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 4, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Santana/Kimberly "A Night At The Family Dog" [FDGH '70 III]

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 (January 30-31, 1970 Jefferson Airplane) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

February 4, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA:  Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Santana/Kimberly "A Night At The Family Dog" (Wednesday)
Most of the concrete information we have about the Family Dog on The Great Highway comes from Grateful Dead scholarship. Almost all of the surviving live tapes from the Dog are from the Grateful Dead or associated with them. Those non-Dead, non-Garcia tapes that exist were largely recorded by either Owsley or Alembic (Bob Matthews et al), each affiliated with the Dead. On top of that, what press coverage there was on the Family Dog was often anchored by reporting about the Dead or Jerry Garcia. 

For the wider audience of rock fans, and even of Deadheads, the most prominent knowledge of the Family Dog on The Great Highway was the Public Television special "A Night At The Family Dog," recorded at a special concert for an invited audience on Wednesday, February 4, 1970. The show was initially broadcast on NET (now PBS-tv) affiliate stations nationwide on April 27, 1970, and re-broadcast various times. With only three commercial networks and the occasional independent station, Public Television shows were widely watched in a way that would be unfathomable today. I assure you that the NET "Night At The Family Dog" special was watched by young people nationwide in large numbers, and was probably influential in suggesting that events like this went on in San Francisco all the time. Certainly, if you were in cold Des Moines or windy El Paso and saw Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Santana sharing the stage, everybody dancing and a big jam afterwards, it would make you believe that San Francisco was the promised land indeed.

I have looked into this event at some length, starting a decade ago when I discovered a contemporary San Francisco Chronicle article about the Wednesday night filming of the KQED special by Ralph Gleason. Although Gleason was disingenuous about his role--he was co-producer of the TV special--it was a striking description, and our only source of information up until that time. It seems, however, that there was a lot more to the story. At least some of the music from the special may have been recorded the night before. There was a dress rehearsal the night before, with professional video and audio, some of it may  have been used in the TV special [for a more Grateful Dead-oriented version of this discussion, see my blog post here].

The Grateful Dead's performance at Chet Helms' Family Dog on The Great Highway on February 4, 1970 is fairly well known today. The hour-long video of concert highlights, originally broadcast on Public Television, has since been released in 2007 on DVD as A Night At The Family Dog. In 2005, the Grateful Dead released the recording of their entire set from that night. Thus both the audio and some video are available from the show, a rare and potent combination. However, while the music is well-covered, and video is available, very little has been recalled about the circumstances of the actual event itself. Even the Dead's cd release is scarce on details. Some years ago, I unearthed detailed coverage of the February 4 event itself, written by SF Chronicle critic Ralph Gleason. While Gleason was disingenuous about the fact that he was co-producer of the special, it was an informative blow-by-blow description of the event (you can read my detailed blog post here). You can watch the video, play the cd, light one up--legally, in most states--and get a feel for what it might have been like Back In The Day.

Grateful Dead scholarship never rests, however, and it seems that the video and cd may have been somewhat more of a pastiche than we originally thought. One of the best sources of the era has been Sally Mann Romano, the ex-wife of the late Jefferson Airplane drummer Spencer Dryden. Her 2018 book The Band's With Me is a must-read for anyone interested in California rock history in the late 60s and early 70s. In a Twitter exchange, Romano recalled that the filming of the TV special was actually two nights at the Family Dog, on Tuesday and Wednesday (February 3 and February 4). This memory was confirmed by an article published much later. The first was a rehearsal and sound check, prudent considering that filming live rock concerts was still in its infancy. I recently discussed the possibility that some of the released Grateful Dead material may have been from the rehearsal the day before.

Owsley Stanley's tape box for the recording at the Family Dog on February 3, 1970. The sticker says "Probably really 2/4/70"--I disagree.

What About Tuesday, February 3?
The Owsley Stanley Foundation has a long-term project of preserving Owsley's live recordings, even when the tapes themselves may not yet be released. Recently the Foundation announced that an Owsley 2-track recording of the February Family Dog had been preserved. The tape box itself says "See 16-track," an indicator that Owsley's recording was different than the Bob Matthews/Alembic recording that would have been the basis of the PBS video special. Owsley, always scrupulous about dates, has marked the box "Dead #2/Airplane #1, 3 Feb 70 Family Dog." A sticker on the box, in different handwriting, says "Probably really 2/4/70," since February 4 was the known date of the live recording of the special.

