February 1970 - Two Nights with the Grateful Dead

Everyone who followed the Grateful Dead has their favorite year or two. Some people favor the raw, early psychedelia of 1968 and 1969. Others like the Brent years,  the Bruce and Vince era,  and almost everyone likes 1972.  My favorite Dead year, hands down,  is 1970, and I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten to see the band’s evolution that year through five shows from four different runs at the Fillmore West.

It was definitely a transitional year, starting with the band smarting from the disaster of Altamont, the loss of many months of income when manager Lenny Hart absconded with their operating capital.  In January, the band began what was arguably their heaviest year of touring with an east coast swing, a junket out to Hawaii, and an ill-fated three-night stand at New Orlean’s warehouse,  during which the group experienced their storied bust at their hotel in the French Quarter.  Keyboardist Tom Constanten elected to exit the group during the Hawaii junket, playing his last gigs with the group in New Orleans. Emotionally and financially bruised, the band retreated to San Francisco to regroup and begin recording their next album, Workingman’s Dead. A combination of financial necessity and the nature of the new material meant that the album was cut quickly and simply, a marked contrast to the extravagant  experimentations of their previous two studio albums, Aoxomoxoa and Anthem of the Sun.  With new road manager Sam Cutler, the group also began rebuilding their finances through a grueling year of touring that found them playing 134 dates in 20 different states, plus gigs in the UK and Canada. This was also the year they cemented their dramatic fan base in New York,  playing 43 gigs in and around Manhattan.  They also played a record number of hometown  dates as well – at least 34 in the greater Bay Area.

The Dead also transitioned from a headlining act to an entire evening of entertainment as their shows expanded to include acoustic sets and Garcia’s side project with  John Dawson and David Nelson, the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Their expansive shows could run to five hours or more, incorporating folk, bluegrass and acoustic blues, the cosmic country of the NRPS, and the Dead’s ever expanding repertoire of originals and their unique takes on an arsenal of rock, country,R&B,  and blues tunes. The Dead arguably reached their compositional and recording peak with the two classic albums recorded that year - Workingman’s Dead and its successor, American Beauty, which introduced a rich and enduring set of new compositions into their repertoire

As the year drew to a close, Mickey Hart was poised to leave the group, and they somewhat abruptly morphed into what  Jerry Garcia described in a 1971 interview as a ‘a regular shoot-em-up saloon band.’ Anchored by single drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s remarkably fluid chops, they continued to thrive well into the seventies and beyond,  but the intimate magic of those 1970 ‘Evenings with the Grateful Dead’ would ever be created again.

The Dead’s first hometown run of 1970 was at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West, where they played their usual extended four-night weekend following an abbreviated set at the Family Dog on the Great Highway on Wednesday night as part of a Ralph Gleason-produced KQED TV Taping that was released years later as A Night at the Family Dog. As fate would have it, I ended up going to two of the four Fillmore West shows, through happenstance rather than by design. I went to the Friday show with my Dad (his first of about a dozen Dead shows), and was then invited to go to the Sunday night show with one of my high school friends and his father. Although it became commonplace for people to attend multiple Dead shows in later years, this was somewhat of a revelation for me, when it became apparent that the setlists of the two shows were almost entirely different (Although we take for granted the exhaustive chronicling of almost every Dead show today, such information was not readily available back then).

Bigfoot 2/8/70 Photo: M. Parrish

            For the February run, the Dead topped a bill rounded out by southern Californians – Taj Mahal’s electric blues band and jazz rock quintet Bigfoot. Bigfoot’s opening set was  vaguely psychedelic jazz rock (think the initial incarnation of Chicago Transit Authority). The quintet recorded a fine album on Winro Records before splitting. Some of the former members had some Grateful Dead connections. Keyboard/sax player Dave Garland was in one of the incarnations of Bob Weir’s side band Bobby and the Midnights, and guitarist/vocalist Art Munson (a multifaceted musician and producer who had worked with the Righteous Brothers before joining Bigfoot) sold many a blank DAT tape to Dead tape collectors in the 1980s and 1990s through his Cassette House. The group’s bassist, Virgil Beckham, went on to be an active participant in the Los Angeles Christian rock arena,  playing in Richie Furay’s early evangelical band as well as with many other ensembles. I remember them putting on fine shows both nights, but don’t remember any specifics.

Taj Mahal Band 2/8/70 - Jesse Ed Davis, Taj, and
Chuck "Brother"  Blackwell. Photo: M. Parrish

At the time of these shows, Taj Mahal had just recently released his double LP, Giant Step/De Old Folks at Home, and was touring with a phenomenal band that included guitarist Jesse Ed Davis,  bassist Gary Gilmore, and drummer Chuck Blackwell.  At Friday night’s show, Taj came  out wearing an outfit very similar to that on the cover of that LP, with a broad brimmed hat,  kerchief around his neck, workshirt and jeans. His all-electric set drew almost entirely from Giant Step and his previous album, The Natch’l Blues, and went down very well indeed with the crowd.  Taj has always known  how to work an audience.  Davis was an amazing guitarist,  the rhythm section cooked,  and the overall chemistry of that band was as memorable as it was legendary. It’s a shame they didn’t stay together longer, but Taj seemed artistically restless during the early 1970s (and beyond, for that matter), trying out new bands and new sounds the way many people try on clothes.

Both nights, the Dead played a single, long electric set. I was able to hear most of Friday’s set,  but regrettably only the first hour or so of the long, powerful show they played on Sunday.  The Friday show featured all of the tunes that would appear on Workingman’s Dead except for the Pigpen showcase  “Easy Wind.” This was the first time I heard the Dead’s slow, funky remake of “Cold Rain and Snow” and their joyous, jammed out rendition of “Dancin’ In the Streets.” It was also a good night for Ron “Pigpen” Meckernan, who trotted out a ferocious version of “Hard to Handle” as well as a long version of the recently resurrected  Rascals chestnut“Good Lovin’” which was punctuated by a duel between Kreutzmann and Hart. Bob Weir’s cowboy persona was starting to fully flower at the time,  and these were the first of countless Weir renditions I was to hear over the years of John Phillips’ “Me and My Uncle” and Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.” Once again, the centerpiece of the set was a long segment built on “That’s It For the Other One” which resolved into one of the earliest airings of the poignant Garcia-Hunter ballad “Black Peter.” We exited the house during that song, which meant that I once again missed the opportunity to see Pig strut his stuff for the concluding "Turn on Your Lovelight."

