis Joplin, so there was plenty of interest. The band was still signed to Columbia Records, too. Sam Andrews had started recording a solo album in Los Angeles, sometime in 1969. This project evolved into the reunion album for Big Brother. Nick Gravenites was signed up as producer. Gravenites had been the producer for Quicskilver Messenger Service's debut album, and he and Mike Bloomfield had helped Janis get her Kozmic Blues Band together, so he was intimately connected with the band. 

Gravenites was a good singer and writer, too, so he was booked to perform with Big Brother at the Family Dog. My general understanding is that Gravenites would come out and sing some numbers with the band, but did not perform the whole show. By this time, Big Brother had added a fifth member, David Schallock. Schallock had been in various Marin bands such as Freedom Highway. Schallock also played guitar (and bass), so Big Brother had a comparatively unique lineup with three lead guitarists. 

The headline weekend at the Family Dog marked the formal return of Big Brother. Since their November date at Fillmore West, they had played a few gigs, but their presence had been low-key. Returning to Chet Helms' venue had a symbolic importance that most fans recognized, even then. Like most Family Dog events of the time, however, we know nothing about the actual shows. Were they well attended? What did the band play? What songs did Gravenites sing? We really have no idea.

Big Brother and The Holding Company would release the underrated Be A Brother album on Columbia in mid-1970, produced by Gravenites. Gravenites sang two of his own songs on the record ("Heartache People" and "I'll Fix Your Flat Tire, Merle").

The Street Giveth and The Street Taketh Away, the debut album of Cat Mother and The All Night Newsboys. Jimi Hendrix produced the album for Polydor, released in 1969.

Cat Mother And The All-Night Newsboys
The Rhythm Dukes had originally been booked at the Family Dog as the opener, and were advertised on the flyer (above). The Rhythm Dukes were led by Jerry Miller of Moby Grape, and had originally included another ex-Grape, Don Stevenson (on guitar rather than drums). Stevenson had left, reducing the band to a trio. Briefly the Rhythm Dukes were a quintet, with which they had played the Family Dog in December, where they had opened for Canned Heat. After yet another gyration, their new lineup would feature no less than Bill Champlin on organ and vocals, as The Sons were sort of breaking up. It turned out, however, that the Sons had what was announced as their final gigs (in Berkeley and Antioch, respectively). As it actually happened, it wasn't the Sons final gigs--not even close--, but Champlin would join the Rhythm Dukes for a few months. Champlin would play with the Dukes at the Family Dog a few weeks later (March 6-8, opening for Lee Michaels). 

Instead of the Rhythm Dukes, the opening act for Big Brother was a Greenwich Village band called Cat Mother and The All Night Newsboys. Cat Mother and The All-Night Newsboys had formed in 1967. By 1969, they had been signed by Michael Jeffery, the manager of Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix had even produced the band's debut album on Polydor, The Street Giveth and The Street Taketh Away. Thanks to the Jeffery connection, Cat Mother got to open for Hendrix and a number of other high profile events. Cat Mother even had a minor hit in late '69, with medley of oldies called "Old Time Rock And Roll." In fact, the band's sound was more country-folk oriented, but they were versatile musicians.

By 1970, however, Cat Mother was anxious to separate themselves from Jeffery's questionable management practices. Their second album, Albion Doo-Wah, would be recorded at Pacific High Recorders in San Francisco. In February, the band had probably just arrived in the City for recording, and were likely to have been added to the Family Dog bill just because they were available.

After they finished their second album, Cat Mother relocated to San Francisco. San Francisco had a unique status for rock bands in the late 1960s and '70s. While the record industry was centered, as it always had been, in Manhattan and Hollywood, San Francisco was an enticing opportunity for rock groups. For one thing, the concert industry was thriving, so a good band could make a living whether they had an album or not. Plus, there were studios and plenty of A&R guys, so SF wasn't the wildnerness. And, it was California--no snow, pretty girls, open minds--so it wasn't hard to persuade fellow band members to make the move. A large number of bands from elsewhere moved to San Francisco.

 

The three founding members of the band, Roy Michaels (bass, vocals), Bob Smith (keyboards, vocals) and Michael Equine (drums), would all relocate permanently to California. At the time of this show, the band still had lead guitarist Paul Johnson and probably violinist Larry Packer. Both of them would ultimately return to New York. Michaels, Smith and Equine would move to Mendocino County and continue on as Cat Mother until 1977.

