Berkeley in the Sixties

Mad River - Jersey Sloo

2011-12-14T19:13:00.000Z

Some old Berkeley Boys many of you may remember .....

SHAGRAT RECORDS is pleased to announce the release of ‘Jersey Sloo’ by legendary late 60s West Coast band, Mad River. The release includes a soft-cover book and 12” 5-track EP pressed on 180gsm vinyl, featuring previously-unissued music by the band in a limited edition run of 500 copies.

Mad River formed at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1965 and inspired what was happening in San Francisco moved to Berkeley in early 1967 just in time for the Summer of Love. During their brief time together they released a now highly-sought-after 7” EP and two albums for Capitol Records. The Shagrat release is a substantial addition to their catalogue.

Housed in the same sleeve as the vinyl 12”, the 12” x 12” 36pp, full colour, mini-coffee table book features a 26,000 word history of the band written by Ugly Things journalist David Biasotti, revealing many unknown stories and details about this legendary, Berkeley-based quintet. The book is profusely illustrated with many photos and other memorabilia which have never been seen before, and tells the band’s remarkable history, how they were involved in the emergent long hair counter culture and the movement against the Vietnam War (then at its height), their relationship with the Diggers and the Hells Angels, the Beat Poets and most interesting of all their friendship and collaboration with the late writer Richard Brautigan.

The band played all the infamous psychedelic ballrooms such as the Avalon, the Fillmore and the Straight Theater, sharing the bill with the likes of Country Joe & the Fish, Phil Ochs, the Vanilla Fudge and Santana, who opened for them on a number of occasions. Both their albums are now rightfully regarded as classics of the era – their eponymous, intense debut album, more prog rock than acid rock, showcased the songwriting prowess of leader/bassist Lawrence Hammond and the glistening twin guitar attack of David Robinson and Rick Bockner. Their sophomore set Paradise Bar & Grill was a more relaxed affair and showed the band’s country and folk roots poking through creating the kind of bucolic, rootsy feel that the Grateful Dead would capitalise on a year later on American Beauty.

Acting as a kind of soundtrack to the book, the 12” record contains five cuts that have never been officially released before, including the four numbers the band cut in Dayton Ohio in early 1967 as a demo before they re-located to California. These show that whilst the band was influenced by the likes of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Country Joe & the Fish (whom drummer Greg Dewey eventually joined and played Woodstock with) and their friends the Youngbloods, they were also pretty fully formed before they set off for the West Coast, as the embryonic ‘Windchimes’ included here testifies.

It was former Youngblood Jerry Corbitt who produced the other long-lost gem from ’69, ‘Jersey Sloo’in this set – showing that away from the long flowing psychedelic numbers, the band could also write concise, accessible, two-minute rockers (even if the lyrics were completely whacked out!). Drummer Greg Dewey takes a rare lead vocal on this one, which with its overtly funky bass lines, might be considered a frenetic companion piece to Country Joe & the Fish’s infamous ‘Rock and Soul Music’.

Release Date: 12th December 2011

Copies may be purchased from:

www.starryeyedandlaughing.com/madriver.htm

It took nearly 45 years before Shagrat Records deemed the world ready for these astonishing Mad River recordings. Limited copies of this beautiful 12 inch package, of what is bound to become a future collectable, can be procured by clicking here. The package includes a beautiful 36 page insert with David Biasotti's 26,000 word essay on the band and some rare photographs. British psychedelic artist John Hurford has provided some beautiful artwork for the project and Tony Poole undertook the audio mastering.

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1970

2011-08-21T09:41:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1970

2011-08-19T10:47:00.001+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1970

2011-08-19T10:41:00.001+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1969

2011-08-18T11:08:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1968

2011-08-17T10:06:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1967

2011-08-12T10:48:00.001+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1966

2011-08-11T10:30:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1965

2011-08-10T11:03:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1964

2011-08-09T14:16:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1963

2011-08-08T11:23:00.001+01:00

Berkeley Winter Folk Festival - 1962

2011-08-07T14:16:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1962

2011-08-06T11:13:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1961

2011-08-05T07:47:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1960

2011-08-04T14:41:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1959

2011-08-03T17:10:00.000+01:00

Berkeley Folk Festival - 1958

2011-07-31T14:36:00.000+01:00

Fresh Fish Only, A Berkeley Bag

2011-06-09T13:21:00.008+01:00

You can tell that Joe & the Fish are a Berkeley band when you see them on stage playing their electric music; Dave swaying with his mouth open and his glasses off, jerking his head back and forth; Barry grimacing, contracting and stretching his body during his long lead electric runs, head lost in a myriad of new sounds and gadgets; Paul bending his body in sections and having fits of rhythmic enthusiasm with the tambourine; John looking so Lower East Side cool while he does beautiful drumming; Bruce innocently playing the bass while joy and dismay alternate on his face; and Joe yelling and singing, stamping his feet, and smiling thru the music when he wants to signal something to the rest of the band.

They're a warm open band, not a hard rock group, and they radiate the Berkeley hip-innocence when they play. You can tell how the performance is going by watching the light show of emotions flickering across their faces, especially Joe's, because he is learning to talk where there are no words, and uses his face to communicate with the band and his friends in the audience.

They give the impression of an unfreaked acidhead taking an outdoor trip in summer flowers amazed warm sun shining works out, amused when it doesn't, because nothing serious ever goes wrong, and things work out unexpectedly fine often.

Collectively they have no stage presence at all. Even more than the Spoonful, who radiate the same vibes, they are a collection of people in undistinguished clothing making a music which catches them half by surprise.

Obviously they don't believe the audience exists, for they strike poses and tell jokes in cowboy dialects, or start convoluted explanations of the evolution of a song, but forget and wander off mike or lapse into incoherence before they finish explaining that they "used to play folk music but now they don't, kinda, Roy, get it?" Stage presence will come, most likely, and with it stylized uniforms and the whole scene, and we're lucky to see it happens. They're real enough now that a chick can come up out of the audience and be a go-go girl for a couple of pieces without everyone getting upset, Perhaps some of you saw what happened to the Spoonful when Zal got kissed at UC.

The band tells me that they are going to make it, and certainly have the potential to ride the charts and have people pay $5 and glad of it to see them, but I can't help wonder if it will happen. Country Joe and the Fish are not, despite their talk, a business corporation nor a music making machine. They have just used the bread that comes with making it as an excuse to permit themselves to buy the equipment they wanted to so they could make serious music.

This seriousness about the music is going to be their worst hang-up if they want to get to the charts. If they did some serious practicing they could tighten up their arrangements and produce a commercial sound, but the problem is in the content. Like any artists they reflect the realities around them, and the realities in Berkeley are not the same as the image blown thru the mass media. Instead of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" they have the "Bass Strings" or the "Dope Song" as it is called. This is strictly an underground song, as are several of the others, like the protest material (Joe wrote the Vietnam Rag and recently one of the band was attacked in the Jabberwock by a drunk marine) and Joe wants to write some serious songs about sex.

Which is not to say that they don't have some commercial songs. "Sad and Lonely Times" would make Sonny and Cher so glad, and the flipped out stuff like "Happiness is a Porpoise Mouth" could make it, just as Dylan in disguise can make it, but it's difficult to say whether make the band could be happy only publicly doing half of what they know.

Anyway, a couple of months after they have formed they have already an identity of their own, and are the most potentially exciting and significant group on the whole Bay rock scene, even tho they may have to settle for a jazz size audience. What they need now is practice and an audience. If you have a where a loud rock band can Play for several hours a day, call the band at the Jabberwock. If you have a Thursday evening, go and see them there.

This nifty article first appeared in ED Denson's column The Folk Scene in the Berkeley Barb (Vol 2, No 23, June 10, 1966).

