PayLess Drug Store, Fremont Plaza, Fremont, CA: Mount Rushmore/Linn County, October 25, 1968

These advertisements from the October 25, 1968 edition of The Fremont Argus promote "in-store" appearances of rock groups at a retailer to publicize their new albums. This is a pretty common retailing practice, made fun of in the movie Spinal Tap, but this example of it must have been a pretty strange experience.

First of all, while most records in the 1960s were sold at large general retailers like department stores, a suburban PayLess in 1968 had about the same hipness quotient that it does now. I don't doubt that many suburban fans bought many of their albums at PayLess, but I doubt it was a "destination" like a Tower Records would be.

Mount Rushmore and Linn County were both pretty good bands, if now somewhat obscure. Mount Rushmore was a San Francisco band who had formed in 1967, but only released their first album High On Mount Rushmore in late 1968. Ross Hannan and I have an ongoing project to document the complete history of Mount Rushmore and related groups like Phoenix. Mount Rushmore had played many Bay Area gigs, although I don't think there were many in Fremont, and I don't know how much the album would have been played on KSAN or KMPX, then the only two FM rock stations in the Bay Area. I would find it surprising if Mount Rushmore were well known in Fremont.

Linn County was a band that had relocated to San Francisco from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The band had formed around 1964, and played extensively around Chicago and the Midwest. They were led by a fine organist and singer named Stephen Miller--no, not the guitarist in the Steve Miller Band. Miller (1942-2003) was a fine, if underrated performer. Linn County relocated to San Francisco in 1968, and were rapidly signed to Mercury, and their first album Proud Flesh Soothseer had just been released. They would go on to release another album, Fever Shot, before they broke up. Stephen Miller had a long performing career, and an extensive discography, playing with The Elvin Bishop Group, Clifton Chenier, Grinderswitch and many others.

Linn County, although they had only been in the Bay Area for a few months, were already regular performers at rock clubs like The New Orleans House in Berkeley, but I do not how much they would have played Fremont in 1968, if at all. Similar to Mount Rushmore, while I'm sure their album got a little play on KSAN and KMPX, as they were a local band, it would not have been an overwhelming amount.

The PayLess Drug Store in Fremont Plaza in October 1968 is pretty far from the Straight Theatre in San Francisco or the New Orleans House in Berkeley, where the bands would normally play. Fremont was in the suburbs, and in 1968 the suburbs were pretty straight. Sure, the teenagers in High School knew something was happening, and had some cool records, but they didn't want to go down to the Fremont Pay Less with their Mom. The younger kids who would go with their Mom had probably just figured out who the Jefferson Airplane were, and hadn't yet figured out about lesser known bands that KSAN played late at night.

San Francisco long hairs like the members of Mount Rushmore and Linn County would have looked pretty out of place in the Fremont Plaza Mall. All in all, this sounds even stranger than the scene in Spinal Tap where the band does an in-store and no fans show up. Perhaps I'm being unfair--perhaps pretty girls from the High School showed up and swooned over the bands, and perhaps all the boys asked about the chord changes to all the tunes, but I think that's kind of unlikely. Still, I have Proud Flesh Soothseer, and I've heard some of High On Mount Rushmore, and they are both pretty good for late 60s albums, so maybe there are people who remember the day fondly, treasuring their autographed copies.

4290 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA: Cabana Hotel, "Tune-In" November 10, 1967

The Cabana Hotel, at 4290 El Camino Real in Palo Alto, was Palo Alto's most glamorous hotel. It was so glamorous, in fact, that it was completely out of place in Palo Alto. The hotel was built in 1962 by entrepreneur Jay Sarno, and Doris Day was one of the original investors. The flashy, Roman-themed design was apparently the blueprint for Caesar's Palace. The Cabana has a permanent place in South Bay mythology because The Beatles stayed there when they played San Francisco in 1965.