 

For the next post in this series (February 27-March 1, 1970 Grateful Dead), see here

 

February 13-14, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Steve Miller Band/Elvin Bishop Group [FDGH '70 V]

 

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."

The Family Dog In 1969
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 (February 6-7, 1970 Quicksilver Messenger Service) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

February 13-14, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Steve Miller Band/Elvin Bishop Group (Friday-Saturday)
At the end of January 1970, the Family Dog on The Great Highway had reconstructed themselves and apparently re-financed themselves. While a merger with the Grateful Dead organization had been scuttled (fortunately for both sides, since Dead manager Lenny Hart was busy ripping off the band), the Dog was on firmer footing. Even though the Dog focused on Bay Area bands, for each weekend in February and March, the Family Dog had the type of acts that would headline the Fillmore West as well. San  Francisco was established enough that the "local heroes" had major label record contracts, and in many cases genuinely successful albums.

Steve Miller, for example, had moved to San Francisco from Chicago in October, 1966, seeking greener musical pastures. He had found them. Miller had rapidly formed a band in Berkeley featuring transplants from his days in Madison and Chicago. The first real paying gig for the new Steve Miller Blues Band had been when Chet Helms paid him $500 to play a weekend at the Avalon in late December, 1966. Miller used the money to take his band out to dinner and to rent an apartment on College Avenue in Berkeley, since he had been living in his VW Microbus. So Miller was original Avalon if anyone was. 

Steve Miller Band debut album Children Of The Future (Capitol June 1968)

In the intervening years, Miller had added another old friend to his band, one Boz Scaggs from Texas. In 1967, after shrewdly waiting for the market to ripen for San Francisco bands, the Steve Miller Band had signed a lucrative contact with Capitol Records. The band's excellent debut album Children Of The Future, recorded in London, had only come out in June, 1968. It's successor, Sailor, recorded at the same time, had come out in October and peaked at #24. Scaggs had then left to go solo, leaving the band a trio (along with drummer Tim Davis, ex-Madison, and California bassist Lonnie Turner). The radio-friendly Brave New World, with the enduring title track and "Kow Kow Kalkulator" had been released in June of 1969, reaching #22. The underrated Your Saving Grace had been released in December of 1969, still managing to reach #38. These chart numbers weren't what the Steve Miller Band would achieve in the mid-70s, but his records hadn't been ignored. 

Ironically, the Steve Miller Band still hadn't played the Family Dog on The Great Highway prior to this weekend. Miller was loyal, and had headlined the November 19, 1969 benefit concert that helped save the Family Dog, so he knew who his friends were. But the fact that the Steve Miller Band hadn't headlined a weekend in 1969 was an implicit indication of the shaky finances of the Family Dog during the prior year. Here in February of 1970, the Steve Miller Band was finally on top of the bill for the whole weekend.

At this time, Miller was mostly working on recording his follow-up to Your Saving Grace, which would be released later in the year as Number 5. Tim Davis was still the drummer, but Lonnie Turner had finally left the band after three years. Replacing him on bass and vocals was Bobby Winkelmann, formerly of the East Bay band Frumious Bandersnatch. The Frumious had come from Contra Costa County, just over the Berkeley hills. At the time, there were plenty of teenagers there, but not many bands. The group was part of Bill Graham's Millard Agency, and played a lot of gigs opening for bands at Fillmore West and the like, but they had never made it over the hump. On September 29, 1968, Frumious Bandersnatch had opened a free concert in Palo Alto for the Steve Miller Band, which is where they met. Frumious Bandersnatch packed it in sometime in 1969. Ultimately, however, 4 of the 5 members of the band would end up joining the Steve Miller Band (Winkelmann, guitarist David Denny, bassist Ross Valory and drummer John King).

The Steve Miller Band were premiere Bay Area headliners, and the Family Dog on The Great Highway was finally in a position to book them. The only cloud on the horizon was that Bay Area concert promotion had a pecking order, and Bill Graham was always the top rooster. The Steve Miller Band had headlined the Fillmore West two weekends earlier (January 29-February 1, Thursday through Sunday), supported by Sha Na Na. According to Ralph Gleason's Chronicle column, it had been very well attended. That meant, of course, that the Family Dog was getting leftovers, if tasty ones. The Fillmore West booking also explains why there was almost never any "coming soon" promotions (like posters) at the Family Dog. Graham, like all promoters, would have insisted that a headliner like Miller could not advertise another Bay Area show until his Fillmore West dates were complete. Steve Miller probably still drew a pretty good crowd to the Family Dog, but Graham was getting first bite.