Reverend Gary Davis: Twas Brillig

2011-02-17T13:14:00.006Z

Friday 25 February 1966
Little Theater, Berkeley (Florence Schwimly Little Theatre): Rev Gary Davis
Jabberwock, 2905 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley: Wry Catchers, Ale Ekstrum, Country Joe and the Fish, Paul Armstrong, Dan Paik. Unscheduled: Rev Gary Davis (nominally a benefit to raise the $1100 bail for Bill Ehlert and Bill Tolman who were busted for possession of pot on February 23 and had been held at Santa Rita County Prison)
ED Denson from the Berkeley Barb (Vol 2, No 9: March 4, 1966): Last Friday the Rev. Gary Davis came to Berkeley and gave his third (Brillig-sponsored) concert here during the present folk revival. It is likely to have been his last, and those who went to see the Byrds instead missed a chance to see an unforgettable, even unbelievable performance.
Two years ago Artesian Productions was destroyed by its double bill of the Rev. and Jimmy Reed, and the Brillig experience may do the same for it. I attended both, and can say that through no fault of its own Brillig managed to put on a better show, or lesser disaster, depending upon your point of view.
But as a promotion which was to be the springboard for later i concerts the whole idea was suicidal from the beginning, for the persistence in Berkeley's folk mind of the memory of the Artesian show was a crippling handicap.
The inexperience of Brillig, a front group for the Jabberwock, combined with the malevolence of nature to ensure that almost every thing went wrong. The publicity photo used on the poster was terrible, the Byrds were booked into the adjacent Community Theater on the same night and for some reason the date of the Davis concert was not changed, the flu epidemic hit hard, and the evening of the concert it rained.
As a final blow Bill Elhert, the active agent of Brillig, was busted two days before the performance in what appears to be one of the shabbiest political busts for grass that the narcos have pulled. These little things add up, and the only blessing is that the concert was a one-night stand for it seems unlikely that five of the 130 who showed up for the first night would have come back for a second.
GOOD START
The show limped off to a good start; although Elhert understandably preoccupied, had neglected to discover how to operate the sound equipment or house lights, and the first few minutes contained some unexpected fluctuations in these, especially when the building manager gave a hand by turning the volume higher than the Byrds could have stood. Davis was singing well, however, and the audience showed no signs of restlessness.
The Rev. has been called the best living folk guitarist, and in his style he is. His voice, while rough and cracked after a lifetime of street singing, has a power unrivalled among the living blues singers, and the sheer force of his performance covers any imperfections and laves you spellbound.
For the first 45 minutes that he sang it was one of the best performances I have attended. The songs were for die most part simple but like most religious folk songs filled with a vivid imagery that has a cumulative effect on the audience. They seemed to sink deeper and deeper, and the spell was not broken by Gary's poor harmonica playing, or Elhert's foolish attempt to get the audience to clap in time to the music,
FATAL ERROR
Then the' fatal mistake of the evening was made. Elhert called an intermission.
Two things occurred during the next 15 minutes which set the stage for final catastrophe. The Byrds concert got out which released hordes of young chicklets who kept thinking that they could find the Byrds by coming though the Davis concert. This also released the critics for the Chronicle and the Examiner, both of whom after being told of the first half seemed well disposed towards the second half and waited to see the Rev.
The gods were having their little joke, however, for the Rev. had caught cold during his 3-day stay in Berkeley prior to the performance. During the initial few songs he had stopped to wipe his nose every now and then, and now in the intermission he dosed himself liberally with his folk medicine: Seagram’s 7 with a lot of peppermint candy in it. By the time he hit the stage again he was getting high. Gary has a way of tantalizing the audience when he is drunk, because he almost begins to play and then thinks of something he wants to say. It seems like he must play in a moment and that moment is pushed further and further down the evening. It rapidly became evident what was going to happen, and my mind began to blow, so my memories may be a little confused in their order, but as I recall the second half of the show Gary launched into a long sermon/conversation about men and women.
NO MUSIC, NO WHISKEY
Elhert paced around and finally in an attempt to get the Rev. to sing came out through the curtains on stage, to scattered applause, and whispered to Gary that no music, no whiskey. Infuriated, the Rev. tried to smash his guitar over Ehlert’s head, muttering that nobody could talk to him that way. After a long tableau during which time no one moved much, Davis realized he was on stage and pretended it was a joke.
As the sermon continued Gleason fled, and 10 minutes later Elwood joined him, asking that it be recorded that the Examiner outlasted the Chronicle.
No sooner was he out of the door then Gary began to sing. He sang a long blues called “She's Funny That Way" which alternates sex with inconclusive verses and is repetitious. It went on for a long time. After some more talking, he sang it again.
By this time the audience was yelling for him to sing gospel, and two hippies were especially vocal. He invited them to come up and help him sing, which one did. That was the high point of the second half, until the guy got tired of making repartee between the lines and went back to the audience. Gary talked some more about pistols, sin and sex, and finally tried to get the audience to sing along with him, which at length part of it did.
Surprisingly few people left, and those that did probably were misled by the advertising into expecting a serious performance or real gospel singing with no side excursions. They looked very unhappy. Towards the end of the evening Gary began to sing again, and whoever was working the lights changed the colors as the Rev. changed chords. It was a nice psychedelic touch, and the Rev. and the lights got two encores.
AND THEN
After the concert Gary was visited in his dressing room by a few fans and discovering some chicks among them he lectured on girls should give a man What He Needs, and how about it, at which point they left. At last the Seagram's was gone and the slow progress toward the waiting car began.
Having gotten up the Rev. got into a head butting contest with one of the people leading him, and with one thing and another it was a half hour before he got to the car.
Later that evening he turned up much drunker singing sloppy blues at the Jabberwock.
I enjoyed the evening very much but I wouldn't have paid to see it, and would not go again for free. The amusing part was the total collapse of everybody's expectations this rapidly transcends being painful and just becomes outrageously funny. The tragedy is that the Rev. Gary Davis is a gifted performer capable of some of the best music of any of the living folk musicians. Instead the audience is treated to a sideshow which Is degrading to the artist, and for the most part a drag.
This is true of others besides the Rev when they perform, and normally comes from an almost total misunderstanding of the situation. In the Rev’s case he simply has not adapted to being an artist for audiences more sophisticated than those on the street corners of Harlem, and the problem is made much worse by the encouragement given to him to continue his burlesque and Uncle Toming by the younger hippies.
Quite naturally the blame in the end must fall upon the promoters who are afraid to tell the performer what they expect, or worse yet; don't realize what they should expect. - Ed Denson

Unscheduled, Reverend Gary Davis plays (drunk on Seagram's 7 with peppermint candy) at the Jabberwock later in the evening. The Reverend Gary Davis had played the "Brillig" presented show at the Little Theater, Berkeley (Florence Schwimly Little Theatre) earlier in the evening. Whilst visiting Berkeley, the Reverend stayed with members of Country Joe and the Fish in Mrs Sherrill's adjacent apartment building on Russell Street. Barry Melton recalls the visit of the good Reverend.

In the early days of Country Joe and the Fish, me and most of other guys in the band lived next door to "The Jabberwock," a folk music nightclub in Berkeley. The club was owned by a big, friendly guy named Bill "Jolly Blue" Ehlert. The Jabberwock was only a postage-stamp sized place, so when Jolly Blue got an offer to do a Reverend Gary Davis show, he decided to promote it in the Berkeley Community Theatre. We were all in awe of "Rev" and it was decided that while he was in Berkeley, he would stay in our house. I remember he stayed there several days, as we sat about the kitchen playing music hour by hour. I think he'd played the "Ash Grove" down in L.A. and had dead time between playing there and playing in Berkeley--this was in late 1966 or early 1967.
And, by the way, Easy Ed's quote from Jerry Garcia expressing the belief that Rev had nothing to do with San Francisco psychedelia is stone wrong. The Rev DID participate in the psychedelic aspect of the San Francisco scene, at least to a limited degree while staying at our house.
Because I was the band's lead guitar player and--I believe--the guy in the band most in awe of Rev, I surrendered my room and bed for Rev to stay in. Things were fine for the first few days he was there: We'd wait for him to get up in the morning, cook him breakfast, take him on whatever errands he had to do, etc., and sit around, smoke, and play music all day and into the night. It was easy to forget that Rev was blind as we sat around the kitchen table, listening to his songs and stories hour after hour. Then the night of the big concert came and, as was the long-standing musical custom, the Rev was paid in cash at the conclusion of the gig. He brought me with him to collect the money and made me read off the denomination of each bill was it was counted into his hand, and I remember him stashing the larger portion of his money into the sound hole of his Gibson J-200, while leaving some travelling money rolled up in his pockets.
Well, the next morning I woke up and remember having to go into my room to get some clothes or something out of my chest of drawers. I was very quiet, as I could hear Rev snoring and didn't want to wake him. Well, I got whatever it was and I was headed toward the door when I heard in a commanding voice,"Don't move or you're dead!". I turned around to see Rev with a .38 revolver in his hand pointed in my general direction, but sort of moving around so as to cover a wider target area. I remember screaming something to the effect of, "No--don't shoot." Rev replied, "One wrong move and you're dead." Well, then I started talking a mile a minute..."Rev, it's me, it's Barry, don't shoot Rev...I was only getting something from my chest of drawers..." Finally, Rev said, "Is that you, Barry?" The incident was soon over, and I had escaped with me life. I guess, from his perspective, it must have been kind of weird to be alone, blind, on the road 3,000 miles from home and rooming with a bunch of lunatic young musicians many years his junior. But to this day, the picture of Reverend Gary Davis that sticks in my mind the most is early in the morning, half-awake and blind as a bat, with a .38 in his hand pointed in my general direction. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. I'll never forget it.

A Benefit Event for the Arhoolie Foundation

2011-01-08T01:34:00.004Z

PRESS RELEASE
January 7, 2011

A Benefit Event for the Arhoolie Foundation
Celebrating Arhoolie Records’ 50th Anniversary
with Three Days of Concerts, Panels, and other events

When: February 4, 5, and 6, 2011.

Where: Freight & Salvage - 2020 Addison St – Berkeley, Ca (510) 644-2020

info@freightandsalvage.org

Why: The entire Event is a benefit for the Arhoolie Foundation which is a public, not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of authentic traditional and regional vernacular music. To learn more about the Arhoolie Foundation, visit:

http://www.arhoolie.org/.

The concerts will be emceed by Nick Spitzer, host of the popular public radio program “American Routes.”

Friday Feb 4th:
Tex-Mex Fiesta w/ Santiago Jimenez Jr.
& La Familia Peña-Govea
Los Cenzontles
Ry Cooder & Co.
~ Intermission ~
Any Old Time String Band
Michael Doucet & Beausoleil Trio
Laurie Lewis w/ Tom Rozum & Co.
with guest Peter Rowan singing “The Free Mexican Air Force” (with Santiago Jimenez on accordion)
Jam!

Saturday Feb 5th:
The Washboard 4
Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band
Barbara Dane w/Bob Mielke Jazz All Stars & Lars Edegran
~ Intermission ~
Toni Brown & Terry Garthwaite (of Joy of Cooking)
The Creole Belles
The Tremé Brass Band from New Orleans

Sunday Feb 6th:
Los Cenzontles
Suzy & Eric Thompson
Country Joe McDonald
The Campbell Brothers
~ Intermission ~
Savoy Family Cajun Band
Taj Mahal
Jam

Tentative Afternoon Panels:
1) Chris & British author of “Conversation With The Blues” , Paul Oliver discussing their first 1960 trip through the South with Paul’s recorded interviews, music and slides. (Sunday afternoon – in Julia Morgan’s historic Berkeley City Club)

2) Mexican Music and beyond – Nick Spitzer (moderator) with Linda Ronstadt and other guests. With previously unseen film clips from Linda’s Mariachi period. (Saturday afternoon – Freight & Salvage)

3) Chris’ film adventures with Les Blank, Maureen Gosling and other guests - with film clips from “Chulas Fronteras”, “Del Mero Corazon”, “J’ai Ete Au Bal”, “Down Home Music – 1963”, etc. (Saturday afternoon – Freight & Salvage)

4) The steel guitar in Gospel music with the Campbell Brothers and Bob Stone – author of the new book: “Sacred Steel”. (Sunday afternoon – in Julia Morgan’s historic Berkeley City Club)

Arhoolie Records is one of the premier roots record labels, bringing you the best in Blues, Cajun, Zydeco, Tex-Mex/Tejano, Gospel, Jazz, Country, Bluegrass, and regional music from around the world. Arhoolie Records was founded in 1960 by Chris Strachwitz. Through the years, Mr. Strachwitz has recorded both known and obscure artists, and brought their music to wider audiences. Among the notable and varied musicians who have recorded for Arhoolie are Big Mama Thornton, Flaco Jimenez, Clifton Chenier, Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Earl Hooker, Michael Doucet dit Beausoleil, Lydia Mendoza, Rose Maddox, the Treme Brass Band, the Savoy Family, Del McCoury, and many more. Check out: http://www.arhoolie.com/

This event is presented by and for the Arhoolie Foundation.