Sunday afternoon, I got a call from my friend Brooks that he and his dad were going up to the Fillmore, and asking if I wanted to go. Although I had not done so on Friday, I grabbed my camera and off we went.  Given that it was a Sunday night, the crowd was lighter than it had been on Friday, so we stationed ourselves along the raised walkway to the right of the stage, which afforded a somewhat better view than the middle of the floor (However, one of the real benefits of the Fillmore West was that the sightlines were great everywhere).

Taj Mahal 2/8/70 Photo: M. Parrish

As I remember, the Bigfoot and Taj Mahal sets were pretty similar to those on Friday. For his Sunday show,  Taj wore a very stylish African outfit, which I am ill versed to properly characterize,  (but is visible in the photos I took that evening).

With the Dead onstage tuning up, I made my way down right opposite the PA speakers on stage left, just a few feet from the band. As has been documented widely elsewhere,  Bill Graham enjoyed a complex love-hate relationship with the Dead, and both took the opportunity to bait the other whenever  possible. To begin his introduction of the group, Graham presented Jerry Garcia with a framed photo of celebrity-of-the-moment Michael J. Brody, who had received headlines earlier in the week for giving much of his fortune away to various charities. Presumably Graham thought that Brody’s largesse might benefit the currently financially-strapped band and, although aspiring musician Brody got both a recording contract with RCA and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show,  he did not emerge as a benefactor for the Dead (and that was probably a good thing!). 

Smokestack Lightnin' -Bob Weir and Pigpen
2/8/70. Photo: M. Parrish

On a roll, Graham needled the beleagured band further with his introduction: “Stars of stage, screen, and radio, fresh from a command performance in New Orleans,  these are the Grateful Dead.” It was common for the Dead to build their sets slowly, starting out with something gentle like “Cumberland Blues” two nights before. It was often the hallmark of a really good night for the band when they began by pulling out all the stops, and that is just what  they did Sunday night, jumping into a gritty, fifteen minute rendition of the seldom played Howlin’ Wolf field holler, “Smokestack Lightning.” As is often the case in the best Grateful Dead performances, the pace is set by Phil Lesh, whose loping bass lines drive the band along. Lead instrumental duties alternated between Garcia’s stinging lead guitar and Mckernan’s fluid harmonica playing. Near the ten minute mark, Garcia and Weir started trading licks back and forth as Pig briefly sat down at the organ before stepping back out front to sing the last verse.

Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir 2/8/70
Photo: M. Parrish

Since 1967, one of the Dead’s most effective numbers was their version of Bonnie Dobson’s anti-war ballad “Morning Dew.” Usually reserved for deep in the band’s set, that evening they chose to pull it out as a solution to how to follow up the dramatic standard set by the opening tune.  Like “Smokestack,” the Dead played “Morning Dew” sparingly, and the versions they did around 1970 were particularly moving and majestic.  At the time, Jerry Garcia’s voice still had a delicacy and vulnerability, and Pigpen’s unadorned organ support was a perfect foil for Garcia’s equally emotive singing and lead guitar.

Two songs and a half hour into the set, the Dead toned things down somewhat with the first Workingman’s tune of the evening, Garcia’s dark folk tune “Dire Wolf.” Although Garcia’s pedal steel was onstage both nights, and he played it on Weir-sung tunes at both the Thursday and Saturday shows,  he stuck to his electric guitar here both on “Wolf” and Weir’s peppy run through “Me and My Uncle.” Unfortunately, the calls of Monday morning school and work meant that we left during this tune, with the bulk of the Dead’s set remaining to be played. Fortunately,  tapes of this show circulate (and can be heard at archive.org),  so I was at least able to hear recordings of the rest of the show years later.

Bob Weir Fillmore West 2/8/70
Photo: M. Parrish

Continuing in short tune mode, the band cruised through a peppy version of another relative rarity – their version of the old bluegrass standard “Sitting On Top of the World.” They retreated to familiar ground with the reliable pairing of “China Cat Sunflower” and “I Know You Rider.” Next up was another rarity, a slow, soulful version of the Elmore James blues lament “It Hurts Me Too,” sung with gusto by McKernan.  Well past 1 AM,  the Dead launched into the heart of their set – a seventy five minute segment that strung together a long, exploratory Dark Star,  Saint Stephen (with Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” sandwiched in the middle), and another long set-capping version of “Lovelight.” Although the best known Dead shows of this era were those from the Fillmore East the next weekend, released on Bear’s Choice and Dick’s Picks Volume 4, I think that the February 8 show is at least as good, if not better, than those shows.  I wish I could’ve stuck around for all of it. 

Pepperland - then and now

The music hall called Pepperland is somewhat of a legend in Marin County lore. Although it was open, on and off, for less than three years, and fully operational for less than a year, it played host to a pretty amazing and diverse roster of international talent, including Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, Chuck Berry, and many others.  I got up to Pepperland two times, once to see what was billed as the Acoustic Grateful Dead and another time to see a dynamite quadruple bill of Grootna, Lamb,  Boz Scaggs, and Taj Mahal’s tuba band.  Pepperland has been discussed recently on a couple of the Bay Area related music blogs, so I thought I would deviate again from a chronological diary of shows to talk about this funky little venue.

Bermuda Palms 1950s? Image courtesy of Rebecca David.
(Check out her great book, Mid-Century By the Bay
calmodbooks.com)

The Aliens performing at Bermuda Palms, early 1960s. This is clearly the same stage setup used when the hall became Pepperland. 

