March 18, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, 660 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Rolling Thunder/Hot Tuna/New Riders of The Purple Sage [FDGH 70 X]

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 (March 13-15, 1970 Country Joe and The Fish) see here
  
• For a summary and the link to the most recent entries in this series, see here

March 18, 1970 Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Rolling Thunder/Hot Tuna/New Riders of The Purple Sage Benefit for The Sons of Thunder (Wednesday)
Almost nothing is known about this Wednesday night benefit at the Family Dog on The Great Highway, save that it happened. Initially, it was only known because there were a few listings in the Barb (above) and also in the Examiner. Since February, the Family Dog had stopped holding weeknight "community" events. There had to be some heft here for this night to be an exception.

"Rolling Thunder" was a man named John Pope. Apparently he was a "Medicine Man" of some kind, associated with Native Americans, although I know nothing about that sort of thing. Pope turns up in various chronicles of hip San Francisco, and --among other things--may have been the inspiration for the title of Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart's initial 1972 solo album on Warner Brothers. I know even less about The Suns Of Thunder Commune in Elko, NV. Suffice to say, Elko, NV probably isn't that Native American/Hippie Friendly today, and was probably less so in 1970. Whatever went down was surely Not Good. The fact that the spinoffs of the two most iconic San Francisco bands were on the bill suggests that Pope had good connections to leverage, good enough to ensure that the Family Dog on The Great Highway held a benefit on a Wednesday.

At this distant remove, we take for granted that Jerry Garcia played a variety of random dates with the New Riders of The Purple Sage, for convenience or fun, with little concern for the so-called "expectations" that normally accrued to legendary sixties rock guitarists. The same generally applies to Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady and Hot Tuna. Jorma and Jack, while playing around steadily since January 1969, had only recently publicly adopted the name of "Hot Tuna." So the dual booking of the Riders and Tuna may seem like a convergence of relaxed musician pals who enjoyed filling in their weeknights with gigs whenever they could. And it was, but there must have been more to it.

 

A ticket for the Grateful Dead at the Pirate's World Amusement Park in Dania, FL. The shows were booked for March 22 (Sunday) and 23 (Monday), but changed to March 23 and 24 (Tuesday)

Grateful Dead Status: March 1970
There are a number of very curious things about this New Riders booking, however, so curious that I had assumed some years ago that the New Riders had not played. In order of importance, the curiosities of this performance are:

• The Grateful Dead were on tour. They had played Tuesday, March 17 in Buffalo, with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. They were booked for the weekend of March 20-21 at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, in suburban New York Metro. To play the show, Garcia, Mickey Hart and possibly others would have had to fly home to San Francisco on Wednesday, play the show, and return to New York by Friday.
• The New Riders of The Purple Sage did not have a bass player, and were effectively inactive. Nominally, Phil Lesh was the Riders' bass player, but confirmations of any Lesh performances with the New Riders are all but impossible to come by. The New Riders had booked a few gigs earlier in March, and canceled them. Bob Matthews was a full-time engineer, as far as I can tell, and Dave Torbert was still in Hawaii.
• Given the barriers to performing, and given the dead-broke band would seemingly make no money, who was John Pope, and who were the Sons Of Thunder commune that they had earned this effort? I have no information in that area, and won't speculate, but it adds to the air of peculiarity about this event.

Why Would The Grateful Dead Return To San Francisco For Just Three Days?
The Grateful Dead had no money in Spring 1970, and they had just fired manager Lenny Hart. By March, they must have figured out that Hart had been ripping them off in a big way, and that they had even less money than they thought. Since the band was playing Buffalo Tuesday night and Port Chester on Friday, wouldn't it have been simpler just to go straight over to the Capitol (just 378 miles away)? 

Since the Dead would have flown out to Buffalo, however, they wouldn't have had a van. Thus they probably would have had to fly to New York Metro to get to Port Chester, then get hotels for Wednesday and Thursday night. It may not have been much more expensive to fly back to San Francisco, not pay hotel bills, and fly back to New York. Possibly a crew member or two rented a truck in Buffalo and drove the equipment to Port Chester.