As I have documented in the previous post in this series, the Family Dog on The Great Highway had re-opened the previous weekend with a comparatively stealthy appearance by the Jefferson Airplane on Friday and Saturday, January 30 and 31. When I asked Sally Mann Romano about this on Twitter, however, she specifically did not recall that weekend's shows, and her recollections are uniformly precise. She plainly recalled going to the Family Dog for two days, presumably February 3 and 4 (Tuesday and Wednesday), and she understandably said that she surely would have remembered spending 4 out of 6 nights at the Dog. Mann Romano's recollection was my first indication of a rehearsal filming on the night before the official event. 

Now, the most-likely explanation for Mann and Dryden not going to the Dog on the weekend is an only-in-Jefferson-Airplane category. The most likely reason was that the Airplane were thinking about firing Dryden, and were trying out drummer Joey Covington, all without telling Spencer or his wife. Indeed, Dryden would be pushed out of the band a month later, and Covington took over the drum chair in March. The actual dating of Covington's arrival is confusing, and not a rabbit hole I will go down here, but suffice to say inviting Covington to a secret gig and not telling the current drummer was just another day in Jefferson Airplaneville. 

What we are left with, however, is the knowledge that there was a rehearsal the night before the official taping. Today, even small venues are set up for live video with synchronized sound--we can all do it ourselves on our phones now anyway--but this was new stuff in 1970. Video cameras were giant at the time, and needed their own locations. Separate trucks were needed for the video feed and the sound recording, and cable snakes would have been laid everywhere. It's not surprising that a full tech rehearsal was in order. And it's also likely that the entire rehearsal was filmed and the music recorded, if only to ensure that there was backup material in case the "official" event on Wednesday (Feb 4) had technical problems.

If there was a full rehearsal the night before, it would not be at all surprising to find out that the official video may have been a pastiche of both nights. At the time, the entire industry considered live recording another way to create product, not an historic record of an event. One track on the Woodstock movie soundtrack album, for example, was actually recorded at Fillmore East (CSNY's "Wooden Ships"). The Grateful Dead released the Family Dog show as part of their Download Series in 2005, but that series was poorly curated and had almost no recording information. The date was listed as February 4, but that was probably based on an assumption. The cd has 9 tracks. The final six are the same as the ones on Owsley's tape (above). I don't think the Dead repeated six songs--either there was only one show, or I think the Dead played better the first night rather than the second, and three of those tracks were used for the PBS video{see the Appendix below for track listings].

What About The Grateful Dead on February 4, 1970?
If in fact, the existing audio and video recordings of the Grateful Dead were from February 3, not February 4, and there were two nights, what did the Grateful Dead play on February 4? It raises the tantalizing possibility that there would have been existing professional recordings of the Dead from the "official" night that were never used. Since there was an invited crowd on Wednesday night, probably there were plenty of crowd shots, but the Dead's actual performance would have been different. My guess is that the Santana and Airplane sets were used from the 4th, as was the jam (opening act Kimberly, associated with Santana management, would not have been recorded).

Unfortunately, however, video tape and 16-track recording tape were expensive. If it was determined that the Dead's February 3 set was superior, then the Dead tapes for the 4th would simply have been erased. Owsley seems to have taped the rehearsal night, but it seems less likely he would have been allowed to tape the "official" performance, if only because space would have been at a premium. There remains the remote hope that some fragments exist, somewhere, or perhaps some production notes. Since no one asked Sally Mann Romano, the existing Owsley tape was casually indicated (by the sticker) as incorrectly dated, when it could have been accurate. Over in the Comments Thread on my Grateful Dead blog post, a careful review of the clothes band members were wearing points toward the February 4 date being accurate, and Owsley's tape box date being wrong.

The tantalizing part is that Owsley's label dates the show as February 3, but says "Grateful Dead #2" (and "Jefferson Airplane #1). Was there a "Grateful Dead" #1" box with material from February 3? Will we find an Owsley tape with more Airplane, or more Santana, or more Dead? If in fact the Owsley box above was just misdated--unlike Owsley, but very plausible--then it meant Owsley had his deck running. We can tell he got some extra Airplane. Maybe he got some Santana, or some of the big jam at the end, too? Now, sure, tech rehearsals usually have a lot of standing around, and bands idly jamming while they wait for something to be checked out or corrected. But with the Dead, that sounds like fun. Here's to hoping some musical fragments from February 3 and 4 come to light, thanks to Mr Owsley. 