2727 Milvia Street, Berkeley, CA, Iceland Skating Rink September 13, 1968: Sky Blue/Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band

2010-12-28T20:58:00.001Z

(the poster for the Sky Blue/CGSB show on September 13, 1968 at Berkeley's Iceland Skating Rink. Poster by Jeannie O'Hara. h/t Brian for the photo)

The 60s were a time of new possibilities and new ideas, particularly in Berkeley. However, not all those ideas worked out as intended. Bands were always looking for new places to play, in the hopes of expanding their audience and making a little money. The manager of the Berkeley band Sky Blue got the clever idea of putting on a rock concert at Berkeley's ice skating rink, Iceland. Friday night was date night there, to some extent, and it seemed like a good idea to make an event out of it. It was a good idea, perhaps, but it still didn't work out.

Iceland
Iceland was Berkeley's first skating rink. In some parts of the country, ponds would freeze over in the Winter and skating was a regular part of the Winter, but in balmy Coastal California that never happened. Ice skating, then, was an exotic activity imported from a foreign land, practiced only by the specially initiated and the very curious. Nothing says "Berkeley" like "imported from a foreign land" and "specially initiated," so Berkeley's Iceland was opened in 1940.

Iceland was at 2727 Milvia, between Derby and Ward. It was a few blocks below Telegraph, and about six blocks West of the Jabberwock. It was in between residential and commercial neighborhoods, a good location for a skating rink, but it was also near where a lot of hippies lived as well. Skating rinks were a comparative rarity on the West Coast, so Iceland had a bit of history to it: the National Ice Skating Championships were held there in 1947, 1957 and 1966, so famous skaters like Dick Button and Peggy Fleming had competed there. By the 60s, the rink was owned by the Zamboni family (Frank Zamboni had invented the Zamboni ice resurfacing machine). No one had considered Iceland as a venue for rock concerts, however.

Allen Silverman and Sky Blue
Allen Silverman had been a songwriter in Los Angeles, with his partner Audie DeLong. De Long and Silverman had had some modest success, placing a song on a Stone Poneys album, among other things, but by 1968 they had moved to Berkeley. Silverman ended up living on Warring Street with the band Sky Blue, a group who was popular in Berkeley but had not yet managed to get any traction outside the city. Silverman became Sky Blue's manager and helped to arrange shows for them. The poster was created by the bass player's girlfriend.

The Iceland show was put on by "Buried Treasure Productions," but that was just Silverman and Sky Blue. The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band were a fellow Berkeley band, a little more successful than Sky Blue at this point, since they had been signed to Vanguard Records. It seemed like a very clever idea to put on a rock concert at the Ice rink, since a lot of hippies lived within walking distance, it was a chance for couples and groups to go out together, and it would have seemed like a fun thing to do while stoned.

Brian Voorheis of the CGSB reports that after all these years he remembers the gig well, since he's never played a concert for ice skating couples since then. The fact that the event was never repeated suggests that it was not a financial success. A couple of possible reasons come to mind:

West Coast people mostly don't know how to skate. If someone had invited me to a skating rock concert at Iceland (I lived in the area in the late 70s and 80s) I wouldn't have wanted to embarrass myself, so I wouldn't have gone. I can't have been the only person who thought that way
Even in the warm October of Northern California, it's cold inside an ice rink. Voorheis recalls that his then girlfriend wore a sun dress and nearly froze to death. She was probably a Californian, and most of us had never set foot in a skating rink, so as a result we wouldn't know to bring a jacket. His girlfriend probably didn't tell everyone the next day that she had a really great time, and she probably wasn't the only chilly Californian there

Aftermath
The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band released their album on Vanguard, and then led the recording of the Masked Marauders album, along with some members of Sky Blue, but CGSB ground to a halt in early 1970.

Sky Blue never released an album, although two members of the group (Vic Smith and Anna Rizzo) joined forces with Allen 'Slim Chance' Silverman to form the band Grootna, who did release an album, but they too did not grab the brass ring. Silverman, however, became successful as a manufacturer of guitar picks.

Iceland soldiered on for another 40 years, finally closing in 2007, as the aging structure and changing economics of Berkeley finally forced it's demise. It is remembered fondly by many skaters, but it's very brief history as a rock concert venue has gone unremarked until now.

UFO Leads Diggers to Be-In Site

2010-12-27T15:46:00.011Z

Berkeley Barb: April 1967

The Digger Be-In, begun last weekend with modest success is still, in progress, and has taken-on a new twist.

Three nature-loving Diggers have staked a claim to an abandoned mine in Malakoff State Park and, according to park authorities, “are in no violation of the law”.

The trio, who have billed themselves as an advance party of a vanguard of thousands of disenchanted city hippies, has set up camp inside the cave and has been living among me trees for more than a week.

The choice of Malakoff Diggings as a Be-In site, one Digger head told a radio station, was the result of the trio's “encounter with a UFO earlier this month”.

The three were driving from Nevada City when they sighted the object.

The bright oval hovered over their car for a few moments then began cruising in the direction of the park. They followed and it very soon disappeared - over a nearby hill. When-the three reached the crest of the hill, they claimed, they found a burned out circle of grass about 200 feet in diameter, with glowing rocks on the ground nearby. The rocks were later analyzed at a UC lab as containing a high degree of radiation. They regard the incident as “a message” a Digger stated.

New tribes will be gathering at the Free Store, 901 Cole, next Wednesday from 7 to lOam, to join those already at the diggings.

The campsite, is located 160 miles north off Highway 99, about twenty .minutes out of Nevada City.

Diggers urge - that those equipped the leave as soon as possible.More information and road of maps of Mars can be obtained at the Free Store

Fish For First Hip Fair

2010-12-26T11:01:00.008Z

Happiness is a Porpoise Mouth. The First Annual Hippy Fair, and Dance-Festival will be held 8 pm Saturday evening in Hearst Gym on the Cal Campus, the sponsoring Pretentious Folk Front announces.

No problems are anticipated from university authorities despite the controversial nature of several of the featured attractions. The event will provide the campus community a chance to see what the hip artists are currently up to.

The Festival is a benefit for Country Joe and the Fish who have lost two weeks work because alcoholic club owners have cancelled their engagements. Fear of risking the Fish's performances was the reason given.

Selections will be screened from the group's in-progress film "How I Stopped the War", a documentary of their triumphant progress from Market Street to Pax Pisces during the recent Peace Demonstrations. Country Joe will perform.

The SF Mime Troupe, itself involved in socially provocative events lately, will bring their bodies east of the Bay for dancing and skits of social interest. Individual improvisers of choreography will also perform, as will the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Agit-Prop Truck Theatre.

Early in the evening Berkeley's own Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band will do some takes by arrangement with the Jabberwock. Several films will be shown, a former Fug will construct a six-foot gods-eye on stage, and the first campus showing of the paintings of the controversial Russian artist Gershon Ikovsky Gershovitz will be opened.

All hip, craftsmen, artists, and artisans are invited to display their work, bringing blankets or whatever showcase they feel suitable. If you are one of the above and wish to participate contact the Front Festival Committee at their temporary office phone 548-1513. Donations at the door, $2.

The Cleanliness & Godliness Skiffle Band in 1967

Love and Peace Weekend - Part II

2010-12-18T15:11:00.008Z

September 28-29, 1968 Live Oak Park, Berkeley
From the Berkeley Barb Issue 163:

Love and Peace Fest Bummed by Fuzz

Berkeley's Festival of Love and Peace last Sunday ended as an Exercise in Law and Order.
While hundreds of diverse people strolled through Live Oak Park gazing at sculpture, painting, photography and unnamed art forms, Carl Worth, director of the city's official art center, was spending much of his time on the phone, trying to keep the heat off.
Police arrived Sunday afternoon, gesturing a stack of complaints several inches thick. A call to City Manager William Hanley kept the festival open. When a group described by one observer as "members of the Geritol set" complained that they couldn't use the park, the test nevertheless went on.

Hanley's support was withdrawn Sunday at 10 p.m., the hour Berkeley's sound ordinance goes into force. Police arrived promptly to squelch the noise emanating from the Art Center's small in door theatre.
The noise was a Rock Mass being offered by the Free Church, sponsor of the weekend festival. According to people outside the building at the time, the sound of the band was far from loud, even near by.
Despite the efforts of Carl Worth and Free Church Reverend Dick York, the police insisted that the sound must cease. Hanley and Worth did succeed for two days in fending off those who objected to the display of "street culture" throughout the park and in its Art Center gallery.
Just before the 10 p.m. crack down Sunday, the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company completed its ceremony-drama, the Quest for the Inner Eye of Truth. Costumes, gestures, music and words woven by the Floating Lotus led a procession of spectators into a spontaneous dance. That dancing mood, at a slower tempo, seemed to be reflected in the eyes of most of the thousands of people who wandered among the artworks during the two days. Many were heard to remark on the good quality of the work. Even the rock bands did not pack the people too tight together, but there always seemed to be a crowd.
Unlike many of the classic Be-Ins, at the Live Oak festival a weary body had room to lie on the grass without encountering stray feet.
Although many street people expressed bitterness that The Man ended the arts test on a harsh note, several are still working on a project to develop an Arts Center for the Telegraph Avenue community. They invite interested persons to attend a meeting for that purpose at the Berkeley City Hall on Friday, October 4, at 1:30 pm.

Love and Peace Weekend - Part I

2010-12-18T13:57:00.007Z

September 28-29, 1968 Live Oak Park, Berkeley

From the Berkeley Barb Issue 163:

The Festival of Love and Peace happens this Saturday and Sunday, at Live Oak Park in Berkeley.
Artists in all media have been invited to exhibit their work, starting from noon on both days.
Pegboard panels will be provided for hanging paintings photographs, prints, posters, etc. Weavers, potters, leather and jewelry makers are also welcome.
Performances and happenings have been planned for both nights. Saturday from 6 to 10 pm local, poets/writers will give readings of their work. They include Charles Bordin, John Thomson, Hal Razavi. Richard Krech, J.Q.Adams, and John Oliver Simon.
Also scheduled for this program is a jazz concert by the New Jazz Improvizational Group, a light show by Environmental Dynamics, and films by Herb de Grasse.
Led by the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, people at park at 8 pm Sunday will experience The Quest for the Inner Eye of Truth. This processional will break through the physical restrictions normally placed by a theater setting.
The Quest will culminate at 9.30 at the park's theater in a Free Church Celebration planned as a liturgy.
Bands will play in the northwest corner of the park. On Saturday bands will be: Milkwood, Lazarus Hmmmm, Dancing Food and Entertainment, and the Crabs.
On Sunday groups playing include Sky Blue, the Purple Earthquake, Friend, and the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band.
The Gallery at the park will be filled with an environment of painting prints, wall hangings, etc. The garden behind the building will be devoted to sculpture. The Free Church is sponsoring the event. They suggest bringing a musical instrument and something to share. And also respect for the pounds. The park is being turned over to the people Berkeley for the weekend, it belongs to you anyway, so treat it with care.