Pepperland had its origins as part of a motel/restaurant complex called the Bermuda Palms which was built in the 1930s by a San Rafael builder/entrepreneur named Whitey Litchfield.  Located in downtown  San Rafael at 737 E. Francisco Blvd., just off of Highway 101, the club was readily accessible from Sonoma, San Francisco, and the East Bay, yet it was far enough away from those centers to have a distinctly laid-back Marin County vibe.

Poster from the Janis/Big Brother/Gold Hell's Angel's
Party 5/21/70

The layout of the Palms is shown nicely in the 1967 postcard shown above (the cars in the parking lot suggest that the picture was taken much earlier). The ballroom, adorned with the large Litchfield's sign, was located on the front of the property and the W-shaped motel was behind the hall and between Francisco Blvd. and Front Street. A photo taken at an Aliens gig in shows what the hall looked like in the mid-1960s (read more about the Aliens here). A Bermuda Palms poster shows a bill featuring the Sons of Champlin, as does the poster for the infamous Hell’s Angel’s party in the club on May 22, 1970 featuring Janis Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie, Big Brother, and Gold (admission $1!) still had the site identified as the Palms.

By late June of 1970,  the dance hall at Litchfield’s was renamed  Euphoria, and had a brief, but storied,  stint that included gigs by Big Brother as well as two nights featuring the Grateful Dead, the New Riders, and Rubber Duck. David Crosby participated in the Dead’s acoustic set the first night and, at the second,  Janjs Joplin appeared again to trade boozy sexual innuendos with Pigpen on “Lovelight.”

The Glyph sound system at Pepperland circa 1970-71

At the end of July, the club closed its doors while it underwent an extensive facelift, emerging in mid September as Pepperland, a Beatles-themed hall that featured a quadraphonic sound system that was one of the earliest projects for sound engineer John Meyer, who  later founded Meyer Sound, the East Bay company that started out building custom PA systems for the Dead and others, and has developed into one of the world’s premier sound reinforcement developers and manufacturers.

To complement the psychedelic décor, the support girders for the hall’s roof were adorned with painted portholes that mimicked the designs present in the fanciful craft piloted by the Beatles in their 1968 cartoon movie Yellow Submarine.  Even the sound system blended into the décor, with the speakers molded into huge conical fiberglass structures as shown above.What appears to have been Pepperland’s grand opening featured an eclectic triple bill of Hot Tuna, Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, and jazz flute maestro Charles Lloyd. From then well into 1971, the club offered really interesting triple bills of acts that would normally be Bill Graham’s stock in trade in the city. Notable among these was a legendary Pink Floyd gig in which the band needed to use the ballroom floor to accommodate  all of their gear, and one of the shows was plagued by power failures as Floyd’s massive sound system taxed the club’s electrical capacity.  The relatively Pepperland portion of the gig list below was culled largely from the web site of Universalightforms, a site run by Bob Pulum, founder of legendary light show crew the Brotherhood of Light, who became the house visual artists at the club beginning with the club’s second gig with Frank Zappa and the Mothers.  According to Pulum’s site,  Pepperland’s first incarnation lasted from that initial show until an April 11, 1971 bill with Quicksilver,  Hot Tuna, and Lizard, after which the promoters allegedly split with the proceeds of that show.  Pepperland reopened in September with some of the original employees, including the BOL, in place, but the new venue seems to have only stayed open a few months, closing for good in January, 1972.  A nice selection of poster images from Pepperland and Euphoria can be found in this page at the great Chicken on a Unicycle web site.

The Litchfield’s motel appears to have been open during this entire time and developed somewhat of a shady reputation in the 1970s. This reputation is supported indirectly by the Grateful Dead tune "Shakedown Street," which was written  in 1978 about the neighborhood surrounding the band’s Front Street studios, which were directly across the street from the rear of the Litchfield’s complex.

Today the site houses a somewhat gentrified Motel 6. In front of the motel is a large building that recently housed the Zebra sofa store, and which was clearly the original Euphoria/Pepperland building. In 2008, the historic Litchfield’s sign was restored on the building through the efforts of Perry Litchfield, Marin County lawyer and Whitey’s son.

Jerry Garcia and David Crosby
Pepperland 12/21/70 Photo: M. Parrish

When I visited Pepperland in 1970 and 1971, it seemed like quite a trek up to the wilds of Marin from Palo Alto, but at least the hall was easy to find once in San Rafael,  located as it was on a frontage road right off of 101. What was immediately impressive about the hall was its modest size. Although it competed directly with the Fillmore West for headliners, Pepperland seemed to have been, by the most generous estimate, no more than half the size of the F. West/Carousel, which was already relatively tiny by today’s concert hall standards. As you can see from the photos, it had less-than-optimum dimensions for a music hall, a long, low building with exposed horizontal girders supporting the wide A-framed roof.  In its Pepperland makeover, these became girders of the enormous submarine one was supposedly inside within the hall. An interesting concept, but not an entirely convincing fantasy.  However,  combined with the exotic Meyer sound sculptures and the light show (it appears that none was operational at the 1970 gig, but Brotherhood of Light was very evident at the Mahal show) made for a fairly exotic interior setting, particularly when contrasted with the utilitarian trappings that surrounded the building.

George Marsh and Jerry Hahn Pepperland 12/21/70
Photo : M. Parrish

The 12/21/70 concert has been written about at length elsewhere, most recently in a lengthy blog post by Jerry Garcia’s Middle Finger. The photos I took at this gig are truly terrible as I was unable to adjust for the very low light conditions, but I was able to adjust the images using photoshop, and share a few of them here to give a bit of visual record from the event. These first two images just came to light a few weeks ago when I found a fragment of negatives from the first part of this show. What proved to be a marathon evening of music got underway with a spectacular set by the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, one of the Bay Area’s most amazing, but generally unheralded, musical aggregations of the era. The group, comprising jazz guitarist Hahn, blues-rock keyboardist and vocalist Michael Finnegan, and the superb rhythm section of drummer George Marsh and bassist Mel Graves, had a relatively short lifespan, disbanding soon after the show I attended. Rocking hard, armed with a splendid set of songs mostly penned by non-member Lane Tietgen, this short lived quartet was very much akin to a Bay Area version of The Band.  They did release one fabulous, eponymous album on Columbia, but never achieved the popularity they richly deserved. This was the only time I got to see them, and I believe the group broke up shortly thereafter. I will write much more about this great group at a later date.