Out of place in Palo Alto The Cabana may have been, but it was the primary spot for important social events like debutante balls. In fact, the Jefferson Airplane played the "Step 'N Time" Gala there on May 22, 1966. For the most part, however, the Cabana featured traditional lounge acts, playing jazz and supper club music. Even The Cabana could feel the blowing winds, however, as their featured show for Friday night, November 10 was

The sights, sounds and styles of the San Francisco psychedelic scene will be seen and heard at the Cabana Hotel, in Palo Alto. A one-night only performance, produced by Sarah Urquhart and Jerry Booker, tonight's "Tune-In" will be for adults only. Two wild groups, Howl and the West Coast Natural Gas Company, will perform throughout the evening.

West Coast Natural Gas had formed in Seattle, and had been invited to San Francisco by their manager, Mathew Katz. Katz had been the manager of Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape, but his parting with those groups was quite bitter (he was in litigation for the Airplane for at least two decades, and he remains in litigation with Moby Grape as of this writing). Katz had been the Airplane's manager when they had played the Cabana the previous year, so perhaps he had a connection there.

Needless to say, I know no one who ever saw this show. In 1968, for reasons unknown to the band, shortly after West Coast Natural Gas arrived in the Bay Area, Katz changed their name to Indian Pudding And Pipe. The Cabana Hotel was sold to Hyatt House in the late 60s, as Sardo had built Caesar's Palace (in 1966), and it is now the Crowne Plaza Cabana Hotel, and it has since been remodeled. While this makes business sense, the original Cabana was Palo Alto's only true kitsch landmark--and anyway The Beatles stayed there.

(The clipping is from the November 10, 1967 edition of The San Mateo Times)

1310 Old Bayshore Highway, Burlingame, CA: The Syndrome June 1966-July 1967

The Syndrome in Burlingame was another effort to try and accommodate the burgeoning rock underground flowering in San Francisco into the South Bay Area Peninsula. This obscure club has only been noted historically because it was a regular venue for a Moby Grape predecessor called Luminous Marsh Gas. A Tacoma, WA band called The Frantics had moved to San Bruno (of all places), but by 1966 the "Northwest Sound" was migrating towards a spacier, bluesier sound. The members of The Frantics, guitarist Jerry Miller, organist Chuck Schoening (aka Chuck Steaks) and drummer Don Stevenson, added singer/harmonica player Denise Kaufman, well before she was in The Ace Of Cups. They took their name from a peculiar news articles that suggested that UFO sightings were really Luminous Marsh Gas. By the end of 1966, Miller and Stevenson would be playing the Fillmore and The Avalon as members of Moby Grape, but in the middle of the year they were still playing The Syndrome.

In 1966, there was a club attempting to attract the hip rock audience every several miles in the South Bay. In South Palo Alto there was The Big Beat, in Redwood City there was The Spectrum (previously The Nu Beat), in San Mateo there was The Trip and in Burlingame there was The Syndrome. Articles in the San Mateo Times (such as the ones above from June 10 and December 16, 1966) make it clear that the club emphasized "psychedelic" lighting to create an "experience." The December, 1966 article says that "With the mass discharge of college hippies from school, you can bet that Bill Hotmans Syndrome in Burlingame will be junpin during the holidays." The Syndrome clearly recognized that they were aiming at the "hippie" market, but they seemed to missed the target. The original proprietor, Joe Gannon, had been the road manager of The Kingston Trio, so he was not a fuddy-duddy old man, but he still seems to have overestimated the reach of the underground. I do not know if Bill Hotman was a new owner or simply a manager.

For one thing, many hippies did not have much money, not enough to afford to hang out in bars. For another, the location of The Syndrome on the South Bay's main drag, El Camino Real, required a car, and if you had a car, why not see the Dead or Big Brother at the Avalon or The Fillmore, just a few miles up the road? Furthermore, many of the hippest rock fans were under 21, in many cases well under 21, and not able to get into a bar. Finally, the Fillmore and Avalon had bands that were perceived as cool, that made people want to go out and see them. The primary act that was advertised at The Syndrome was Mr. Clean (the above is from November 25), a soul combo headed by former NFL player and saxophonist/vocalist Ollie McClay. While no doubt McClay was a fine musician (lounge musicians usually are), he didn't have the underground cachet that the Fillmore bands did.

It is ironic that Luminous Marsh Gas, with two future members of various Fillmore bands, who apparently played the club regularly but were not advertised in the paper, probably had the talent and underground cred to make The Syndrome into a happening place, but the proprietors were unable to capitalize on it. According to Kaufman, the band was already playing some nascent Moby Grape material, including the great song "Murder In My Heart For The Judge."