More importantly, the Dead, and particularly Jerry Garcia, would have had business back in San Francisco. The bulk of the recording for Workingman's Dead had been done from March 10-16, 1970. Garcia in particular would still have been needed for overdubs, harmonies, and general oversight. Lesh and Hart also seem likely candidates for such duties, which was convenient if they were flying back from the gig anyway. So Garcia may have known that he was going to be in town on March 18, the day after Buffalo, and it wasn't a disruption at all. Perhaps some crew, and perhaps Kreutzmann, Weir and/or Pigpen stayed in New York state, although they would have had to find a way to get to Port Chester.

Who Played Bass With The New Riders?
I never tire of the topic of who played bass for the New Riders (lengthy posts, with detailed comment threads are here [check the Comments] and here, for example). Let me briefly summarize the isssues:

The initial bass player for the New Riders was Bob Matthews. Over the decades, John Dawson, David Nelson and Jerry Garcia repeated the story over and over that the Riders were invented because the Dead could just bring Nelson and Dawson, with Garcia, Lesh and Hart filling out the band, and go on tour cheaply as the Dead's opening act. This never happened. The only time the New Riders opened for the Dead out of town during this period (Seattle and Oregon, August 1969), Bob Matthews played bass. The story has been repeated so often that even the principals thought it was true.

According to Matthews, his last show with the New Riders was in September, 1969, but that is simply not true, either. The excellent Dawn Of The New Riders Of The Purple Sage box has a set from October, 1969 with Matthews on bass. The only confirmed instance of Phil Lesh playing bass for the Riders was on a 4-track demo done at Pacific High Recorders in November 1969 (released by Relix Records on the 1986 album Before Time Began), with Bob Matthews as the engineer. There are no other known tapes, eyewitness accounts or photos of Phil Lesh playing live with the New Riders in 1969 (or any other time). If you have one, please put it in the Comments.

By January of 1970, it was clear that Matthews duties as an engineer were taking precedence over bass playing. It's also known that at least on occasion Robert Hunter rehearsed with the Riders on bass. But Hunter complained that they never asked him to play a gig, and the early 1970 period when Phil Lesh "should" have been the bass player featured no Riders' shows. There was a January 19, 1970 benefit in Berkeley, although we haven't confirmed that the band played, some canceled shows in March, and the March 18 benefit.

The history of Dave Torbert's arrival is another complex story, but the short version is that the April 17-19 Family Dog shows were the debut of Torbert. The math does not fit his arrival in March, nor could he have rehearsed, since the Dead were recording Workingman's Dead in February and March and touring constantly. So all the evidence pointed out to either the New Riders canceling out of the Family Dog show, or Phil Lesh making his last appearance as a New Rider. It had always seemed unlikely that the New Riders played this event.

 

Susanna Millman's photo of the Grateful Dead Vault, ca 2004 (from the Tapers Compendium)

Guess what? Owsley taped it. Owsley was no longer able to travel around with the Grateful Dead, thanks to the New Orleans bust, but he was the soundman for the Family Dog on The Great Highway on occasion. We know he taped it, because a Susanna Millman photo of the Grateful Dead Vault (from the old Tapers Compendium), when Owsley's material was still there, is plain enough to read the box labels, and the distinctive writing is Owsley's. The last five boxes on the right in the photo (above) represent the Benefit. All five tapes are marked as "3/18/70 Hot Tuna/NR". Tape #1 says "Banjo Player"--yes, it does--, tape, #2 says "and NRPS", tape #3 just says "NR", and tape #4 says "Hot Tuna" and #5 says "Hot Tuna/NR." So some banjo player opened, and then the New Riders played, and then Hot Tuna ( in both rows of boxes, we can see some other non-Dead shows that Owsley taped and preserved from this period).

The Owsley Stanley Foundation is looking into the whereabouts of these tapes, and we may find out more. For now, we at least know that the benefit actually happened and that the Riders actually played.

Thanks to JGMF, we have a poster that tells us Dave Torbert was a member of the New Riders for this show at the Family Dog on March 18

[update 20240831] Fellow scholar JGMF has uncovered another poster for the March 18, 1970 show at the Family Dog. Remarkably, it names all the members of the New Riders--most significantly Dave Torbert. So anyone tracking the history of the New Riders bass player, which is pretty much just me, has to revise the timeline. Torbert was already in California rehearsing prior to March 18, and the Family Dog was his debut. Interestingly, given the busy schedule of the Grateful Dead during this period, recording Workingman's Dead and kicking off a tour, Torbert had probably hardly rehearsed with Garcia prior to this show.