Mystery Musicians Pepperland 12/21/70
Photo: M. Parrish

What happened next is not entirely clear. I know that John Kahn played an unbilled set as (I believe) just a duo with a blues guitarist whose name I do not remember (none of the usual suspects like Bloomfield. Gravenites, Bishop, or the like) but I seem to have no photo record of this set. On the other hand, I do have this enigmatic photo of a jazz guitarist and drummer that was positioned chronologically on the film between shots of Hahn and the New Riders. As noted in the jgmf post and the attached poster, Howard Wales was billed in the advance posters. In a response to jgmf, I indicated that Wales had not played, but it is conceivable that he did play and I did not remember it. It was a very long evening of music, and an additional set by Wales and company would perhaps get the headliners coming on as late as they in fact did appear. What I believe I expected was for Garcia to play with Wales, which did not happen. At the time, seeing Wales himself would have been no big deal, as I had seen him a number of times with A.B. Skhy. So either this photo is of the guys who played with Kahn or perhaps part of Wales' band. Neither of the more familiar musicians are visible, so this is likely to remain a mystery unless more information is forthcoming. The guitarist looks somewhat like Terry Haggerty, but I am pretty confident that it is someone else.

Spencer Dryden and David Nelson of NRPS
Pepperland 12/21/70 Photo: M. Parrish

After Kahn and friend(s) came the New Riders of the Purple Sage. I'd seen them many times in 1970, but this was the first time I had seen them with Spencer Dryden on the drum kit instead of Mickey Hart. They played a nice long set, with no real surprises except for the switch in drummers, and finished up well after 1 AM.

Jerry Garcia's nose and David Crosby
Note: Garcia playing an SG and Crosby a Gretsch 6 String
Pepperland 12/21/70 Photo: M. Parrish

The headliners were billed as the "Acoustic Dead" but the group that took the stage was an impromptu quartet comprising Garcia, Lesh, Kreutzmann, and David Crosby. Two tapes of this ensemble (it remains an open question whether Mickey Hart substituted for Kreutzmann in the earlier gigs) from the Matrix a few days earlier (the exact date(s) of those tapes are debated) circulate widely, but their tenure was short lived, and this may have been the last time the quartet performed. I was only able to hear part of their set, which opened with "Alabama Bound" and also included "Deep Elum Blues," "Motherless Children" and "Triad." Clearly they played a lot more (which, based on the tapes from the Matrix show, would have included primal versions of "Bertha" and "Bird Song"), but at that point I was dragged out by my father, who had to go to work the next morning. As noted elsewhere, at least Weir and Pigpen could be seen wandering around backstage, so it is likely that the Dead did indeed play later.


There seemed to be nothing like a curfew at Pepperland, and the musicians were clearly in no hurry to get anywhere.

Crosby, Kreutzmann, Lesh Pepperland 12/21/70
Photo M. Parrish

An interesting question begged by this show's billing, as well as that for the 12/31/70 New Year's show, was the specific timing of the demise of the Dead's 1969-70 acoustic sets. Both of these shows advertised the Dead playing acoustically, but it appears that this did not come to pass at either gig. The last shows at which acoustic sets are verified are the 11/5-8/70 Capitol Theatre shows, and a plethora of subsequent November (11/16, 11/20, 11/29) and December (12/12, 12/26-28, 31) shows are known that do not include acoustic sets. The reasoning for the abandonment of these sets is unclear. The amplification of the acoustic sets was always problematic, and Mickey Hart's imminent departure may have also figured into the issue. Whatever the reason, there is no documented record of the band stepping onstage with acoustic guitars until the 11/17/78 Hunger Week benefit in Chicago (which I got to attend, and will write about another day).

The issue of the drummer for this ensemble has been a source of some confusion. When the tapes of the Matrix show first circulated in the mid-1970s, the tape notations listed Mickey Hart as the drummer. During the Dead's acoustic sets in 1970, who provided percussion seemed to be almost random. Either Kreutzmann or Hart would generally be the principal drummer (except on the many occasions when only Garcia, Weir, and Lesh performed without percussion), so seeing a sole drummer onstage was no big deal. When I was recently able to scan the negatives from this show, it became clear that the drummer this evening was Kreutzmann, not Hart, so it seems equally likely that this was the case at the Matrix show/rehearsal earlier in the week. As discussed over at JGMF, I do not recall seeing Hart in the hall (and only one drum kit was onstage), so he most likely did not perform that evening at all.

Taj Mahal Tuba Band at Pepperland 4/2-4/71
Photo: Dr. Che

The only other time I made it to Pepperland was the next March, for a great bill of three hometown acts and headliner Taj Mahal with his unique four tuba band. As noted earlier, the Brotherhood of Light did provide visuals for that show, which was one of the last under the sponsorship of the original Pepperland booking agents. This show opened with an unbilled set by Grootna. Although this group did perform during the closing week of the Fillmore West, and recorded a single, eponymous album for Columbia produced by the Airplane's Marty Balin, they never really broke nationally, or even achieved headline status in the Bay Area. Grootna consisted of vocalist Anna Rizzo, guitarists Slim Chance and Vic Smith, bassist Kelly Bryan, and drummer Greg Dewey,  who had played at Woodstock in the final incarnation of Country Joe and the Fish and went by the nom de plume of Dewey DaGreeze in Grootna. The group's tight blues-rock set probably consisted principally of material from their single album.

Next up was Lamb, which had originated as an acoustic duo consisting of guitarist-vocalist Barbara Mauritz and guitarist-keyboard player Bob Swanson. By the time of this show, they had expanded to an electric quartet, which included bassist David Hayes and a percussionist. The group's eclectic material was jazz influenced, and driven by Mauritz' powerful, hypnotic vocals. Their second album, Cross Between, featured Jerry Garcia on three cuts.