The Syndrome was only open from June 1966 until July 1967. It was replaced in August of 1967 by a Greek restaurant called Zorba's.

4301 El Camino Real, San Mateo, CA: The Trip November 1966-Spring 68

As Bill Graham's Fillmore and Chet Helms's Avalon became increasingly successful, the entertainment scene in the more staid Peninsula felt the whiff of change. While most of the El Camino Real bars styled themselves as Las Vegas Lounges--if without the gambling--with dinner, drinks and dancing, a few entrepreneurs started looking for a different audience. One of the sharpest of these was Yvonne Modica, a successful restauranteur since the 1950s. She had opened The Big Beat in South Palo Alto, and it had been an almost immediate success. Her next venture, The Trip, in San Mateo, was the first overt attempt in the South Bay to commercially exploit the San Francisco underground.

Modica opened The Trip about a year after she opened The Big Beat in Palo Alto. The Palo Alto club opened around Dec 21, 1965, and The Trip opened November 22, 1966 (the article above is from the November 11 San Mateo Times). It followed the model of The Big Beat by having pizza and beer to go with the dancing, with an after hours jam session from 2-6am on Saturday and Sunday mornings. However, the club's name overtly identified with the underground rock scene in San Francisco. Just in case you missed the reference, the ad says "A Journey Through LSD--Light, Sound, Delicious Pizza." There seems to have been some version of a Fillmore-style light show.

4301 El Camino Real, on the main street for the whole South Bay (El Camino Real runs from South San Francisco to Santa Clara), had formerly been a place called "Big Al's Gashouse." The Gashouse, also a pizza-beer-entertainment join, was at least thematically connected to a well-known San Francisco club on Broadway called Big Al's. Various local bands had played Big Al's, including the Vejtables and The Warlocks, but the venue burned down in early 1966.

The Trip was only open until early 1968, when Modica re-opened it under the name "Souled Out," going for more of a rhythm and blues sound. A South Bay resident at the time told me that one of the problems with these El Camino bars trying to be "hip" was that they were kind of expensive for hippies surviving hand to mouth, and in any case since you had to drive you may as well go to the Fillmore or Avalon, just a few more miles up the road. The Big Beat was pretty far from San Francisco, but that isn't true for San Mateo. In any case, many of the Fillmore and Avalon patrons were too young to get in a bar, thus creating another limitation for The Trip.

One thing that Modica and others missed in trying to export psychedelia to the suburban South Bay was that the Fillmore experience doesn't work without a good band, preferably one that likes to jam. Modica regularly presented the same groups at The Trip that she did at The Big Beat. While I don't know much about The Tombstones, the peripheral evidence suggests that they were a typical South Bay dance band--they probably played a lot of rock and roll and Motown covers, probably pretty well, but they weren't the sort of band that people went out of their way to see. However delicious the pizza may have been, people looking for a transcendent experience were more likely to get it from the wide open explorations of The Dead or Quicksilver, despite any sloppiness, rather than the efficient cover versions of a dance band.

4301 El Camino Real is now the site of a used car dealer called Auto Access.

1545 Market Street, San Francisco, CA: The Bachelors live at The Carousel Ballroom, May 21, 1966

The Bachelors were an Irish singing group popular in the United Kingdom, with some following in the United States. This ad from the May 13, 1966 edition of the San Mateo Times has no significance from a rock perspective, except insofar as this is the future site of The Fillmore West.

Various San Francisco bands formed a consortium in early 1968 to compete directly with Bill Graham's Fillmore and Chet Helms's Avalon. They leased the Carousel and Grateful Dead staff largely ran it. Despite best intentions and great bills, the venue rapidly turned into a financial mess. The Carousel was owned by an Irishman, and Bill Graham apparently flew to Ireland to wrest the lease away from the bands. He succeeded, and moved his Fillmore operation to the much larger Fillmore West.

All that was in the future, however. In 1966, The Carousel Ballroom, once the El Patio, was a pale reflection of its former glory, but still served as a ballroom, as the above ad shows. The site is currently a Honda dealership.