Kaahwump! And Crowd Says Aaah

2010-11-18T15:06:00.012Z

Piano Drop: Duvall, Washington - April 28, 1968

Oooooh!—Kaahwump!—Aah!" Those are the sounds a crowd and an uptight piano' make when a helicopter dumps the piano from a height of 200 feet.

More than 3,000 people, many of them flowered, beaded and longhaired hippies paid $1 and gathered in an isolated grassy ravine near here underneath sunny and warm Sunday skies to watch "the piano drop."

A musical underground group called Country Joe and the Fish, provided music while the crowd waited for the helicopter.

When the time came, spectators, children and several dogs were shooed back from the area where the piano would drop.

The helicopter soared overhead. The piano dropped, the crowd went 'Oooooh!", the piano went "Kaahwhumpl", shattered and the crowd went "Aaah!."

The whole thing was a benefit for a listener-sponsored FM radio station, KRAB, in Seattle, 40 miles west of the "piano drop" area.

Piano dropped from helicopter in Duvall and thousands turn out to see it on April 28, 1968

On April 28, 1968, nearly 3,000 spectators flock to Larry Van Over's farm in Duvall to see (hear?) a piano drop from a helicopter. Duvall is located in King County northeast of Seattle.
Van Over, better known as "Jug" for his musicianship as a member of the Willowdale Handcar jug band, had recently heard a recording on KRAB-FM of a piano being destroyed by sledge hammers. Finding the aural experience disappointing led to the speculation (most likely fueled by certain psychoactive chemicals) about dropping a piano from a building, or better yet, a helicopter, and what that drop might sound like.

Van Over enlisted the aid of Paul Dorpat (b. 1938) at Helix. A benefit "Media Mash," co-sponsored by KRAB and Helix, had already been scheduled for April 21, with performances by Country Joe and the Fish among others. The Piano Drop was hooked on as a free premium the following Sunday.

Larry tracked down an old upright piano, moved it to his farm, and contracted a helicopter service out of Boeing Field. The pilot didn't quite get the point, but he had moved pianos with his helicopter before. Having successfully not dropped pianos, he saw no special problem in doing the opposite. As Larry later recalled, "There were a number of Newton's laws that the pilot neglected to consider."

Assured of the feasibility of musical strategic bombing, Larry calmly dropped acid on Sunday afternoon and climbed into the helicopter to guide the pilot out to his farm in Duvall. It was sunny and clear. As the helicopter passed Woodinville, Larry and the pilot noticed that the traffic below was getting heavier and heavier. "Gee, there are a lot of people out today," Larry commented over the engine's roar.

By the turnoff to Larry's farm, he and the pilot realized that they had not been observing mere Sunday drivers. The roads around the farm were a parking lot - and then they saw a wall-to-wall carpet of humanity covering the drop zone. Instead of the 300 participants he expected, the pilot estimated at least 10 times as many people filled the countryside below. At that moment, Larry got that special, tinny taste in his mouth indicating that his mental altimeter had exceeded the helicopter's.

"No way, no way, no way," the pilot muttered with mounting conviction as he set the helicopter down next to the awaiting piano. "What exactly is your apprehension here?" Larry asked innocently.

"They're not going to get out of the way," the pilot explained.

"They'll move, man, they'll move," Larry pleaded with that persuasive power only true evangelists and zonked-out lunatics can muster. "Trust me, man, it'll be like the Red Sea all over again!"

For whatever reason -- curiosity, fear of not getting paid, or a contact high -- the pilot relented. "Okay, but they gotta give me plenty of room, or no drop."

The pilot hitched the piano to a special harness and lifted off. He approached the target, a platform of logs, from an altitude of at least 150 feet. The machine hove into view and the crowd, as Larry had predicted, parted and retreated to a respectful distance.

The pilot brought his machine to a halt mid-air, but bodies in motion tend to remain in motion, and the 500-pound piano dragged the helicopter forward. The pilot panicked and hit the harness release, but nothing happened. He then hit the emergency cable release, and the piano snapped free.

It described a lazy arc through the bright spring sky, overshot the target by several yards, struck the soft earth, and imploded with a singularly unmusical whump. "A piano flop," Paul Dorpat later dubbed it.

The crowd was not disappointed and let loose a collective "Far out!" as it surged toward the remains of the piano. By the time Larry pushed his way to the piano's impact crater, not a stick, wire, ivory, or scrap of felt remained. "They devoured it," he recalled. The last he saw of the instrument was its steel harp being loaded into a VW microbus by two hippies.

As Country Joe and the Fish fired up their amplifiers, somebody said, "Hey, let's do that again," and so was born the idea for the Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair, which took place later that year.

Sources:
AP Article “Piano Drop”
Walt Crowley, Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 110-112, 255.

Solon Faces Banana Treat

2010-10-03T03:27:00.004+01:00

The following article first appeared in the Berkeley Barb Volume 4, Number 10 (Issue 91, May 12-18, 1967).

(Mr. Thompson of New Jersey asked and was given permission to extend his remarks at this point in the Record and to include extraneous matter.)

Mr. Thompson of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently launched an investigation or banana peel smoking.

This was very good news to me, since I have been extremely concerned over the serious increase in the use of hallucinogenics of youngsters. Apparently, it was not enough for this generation of thrill seekers to use illicit LSD, marijuana, and airplane glue. They have now invaded the fruit stand.

The implications are quite clear. From bananas it is a short but shocking step to other fruits. Today the cry is "Burn, Banana, Burn." Tomorrow we may face strawberry smoking, dried apricot inhaling or prune puffing.

What can Congress do in this time of crisis? A high official in. the FDA has declared: Forbidding the smoking of material from banana peels would require congressional legislation. As a legislator, I feel it my duty to respond to this call for action. I ask Congress to give thoughtful consideration to legislation entitled, appropriately, the Banana and Other Odd Fruit Disclosure and Reporting Act of 1967. The target is those banana smoking beatniks who seek a make believe land, "the land of Honalee," as it is described in the peel puffers' secret psychedelic marching song, "Puff, The Magic Dragon."

Part of the problem is, with bananas at 10 cents a pound, these beatniks can afford to take a hallucinogenic trip each and every day. Not even the New York City subway system, which advertises the longest ride for the cheapest price, can claim for pennies a day to send its passengers out of this world.

Unfortunately, many people have not yet sensed the seriousness of this hallucinogenic trip taking. Bananas may help explain the trancelike quality of much of the 90th Congress proceedings. Just yesterday I saw on the luncheon menu of the Capitol dining room a breast of chicken Waikiki entry topped with, of all things, fried bananas.

An official of the United Fruit Co. daring to treat this banana crisis with levity, recently said: The only trip you can take with a banana is when you slip on the peel.

But I am wary of United Fruit and their ilk, because, as the New York Times pointed out, “United stands to reap large profits if the banana smoking wave catches on."

United has good reason to encourage us to fly high on psychedelic trips. And consequently, I think twice every time I hear that TV commercial: "fly the friendly skies of United."

But let me get back to what Congress must do. We must move quickly to stop the sinister spread of banana smoking. Those of my colleagues who occasionally smoke a cigarette of tobacco would probably agree with the English statesman who wrote: The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.

But the banana smoker is a different breed. He is a driven man who cannot get the banana off his back.

Driven by his need for bananas, he may take to cultivating bananas in his own backyard. The character of this country depends on our ability, above all else, to prevent the growing of bananas here. Ralph Waldo Emerson gave us proper warning: Where the banana. grows, man is ... cruel.

The final results are not yet in, however, on the extent of the banana threat. An FDA official has said that. .judging from the four years of research needed to discover peyote's contents; it will probably take years to determine scientifically the hallucinogenic contents of the banana. We cannot wait years, particularly when the world's most avid banana eater, the monkey, provides an immediate answer.

We can use the monkey as a laboratory, seeing what effects bananas have on him. The FDA says it cannot tell if a monkey has hallucinogenic kicks; they think not. The problem, I feel, is seeing the monkey munch in its natural habitat. To solve this dilemma, I propose the Peel Corps, necessarily a swinging set of young Americans capable of following the monkey as he moves through the forest leaping from limb to limb.

On the home front, I am requesting the President to direct the Surgeon General to update his landmark report on smoking and health to include a chapter on banana peels. In the meantime Congress has a responsibility to give the public immediate warning. As you know, because of our decisive action with respect to tobacco, cigarette smoking in the United States is almost at a standstill. This is because every package of cigarettes that is sold now carries a warning message on its side.

Therefore, I propose the Banana. Labeling Act of 1967, a bill to require that every banana bear the following stamp, "Caution: Banana Peel Smoking May Be Injurious to Your Health. Never Put Bananas in the Refrigerator."

There is, of course, one practical problem with this legislation: banana peels turn black with age. At that point, the warning sign becomes unreadable. It may be necessary, as a consequence, to provide for a peel depository, carefully guarded to protect the public from aged peels. I am now requesting of the Secretary of the Treasury that, given the imbalance of the gold flow, some of the empty room at Fort Knox be given over to such a peel depository.

As with any revolutionary reform movement, I expect the forces of opposition to be quite strong. One only has to look at the total lack of Federal law or regulation relating to bananas to realize the banana lobby's power. We have regulations on avocados, dates, figs. oranges, lemons, pears, peaches, plums and raisins. But bananas have slipped by unscathed.

What we need across the length and breadth of this great land is a grassroots move to ban the banana, to repeal the peel. Howard Johnson's can survive with only 27 flavors. And what is wrong with an avocado split? I will only breathe easier when this country, this land we love, can declare, "Yes, we have no bananas; we have no bananas today."