During 1970 and 1971, one of the Bay Area's best bands was the octet led by by Boz Scaggs. After departing the Steve Miller Band at the end of 1968, Scaggs took a year or so off from performing, but cut a legendary, eponymous album in Muscle Shoals with a lot of help from Duane Allman. When that album garnered a lot of airplay. Scaggs went ahead and assembled a band to, as much as possible, capture the tight big band sound he had captured on the album. The new group featured drummer George Rains (late of Mother Earth and the Sir Douglas Quintet), bassist David Brown, jazz keyboard player Jymm Joachim Young, guitarist Doug Simril, and a horn section comprising sax player Mel Martin, trombonist Patrick O'Hara, and trumpeter Bill Atwood (replaced at some point by Tom Poole). The group's diverse sets were drawn mostly from the Atlantic Scaggs album and the band's first Columbia album, Moments, both of which featured a blend of rockers and soulful ballads that were very different than the disco material that brought Scaggs his greatest commercial success in the late 1970s and 1980s. A high point of their sets as the time was a long, spacy version of "Baby's Calling Me Home" which Scaggs had contributed to the first Steve Miller Band album, Children of the Future.

Taj Mahal was ubiquitous in the Bay Area during the era, but this was the first time, to my knowledge, that he performed locally with the remarkable band he assembled for a couple of tours that was documented in The Real Thing. Taj was always staking out new musical territory, but the so called "Tuba band" was perhaps his most audacious (and probably expensive) experiment. Comprising first call musicians like guitarist John Hall (later leader of Orleans), one-time Hendrix bassist Billy Rich, pianist John Simon, drummer Greg Thomas, and conga player Kwasi "Rocky" DziDzournou, the group's most startiing element was the quartet of tuba players led by Howard Johnson and also featuring Bob Stewart, Joseph Daley, and Earl McIntyre.

Few vocalist-guitarists have enough presence not to be upstaged by a quartet of tubas, but the combination worked remarkably well. Taj used the tubas mostly to provide a tremendous bottom to tunes like "Sweet Mama Janisse" and the extended "You Ain't No Street Walker Mama, But Honey I Love the Way You Strut Your Stuff." After doing a couple of songs solo, Taj brought the rest of the musicians out for a slow, breezy version of "Ain't Gwine To Whistle Dixie (Anymo') highlighted by both exclamations from the tuba section and Hall's jazzy guitar. It was a great set and, given that it was a Saturday night, we stayed until the end. 

The Interior of the Pepperland Building Circa 2/2011
The stage was located back by the flat Screen TV and
the exercise balls. Photo: M. Parrish

The Bermuda Palms/Euphoria/Pepperland Building
Circa 2/2011 Photo M. Parrish

Curiosity about the current state of the building and the Litchfield’s site led to a Cryptical Road Trip to sunny San Rafael, Taking the exit off of 101 that leads to the Richmond San Rafael Bridge onramp, a sudden sharp left turn leads to Francisco Blvd., a high volume frontage road that parallels 101 on its eastern side. A few blocks northward,  the Litchfield’s property loomed, replete with the large, restored sign. Emerging from my car I discovered that the building has been carved up into a few retail areas,  one of which is currently occupied by a Fitness Warehouse. Comparing the interior photo to the best shot I could find of Pepperland in its prime (a great shot by Dr. Ché from the interior of Taj Mahal’s Real Thing album, which  was not recorded at Pepperland, but at the Fillmore East), it appears that the stage area was located just about where the exercise balls now reside. Needless to say, the submarine trappings are long gone, as is the Meyer-built Glyph sound system. The proprietors of the store had no idea of the building’s illustrious past, but also didn’t seem all that interested.

The former site of Le Club Front as of 2/2011
Photo: M. Parrish

Being in the neighborhood, I popped around the corner to pay my respects to the former site of Le Club Front. The warehouse, which most recently housed a plumbing supply store, is currently unoccupied. I got out to take some photos, but beat a hasty retreat when a truck pulled up to the curb and what looked like some clandestine transaction got underway.  It was clearly time to bid adieu to shakedown street,  and a memorable bit of Marin County rock history.

Gig Lists

Bermuda Palms

7/28/67             Sons of Champlin, Baltimore Steam Packet,  Thursday’s Island, Mieville Square,  The IV Kings.

5/21/70            Hell’s Angels Party with Janis Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie (billed as Main Squeeze, but they had broken up by then), Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Gold.

Euphoria

7/3,4,5/70  Big Brother and the Holding Company, A.B. Skhy, Joy of Cooking

7/14, 16/70 Grateful Dead, NRPS, Rubber Duck

7/20/70  Country Joe and the Fish, Southern Comfort

7/24,25,26  Chambers Brothers, Boz Scaggs, Southern Comfort

Pepperland 

9/18,19/70 - Pepperland Ballroom Hot Tuna, Capt. Beefheart, Charles Lloyd

9/25,26/70 - Pepperland NBL Productions - Frank Zappa & Mothers, Tim Buckley, Kindred

10/16,17/70 - Pink Floyd, Kimberly, Osceola

10/24,25/70 - Steve Miller, Jerry Hahn, Dan Hicks & Hot Licks

11/13,14/70 - Incredible String Band, Doug Kershaw, Joy Of Cooking

11/28/70 - Leon Russell, Capt. Beefheart, Clover, Truk

12/18,19/70 - Chuck Berry, Sir Douglas (or Edward’s Hand?) , Boz Scaggs

12/20/70 - Joan Baez

12/21/70 – Grateful Dead?, Crosby/Garcia/Lesh/Kreutzmann, John Kahn and Terry Haggerty, NRPS, Jerry Hahn Brotherhood