Ralph Gleason's Chronicle column from Monday, March 6, 1970

Hot Tuna
Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady had been playing around the Bay Area since early 1969. Initially, they had played as an acoustic duo, billed under their own names. After a while, they also played as an electric trio, billed as Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and (drummer) Joey Covington. When Hot Tuna recorded their famous debut album, at Berkeley's New Orleans House in September 1969, they were billed at the club as "Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady." The name Hot Tuna was not used until early 1970, because RCA needed a name for their new group. Chronicle columnist Ralph Gleason had reviewed an electric performance by Hot Tuna a few weeks before this Family Dog show, at the New Orleans House (in the Monday, March 6, paper, referring to the prior weekend). 

Gleason mentioned Jorma, Jack and Covington, along with a rhythm guitarist whose name he did not catch. I'm pretty sure that the extra guitarist was Paul Ziegler, and old pal of Jorma's from Santa Clara days, and a member of the group Weird Herald. Gleason also mentions Marty Balin singing with Hot Tuna, which was a regular occurrence at the time. Balin did not sing "songs" as such (to my knowledge), just sort of grooved along in an Eric Burdon "Spill The Wine" kind of way. So I assume that was the lineup for the benefit--an electric quartet, possibly with a Balin guest appearance. If the Owsley tape surfaces, the recording would be a different configuration of Hot Tuna than we currently have available.

For the next post in this series (March 20-22, 1970-Big Brother), see here

1839 Geary Blvd, San Francisco, CA July 29-30, 1977 Theatre 1839 Jerry Garcia Band

Most scholarly Deadheads are aware that the Jerry Garcia Band played two shows at Theatre 1839 in San Francisco on July 29 and 30, 1977, not least because a fine double-cd set was released from those shows. I attended the second show on July 30, and it was a truly wonderful performance in an inspiring venue. I was sorry that Jerry never played there again. It was only later when I found out some of the interesting historical aspects of the building, and I thought I would pass those on.

There were three significant buildings on the South (odd numbered) 1800 block of Geary Boulevard. The most famous to rock fans is of course the Fillmore Auditorium at 1805 Geary, on the corner of Fillmore and Geary, built in 1912 (as The Majestic Hall and Dancing Academy) and still operating today. Next door was the former site of the synagogue for Temple Beth Israel, an early Jewish congregation in San Francisco, founded around 1860, which began constructing its fifth building at 1839 Geary in 1905, although its completion was interrupted by the April 1906 earthquake .  Next to the synagogue was the Scottish Rites (Masonic) Temple Building, known as the Alfred Pike Memorial Temple, at 1859 Geary, which dated back to the 19th century. A remarkable photo exists from right after the 1906 San Francisco  earthquake, showing a damaged Beth Israel synagogue and the equally damaged Masonic Temple, with an empty lot where the future Fillmore would be built a few years later. Although there were a number of different addresses on the block, these three buildings were the main structures on the block until the 1980s.

I have written an extensive post about The Geary Temple (1859 Geary) elsewhere, but 1839 Geary deserves some attention of its own.  A striking photograph from 1964 of Temple Beth Israel can be seen at the San Francisco Public Library site. The edge of the Fillmore Auditorium is visible just to the left (East) of the building. It is a striking and beautiful building, which in 1964 would have been 58 years old (it was completed in 1906, after the earthquake). In 1964 the Fillmore Auditorium, after some time as a roller skating rink, had become an important venue for African-American music, promoted by Charles Sullivan, who was one of the principal promoters of black music on the West Coast.


When Charles Sullivan retired at the end of 1965, after renting the facility a few times, Bill Graham took over the lease of the Fillmore Auditorium, starting on February 1, 1966. The venue was an immediate success, but Graham was not without troubles. In particular, he had particular difficulty with the status of his "Dance Hall Permit," a left over bit of bureaucracy from the post-Prohibition era. While initially Graham had used Sullivan's license, he had considerable trouble procuring a license from the City of San Francisco, and at one point was even arrested. This made Graham particularly susceptible to challenges from the community.