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD April 19, 1967

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen Performance List 1969: Berkeley Beginnings

2010-09-18T22:50:00.012+01:00

(A flyer for the Grateful Dead show at the Family Dog on The Great Highway, August 29-30, 1969, representing the first known appearance of Commander Cody on a Bay Area rock artifact)

COMMANDER CODY Performance List 1969
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were the second group from Berkeley to have a successful rock and roll music career, after Country Joe and The Fish. Of course, the members of both bands have considerably fuzzier memories and fewer dollars than fans might think appropriate to genuine legends, but such was rock music stardom in the 1960s. However, the ubiquity of the band’s 1972 hit was so great that people of a certain age who grew up in the Bay Area, whether or not they recall the name Commander Cody, know that Pappy said son, you’re gonna drive me to drinking, if you don’t stop driving that Hot—Rod—Lincoln.

Of course, quite a number of successful Bay Area bands had roots in the East Bay. Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the biggest bands of the 1960s, and they were very much an East Bay band. Their label, Fantasy Records, was on 10th Street (at Parker) in Berkeley, and John Fogerty took guitar lessons in Berkeley, among many other Berkeley connections. However, Creedence could more fairly be termed an “East Bay” band, which certainly included Berkeley, but they were not an exclusively Berkeley band. The group was actually formed in El Cerrito, and the band members lived around various cities in the East Bay as the band evolved. Tower of Power were the pride of Oakland, and they played Berkeley many times, but they were not Berkeley centered in the manner of Country Joe and The Fish and Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen.

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were also interesting in that the key members of the band moved to the Bay Area in order to succeed, as did many 60s bands, but Cody and company actually achieved their goal. Commander Cody and iIs Lost Planet Airmen’s mixture of honky tonk, rock and roll and Texas swing, with a twist of hip self-consciousness made them a Berkeley band, playing modified versions of strains of popular music little known to middle-class suburbanites.

Cody and the Airmen were from Ann Arbor, MI, but Berkeley and Ann Arbor have always had a symbiotic relationship. In the late 20th century, the Universities of Michigan and California (at Berkeley) were the top public schools in the nation, and the traffic back and forth was thick with scholars, activists and musicians.

There are two very entertaining accounts of the founding of the Airmen on the web, a story in George (Cody) Frayne’s own words and an old Ed Ward article from Rolling Stone. Both of these stories, while hugely entertaining, are full of various amusing exaggerations. Neither is very helpful with respect to the timeline of the early days of the band in the Bay Area (Cody’s story actually gets the year wrong), so I am rectifying that here. What follows is a chronology of the first six months in the East Bay for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. This chronicle is based on the best information available to me at this time. Anyone with additional insights, corrections or recovered memories (real or imagined) should Comment or email me.

Ann Arbor 1967-69
University of Michigan graduate students George Frayne (Fine Arts, piano) and John Tichy (Physics, guitar) had formed the group in Ann Arbor in 1967 as Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, as an homage to an obscure movie serial (actually called Commando Cody). The group was a loose aggregation of local musicians, and was a continuation of a band that Frayne and Tichy had begun as undergraduates. Although the story gets changed and embellished with each telling, it does seem that the band chose the name and then had to “decide” who was “Commander Cody,” since people kept asking. For reasons that change periodically with each retelling, George Frayne was designated as Commander Cody.

George Frayne received his MFA in Spring 1968 and got a position teaching Art at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh (the main campus was at Madison—Oshkosh was a satellite). The Commander Cody band continued on with various members throughout the 1968-69 school year. Frayne did come home to play with Commander Cody on weekends, but ultimately the band “fired” him in order to be able to play more gigs. The Commander Cody band was particularly interested in playing “honky tonk” country music, in a Bakersfield style that was distinct from the fashion popular in Nashville, as well as rocked up versions of Texas Swing music, all of which was largely lost on the R&B oriented fans in Michigan. The band finally ground to a halt in the Spring of 1969 when guitarist Bill Kirchen headed out West to California.

Bill Kirchen had been in the Detroit psychedelic blues band The Seventh Seal, but he had also been a part-time member of the Cody outfit. The Seventh Seal ended sometime in late 1968, and in early 1969 Kirchen left the Kody band and headed out for the West Coast. Around the same time, Cody singer Billy C Farlow, a member of the Detroit band Billy C And The Sunshine Band, had joined the group of Chicago blues drummer Sam Lay for a tour. However, Lay’s band folded out on the West Coast, and Lay and Kirchen joined forces.

Lay and Kirchen had put together a band called The Ozones and found a regular booking at a "Hillbilly bar" on Mission Street in San Francisco called Harris’s Town Pump. In June of 1969, with the academic year ending, Kirchen called Frayne and John Tichy, and persuaded them both to put their academic careers on hold and try music in the Bay Area. Frayne was already tired of college teaching after just one year, and Tichy was willing to put his graduate career in physics on hold. Kirchen reported that no bands in the Bay Area were playing what they were, so the Coast was clear. In any case, there had always been such a regular transit between Berkeley and Ann Arbor than any U. of Michigan student who moved to Berkeley did not even have to make new friends (I’m not exaggerating).

June 1969: Harris’s Town Pump, San Francisco, CA: The Ozones
The story of The Ozones residency at Harris’s Town Pump is mostly known from the Ed Ward article a year later. Apparently, it was a Hillbilly dive on Mission Street at 18th, not too far from Dolores Park (a picture is here). During the Ozones' time there, the club seems to have been sold to Samoan proprietors and the bar seems to have undergone a transformation. In any case, it remains a mystery to this day who else was in The Ozones besides George Frayne (piano), Bill Kirchen (lead guitar, vocals), Billy C Farlow (vocals, harmonica) and John Tichy (guitar, vocals).

While the band seems to have been playing their unique brand of hippie honky-tonk several nights a week at Harris’s Town Pump, they also seem to have been making plans to become a real band, using the name Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen. The numerous amusing tales told by Frayne and others about their early days in San Francisco—while likely true—mask a complete seriousness to give up potentially paying jobs in teaching or music in order to perform their own style of music, which was years ahead of its time.

July 4, 1969: outside Cody’s Books, Haste St and Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
According to George Frayne’s own version of the saga, the first official performance of the band was an acoustic performance on Telegraph Avenue outside of Berkeley’s popular Cody’s Bookstore (just down the block from Moe’s, and three blocks up from campus). Frayne played accordian, and Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band drummer Tom Ralston (an old friend from Michigan) played a little percussion, so the performance seems to have been of great ceremonial importance to the band. It’s unlikely many or any other people recall it however—in true 1969 Berkeley fashion, the performance was interrupted by a full blown riot, complete with tear gas.

What little evidence that can be gleaned suggests that throughout the Summer Frayne, Tichy, Kirchen and Farlow were putting together the West Coast version of Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen. The band members found a house in Emeryville, a tiny town on the bay near the Oakland/Berkeley border, and that became the “band house” that is a foundational myth in many band stories. Emeryville, once an important transportation hub, had a lengthy history of drinkin’, gamblin’, sinnin’ and good times, perfect for the Commnander Cody persona (indeed the only other Emeryville band I know of was the notorious Country P*rn, with Chinga Chavin).

I think the Berkeley performance on July 4 was an event of importance to the band members, even though they did not yet have a rhythm section. However, they seem to have been in the process of putting one together. By mid-Summer, the initial lineup of the group seems to have been

Billy C Farlow-vocals, harmonica
Bill Kirchen-lead guitar, trombone, vocals
John Tichy-guitar, vocals
Steve “West Virginia Creeper” Davis-pedal steel guitar
Andy Stein-fiddle, tenor sax
George “Commander Cody” Frayne-piano
Lance Dickerson-drums
Gene Tortora-bass

Steve Davis had been the bass player in one of the early bands formed by Tichy and Frayne back in the mid-60s, and among many other things he had been the State Trampoline champion. One of the many forgotten peculiarities about the refreshing persona of Cody and the Airmen was that for Berkeley hippies, they had a distinctly “jock” persona, in that they were all huge sports fans, independent of their commitment to revolution and weed (until this century, Michigan has always had a great football program, and Berkeley has always been indifferent, and this one was one of the few profound differences between Ann Arbor and Berkeley). Since his undergraduate days, Davis had learned to play pedal steel guitar. According to Cody legend, Davis had wanted to be “Commander Cody,” but was outvoted by other band members, and was given the name “West Virginia Creeper” instead.

Andy Stein was a classically trained violinist who also played bluegrass and country fiddle, not to mention tenor saxophone. Stein’s ability to switch from fiddle to saxophone gave the Airmen their distinct stylistic versatility. Stein was from New York, although I’m not certain if he knew Frayne from High School (Frayne grew up in Long Island). In any case, Stein played with the band on occasion in Michigan, and seems to have come out to Berkeley to join the Airmen. One of the more concrete bits of evidence about the band’s genesis turns out to be that Andy Stein played fiddle in High Country, Berkeley’s finest bluegrass band, throughout the Summer of 1969 while waiting for Cody and the Airmen to start performing regularly (this information courtesy bassist George Inskeep). Stein, too, was putting aside considerable training to throw in his lot with Cody, so for all the band’s bravado it was a very serious enterprise.

Lance Dickerson had been the drummer for Charlie Musselwhite in early 1969, which is how he met Billy C Farlow, who at the time was on tour with Sam Lay’s band. When Musselwhite’s aggregation stopped playing, Dickerson was available to join the fledgling Airmen.

August 11, 1969: Mandrake’s, Berkeley: Audition Night: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
According to the Ward article, Cody and The Airmen debuted at audition night at a Berkeley club called Mandrake’s, at 1048 University (near San Pablo Avenue). Mandrake’s was a little beer joint that generally featured blues and danceable rock. The Cody crew had so many friends from Ann Arbor that they managed to pack the place on a weeknight, so they were immediately booked. While the Cody band was a terrific outfit, it was a fact that Ann Arborites moved to Berkeley with their social life intact, so Cody already had a built in fanbase in Berkeley.

The Airmen's integration into Berkeley was so seamless that their audition show at Mandrake's was reviewed in the next week's Berkeley Barb. Clearly written by a friend of the band, the article included a photo of the group (above) and the headline "Real Country Rock." However, a waitress who worked at Madrake's at the time thinks that the photo was not from the club, although she recognizes Cody and the Airmen circa 1969. We have assumed the photo was taken in Michigan, and given to the Barb writer for publication, but I would love to know exactly where it was taken.

August 23, 1969: Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Sons of Champlin with Jimmy Witherspoon/Anonymous Artists of America
1969 was the Summer of Rock Festivals, and San Francisco was going to have its own on the weekend of August 22, called The Wild West Festival. Ultimately the grand three-day event in Golden Gate Park was canceled, leaving numerous bands without a gig and the organizers holding many debts. A number of last second events were held at Fillmore West and The Family Dog, which I have written about elsewhere.