The Elvin Bishop Group were regulars at the few Bay Area rock nightclubs, like the Keystone Korner and The Matrix. But Bishop had just played the Fillmore West, too, second on the bill to Chicago on the weekend of January 8-11. Now, it's even less surprising that the Elvin Bishop Group gave the favorable booking to Bill Graham, since Bishop recorded for one of Graham's record labels and was booked by Graham's Millard Talent Agency.

Elvin Bishop had been an original member of the groundbreaking Paul Butterfield Blues Band, going back to 1965. When the Butterfield band first played the Fillmore back in February '66, the twin guitars of Bishop and Mike Bloomfield, and the slashing harmonica of Butterfield made for an unforgettable front line. The Butterfield Blues Band would play their signature song "East-West" for 15 or 20 minutes, with beautiful modal jamming, while contemporary San Francisco bands were still figuring out electric instruments. When Bloomfield had left the Butterfield band in early '67 to move to San Francisco, Bishop had taken over the front line as Butter's main foil. After two more albums (Resurrection Of Pigboy Crabshaw and In My Own Dream), Bishop himself had moved to San Francisco in mid-68.

By the end of 1968, the Elvin Bishop Group was playing regularly around the Bay Area. Bill Graham had not one but two record labels, in partnership with producer David Rubinson, and Bishop was signed to Fillmore Records, distributed by CBS. The Elvin Bishop Group album had been released in mid-1969. The Millard Agency booked Elvin Bishop all over Northern California, on the premise that even if suburban teenagers might not be allowed to come to San Francisco, Millard could bring the Fillmore West bands to them. At the time, the Elvin Bishop Group would have been

Elvin Bishop-guitar, vocals
Jo Baker-vocals
Stephen Miller-organ, vocals
Kip Mackerlin-bass
John Chambers-drums

Organ player Stephen Miller, from the Elvin Bishop Group, had released a solo album on Phillips in 1970

Stephen Miller (the "other" Stephen Miller) was from Cedar Rapids, IA, and had led the band Linn County, which had moved to San Francisco. Linn County had released three albums on Phillips (a Mercury subsidiary), while Miller had played with the Bishop Group when he could. Their last album had been Til The Break Of Dawn, released in late '69. Linn County still existed in early 1970, sort of, and played the occasional show, but Miller was full-time in the Bishop Group by now. Miller would release a solo album on Phillips in 1970, featuring members of both Linn County and the Bishop Group, probably fulfilling an obligation to the label. 

The Millard Agency and Bill Graham was happy to book the Elvin Bishop Group at the Family Dog, even though the Dog was a competitor to the Fillmore West. It was probably a good paying gig, and in any case the Fillmore West had the dominant position. As I have stated in previous posts, I think Bill Graham was happy with Chet Helms as a weak but competent rival across town, rather than leaving an opening for a better capitalized threat.

For the next post in this series (Feb 20-21, 1970 Big Brother), see here

 

February 6-7, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Mike Seeger/Freedom Highway [FDGH '70 IV]

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."

The Family Dog In 1969
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 (February 4, 1970 "A Night At The Family Dog") see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

February 6-7, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA:  Quicksilver Messenger Service/Mike Seeger (Saturday only)/Freedom Highway (Friday-Saturday)
The Jefferson Airplane had played a stealth event to re-open the Family Dog on the Great Highway on the last weekend of January, and the three biggest bands in San Francisco--Santana, the Airplane and The Grateful Dead--had filmed a PBS television special in the middle of the week (Tuesday and Wednesday February 3-4). For the first properly advertised show of the new Family Dog, Chet Helms presented the return of Quicksilver Messenger Service. The band had not exactly broken up, but just as the band's popularity had been peaking at the end of 1968, with a popular debut album and a live one coming, the band had disintegrated. Quicksilver Messenger Service had spent 1969 as a pale shadow of itself. Now, as far as fans were concerned, they were back.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway had returned to business at the end of January with a seemingly new plan. They had acquired capital from somewhere--probably hippie entrepreneurs who sold "certain products"--and the venue was focused on high profile weekend bookings rather than financially draining community events. The Dog's focus was on San Francisco's own bands.  Since San Francisco was one of the worldwide centers of rock music, all the "locals" not only had albums, many of them were nationally successful. Although the Fillmore West was still better paying and higher profile, it also emphasized national touring acts, which the new Dog largely ignored. From that point of view, the return of Quicksilver was perfect.