1/22,23/71 - Youngbloods, Sea Train, John Fahey

1/29,30/71 - Cold Blood, Boz Scaggs, Stoneground

2/5,6/71 - Elvin Bishop, PG&E, Tower Of Power

2/20,21/71- Big Brother, The Sons, Clover

2/26,27/71- Spencer Davis, Dan Hicks&Hot Licks, Country Weather

3/5,6/71- Steve Miller, John Lee Hooker, Bronze Hog

3/12,13/71- Lee Michaels, Joy Of Cooking, Fourth Way

3/11/71 - Linda Ronstadt, Clover, Little John, Chris Darrow

3/19,20/71 – It’s A Beautiful Day, Odetta, Victoria

4/2-4/71 - Taj Mahal, Boz Scaggs, Lamb, Grootna

4/11/71 - Quicksilver, Hot Tuna, Lizard

Last NBL show

9/9-11/71 - Steve Miller, Yogi Phlegm, Nazgul, Clover

9/24,25/71 - Mike Bloomfield, Stoneground, Clover

11/13/71- Tower Of Power, Cold Blood, Norman Greenbaum

12/4/71 - Boz Scaggs, Earthquake, Staton Bros.

12/11/71- Joy Of Cooking, Commander Cody, Crossfire

1/22/72-  Tower Of Power, Redwing, Roger Collins

IABD at Frost, The Dead at Winterland, and CSNY at UCSB



Old Davis, Stanford 10/5/69 Photo: M. Parrish



Looking back on 1969, I actually was able to see quite a bit of music for a kid without a driver’s license.  The fall brought several more memorable concerts, including another memorable multi-act bill at the Frost Amphitheatre, my first of many visits to the late, lamented Winterland, and a chance to see Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young in their formative period.

As mentioned in an earlier post and in several places on the MFU site, the Midpeninsula Free University had to abandon their El Camino Park Be-Ins in 1968. However, they continued to sponsor music events, and the October 5 SCORE (Stanford Committee on Radical Education) concert held at Frost Amphitheatre was sponsored by the MFU and served as a benefit for the Defense fund for a group of individuals arrested in a demonstration at SRI earlier that year.

This show was memorable for me in that it was the first time I had gone out anywhere with a girl. I had known Monica for a year or so as our parents were mutual friends, so we ended up spending a lot of time with her and her brother at dinner parties and such. Because we liked the same kind of music as well, it made sense that we would go to this together. Still, it was a big step for me, and she was great company at both this show and the Winterland Airplane-Dead show I will describe next. It turned out that these were the only two shows we went to together, but I enjoyed her company and have fond memories of both outings.

The SCORE show took place on another beautiful sunny Stanford Sunday afternoon. As has been mentioned before, the correlations between who was advertised at one of these Frost shows and who actually appeared was often pretty low. In this case, two of the major acts advertised,  Southern Comfort and the Bloomfield/Gravenites band, did not appear. According to a review by Craig Okino in the Stanford Daily, these two acts pulled out because of a financial dispute, and Buddy Guy, who was advertised as part of the bill early on, was unable to make the gig because of scheduling issues. Nonetheless, the show had a good representation of second-tier San Francisco bands.

When scanning my photos of the event, I came upon shots of a band that I did not remember at all. After a certain amount of detective work, and a consultation with Rock Prosopography's Corry 834, it was established that this group was peninsula band Old Davis, which at one point had future Santana-Journey member Neil Schon as a guitarist. Obviously, they did not make a lasting impression on me. Another group listed on the posters, Stone Rock Outcrop, I neither remember nor photographed. They may have played before we got to the show, or were also no-shows.

Sanpaku 10/5/69 Photo: M. Parrish

Sanpaku 10/5/69 Photo: M. Parrish

Much more memorable was the set by jazz inflected rock group Sanpaku. Sanpaku is another of those groups that were a mainstay of ballroom and festival bills on the west coast for a couple of years that never released any music commercially. You can learn much more about Sanpaku here. At the Frost show, they played a long set, enlivened by a dramatic percussion solo where bare chested drummer Duane (Motor) Temme beat on his kit, microphone stands, and pretty much anything else he could find, while an unperturbed hippie dog walked past him onstage. I wish I had some better tools for describing Sanpaku’s music that afternoon, but details elude me after all these years, especially in light of the absence of recorded music as a reference point.  Stanford Daily reviewer Craig Okino likened them to a cross between Santana and the Sons of Champlin, which to my memory is not too far off the mark.

Cold Blood 10/5/69

This was the first of many times I heard Cold Blood. One of the second-tier San Francisco bands, Cold Blood is another big, horn-heavy ensemble led by charismatic lead vocalist Lydia Pense. The group had just released their first, eponymous album on Bill Graham’s San Francisco label, and their powerful set built on the momentum established by Sanpaku, closing with “You Got Me Humming,” which was an FM radio hit at the time. Okino was clearly not a big fan, citing tired horn riffs and arrangements. Amazingly, a version of Cold Blood still tours today, and Pense remains a remarkable vocal presence, whose youthful appearance belies the fact that she has over four decades of gigs under her belt.

Dancing Girl 10/5/69 Photo: M. Parrish

As at the Monterey Jazz Festival a few weeks earlier, I was fascinated by my fellow audience members, and took quite a few shots of the proceedings in the crowd. It was one of those warm, sunny late fall afternoons, and the sun and the great music animated and energized the lively, capacity crowd.

Crowd 10/5/69 Photo: M. Parrish

The show’s closing act was It’s a Beautiful Day, who were by then well established as a headlining act in the ballrooms, had released a popular debut album, and had a solid FM radio hit with “White Bird.”  Since I saw them a year earlier, leader David LaFlamme had acquired a moustache and the band had hired a new keyboard player, Fred Webb, who had recently replaced Linda LaFlamme. The group’s set again included most of their debut album, along with material such as the instrumental “Don and Dewey,” which would come out on their second release, Marrying Maiden, the following year. The group was more confident than they had been at when I saw them open for Cream, and had developed a harder edge. Laflamme and vocalist Patty Santos had developed a dynamic stage presence, and their vibrant vocal harmonies at the time were reminiscent of the similar chemistry seen between Marty Balin and Grace Slick in the Jefferson Airplane. All in all, it was another great afternoon of music. No real superstars, but a consistently interesting and energetic lineup of groups.