Now, as for the video, video tape was very expensive in those days, and any video from February 3 is likely went to the cutting room floor, never to be seen again. Any Dead video from the 3rd has likely disappeared. Sic Transit Gloria Psychedelia.

Appendix 1: A Night At The Family Dog TV show
Broadcast on Public Television stations on or about April 27, 1970
Produced by Ralph J. Gleason and Bob Zagone for National Educational Television (NET)

A Night At The Family Dog DVD
with Grateful Dead/Jefferson Airplane/Santana
Eagle Vision: released 2007

• Incident At Neshabur - Santana
• Soul Sacrifice - Santana
• Hard To Handle - Grateful Dead
• China Cat Sunflower - Grateful Dead
• I Know You Rider - Grateful Dead
• The Ballad of You And Me And Pooneil - Jefferson Airplane
• Eskimo Blue Day - Jefferson Airplane
• Super jam featuring members of Santana, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane

 A Night At The Family Dog audio
Grateful Dead Download Series
Grateful Dead Records: released 2005

• Hard To Handle
• Black Peter 
• Me and My Uncle 
• China Cat Sunflower > 
• I Know You Rider 
• St. Stephen > 
• Not Fade Away > 
• St. Stephen > 
• In The Midnight Hour
  

 (plus bonus tracks from other 1970 shows)

Appendix 2: Excerpts from Ralph Gleason's San Francisco Chronicle column, February 6, 1970

"Do you have a set schedule for what's going to happen?" the technician asked Bob Zagone of KQED. "We don't have a set schedule for anything, Zagone said. 'We have a loose schedule."

They were in the KQED mobile video tape recording truck outside the Family Dog. Several other trucks and a generator, roaring away like a power drill, were set up in the parking lot. Zagone and the KQED crew were getting ready to videotape a Jefferson Airplane party at the Family Dog for National Educational Television.

There's a young band called 'Kimberly' going on stage starting in a few minutes," Zagone said. "The it will be Santana. After that I don't know what's going to happen."

The cables were strung all along the sidewalk and into the hall and the huge TV cameras on dollies were rolling back and forth through the place in the wild assembly of San Francisco hip society.

On stage the musicians were plugging in their guitars and tuning. In a little while Kimberly, a neat, melodic band, began. Light men experimented with different combinations. Rock critics wandered through the hall. "It has the right feeling tonight," Mike Goodwin of Rolling Stone said. And poet Lew Welch pointed out that it was one of the few times in recent memories that you could actually get close to a band and not be jammed by the press of a crowd.

After Kimberly, Santana took over and the rhythms of the drums and the bass melded with the guitar and conga drum and rose to an incredible [something]. It ended with Santana almost leaning over backwards, hitting the guitar strings and bassist David Brown, his eyes squeezed shut, flailing away at the guitar. The crowd screamed. Out in the truck, Bob Zagone complained "we're not getting that audience noise" and Bob Matthews, who was doing the sound, whipped out a mike and set it up taping the audience.  

"We'll go dark as they start their set and bring the light up gradually," Zagone said and the Grateful Dead began. In the truck the multiple images on the little screens made a fascinating montage. Jerry Garcia's face silhouetted but still clear, approached the mike on the screen and he began to sing. The little screens that showed the pictures [of] the various cameras were registering, flicked from one to another. "Gimme a two shot," Zagone said, "Let's see both those guitars."

Out in the crowd, which was dancing or sitting on the floor and around the sides of the stage, John Carpenter of the L.A. Free Press said "when is it going to be aired?" and hoped a definite date could be set. The man from N.E.T said probably in April. "It's a good night," Carpenter said. "I had forgotten what San Francisco was really like. I've seen people I haven't seen in years."

On stage the sound was into those rhythmic phrases that make the Dead such groovy dance music and several guests were dancing behind the band and on the stage. Still photographers leaped up from the audience and shot pictures like the paparazzi in "Z."

Then the Airplane came on and Grace smiled and Marty sang "Do you want to know a secret, just between you and me," and the lights flickered off the sweat on his forehead as he sang and Spencer drove into the drums with a fierce concentration and Jorma sang "Good Shepherd" and the crowd gyrated and the cameras rolled back and forth.