By any calculation, Quicksilver Messenger Service was an original San Francisco psychedelic ballroom band, whose limited output from Back In The Day has paradoxically made them more popular rather than less. For most of us who weren't there, the band's first two Capitol albums, Quicksilver Messenger Service (released May 1968) and Happy Trails (released March 1969) are true San Francisco rock classics, lysergically etched in the brains of past, present and future hippies. What few live tapes survive of the band from 1967 and '68 are plenty impressive, as well. 

The roots of Quicksilver go back to late 1965 and the very beginning of San Francisco rock. A few long-haired musicians had been rehearsing at the Matrix, and their band did not even have a name. Jefferson Airplane had poached their guitarist, Skip Spence, and turned him into their drummer. The unnamed-band's bassist (David Freiberg) then spent 60 days in jail on a parole violation for weed. Two guys in the band (guitarists John Cippolina and Jim Murray) went to the very first Family Dog event at Longshoreman's Hall on October 16, 1965 (pre-Chet Helms), and met two musicians from Stockton, CA, whose band (The Brogues) had just fallen apart. Once guitarist Gary Duncan and drummer Greg Elmore joined Cippolina, Murray and Freiberg, the band was back on its feet. The Quicksilver Messenger Service had even put on their own show at the Fillmore (February 12, 1966), before Bill Graham had fully established his operation. So Quicksilver went back to the very beginning.

Quicksilver Messenger Service was an essential part of every major San Francisco venue and rock event from 1966 through 1968, worthy of a book in its own right (actually, I know someone who wrote one, and it's very good, but I don't think it will ever see the light of day). Old tapes show us that the initial Quicksilver quintet had a broad palate and an interesting mixture of driving rhythms and folk-rock harmonies. By the time their debut album was released in May, 1968, however, Jim Murray had departed. There were fewer harmonies and more guitar, right in line with the explosion of psychedelia. Quicksilver toured the country, and the quartet killed it everywhere they went, less sloppy than the Airplane yet more direct than the Grateful Dead. Stardom beckoned for the band.

Unfortunately, guitarist Gary Duncan left Quicksilver Messenger Service at the end of 1968, feeling the band had stagnated. Duncan felt they had been playing the same set live for months, one of the things that made them powerful on the road. It's also why most '68 QMS tapes are pretty much the same, if uniformly enjoyable. Duncan's guitar was essential to the band's sound, and he shared lead vocals with Freiberg. Quicksilver existed in 1969, but only as a ghost. Duncan had gone off to form a group with former folk singer Dino Valenti (whose story is too long to tell here).

In March, 1969, Capitol had released the band's second album, Happy Trails. Happy Trails, mostly recorded live, remains a psychedelic classic to this day. "Who Do You Love," taking up most of side two, showed the rest of the music world how psychedelia was done just right in San Francisco. The album got major airplay on the new FM rock stations all over the country. The band was a hit. But they weren't really a band without Duncan.

Quicksilver Messenger Service 3rd album, Shady Grove, released by Capitol in December 1969. Nicky Hopkins was a member of the band, and Dan Healy was the engineer.

Quicksilver Messenger Service muddled through 1969, trying to record a follow-up to Happy Trails. Lead guitarist John Cippolina wasn't a writer, however, nor was Freiberg, even though he was a good singer. Pianist Nicky Hopkins, a friend of Cippolina's, joined the band, but he wasn't a writer or singer either. Producer Nick Gravenites contributed some songs, a few friends contributed some songs and the band released the messy album Shady Grove in December of 1969. Throughout the year, the band played perhaps a half-dozen gigs, mostly unsatisfactory ones. A band with great promise had been stopped in its tracks. 

In 1969, however, Duncan and Valenti had achieved nothing together, so they rejoined Quicksilver Messenger Service at Winterland on New Year's Eve 1969. I'm not really sure what went down on stage that night (the tape circulating with the New Year's date does not seem to be from that show). Still, all their fans were happy to have Duncan back on the train. The new Quicksilver had the core quartet (Cippolina, Duncan, Freiberg, Elmore), along with Hopkins on piano and Valenti as another vocalist. It seemed like a winning combination. This weekend at the Family Dog was the public return of Quicksilver Messenger Service. Shady Grove had been a flop of an album, but everything looked promising.

Mike Seeger at the U. of Montana in 1972

Legendary folk artist Mike Seeger (1933-2009) was added to the bill for Saturday night. Seeger seemed to be touring around, and he was so seminal that he could play rock or folk gigs with ease. Seeger (half-brother of Pete) had played the Family Dog with his legendary band The New Lost City Ramblers back in August. By early 1970, the Ramblers had broken up. While Seeger might have performed as a solo, he had a lot of friends on the Berkeley folk scene, so some fellow musicians probably joined him.