It's A  Beautiful Day 10/5/69 Photo: M. Parrish

It's a Beautiful Day 10/5/69 Photo: M. Parrish

A few weeks later, Monica and I went to Winterland for the first night of the weekend stand with the Dead and the Jefferson Airplane co-headlining. Since I was still a few weeks shy of driving age, my parents again acted as chauffeurs, and the four of us had dinner on Union Street before they deposited us in front of the big ice arena right at showtime.

Although I had been to the Fillmore a few times by then, the much larger Winterland was definitely an adjustment. By the time we got into the hall, the lights were down and the huge hall, which seemed generously oversold, was full to the rafters with revelers. We ended up staking out a bit of floor space near the back of the hall, which was not too bad a location given that the stage was located on the wide, western end of the hall.  However, being crammed into the extremely crowded floor was a very different experience than being at the Fillmore, which somehow never seemed too crowded, even when a show was sold out.

Opening the evening was a curiosity for an evening of San Francisco music. Cajun fiddler Doug Kershaw had recently released a mainstream album on Warner Brothers that was getting a lot of airplay on local FM stations. For his set at Winterland, Kershaw was backed by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, still relatively new to the area after relocating to Berkeley from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I recall a high energy set, with Kershaw playing his biggest hits, “Diggy Diggy Lo” and “Louisiana Man” along with a bunch of other stuff. Cody and company played dutiful backup, but did not have a venue to demonstrate their own arsenal of talent that evening.

After a longish break, the Sons of Champlin played a great set of music very similar to the one they had delivered at Monterey several weeks earlier. Their set from this show actually circulates in collector’s circles, and consists of all but one track from their second album (which, according to a stage announcement from Bill Champlin, was due to be released the following week) followed by a long medley of “Get High” and “Freedom” from their earlier release “Loosen Up Naturally.”

Sons 10/24/69 Photo: M. Parrish

After another long break, the Dead finally came on about 10 PM. I was starting to get nervous, because we had planned another midnight meeting with my parents outside, based on the assumption that each band would play two sets in the evening as had been the protocol at the Fillmore West shows I had seen. It was quickly becoming apparent that this would not be the case that evening, and indeed, from then on, all Graham-run shows I saw consisted of a linear progression of acts rather than the earlier format comprising six set evenings with each act playing twice.

The Dead played a nice set (you can listen to part of it here), although it paled in comparison to their amazing performance back in March at the Fillmore. Although the Dead had four albums worth of material I knew well, the bulk of their set was new to me. They opened with a quartet of original songs that would find their way out on the group’s next studio release, Workingman’s Dead, the following year. Casey Jones had first appeared in the Dead’s sets the previous June, and was still a work in progress, delivered at a breakneck tempo, and without the syncopated, rolling cadence it was played at by the time it was recorded early the following year. At least on the partial audience tape of the show that circulates, Tom Constanten’s roller rink organ was prominent in the mix the entire show. On artistic grounds alone, it is clear why he parted company with the Dead a few months later, as their new music did not leave a lot of space for the sound of his keyboards. 

Grateful Dead 10/24/69 Photo: M. Parrish

“Dire Wolf,” Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s sardonic little gambling ballad, had already been through an interesting evolution. Appearing in June as an acoustic ballad sung by Garcia, it then became one of several songs that allowed Garcia to flex his chops on his new pedal steel guitar. During this juncture, Bob Weir assumed the lead vocals, presumably because of the difficulty of playing the pedal steel and singing lead simultaneously.  By the time of the Winterland show, Garcia had established a more regular pedal steel outlet with the New Riders of the Purple Sage, so he was back to singing the song while playing regular electric lead. The slow, mournful “High Time” was another new Garcia/Hunter tune that had emerged as a favorite point of resolution out of open ended tunes like “Dark Star” and “China Cat Sunflower,” but here they went straight into it after the relatively unadorned “Dire Wolf.”

When I first saw the Dead at the Fillmore West in March, Pigpen was all but invisible, as Constanten was at both shows I saw in which he participated. However, at Winterland, Pigpen was prominent in the front line, behind a pair of conga drums. He was also featured prominently in the set list, first with an early, extended version of “Easy Wind,” one of the few songs in the Dead’s repertoire that had a sole authorship credit by Robert Hunter. The middle section of the tune developed into a bit of an instrumental jousting match between Garcia and Constanten.

Grateful Dead 10/24/69 Photo: M. Parrish

            From its origination, “China Cat Sunflower” had been a song in search of an ending.  At its introduction, in early 1968, it had flowed directly into “The Eleven” with which it was originally linked lyrically. When “The Eleven” found its way into the Live Dead suite between St. Stephen and Lovelight, China Cat was dropped from the live setlist for awhile, and then, in the spring of 1969, became the frequent jumping off point for “Doing That Rag” and later “High Time.” At Winterland, it was newly paired with “I Know You Rider,” a combination that was maintained throughout the rest of the Dead’s performing history. The version that night was revved up, with an extended jam out of the last verse of “I Know You Rider” that ultimately crashed back down into an additional version of the old folk song’s refrain.

            Pigpen stepped to the microphone again for Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle,” another tune relatively new to the band’s repertoire. This became a real show stopper for the band in 1970 and 1971, but it was no less energetic, if a bit less polished, in this early version.  Although Redding’s original is hard to beat, Mckernan owned this song, and there was nothing like his shouting out the refrain and the band cranking out that three chord riff in response.

            Based on my first experience with the Dead and their soon-to-be-released Live Dead (which I had already heard in its entirety on the radio numerous times), I was expecting a long, improvised segment and, nearly an hour into the Dead’s set, they began one with “Cryptical Envelopment.”  Fully warmed up at this point, the tune naturally evolved into a medium length version of “The Other One.”  The only part of this suite that I’ve heard on tape is a snippet beginning late in “The Other One” and moving into “Cosmic Charlie.”  This passage contains some brilliant playing, as one tune morphs gradually into the next.  Garcia started things off with a wailing banshee riff that Lesh soon anchored with his bass. Over the next minute or so, they switched back and forth between that intro and the chords of the “Cryptical” reprise before dropping deftly and gently into “Charlie.”

