June 30-July 1, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: The Kinks/Osceola [FDGH '70 XVII]

 

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 (May 29-June 27, 1970 various) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

June 30-July 1, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: The Kinks/Osceola (Tuesday-Wednesday)
The Family Dog on The Great Highway had pretty much just been a hall for rent throughout June of 1970. I presume that Chet Helms was keeping it open only because he was seeking some sort of well-capitalized partner in order to make another go of it. The month of July only featured a couple of bookings, and two of them were mid-week, so the venue was only just barely open. Yet a few of the bookings in July were among the most fascinating in the brief history of the Family Dog, and worthy of careful examination of the evidence that remains. Perhaps the most unlikely booking was on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 30 and July 1, 1970, when the Family Dog on The Great Highway presented no less than The Kinks. As if that wasn't enough, the Family Dog presented The Kinks again the next night (Thursday July 2), at a High School Auditorium in the suburbs. This was the only Family Dog promotion at a High School, at a time when the Bay Area rock audience was centered around that age group.

The Kinks had been a legendary "British Invasion" band since the release of "You Really Got Me" and "All Day And All Of The Night" back in 1964. In 1965, the Kinks had been booked to tour the United States. In Los Angeles, singer Ray Davies got in a fight with the head of the Los Angeles Musicians Union. As Ray had been a champion teenage boxer, he probably thumped the guy pretty hard. The US Musicians Union banned The Kinks from performing in the States. So unlike the Beatles, Stones, Animals, Yardbirds and others, the Kinks weren't able to build the reputation from touring that their music deserved. Instead, they concentrated on England and Europe. Despite the touring ban, a few Kinks hits still made it across the pond to US radio, like "Sunny Afternoon."

By 1969, the fact that the Kinks could not tour the States was a serious impediment to their future success. With the rise of the Fillmore circuit, English bands without a giant hit single (like Fleetwood Mac, Traffic or Ten Years After) could build an audience and sell albums, thanks to FM radio. The Kinks made great records, but they needed to get out there. Eventually, the union issues were resolved, and the Kinks were able to tour America in the Fall of '69. The band was still intact: Ray Davies was the lead singer and songwriter (and rhythm guitarist), his brother Dave played lead guitar and sang harmonies and Mick Avory played drums. All three had been in the Kinks from the beginning. Bassist John Dalton had permanently replaced Peter Quaife in early '69. The Kinks initial tour of the US was as a quartet, mostly opening for other bands. The Kinks were inconsistent and unpredictable, which, while part of their appeal, didn't always translate well on the road. 

In the Summer of 1970, the Kinks had set out on another North American tour. Their most recent album had been Arthur (or The Decline And Fall of The British Empire), released in October of 1969. It was a brilliant album that holds up well today, but it hadn't yet gained much traction on FM (or AM) radio in the States or Canada. In 1970, the Kinks had added John Gosling on piano, initially just for the US tour (Gosling would in fact stay in the band until 1978). The Kinks were booked in June for some Northeastern US shows, a Canadian tour, then a week in Hawaii and a few days at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood. It was common for touring bands, particularly from England, to spend time in Hawaii as a kind of vacation. They would book a few shows in Hawaii to pay for the trip.

Unfortunately for The Kinks, however (per the indispensable Douglas Hinman's amazing 2004 Kinks chronology All Day And All Of The Night: Concerts, Recordings and Broadcasts 1961-1996), the three gigs booked for Hawaii from June 30-July 2 were canceled, as the venue had closed. Having just played British Columbia, and awaiting a high-profile Whisky show, the Kinks were stranded on the West Coast. The bookings at the Family Dog were clearly put together at the last minute. Since The Kinks were playing the Whisky on the weekend of July 3-5, only these weekdays would have been available. The Fillmore West had booked Traffic and Leon Russel. The Kinks were not popular enough yet to get Bill Graham to upend his booking, nor would Graham have booked a show competing against his own venue. That seems to have left the Family Dog.