According to the Ward article, Cody and the Airmen opened for Quicksilver and “only two people attended the show.” Quicksilver played Saturday night at the Dog, and Ralph Gleason reviewed the show, and a lot more than two people were there. However, its reasonable to assume that Cody played early and few people were there when they played. The group was not listed in any of the last-second publicity.

August 25, 1969: Jewish Community Center, San Francisco: Larry Hanks/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/many others “Golf Festival”
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ralph Gleason gave Commander Cody their first mention in the Monday, August 25, 1969 edition (above). Larry Hanks and Cody were playing a “Golf Festival” at the Jewish Community Center. What was this? Was anyone there ready to be “Lookin At The World Through A Windshield” and dancing to some hippie honky tonk?

Although the official name of the group was Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, the band was often billed as just “Commander Cody” or “Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen.” This confusion has continued into the present day.

August 28-30, 1969: Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco: Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Rubber Duck Company
The first real exposure for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen was third on the bill at Chet Helms’s Family Dog on The Great Highway, behind The Grateful Dead and The New Riders of The Purple Sage. While Commander Cody’s swinging honky tonk may sound comfortable to our ears, it was odd stuff in late 1969, and a Grateful Dead concert was as good a place as any for them to be heard (poster up top).

Keep in mind, however, that in late 1969 the Dead’s current album was the psychedelic Aoxomoxoa, and while the Dead had started to play the more countrified material later found on Workingman’s Dead, their audience wasn’t yet assimilated to the Buck Owens sound. This weekend was also a very early performance for the New Riders of The Purple Sage, who were often tied together with the Airmen throughout the early 1970s. At one point, in fact, the Riders and Cody had the same management. The New Riders, however, played in a much more melodic style, with greater focus on songwriting, while Cody and the Airmen were a more swinging, danceable aggregation.

The poster advertised shows on Friday (29) and Saturday (30), but it appears that all the bands played on Thursday August 28 as well.

September 2-4, 1969: Mandrake’s, Berkeley: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Cody and The Airmen played Tuesday through Thursday at Mandrake’s, presumably the result of their successful audition somewhat earlier.

September 9, 1969: Mandrake’s, Berkeley: Commander Cody and HIs Lost Planet Airmen

September 12, 1969: Freight and Salvage, Berkeley: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
The Freight and Salvage was Berkeley’s premier folk club (and still is). There cannot have been much financial benefit for an 8-piece band playing the 87-seat Freight and Salvage, but the Airmen played the Freight regularly, presumably because it was near their house, it was a fun gig and it provided an opportunity to work on new material. The Freight lacked a liquor license, nor did it allow smoking—a first for a nightclub as far as I know—so its an indication of the sincerity of Cody and The Airmen that they regular played the Freight under such restrictions (that is, they had to go across the street to The Albatross to drink and smoke).

Nonetheless, this Friday night appearance at the Freight appears to have been the first weekend headline booking in the Bay Area for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.

September 19-20, 1969: Freight and Salvage, Berkeley: Alice Stuart/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
The Freight calendar just has Alice Stuart on the 19th, and the Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band on the 20th, whereas The Berkeley Barb has Stuart and Commander Cody for both nights. It does seem possible that it was one or the other, but Alice Stuart was close friends with the Cody crew (a 1969 tape circulates with her standing in on bass with the Airmen), so perhaps they did play together. In any case, it is uncertain who actually played bass with the Airmen at this time, and maybe she was temporarily part of the group.

September 30, 1969: Family Dog on The Great Highway, San Francisco: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Flying Circus/Deluxe/Clover
This event was presented by the 13th Tribe. It was a Tuesday night event featuring local bands.

October 3-4, 1969: New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA AB Skhy/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
The New Orleans House, at 1505 San Pablo Avenue, was a little farther up Berkeley’s rock and roll food chain. Cody and the Airmen played a weekend booking with AB Skhy, a Wisconsin band who had moved to the Bay Area the previous year and developed a solid following.

October 5, 1969: Freight and Salvage, Berkeley: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

October 7, 1969: Fillmore West, San Francisco: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Gods Country/Sunday
The Fillmore West had a Tuesday night audition series, largely obscured by history, that I have written about extensively. The $1.00 admission shows gave bands a chance to showcase themselves for both Bill Graham’s organization and local talent agents and record company staff. No posters or flyers advertised the show; press releases that got mentioned in local papers are one of the few ways we have to trace these events.

Given the date, this must have been how the group made themselves known to the Bill Graham organization, who seemed to have hired them to back Doug Kershaw a few weeks later (see October 24-26 below). There were many Bay Area country bands who could have backed Kershaw, but they were not part of the Bill Graham Presents universe at the time, and Cody’s timely audition must have fit nicely with the need for them.

October 10-11, 1969: The New Old Fillmore, San Francisco: Flamin Groovies/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Phoenix
The Flamin Groovies (a San Francisco band) had taken over the booking of the original Fillmore (at 1805 Geary) after Graham had decamped to the Fillmore West (the old Carousel). Ancient posters reveal a bunch of cool bands who played the venue in the Fall of ‘69, but by all accounts the “New Old Fillmore” was thinly attended.

October 23-25, 1969 UC Berkeley Folk Festival
>October 23, 1969: Pauley Ballroom(evening) Dance: Country Joe and The Fish/Youngbloods/Vern and Ray/Janet Smith/ Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen /Jeffrey Cain/Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks
>October 24, 1969: Pauley Ballroom (afternoon) Panel: Sam Hinton, Arthur Crudup, Alice Stewart, Charles Seeger, Charley Marshall, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Commander Cody.
>October 24, 1969: Pauley Ballroom (evening) Dance: Arthur Crudup/Charley Marshall/John Fahey/Opelousas Playboys/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Joy of Cooking/Billy Joe Becoat
>October 25, 1969: Greek Theatre (afternoon) All performers.
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen had been “discovered” by Barry Olivier, playing for free outside of Cody’s Books. Exactly when Olivier discovered them isn’t precise, but he booked them for Berkeley’s Folk Festival in the Fall. The Folk Festival—or more accurately—the rock concert at the Folk Festival—was where Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen first got widely heard in Berkeley. There were numerous events throughout the campus on that weekend, and I have only listed the ones where the band was scheduled to play.

Bassist Buffalo Bruce Barlow, previously in Magic Sam’s blues band, joined the Airmen for this show, replacing Gene Tortora. Barlow stayed in the band for a decade. Barlow apparently had met the group at the New Orleans House.

October 24-26, 1969: Winterland, San Francisco Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Sons Of Champlin/Doug Kershaw
According to a reliable eyewitness, Commander Cody and the Airmen backed Doug Kershaw. Kershaw was from Louisiana but was based in Nashville, and he played a sort of Cajun/Country hybrid style of music. Kershaw had been a popular Country artist throughout the early 60s, and his biggest hits were “Louisiana Man” and “Diggy Diggy Lo.” During this period, Warner Brothers (Kershaw’s new record company) was trying to break Kershaw out to rock audiences, but rather than have a regular band he worked with local combos, a common practice in Country music. Presumably, the Bill Graham Presents staff discovered Cody and The Airmen at their October 7 Fillmore West audition, and signed them up to back Kershaw. The band probably knew many of Kershaw’s hits already—certainly they knew (and later even released) “Diggy Diggy Lo.”

This weekend’s bill was quite famous, as not only did the Airplane and the Dead play together at Winterland, but Crosby, Stills and Nash appeared during the weekend as well. Kershaw probably played a single early set on each night (Friday through Saturday). This would have given the Cody band a chance to rush back and forth from Berkeley on Friday (Oct 24), when they appeared at both afternoon and evening events at the Folk Festival.

Update: A KSAN "Fillmore West Retrospective" broadcast from 1972 has surfaced (in my house), and it includes three songs from Doug Kershaw at Fillmore West on Oct 24 or 25. Since Kershaw was backed by members of the Lost Planet Airmen, it is the earliest snapshot of the band (the songs are "Louisiana Man," "Battle Of New Orleans" and "Orange Blossom Special").

October 31, 1969: Mandrake’s, Berkeley: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen /Joy Of Cooking/Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band
A Mandrake's employee recalls Commander Cody's performance at this Halloween show. A theater troupe (The Magic Theater) performed their regular Friday night show, starting at 7:00pm, and then the club closed and reopened (with a new admission) for music. The Lost Planet Airmen's performance was filmed by local station KQED-tv, and parts of it may have been broadcast later as part of a news or documentary show. Its extremely unlikely that any footage survives, but its at least remotely possible.

Mandrake's was one of the first places where Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen had a following, probably due to the many Michiganders in Berkeley. The same employee recalled some amusing scenes from early Cody performances at Mandrake's

The people who came to see Commander Cody would throw their beer glasses against the wall at the beginning of a favorite tune, like faux rednecks, resulting in much breakage, and were sometimes encouraged by the band onstage to do this. Don got miffed after awhile and added the cost of new barware to the band's tab at the end of the night

November 1, 1969: The New Old Fillmore, San Francisco: Flamin Groovies/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Joy of Cooking/Canterbury Fair/Gold
The poster for this event suggests that Commander Cody played both Friday (October 31) and Saturday (November 1), but based on what we know about Mandrake's, I am assuming that Cody (and Joy Of Cooking) played Friday at Mandrake's and Saturday at Fillmore.

November 2, 1969: New Orleans House, Berkeley: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Congress of Wonders/The Fourth Way/Paul Arnoldi/Mendelbaum

November 13, 1969: Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Cotati was a hippie enclave about an hour North of San Francisco, near Sonoma State College. San Francisco and East Bay bands often played The Inn Of The Beginning. This booking was on a Thursday night. It seems to represent Cody and The Airmen’s first show outside of San Francisco or Berkeley.

November ?, 1969: Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, MI: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Cody and the Airmen returned to Ann Arbor for what appears to be three dates. Amazingly, fairly decent sounding board tapes of two of these shows survive in their entirety. Although they represent the only early snapshot of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, circa 1969, its quite revealing nonetheless. The band’s trademark honky tonk swing sound and comical swagger is already in place. Some of the original material recorded on their 1971 debut album is also present (like “Lost In The Ozone” or “Down To Seeds and Stems Again Blues”), so even as early as 1969, Cody and The Airmen were a fully formed entity.