It was a great evening. San Francisco within a week had two TV specials shot here. Both on rock. There will be more and if they end up on the screen as good as they are in person, the rest of the country will see something unique.

For the next post in this series (Feb 6-7 '70, Quicksilver Messenger Service), see here

 

November 1-2, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Danny Cox/Golden Toad [FDGH '69 XXV]

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

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For the previous entry (October 17-30, 1969) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

October 31, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Danny Cox/Alan Watts/Golden Toad/Hells Angels Own Band (Friday)
The Family Dog had lurched through October with little to show for it. The venue had been open almost every night of the month, mostly with a variety of community-oriented events that only charged $1.00 admission on weeknights. While in retrospect we can see that some of the weekend acts would have been playing some good music (Kaleidoscope or Brewer And Shipley, for example), they weren't really good draws. Yet Jerry Garcia had played there with the New Riders of The Purple Sage, and while the Riders were too new to really have a following, at least Garcia himself was a genuine star. Indeed, the scanty evidence available to us suggests that the Grateful Dead were the one consistent draw at the Family Dog on the Great Highway. They played there more than any other band at their level (i.e. Fillmore West headliner), so things must have gone well. The Dead would be back at the Family Dog on Saturday and Sunday (November 1 and 2). Why, then were the Grateful Dead skipping a Friday night Halloween  at the Great Highway? Wasn't it some sort of Federal or Natural law that the Grateful Dead have to play on Halloween? 

On Halloween, 1969, the Grateful Dead and the New Riders were booked at the newly opened Student Union Ballroom at San Jose State College. The room--later known as the Loma Prieta Ballroom, for any old Spartans out there--held about 700 in concert configuration. Now, granted, a big school like San Jose State had some kind of entertainment budget, so the Dead's fee would have been greater than playing a regular show for 700 patrons. The poster tells us that SJSC students were charged $2.00, and the public $3.00. Assuming a sellout and 50% students, that's a $1500 gate. Add some from the entertainment budget subvention, but it still isn't a huge number. The Dead were willing to pass on a potentially wild Halloween at the Great Highway for a tiny gate. It doesn't speak well of the band's confidence at drawing a good crowd at the Dog (for a more Grateful Dead-oriented discussion of this weekend, see my blog post here).

When the Dead played the Family Dog on Saturday and Sunday, I'm certain they weren't getting an advance, but rather taking a big slice of the gate. There's some risk associated with that. Now, Garcia didn't mind risk, and Grateful Dead manager Lenny Hart was not an honorable businessman in any case. The attraction of the San Jose State booking, however, must have been that the Dead were guaranteed their money. San Jose State wasn't getting hit with an IRS lien, and wouldn't go out of business the night before. Whatever number the Dead were promised for Friday night in San Jose, that would go to their account. They could take a chance at the Family Dog for the rest of the weekend. 

There was another hangup, however, that increased the risk for the weekend: the Family Dog wouldn't be able to advertise the Dead show until that very week. Bill Graham Presents had booked the Dead with Jefferson Airplane for the prior weekend, and the contract would have required that the Dead could not advertise a show within 50 miles until their booking was complete. Now, it wasn't that Dead fans wouldn't want to see the band again--that was never a problem. It's just that concert attendance takes planning, and if you don't know there's a Dead concert on Halloween weekend, what if you've got something else going on? What if your sister already got the family car and you've got no way to get there?

Also, on any given night, anything could happen--rainstorm, earthquake, fire in the venue, riots in the neighborhood--that would lead to a financial debacle at the Dog. This risk was magnified by the prohibition on advertising until the prior Monday. Also, although San Francisco has always loved Halloween, the band may have felt that the Great Highway was too far away, and that there would be considerably less competition on the balance of the weekend. So the Dead played Halloween Friday at San Jose State for 700 students instead of at the Family Dog, a politely damning indictment of Chet Helms' sincere but failing enterprise.

So for Halloween at the Family Dog, the putative headliner was the Golden Toad and folksinger Danny Cox, both of whom would be opening for the Dead on the subsequent nights. The unexplained billing was "Hells Angels Own Band." Who were they? What did it mean? We know it wasn't the Dead, since they were playing in San Jose. I guess you could claim they were going to show up late, but geography doesn't favor that, and in any case, why invoke the Hells Angels? I wouldn't go to any public event today that advertised anything to do with the Hells Angels, and this was Halloween in 1969. Also, the Hells Angels never took kindly to anyone using their name satirically, so the usage must have had some kind of informal approval. 