Apparently the rabbi at Temple Beth Israel was not a fan of Graham's use of the Fillmore (whether he appreciated Sullivan's promotions is unknown). Graham took a bitter relish in relaying the story of how the rabbi accused him of not knowing the suffering of the Jews, in response to which Graham pulled up his sleeve and showed the rabbi the number the Nazis had tattooed on his arm as a child (I heard Graham tell this story in person at a lecture in 1976, and he was still angry at the rabbi). Twice in 1966, Graham moved events at the Fillmore to other venues to accommodate Jewish religious celebrations: on April 16, 1966 the Jefferson Airplane/Butterfield Blues Band show was moved from the Fillmore to Harmon Gym at UC Berkeley, and on September 10, 1966 the Mothers Of Invention/Oxford Circle show was moved to the Scottish Rites Temple across town (at 2850 19th Avenue and Sloat Blvd).


Graham eventually received a Dance Hall Permit, and apparently by 1967 conflicts with the neighboring Synagogue were no longer an issue. Whether Graham was no longer concerned with political pressure, whether he moved key dates to Winterland or there was some other solution is not clear to me (I have not been able to determine which would have been the relevant dates in 1967). In any case, Graham was so successful he looked to move out of the Fillmore to the Fillmore West, and by mid-summer 1968 Graham had moved to Market and Van Ness.


Temple Beth Israel was on the move as well, as its Congregation merged with another Congregation, becoming Congregation Beth Israel-Judea in 1969. The Congregation moved to 625 Brotherhood Way in San Francisco, where it remains today. The Temple at 1839 Geary seems to have been temporarily used for other functions and then sold around 1971, as near as I can tell. The building's history from 1971 to 1977 is obscure to me.


Theatre 1839
Ads for the shows above abruptly appeared in 1977. The promoters were unknown to me. Older folks must have recognized the building, but all I knew at the time was that it was near Winterland (at Post and Steiner), then the principal rock and roll concert venue in the Bay Area. I knew the Fillmore Auditorium had been somewhere around there, but when we went to see Jerry Garcia (hi Geoff) at Theatre 1839, we had no idea that the fully intact Fillmore was right next door. Although the venue had "festival seating" for the most part, probably different than its synagogue functions, the elegant ceilings and decorations were intact, and it was not only a beautiful building but beautiful sounding as well.


The Garcia Band show on July 30, 1977 was fantastic, and when I later acquired tapes of that night and the night before I learned that I had not imagined it. The Hot Tuna show on August 5 was used for the 1978 Hot Tuna live album Double Dose, so all the shows at Theatre 1839 were turned into live albums. I talked to someone who went to the Hot Tuna show, and he confirmed my feeling that it was a wonderful venue.Whatever the finances behind the Theatre, however, it was not used for another show in that incarnation, and more's the pity for that.



Right next door, however, was the converted Alfred Pike Memorial Scottish Rites Temple, which by this time was the headquarters of Jim Jones's infamous Peoples Temple. Jones and his followers left for Jonestown, Guyana and their tragic mass suicide took place on November 18, 1978. While Theatre 1839 was not directly connected to those events, it did add to the strange mojo of the block.


Temple Beautiful
Theatre 1839 did arise as a performance venue, however, known as Temple Beautiful in early 1979 and hosting a number of punk rock shows. The Clash in particular played a warmly remembered gig there, as well as many more local bands. While this is outside the scope of this blog, it is worth noting that once a Use Permit has been defined, venues are more likely to remain in use. Once again, I do not know the finances behind the concerts, nor why the building stopped being used for music after about 1980. At some point the building became "The Duquette Pavilion," hosting the work of artist Anthony Duquette.



The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 damaged the Fillmore Auditorium, Temple Beautiful (1839) and the former People's Temple (1859), and all the buildings were damaged by fire. The Fillmore was fully refurbished, but the two other buildings were torn down. After some time as vacant lots, the 1859 Geary address is now a newly constructed Post Office, and I do not know the fate of the lot at 1839.