Oddly enough, John Tichy is not present on the two surviving tapes. Why he did not come with the group when they returned to Ann Arbor remains a mystery. Whether he was temporarily not a member of the band or simply unavailable for some reason remains completely unclear. An article in the December 15, 1969 San Francisco Examiner suggests the group is a six-piece, without John Tichy, and with Andy Stein "joining the group soon," so perhaps Tichy was not part of the band for some period.

Alice Stuart plays bass on the two recordings, and sings a couple of songs herself each night. Supposedly Bruce Barlow had already joined by this time, but perhaps he had obligations that did not allow him to come to Michigan. Stuart’s presence suggests that she was quite familiar with the band’s repertoire, only adding to the mystery of the bass player prior to Barlow’s joining the group.

November ?, 1969: [venue], U. of Michigan?, Ann Arbor, MI: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
This tape is often called the “Hill Auditorium” tape, because as the show begins, a band member says “Welcome to the Hill Auditorium,” and some people in the small audience laugh and clap. Hill Auditorium was the largest and most prestigious venue on the University of Michigan campus, with a capacity of a few thousand. Cody and the Airmen were returning from the Coast, and clearly they were joking about playing the biggest venue in town, but it was a self-evident joke that they were not playing there.

On both tapes, band members allude to “three nights in Michigan,” so I take it to mean that there was a third show somewhere.

November 22-23, 1969: Mandrake’s, Berkeley: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Magic Theatre (22nd)

November 28&30, 1969: Family Dog at The Great Highway, San Francisco: Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Vern and Ray/Dr. Humbead’s New Tranquility String Band
Cody and The Airmen played Friday and Sunday night at the Family Dog on The Great Highway, but they were repelaced on Saturday night by Seattle’s Floating Bridge.

December 3, 1969: Fillmore West, San Francisco: Creedence Clearwater Revival/Billy Joe Becoat/Gary Wagner Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen /Flamin Groovies KPFA Benefit
This Wednesday night show was a benefit for KPFA-fm radio in Berkeley, so the acts had a distinctly Berkeley flavor. El Cerrito’s finest, Creedence Clearwater Revival headlined the show. Billy Jo Becoat and Gary Wagner were both on Berkeley’s Fantasy Records, as were Creedence, and Cody and the Airmen added to the Berkeley flavor.

Earlier listings had different opening acts that did not include Cody, but like many benefits the bill changed before the show actually happened.

December 5-6, 1969: The Lion’s Share, San Anselmo: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen/Jeffrey Cain/Lambert and Nuttycombe
The Lion’s Share was a tiny musician’s hangout in Marin, but headlining a weekend there was yet another sign that Cody and the Airmen were slowly expanding their horizons.

December 7, 1969: Freight and Salvage, Berkeley: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

December 17, 1969: Union Ballroom, San Jose State College, San Jose: Lee Michaels/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
San Jose State College represented a good out of town booking for San Francisco and Berkeley bands. The San Jose area still had a strong agricultural component and a big country scene, so while the San Jose State crowd was probably a bunch of hippie students, the South Bay was still a fruitful area for expansion for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, so the band’s first six months in the Bay Area ended on an optimistic note.

I have to think the band had some sort of New Year’s booking, but I have been so far unable to find it. I am certain that there are numerous performance dates from 1969 that I have been unable to uncover, so this remains a work in progress.

1970 and Beyond
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen were well ahead of their time, and moving to Berkeley allowed them to survive and thrive when they would have been too country for most hippies and too long haired for most country music fans. Country rock was starting to thrive in late 1969, but most proponents emphasized melody, songwriting and harmonies (like The Flying Burrito Brothers or The New Riders of The Purple Sage) rather than the raucous dance music of The Airmen. Nonetheless, the band was signed by ABC Paramount and released their classic first album Lost In The Ozone in 1971. Their hit “Hot Rod Lincoln” (a remake of a 1960 Johnny Bond country hit) went as high as #9 in 1972, and was ubiquitous on Bay Area AM radio.

Cody and the Airmen continued to tour successfully until about 1976, but despite some fine albums and many great shows, they never managed to cross over to lasting financial success. A 1975 incarnation of Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen was analyzed in detail in Geoffrey Stokes’s 1976 book Starmaking Machinery. Just about all the members of the 1969 incarnation have continued on in successful music careers (although drummer Lance Dickerson sadly passed away in 2004), and their have been occasional partial or full reunions over the years—I saw a fine one in Berkeley’s Provo Park on April 2, 1978.

Only guitarist John Tichy dropped out of professional music. He left the band in 1974, and—presumably with few other professional options-- ended up becoming Professor of the Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, with a long list of distinguished publications (one of his current research interests is “to develop continuum rheological models for lubricant and granular flows from molecular simulations and apply them to realistic engineering surface configurations”).

Freight and Salvage 1968-69 Performers Update: George Inskeep

2010-09-11T23:52:00.000+01:00

We have previously published an extensive list of performers at Berkeley's Freight and Salvage during 1968 and 1969, covering the first 18 months of the club's existence, as part of our ongoing Berkeley 60s Music project. When the Freight and Salvage opened, it was housed in a building at 1827 San Pablo Avenue (now Berkeley Auto Body). The Freight since has moved, first to 1111 Addison (the "Middle Freight") and now to a brand new venue.

Despite our best efforts, we were not able to identify every performer, and we published a list of performers unknown to us. Many correspondents wrote in--some of them the "unknown" performers themselves--and I published the information in previous posts. Due to the magic of the Internet, I have some more information about an hitherto unknown performer, plus some other remarkable details about music at the Freight during this period, and I will share it here. Our Freight and Salvage list had the following notation for June 1, 1969:

June 1, 1969 Freight and Salvage, Berkeley: Bluegrass Music with Sandy Rothman, Butch Waller, Hank Bradley, Mayne Smith, George Inskeep

The June, 1969 Freight and Salvage lists these five musicians but does not name them as a group. Most likely, they were simply performing songs they all knew and were not a group, as such. George Inskeep is unfamiliar to me, but the other musicians appear all over this chronology.

It's always better to be lucky than good. Another correspondent had suggested that George Inskeep was a pilot who played bass an occasion, but his musical history was unraveled when Mr. Inskeep sent me a very nice email. He not only explained his own musical history, but had some interesting insights and details about music at the Freight and Salvage during this period and beyond. Thus (with his permission) I am publishing most of his email (save for salutations and some personal notes).

George Inskeep, bass

I spent a good deal of time at the Freight during that period both as an observer and performer, and will try to provide a few corrections and fill in a few blanks.

I am mentioned for the first and only time on June 1, 1969 as the person the author had never heard of. I (George Inskeep) had learned banjo from Sandy Rothman a couple of years earlier, and since there was no shortage of banjoists in those days gravitated to the string bass. Sandy was kind enough to give me a gig with this particular pick-up group, and I went on to perform with a number of the groups mentioned. I knew most of the musicians fairly well. I was the odd man out in that company as I had recently gotten out of the Navy and was flying for the airlines, so was pretty much the only one there with short hair and who didn’t do drugs of some sort. Didn’t seem to really matter to most people.

I’ll try to go down the schedule chronologically and throw in some comments as they occur to me.

The first mention of High Country was in November of ’68 as “two man bluegrass.” The second man in the group was Myles Sonka (correct spelling), a red headed guitar player with a nice voice who sang Hank Williams songs a lot. I played with both Myles and High Country, although not at the same time. I joined High Country shortly after the June gig with Sandy and Mayne. At that time the group consisted of Butch, Rich Wilbun (correct spelling, although everyone wants to spell it Wilbur), myself, Pete Wernick on banjo (on summer vacation from Columbia U), and Andy Stein on fiddle. Andy, along with Billy C Farlow, came out from the University of Michigan to join Commander Cody and he played with us until the fall when Cody started playing seriously. (Andy has been a regular for years now with Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion.) We participated in the Old Time Fiddler’s Convention mentioned on June 21 of that year. We won a prize, but I don’t recall any rutabagas being involved.

In July Vern Williams and Ray Park returned to California from Nashville. They needed a banjo and bass, and Pete Wernick and I got recruited. We played together until the fall, at which time Pete had to return to Columbia to school. (Pete, of course, later formed Hot Rize with Tim O’Brian). After that our banjoist was Rick Shubb for most of the gigs, although for several months we had John Hedgecock or Bill Amatneek.

I am admittedly prejudiced, but many professional bluegrass musicians share my opinion that they were the best bluegrass performers of their time in California, and one of the best in the country. We played to sold-out houses at the Freight every month, the Fillmore, the Family Dog, the Great American Music Hall, the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1969, and several venues in southern California including the Ash Grove, where we had a couple of dates on our own and once opening for the Byrds. We, along with Commander Cody, opened for Merle Haggard at the Oakland Coliseum in December 1969. Vern and Ray were the inspiration for many players who came along later, and were definitely one of the all-time great bluegrass duets. Vern played mandolin and sang tenor with a voice that, as Pat Enright was heard to remark, could “cut hard cheese at 10 paces.” Ray sang lead, played a really solid rhythm guitar and was the California state champion fiddler that year.

I played with them until moving out of state in 1972, at which point Rick’s wife Markie Shubb took over at bass. They continued as a group for about a year after that, at which point Vern left to form his own band with his son Delbert. Vern made several records with the band, including three with Rose Maddox. Ray moved to LA to do studio work and cut a couple of albums also, one with Byron Berline. There were several reunions over the years, including one in 1989 in Grass Valley that I was able to play with them and Herb Pedersen. Sorry to digress, but those were some of my fondest memories. A lot of other players sat in with us from time to time, including Clarence Van Hook, Doug Kershaw, Richard Greene and others.

Getting back to the Freight schedule, the correct spelling of the Scottish balladeer is Alan MacLeod. Alan is to this day a good friend, in fact I’m playing a gig with him in Sonoma this coming weekend at Murphy’s Pub along with Hugh Shacklett, who with John Brandeburg was also a fixture at the Freight in the ‘70s as the Perfect Crime. Alan is a terrific guy, and hasn’t lost a beat.

I was also quite good friends with Campbell Coe. We spent a lot of time together. He was a genuine character. He played electric guitar in the Charlie Christian style, although I never saw him perform on stage. He, Sandy Rothman and I would jam at my house from time to time. He had this little hole-in-the-wall shop near the University. He could take an instrument apart faster than anyone I ever saw. He’d have the whole thing in pieces in under an hour. I cannot recall, though, ever having seen one that he’d put back together. He continually had a camera around his neck and was constantly taking photos of everything everywhere, but, again, I never saw a developed picture. It was the common consensus that he never put film in it.