Was this a biker party? Apparently--but why advertise it to the public? Also, bikers are bikers--were they going to look forward to a Renaissance Fair quintet playing 15th century melodies on hand-built replicas of medieval pipes (which is what Golden Toad did)? Sure, Golden Toad founder Bob Thomas was a personal friend (and sometime roommate) of Owsley, but would a bunch of cranked-up bikers care? Danny Cox was an enjoyable folksinger, but he was a big African-American guy, and the Hells Angels were never an advertisement for diverse inclusion. 

Nothing about the Friday night booking made any sense. I have one tiny clue: I had a clever, but inaccurate, theory that Owsley Stanley had made a tape of Danny Cox that would become the album Danny Cox Live At The Family Dog. The Owsley Stanley Foundation looked into it, and it turned out that Cox's manager would not let Owsley tape his act. Family Dog soundman Lee Brenkman thinks that Cox was recorded on Halloween. Brenkman referred to the event as the "Hell's Angels Halloween party", and added that "it was the last calm thing that occurred that night." Intriguing. Anyone with insight, rumors or clever speculation, please post in the Comments.

November 1-2, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Danny Cox/Golden Toad (Saturday-Sunday)
The Grateful Dead headlined the Family Dog on The Great Highway on Saturday and Sunday night. Thanks to Owsley Stanley, we have tapes of both nights. The playing on both nights is magical. The existing tapes are both two hours, and seem to be complete shows with a few minor snips. So Golden Toad and Danny Cox must have each done sets, capped by a two-hour blast by the Grateful Dead in their early prime. David Browne, in his great Dead survey So Many Roads, reviews the November 2 (Sunday) tape, with its 30-minute "Dark Star" in its larger context, and it is well worth reading (as is the rest of the book). Whatever the commercial flaws of the Family Dog on The Great Highway, and they seemed to be many, the Dead played fabulously there. In early 1970, manager Lenny Hart would make plans to merge the Grateful Dead's operations with Chet Helms and the Dog, and it had to be at least in part because the band played so well there.

The Golden Toad had nothing to do with rock, of course. But they resolutely followed their own musical course, in a manner clearly aligned with the Grateful Dead's own single-minded mission. The Toad mostly played outdoors in at Renaissance Fairs (in Los Angeles and Marin) or in Berkeley, and usually only played indoors at Berkeley's Freight and Salvage or with the Grateful Dead. The Golden Toad were known to have a rather flexible membership, so they may have had numerous people on stage augmenting the root quintet (supposedly they had performed with up to 23 members) [I discussed the Golden Toad in detail in the previous entry].

Danny Cox's 3rd album was Birth Announcement, a double-LP released on Together Records in 1969 and produced by Gary Usher

Danny Cox was from Cincinnati, but he had relocated to Kansas City in 1967. Cox, a large African-American man, defied rather primitive 60s expectations by singing folk music instead of blues. His current album was his 3rd, Birth Announcement, a double-lp on Together Records produced by Gary Usher. Cox sang folk classics along with Beatles and Dylan songs, lightly backed.

Cox shared management with Brewer And Shipley, and like them he would record an album for ABC/Dunhill in San Francisco with producer Nick Gravenites. Recorded at Wally Heider Studios, it was released in 1971. Both John Kahn and Merl Saunders played on that album. During demos sessions for the record in 1970, Kahn introduced Merl Saunders to Jerry Garcia, who was recording in another room. Some weeks later, when Howard Wales didn't want to come jam at the Matrix, Kahn recommended Merl and the Garcia/Saunders partnership began.

In between 1969 Birth Announcement and his 1971 ABC/Dunhill albums, Sunflower Records released a 1970 Danny Cox album called Live At The Family Dog. Sunflower, associated with MGM, was a fringe label that had released the legal-but-unauthorized Vintage Dead and Historic Dead albums in 1971. Danny Cox only played the Family Dog this weekend and the next weekend in 1969, so assuming that the material was really recorded at the Family Dog--that's no sure thing--they could very well have been recorded this weekend. House soundman Lee Brenkman, as noted above, suggested that Cox may have been recorded Halloween night.

(Scholarly readers will be interested to know that on the Family Dog lp, Cox records "Me And My Uncle," and it is credited to "Trad.--arranged Danny Cox.")