            The Dead rounded out their set with another extended extravaganza, their Pigpen sung  adaptation of the Rascals hit “Good Lovin’. At this point, this tune was newly restored to their repertoire, and, like “Hard to Handle,” it lacked some of the punch it developed over the next couple of years. However, it gave the two drummers plenty of space to strut their stuff, and wrapped up the set nicely.

            I suppose I should have been thrilled to have heard such a strong set by the Dead back in 1969, but I was actually pretty unhappy at this point. The Dead’s set was largely unfamiliar to me, and included none of Live Dead. Worse was the fact that they wrapped up after 1130 and, thanks to another set change, the Airplane didn’t hit the stage until about 5 minutes before our pumpkin coach was to arrive outside. At this point, I was probably as big a fan of the Airplane as the Dead, and had never seen them live. Regrettably, all I can describe of their set was the corrosive version of their apocalyptic “House at Pooneil Corners” that opened what presumably was a lengthy set, which we heard as we were making our way to the door.

            One of the big music events of late 1969 was the Rolling Stones tour, and I really wanted to see the band at their show at the Oakland Coliseum. Regrettably, both shows were sold out by the time I had arranged transportation. As a result, I did not see the Stones until 1972 as my parents, very wisely as it turned out, did not let me trek up to Altamont for that fabled social disaster of a free concert the next month. As a consolation prize for missing the Stones in Oakland, I ended up getting a plane ticket down to Santa Barbara to visit my brother, who was then a freshman at UCSB. In addition to seeing the campus and visiting my now collegiate sibling, the occasion was one of the very early gigs by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, at the university’s stadium. It was a cold, cloudy day, and Bill and I ended up getting pretty good seats in the stadium stands for the sold-to-capacity afternoon show.

            The opening act was Los Angeles octet Sweetwater, with their eclectic mix of folk-jazz-rock. Lead singer Nancy Nevins’ gentle voice, August Burns’ cello, and Albert Moore’s flute gave the group a much mellower edge than many of their contemporaries. Sweetwater had played the first day of the Woodstock Festival a few months earlier, but they did not end up in the movie or receive any of the attendant secondary fame that many of the other festival acts enjoyed.  At UCSB, they played a rather long set, but I was unfamiliar with their music at the time so can offer no particulars about what they played. Just weeks after the UCSB gig, Nevins was severely injured by a drunk driver, and she suffered through a lengthy recovery. The band did record two albums after the accident, but broke up in the early 1970s. Today, a revived version of Sweetwater exists, featuring Nevins, along with original bass player Fred Herrera and keyboardist Alex Del Zoppo.

The Steve Miller Band was booked to play between Sweetwater and CSNY, but they ran into travel delays, and we endured a lengthy break while waiting for Miller’s arrival. Finally, the decision was made to have CSNY go ahead and play, with the Miller Band slated to play afterwards if and when they showed up.

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were still a very new commodity in November 1969. The initial album by Crosby Stills and Nash had come out in mid-1968, to universal acclaim and sold briskly, reaching #6 on the charts and receiving Gold status within weeks of its May, 1969 release. In the meantime, Stephen Stills’ old bandmate Neil Young had recorded two solo albums. His eponymous debut didn’t generate a lot of heat, but Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which also came out in the summer of 1969, generated a tremendous buzz thanks to the long, corrosive guitar jams he recorded with Crazy Horse and the album’s radio-friendly single, “Cinnamon Girl.” When Crosby, Stills, and Nash set out to tour, they realized they needed another instrumentalist, and Stills lobbied for Young’s inclusion. As history has shown, the charges in this powerful nucleus of talents were consistently unstable, and alliances between group members were broken and forged repeatedly over the decades. However, in the fall of 1969, all was new, and the group was seemingly reveling in their talents and in the steady flow of creative energy the new partnership had brought.

In Santa Barbara, the group played a wonderful, long set, opening with a bunch of acoustic tunes led off by Stills’ omnipresent harmony vehicle “Suite Judy Blue Eyes.” No known recordings of the show exist, and I did not keep a detailed set list, but the group played the bulk of the Crosby Stills and Nash album along with a long, jammed out version of Young’s “Down By The River” and some new songs like Stills’ “4 + 20”,  and “So Begins the  Task,” Young’s “Helpless” and “Sea of Madness,” and the group’s luminous cover of Lennon and McCartney’s “Blackbird.” The set was also notable for what was not played. At one point mid-set when the group was debating what to play next, an exasperated Young piped up “Let’s play a Grateful Dead tune.” They didn’t take the bait, but the possibility is strong that they could have done one of the Dead’s new country inflected tunes. The quartet, and Stills and Crosby in particular, had been hanging out with the Dead in recent months, and helping them hone their harmonies. As the set neared the end, Nash announced that the group would next do a brand new tune written by Joni Mitchell about Woodstock. After more onstage sturm und drang, someone within the group decided that Mitchell’s tune was not ready for prime time, although they were playing it regularly onstage within a couple of weeks.

Sometime during the CSNY set, a large group of people outside the stadium broke down a fence and charged into the grounds, espousing the then popular philosophy that all music should be free, and that the era’s musical heroes should presumably ply their craft freely without compensation. The effect of this civil disobedience was that those that tore down the fence got to hear a few minutes of music, and the UCSB Stadium was not used for outdoor concerts for nearly four years.  It also meant that Steve Miller never did play, although it is unclear whether his band ever made it to Santa Barbara or not.

As mentioned earlier, I did not make the trek to Altamont and, as it turned out, the CSNY show was the last major concert I attended in 1969. It had been a remarkable year for popular music, and I was lucky to have heard many of the era’s icons at, or near, their peaks.