Cross posted at Lost Live Dead

The Matrix, San Francisco, CA February 19, 1969 Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady/Weird Herald

The Matrix, at 3138 Fillmore Street in San Francisco, was the original hippie hangout, even before there were hippies. Founded by Marty Balin and his father, the club provided a place to play for the newly-formed Jefferson Airplane on August 13, 1965. Numerous other groups either debuted or made their San Francisco debut there, such as Big Brother and The Holding Company (on January 10, 1966). The Matrix was also a clubhouse and hangout for what few underground pothead musicians were around at the time. As the scene expanded, and the Fillmore and Avalon became major venues, the Matrix became as a hangout as much as a club. Although The Matrix only served beer and pizza, hippies were very much not welcome at many establishments, and in any case it took a while for rock music to become the dominant form of music in San Francisco nightclubs, so the Matrix was the best small place in the City for rock.

A tiny place that only seated 100, by 1969 it was a place for new bands in town to get heard or for local heavyweights to try out different configurations in a casual setting. The actual billing for February 19, 1969 (according to a newspaper listing, I believe in the San Francisco Chronicle) was   for Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady with Weird Herald (for many years, it was believed that Jerry Garcia and High Country played The Matrix on February 19, but it seems definitive that the Dead played Fillmore West that night. I discuss the Garcia/High Country Matrix tape elsewhere).

Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady started Hot Tuna--whom I saw just a few months ago, only 40 years later--because they played together so much in hotel rooms they thought it would be fun to continue it on stage when the Jefferson Airplane weren't playing. This booking at the Matrix is the first known public booking of the pair. Did Jorma and Jack play or plan to play acoustic, or electric? My guess would be acoustic, since subsequent electric gigs at the Matrix in 1969 (such as April 13, 1969) were billed as "Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and Joey Covington." Still, this would have been the duo's first night, so its hard to say what was planned.

Weird Herald is even more mysterious, but all the more interesting for that. Jorma Kaukonen had gotten his start in the South Bay folk scene, where he was friends with Garcia, Nelson and all the rest. Among his San Jose pals were guitarists Paul Ziegler and Billy Dean Andrus. Andrus, a transplant from Mississippi, was reputed to be one of the hot pickers in the South Bay. Weird Herald was the 1968-69 folk rock band started by Ziegler and Andrus. They played many "underground" gigs in San Jose, but little is known about them save for one 45, featuring some spacey acoustic fingerpicking. Supposedly Weird Herald recorded an unreleased album (for Onyx Records) but I don't know what it might have sounded like. Did Weird Herald even have a drummer? Were they planning to play an acoustic gig without a band? Were Jorma and Jack going to join in with Weird Herald? Ziegler was the guitarist with Hot Tuna in 1970, so that isn't such a stretch.

Unlike Jorma and Jack, Billy Dean Andrus remains an unheard legend. After Weird Herald broke up, Andrus joined a San Jose group called Pachuco, featuring the even more legendary Skip Spence, and finally a Santa Cruz Mountains band called Mountain Current. In early November 1970, Andrus died of a drug overdose, supposedly after  a three-day party at a notorious biker hangout in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Jorma Kaukonen wrote "Ode To Billy Dean" (on Burgers) and still plays it to this day. One of Andrus's San Jose pals, Pat Simmons, had joined a band called The Doobie Brothers, and later dedicated the song "Black Water" to him, so Andrus's presence still resides with his friends.

The Matrix owners recorded every show, although they did not preserve every tape due to the cost of recording tape at the time. We can only hope that some piece of Weird Herald's performance is still accessible.

Update

a photo of Weird Herald, purportedly from late 1967

I am happy to report that my fishhook in the ocean about Weird Herald has gotten some real bites. Two surviving members of the band,  drummer Patrick McIntire and bassist Cecil Bollinger can both be seen in the Comments, and I have been in touch with a wide variety of people regarding the band. An album was recorded in San Francisco in 1968 and the recordings still exist--I have heard a little bit and they really were some band--but it remains to be seen whether the surviving recording is releasable.

I am attaching a photo--unfortunately tiny--sent by a mysterious stranger (hey, the band wasn't called "Normal Herald"). This correspondent said that he was Weird Herald's manager in late 1967, that they recorded a now-lost 4-song demo, and he almost took the band to Australia. He included this promotional photo. I'm putting it on this post in the hopes that other correspondents may recognize the photo, the setting, or anything else.