November 4, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Workshop with Family Circus/Rainbow Jam Sky/music by children of Mu (Tuesday)
Circus ephemera is beyond the scope of this blog, but it's possible that "Family Circus" evolved into "Pickle Family Circus," a local circus act without animals. The others are unknown to me. 


November 5, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Family of Man-Family of God (Wednesday)
There were plenty of evangelical groups trying to recruit drifting young hippies. Such groups were referred to as "Jesus Freaks." A few were sincere, but many were just exploiters. 


November 6, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Acoustic Strings Night/Pup Fisher/All God's Children (Thursday)
This repeated event seems like the equivalent of Hoot Night at a local folk club.

For the next post in this series (Velvet Underground, Nov 7-9 '69, see here)

September 12-14, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: It's A Beautiful Day/Sons Of Champlin/Fourth Way [FDGH '69 XX]

 

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

The Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
The Family Dog was a foundation stone in the rise of San Francisco rock, and it was in operation in various forms from Fall 1965 through the Summer of 1970. For sound historical reasons, most of the focus on the Family Dog has been on the original 4-person collective who organized the first San Francisco Dance Concerts in late 1965, and on their successor Chet Helms. Helms took over the Family Dog in early 1966, and after a brief partnership with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, promoted memorable concerts at the Avalon Ballroom from Spring 1966 through December 1968. The posters, music and foggy memories of the Avalon are what made the Family Dog a legendary 60s rock icon.

In the Summer of 1969, however, with San Francisco as one of the fulcrums of the rock music explosion, Chet Helms opened another venue. The Family Dog on The Great Highway, at 660 Great Highway, on the Western edge of San Francisco, was only open for 14 months and was not a success. Yet numerous interesting bands played there, and remarkable events took place, and they are only documented in a scattered form. This series of posts will undertake a systematic review of every musical event at the Family Dog on The Great Highway. In general, each post will represent a week of musical events at the venue, although that may vary slightly depending on the bookings.

If anyone has memories, reflections, insights, corrections or flashbacks about shows at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, please post them in the Comments.

660 Great Highway in San Francisco in 1967, when it was the ModelCar Raceway, a slot car track

The Edgewater Ballroom, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA
As early as 1913, there were rides and concessions at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, near the Richmond District. By 1926, they had been consolidated as Playland-At-The-Beach. The Ocean Beach area included attractions such as the Sutro Baths and the Cliff House. The San Francisco Zoo was just south of Playland, having opened in the 1930s. One of the attractions at Playland was a restaurant called Topsy's Roost. The restaurant had closed in 1930, and the room became the Edgewater Ballroom. The Ballroom eventually closed, and Playland went into decline when its owner died in 1958. By the 1960s, the former Edgewater was a slot car raceway. In early 1969, Chet Helms took over the lease of the old Edgewater.

One of the only photos of the interior of the Family Dog on The Great Highway (from a Stephen Gaskin "Monday Night Class" ca. October 1969)

The Family Dog On The Great Highway
The Great Highway was a four-lane road that ran along the Western edge of San Francisco, right next to Ocean Beach. Downtown San Francisco faced the Bay, but beyond Golden Gate Park was the Pacific Ocean. The aptly named Ocean Beach is dramatic and beautiful, but it is mostly windy and foggy. Much of the West Coast of San Francisco is not even a beach, but rocky cliffs. There are no roads in San Francisco West of the Great Highway, so "660 Great Highway" was ample for directions (for reference, it is near the intersection of Balboa Street and 48th Avenue). The tag-line "Edge Of The Western World" was not an exaggeration, at least in American terms.

The Family Dog on The Great Highway was smaller than the Bill Graham's old Fillmore Auditorium. It could hold up to 1500, but the official capacity was probably closer to 1000. Unlike the comparatively centrally located Fillmore West, the FDGH was far from downtown, far from the Peninsula suburbs, and not particularly easy to get to from the freeway. For East Bay or Marin residents, the Great Highway was a formidable trip. The little ballroom was very appealing, but if you didn't live way out in the Avenues, you had to drive. As a result, FDGH didn't get a huge number of casual drop-ins, and that didn't help its fortunes. Most of the locals referred to the venue as "Playland."