We can be pretty certain that the Kinks Family Dog shows took place, but we don't know how many tickets were sold or what songs the band played. We have some slight confirmation of the High School show on Thursday (see below), but the Kinks appearance at the edge of the Western World remains just outside of our view. As any Kinks fan can tell you, the Kinks can be a charming mess, or get in a fistfight onstage or be one of the greatest bands you've ever seen in a concert. Ray Davies' song choices could be a surprise--sometimes he might do old blues covers--but the Kinks never run out of great songs to play, when Ray was inclined. So the Kinks could have absolutely killed it (if anyone has an inkling about what really happened, please note them in the Comments).

Things were about to change for The Kinks fortunes in the States, however, in a very unlikely way. In May, the Kinks had finished a new single, which was released in the UK in early June. It was starting to be a hit in England. "Lola" would not be released in the US until the end of July, and it's hard to imagine that a sing-along about a transvestite would make a band's fortunes back in 1970, but that's what it did. So maybe the Family Dog audience got to hear then-unknown (to them) "Lola" for the first time, and maybe they all just sang along...when the Kinks would return to the States at the end of 1970, they were riding a big hit single and a popular album, and they wouldn't be playing little ballrooms on a Tuesday night.

Opening act Osceola were regular performers at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. Guitarist Bill Ande had founded the group in San Francisco, but all the members were transplanted Floridians. Osceola played around the Bay Area from 1969 to '72, but never recorded. The members mostly returned to successful music careers in the Southeast.

July 2, 1970 Ygnacio Valley High School, Concord, CA: The Kinks/Beggars Opera (Thursday)
The Kinks had an open date, so the Family Dog booked a show way out in Contra Costa County, over the hill from Berkeley. The suburbs in Contra Costa--Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Danville, Concord and so on--were just starting to boom. There were a lot of teenagers there, and not surprisingly a booming rock concert market. One intriguing dynamic of the Contra Costa County market was that the suburban teenagers all had access to cars, but in many cases were not allowed to go to San Francisco or Berkeley. They would all be dying to go to the Fillmore West or the Oakland Coliseum, but it was forbidden. So a fair number of bands played some venues on that side of the hill. There was a Fillmore competitor called the Concord Coliseum in 1967-68, and later a number of shows at the Concord Armory in 1968 and '69. 

Since school was out, it appears that the Ygnacio Valley High School gym was just rented like any other venue. Ygnacio Valley High School was at 755 Oak Grove Road in Concord, and had only opened in 1962. Since the Contra Costa suburbs were expanding, new schools had to be built to accommodate them. The local rock shows were centered around Concord because the network of freeways led to the town, and a critical mass of teenagers could go to a Concord show from different towns, even if they weren't allowed to go the City. 

Contra Costa teenagers read the newspaper, so they had all heard of the Family Dog. The Family Dog probably seemed like a cool and exotic place, so the fact that the Dog was bringing an English band to a local High School gym would have been extremely attractive to restless suburban teenagers. It does hint that Helms could have used the value of the Family Dog's hipness--today it would be called "His Brand"--to generate interest farther from San Francisco. He lacked the capital to do so, however, which poses the question of how these Kinks shows were financed, particularly this lone adventure to a distant suburb. As a curiosity, the Kinks had actually played Contra Costa the previous year, at the County Fairgrounds in Antioch (on November 26, 1969, opening for It's A Beautiful Day).

In a Comment Thread on my post about Concord rock shows in the 60s, a few commenters mention attending the Kinks show at YGVS, so it appears to have happened, yet once again we know next to nothing about it. Beggars Opera was a Contra Costa County band, but I don't know anything else about them. 

[update: 1 July 2023: Stellar researcher David Kramer-Smyth found a detailed newspaper report of the Ygnacio Valley HS Kinks show. Ironically, it mostly focuses on the local band Beggars Opera (from the Contra Costa Times, July 19, 1970) ]

The Contra Costa Times, July 19 '70 had a detailed report of the July 2 Ygnacio Valley HS show, mostly focusing on the local band Beggars Opera (thanks DKS for the grafted scan)

For the next post in the series (July 14-15, 1970 Terry Reid), see here