The New Lost City Ramblers had been formed in Greenwich Village in 1958. At the time, string band and “old-timey” music was inaccessible to all but the most determined of record collectors. By performing and recording this music, the New Lost City Ramblers were the essential actors in introducing early American music to serious folk musicians, from Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia to everyone else. The original trio had been John Cohen, Mike Seeger and Tom Paley. Tracy Schwarz had replaced Paley in the early 1960s. By 1969, the Ramblers had released over 15 albums. They would stop performing regularly after 1969, but continued to play occasional reunions for decades.  Their last album had been Modern Times, which had been released in 1968 on Folkways. Seeger continued to tour as a mostly solo performer from 1970 onwards, although he worked with a variety of other musicians as well.

Freedom Highway, as a trio, circa 1968

Freedom Highway was a band of young Marin players, under the aegis of Quicksilver manager Ron Polte. The band had been around in some form since 1966. By this time, they were probably a trio, with Richie Ray Harris on guitar, Scott Inglis on bass and Bruce Brymer on drums. They did not have a  record, although some demo tapes from the previous year were released as Freedom Highway Made In '68 in 2002 (guitarist Gary Phillipet had also been in the band in 1968, as was bassist Dave Schallock).

What Happened?
Like most shows at the Family Dog on The Great Highway, we don't really know what happened. In this instance, however, we do have a tape of Quicksilver Messenger Service's performances. The Quick aren't the Dead, however, so tape scholarship isn't nearly so advanced. There are two sets of music that may be from one night or two. Based on the setlists, I think these are from Friday and Saturday nights--note the encore is the same both nights. Quicksilver, unlike the Dead, never really had that much material, so they weren't really inclined to play a lengthy two-set show.

It would be interesting to know how the new-edition Quicksilver went over with the crowd. In early 1970, the band was known from Happy Trails for the contrast of Duncan's driving guitar against Cippolina's unique electronic shiver. The brilliant Hopkins would fit in easily with that. Dino Valenti, however, was rather an acquired taste. Valenti did contribute the song "Fresh Air," a kind of hit that would help temporarily revitalize the band's fortunes, but not everyone liked Valenti. More importantly, Dino was the kind of singer who dominated every song he sang, moaning wordlessly when he wasn't singing. Not everyone liked it, particularly if they just wanted to hear Duncan and Cippo going at it.

Such were the criticisms of the Valenti-era Quicksilver by the end of the 1970. But we don't know whether people's expectations were met or disappointed by what actually went down in February. My guess is that fans were happy to hear the two guitarists back together, and figured they would adjust to the rest of it over time.

February 9, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Monday Night Class with Stephen Gaskin
On February 9, Stephen Gaskin held his final "Monday Night Class" at the Family Dog. These events had been regularly held on Mondays--though not quite every Monday--since at least August of 1969. Gaskin spoke about what would now be called "Human Potential," but at the time was considered a "hip guru." After this Monday night, Gaskin moved his presentations to Sunday afternoons at the nearby Cliff House. Sometime in 1970, Gaskin and his fellow travelers rented a fleet of school buses and journeyed around America, ultimately moving to a large piece of property in Tennessee called The Farm. Although Gaskin died in 2014, the Farm is still functioning today.

The final Monday night class was one of the last vestiges of the Family Dog on The Great Highway as a "Hip Community Center." For the next several months, the Dog focused on being a working rock venue.

Appendix: Quicksilver Messenger Service Setlists, Family Dog on The Great Highway, February 1970

Friday, February 6, 1970
1. Intro > Fresh Air
2. Shady Grove
3. Tabla Jam
4. Don't Let it Happen to You
5. Mona
6. The Truth
7. Joseph's Coat >
8. Edward the Mad Shirt Grinder
Encore :
9. Poor Boy    

Saturday February 7, 1970
    1. Intro > Jam > Pride Of Man
    2. Subway
    3. Gold & Silver
    4. Fresh Air
    5. Too Far
    6. Mojo
    7. Who Do You Love?
    Encore:
    8. Poor Boy

John Cipollina, Dino Valenti, Greg Elmore, David Freiberg, Nicky Hopkins & Gary Duncan.

1st generation reel to reel > revox > amplifiers > tascam audio cdrw750 > cd > computer > plex tool professional XL > wav > flac.

For the next post in this series (February 13-14, 1970 Steve Miller Band), see here