• For a complete list of Family Dog shows (including FDGH), see here
• For the previous entry (September 6, 1969 Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

 

A

The Sunday (Sep 14) SF Chronicle had a photo of The Fourth Way, noting their gig opening at the Family Dog on The Great Highway

The Family Dog on The Great Highway had opened in June of 1969, and it had never gotten on to firm financial footing. It was losing money each week, apparently, and proprietor Chet Helms had a huge tax bill from the IRS, left over from 1967, when the Avalon had been successful. Nonetheless, the Family Dog had some great bands throughout the month of August, and likely pretty good attendance. The Grateful Dead had played the first and last weekends (August 2-3 and August 29-30), Country Joe and The Fish (August 8-10) and Mike Bloomfield (August 15-16), had both played weekends, there had been a Wild West "makeup" extravaganza, and on the first weekend of September, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead had played a stealth gig on Saturday, September 6. Still, the Dog was on the precipice, and they were on the verge of falling off.

The Tuesday, September 9, 1969 Examiner listed "Rock, Etc" at the Family Dog

September 9, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Sufi Dervish Dancing, Pakistani Fashion Show, Phoenix (rock) (Tuesday)
The Family Dog was regularly rented for promotions by outside groups. A Pakistani Fashion Show and Sufi Dervish Dancing sounds like a unique night out. Phoenix was a good local rock band that played pretty danceable music, and deep, complicated roots in the 60s Bay Area rock scene.

September 10, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA:  "Latin Rock" Kwane and The Kwanditos/Los Flamencos de la Santa Lucia (Wednesday)
Latin Jazz had gotten its start on San Francisco's Broadway back in the 1950s, and of course Santana had invented Latin Rock, so popular Latin music roots went pretty deep in the Bay Area. The previous Wednesday, the Dog had also held a Latin Music night. I have no idea if these consecutive weeks were tied together but it seems likely. 

Kwane And The Kwanditos played some sort of Latin jazz-rock, as far as I can tell. Their pianist was Todd Barkan, who would go on to take over San Francisco's Keystone Korner jazz club in 1972.

Los Flamencos de la Santa Lucia were a flamenco troupe that were regularly booked at rock venues.

 

September 11, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Purple Earthquake/Johnny Mars Band/Wisdom Finger/Osceola (Thursday)
This Thursday night booking of obscure local bands is intriguing for the possibility that the Grateful Dead may have made a guest appearance. As is typical with the Dead and the Dog, we have a tape fragment  but no other evidence.

The Bay Area rock market was booming, for both live performance and recording. The Fillmore West had regular audition nights on Tuesdays. Bill Graham had just re-started them for the Fall (in the Summer, the Fillmore West was open six nights a week with touring bands, but in the Fall and Winter it was just Thursday through Sunday). A few local or out-of-town bands would play the Fillmore West on Tuesdays, and sometimes there would be a jam afterwards, including some local heavyweights. It looks like Chet Helms had the same idea, but opted for a Thursday.

Purple Earthquake was a power trio out of Berkeley High School. They would evolve into the band Earth Quake, who had a fair amount of local success with their albums in the 1970s.

I recognize the name Johnny Mars Blues Band from listings around this time, but don't know anything else about them. 

As for Wisdom Fingers, we know a little about them from the miracle of the Comment Thread (in my Fillmore West Audition post)

Wisdom Fingers was a band lead by singer-songwriter Rip Masters on keys and vocals. Given name: Martin Masters. The band featured Lenny Giachello on drums and Geoff Pierce on guitar with Larry Brown on bass. Some gigs were as a trio with organ bass. The band also played at The Family Dog on the Great Highway with Purple Earthquake, and at the wrap party for the cult film "Glenn and Randa" [sic] among other appearances around the Bay Area. The band was based in Haight Ashbury with ties to Mill Valley and Santa Cruz. Music was mostly original. East Coast native and leader Masters went on to become a well known rockabilly artist and session player starting in the mid 70s through the present.

Guitarist Alan Yott of Osceola at the Family Dog on The Great Highway, probably 1970

 We know a fair amount about the band Osceola. This show at the Family Dog was probably one of their very first gigs. They would go on to play the Dog many times, and played around the Bay Area regularly until at least 1972. Osceola lead guitarist Bill Ande was a transplant from Florida. He had played and recorded with some modestly successful bands, like the R-Dells, the American Beetles (really), who had then changed their name to The Razor's Edge and had even played American Bandstand. Come '69, Ande had relocated to San Francisco to play some psychedelic blues. The musicians he linked up with were all Florida transplants as well, so even though they were a San Francisco band, they chose the name Osceola as an homage to their roots.

Osceola was a five piece band with two drummers, and played all the local ballrooms and rock nightclubs. Ande was joined by guitarist Alan Yott, bassist Chuck Nicholis and drummers Donny Fields and Richard Bevis. Osceola was a successful live act, but never recorded. Almost all of the band members would return to the Southeast (mainly Tallahassee and Atlanta) in the mid-70 to have successful music careers.

The Grateful Dead link is more tenuous. There is a fragmentary Dead tape consisting of one song that has circulated since at least the early 80s. It is an audience tape of one song, "Easy Wind," dated September 11, 1969. The provenance of the tape is obscure, as there is not a longer recording. It's also worth noting that there were almost no audience tapers on the West Coast at the time. Who made this tape, and where did it come from?

The "official" listings on the archive suggest that the tape was originally labeled "unknown venue," and the location of The Family Dog on The Great Highway was just a plausible suggestion. It is a plausible suggestion, but no evidence backs it up. The recording persisted as "tape filler" for many years since it's so interesting. It is an early performance of "Easy Wind," with a slide guitar part. For many years, this was assumed to part of some jam with a guest on slide guitar--making the Family Dog seem likely--but I reject that hypothesis now. I'm convinced it's actually Jerry Garcia on slide guitar, with Bob Weir playing lead. 

If the tape really was recorded at the Family Dog, we have to assume the Dead showed up on "new band night" for a blow. They very well could have. They had jammed at the Dog (possibly for no audience) on Thursday August 14, played a practically stealth show on Thursday August 28, and then played at least one stealth show with the Jefferson Airplane on Saturday, September 6. So, it's not far-fetched to imagine them dropping in on September 11.

It does beg the question, however, of why the above commenter, most likely Rip Masters or someone close to him, didn't mention opening for the Dead at the Dog. So the September 11, 1969 performance of "Easy Wind" remains a mystery that may or may not have emanated from the Family Dog.

 

September 12-14, 1969 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: It's A Beautiful Day/Sons Of Champlin/Fourth Way (Friday-Sunday)
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, and then a Wild West makeup show on August 24, but this weekend was the band's first time headlining a paying gig at the Dog.

The Sons of Champlin were a tier lower than It's A Beautiful Day, but they were a Bay Area band on the rise. Capitol Records had released the Sons' debut album, Loosen Up Naturally--a double lp--back in May. The hard-working Sons had played all over the Bay Area for years, and they had played The Family Dog in June and again for a Wild West show in August.

The Fourth Way were an intriguing jazz-rock hybrid band who had just released their debut album on Capitol Records. The quartet played electric jazz, and was one of a number of Bay Area bands experimenting with jazz and rock, but in a less aggressive style than East Coast "Fusion" music inspired by Miles Davis' Bitches Brew band and album. The Fourth Way were led by expatriate New Zealand pianist Mike Nock, whose career is too long and interesting to summarize (although he does a pretty good job of it himself, when interviewed on his 80th birthday in 2019). Chief soloist was electric violinist Michael White, who had toured and recorded with John Handy in the mid-60s. Jazz veterans Eddie Marshall (on drums) and Ron McClure filled out the band. 

The Friday September 12, 1969 Examiner mentions opening act Fourth Way and the light show (Garden Of Delights), with no mention of the previously-booked Sons Of Champlin. They may not have played.

What Happened?
Like many Family Dog bookings, the event seems to have disappeared without a trace. I know of no review or eyewitness account. In fact, the Sons of Champlin may not have even played. The Friday Examiner did not list them, and Sons' road manager did not think the band played many weekends at the Family Dog, and didn't recall this one. Neither of those are proof that the Sons didn't play, but it's not a good sign when a venue either can't pay or the bands who played there can't remember it. There's not a doubt about the quality of music that would have been played, but for how many people?

After this weekend, the bottom fell out of Family Dog weekend bookings. Name bands did not play the Family Dog for the balance of the month, not even the old Avalon stalwarts that had been the regular fare. The skinny evidence suggests that this was a very poorly attended weekend, and the Family Dog couldn't recover for some time. The venue was rented to outside promoters, but that was thin gruel indeed.

For the next entry in the series (September 15-26 '69, various bands), see here