Other trivia – When Ingrid and Bob Fowler (Styx River Ferry) separated, and later divorced, Ingrid went back to her maiden name of Herman. She was, indeed, Woody Herman’s daughter, and just before he died they appeared together on KPFA, the local public radio station. She moved to the Seattle area quite a while ago, as did Hank Bradley.

Thanks very much to George Inskeep for sharing his memories and insights.

Remaining "Unknown" Performers from The Freight and Salvage 1968-69
Below is a list of performers from the first 18 months of the Freight who are not known to us. They are known to someone, however, and hopefully we will find out more. Anyone with further information about who these performers might have been, where they where from, and anything about their music is urged to Comment or contact me.

Please note: this entire post makes little sense unless you have looked at the original Performances list. Listed below are the performers, as spelled in the Calendar or Berkeley Barb, their first scheduled performance date, and any identifying information about their style of music.

Dementia 8.2.68: improvisational theatre troupe

Don Copeland 8.5.68

John Dillon 8.11.68

The Maelstrom 8.11.68

Bryson Collins 8.12.68: “Crayon Encounter”
Kazz 8.18.68
Neo Passe String Band 8.26.68
Mike Scott 8.27.68
Fowler, Krech Paul X 9.10.68: Poets Theater Workshop
Bob Georgio 9.10.68
Quarter Dozen String Band 9.21.68
Ken Carter 10.18.68
Gil Turner 11.24.68
New York Slew 12.6.68
Jim Lynch 12.26.68: Country and Western
Tim Ryan 2.3.69
Joe Friedman and Barry Aiken 2.5.69: Classical Blues
Julie Meredith 2.13.69
Dallas Williams 2.14.69
Tom Maddox 3.17.69
Genny Haley 3.20.69
Kevin Barry 4.7.69
Rusty Elliot: 5.19.69
Bob Parsons 6.4.69
Gary Solaman 7.16.69
Steve Young 10.17.69
Tim Williams 10.22.69
Solari and Carr 11.13.69: “hip vaudeville”
Renaissance Catch Singers 12.10.69

FISH FOR FIRST HIP FAIR

2010-09-06T09:39:00.006+01:00

Not for the first time Country Joe and The Fish needed some funds to keep themselves in business. The Pretentious Folk Front had been created in the fall of 1965 by ED Denson and others for the sole purpose of getting access to a University venue, using bassist Richard Saunders (then a student) as a front man.

It is interesting to see that two weeks work had recently been lost due to "alcoholic club owners". The week of April 18 to 23 had seen a cancelled series of shows at the Rock Garden with planned support from Larry Younger and The Epics. No other shows had been known to have been scheduled between the 24th and the 28th when Country Joe and The Fish and The Fugs played a free show in Golden Gate Park's Panhandle (with $180 raised by passing the hat).

HAPPINESS IS A PORPOISE MOUTH. The First Annual Hippy Fair and Dance Festival will be held 8 pm Saturday evening in Hearst Gym on the Cal. Campus, the sponsoring Pretentious Folk Front announces.

No problems are anticipated from university authorities despite the controversial, nature of several of the featured attractions. The event will provide the campus community a chance to see what the hip artists are currently up to.

The S.F. Mime Troupe, itself involved in socially provocative events lately, will bring their bodies east of the Bay for dancing and skits of social interest. Individual improvisers of choreography will also perform, as will the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Agit-Prop Truck Theatre.

Early in the evening Berkeley's own Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band will do some takes by arrangement with the Jabberwock. Several films will be shown, a former Fug will construct a six-foot godseye on stage, and the first campus showing of the paintings of the controversial Russian artist Gershon Ikovsky Gershovitz will be opened.

All hip craftsmen, artists, and artisans are invited to display their work, bringing blankets or whatever showcase they feel suitable. If you are one of the above and wish to participate contact the Front Festival Committee at their temporary office phone 548-1513. Donations at the door, $2.

Berkeley Barb Volume 4, No 17 - Issue 89 (April 28, 1967 to May 4, 1967)

Provo Park, Berkeley Concerts 1967-69

2010-07-01T02:50:00.011+01:00

(this is a substantial update of an earlier post about Provo Park concerts in the late 1960s)

Provo Park in Berkeley, originally named Constitution Park, lies in the center of town, near City Hall and Berkeley High School. It is bounded by Allston Way, Martin Luther King Junior Way (called Grove Street in the 1960s) and Center Street. In the mid-1960s, Berkeleyites started calling Constitution Park "Provo Park" in support of the Dutch Provos (I had thought it was the IRA, but I was mistaken), and the name stuck. This is typical Berkeley politics, and almost no one living there later recalled why the park was called Provo Park.

When free concerts in the Golden Gate Park Panhandle became commonplace, many Berkeley rock bands looked to extend the idea to Provo Park. It was fun, it was cool and anyway it was good publicity for the bands. The first Panhandle show was October 6, 1966, the day LSD was declared illegal, and when The Grateful Dead, Big Brother, Wildlower and Orkustra played an unauthorized event there. By Spring 1967 the idea had spread to Berkeley, and there were apparently almost weekly shows, mostly during weekend afternoons. While many of the performers were simply aspiring local folk musicians or Berkeley High School rock bands, many larger events took place there too.

Provo Park remains fairly similar to how it looked in the day, although the buildings around have changed considerably. I took the top photos on August 11, 2009. Its vantage point is from near Center Street (Stage Right), looking across towards Allston. The Berkeley Community Theatre looms in the background, on the grounds of the High School.

The 60s musical history of Provo Park is considerably less celebrated than that of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, but in fact Provo played a key role in expanding the Berkeley music scene, because local fans had a chance to see groups for free, so a good group didn't have to be well known to become popular in the San Pablo Avenue clubs. This sort of promotion is a microcosm of modern Internet style marketing, but without the Internet, just one of the many ways in which Berkeley was ahead of its time.

It would be impossible to compile a complete list of Provo Park shows in the 1960s, as many of the performances were casual. Nonetheless, I am making an effort here to make a list of scheduled performances at Provo Park, that were publicized in the newspaper or with local flyers, an effort that has been considerably improved by Ross. Anyone with additional memories, additions, insights or corrections is encouraged to Comment.

January 15, 1967 Loading Zone, Ulysses S. Crockett, Drongos

Bands like the Loading Zone were playing for free in Sproul Plaza at anti-war protests, so the idea was extended to the stage at Constitution Park. While this event wasn't exactly sanctioned, it was mentioned in Ralph Gleason's San Francisco Chronicle column of January 13, 1967 (above). Note that Gleason still calls it "Berkeley City Park."

The Oakland-based Loading Zone were one of Berkeley's popular hippie bands, one of the first groups to mix psychedelic rock with R&B. They were well connected to the Underground, having played many seminal events like the Trips Festival. This was a portentous weekend in the Bay Area, as among many other events the Human Be-In had taken place in Golden Gate Park the day before.

Ulysses Crockett and The Afro-Blue Persuasion were a funky modern jazz group who were regular performers in the East Bay and San Francisco. Law student Crockett played vibes and flute, and the bassist at this time was probably Phil Marsh of The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band. The Drongos were a Berkeley High School band.

January 29, 1967 Loading Zone, New Delhi River Band
The New Delhi River Band were Palo Alto’s leading psychedelic blues band, and featured David Nelson and Dave Torbert, both future members of The New Riders Of The Purple Sage. NDRB were popular in the South Bay, due mainly to having been the house band at The Barn in Scotts Valley, near Santa Cruz. They were looking to expand their horizons, and a free concert in Berkeley was the perfect opportunity to introduce themselves to a different audience.

March 5, 1967 Loading Zone, New Delhi River Band, Motor
The group Motor, while familiar from many handbills, is unknown to me.

March 11, 1967 Mineral Springs, Tilden Park, Berkeley
The Reversal of Planet Earthquake Picnic

After the Human Be-In in San Francisco (Jan 14), similar events were held all over the West Coast and the rest of the country. Ralph Gleason described the peculiar Berkeley landscape in his Friday column (March 10):

Tomorrow, the Berkeley Provos, who are modeled on the Dutch Provos and are similar to the Haight Ashbury Diggers, The Los Angeles Diggers and a new group in Cleveland called the Cleveland Prunes, are having a Berkeley Be-In.

The affair will begin at noon in Tilden Park at the Mineral Springs area. The Provos are organizing a car pool for those without wheels which will leave Constitution Park at 11am. There will be free food and lots of music.

Among the groups which will appear at the Berkeley event--which is being officially called the Reversal Of The Earthquake Picnic--are:
The Loading Zone, The New Delhi River Band, The Junior Teachers Band, Soul Purpose, Motor and Blue Cheer.

Given the basic political orientation of Berkeley, as opposed to the basic non-political orientation of the Haight/Ashbury, this affair ought to be different and even more interesting. It might even achieve the Yellow Submarine (remember, Mellow Yellow!) community envisioned by some who hope to see the two merge.

As it happened, the event was rained out, and re-scheduled for the following Sunday at Constitution (Provo) Park.

March 19, 1967 Loading Zone, New Delhi River Band, Motor, Blue Cheer, Soul Purpose, Haymarket Riot, Ulysses S. Crockett and The Afro-Blues Persuasion
The Reversal of Planet Earthquake Picnic

This event had been planned for the Mineral Springs area of Tilden Park the previous Saturday (March 11), but the event was rained out. The event was held eight days later, with a slightly different set of groups scheduled.

Blue Cheer had formed only recently, and had rarely ventured beyond The Matrix at this point.

April 9, 1967 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley Loading Zone/others
An unscheduled "Happening" on Telegraph Avenue drew several thousand participants. Telegraph Avenue led straight into the Berkeley Campus, and the street was blocked off, which did not make the City comfortable.

April 30, 1967 Loading Zone, New Delhi River Band, Motor, Notes From The Underground
As a result of the friendly but unscheduled “happening” on Telegraph Avenue (a few blocks from the Park) on 9 April, the city agreed with Loading Zone manager Ron Barnett (quoted in an April 21 Tribune article) that the band just wanted a place to play. As a result, the city agreed to regular concerts in Provo Park, thus sanctioning what was already occurring. The first show was scheduled for Sunday April 23.

However, there was extensive rain on Sunday the 23rd, and the show was rescheduled for the next Sunday (Apr 30).

May 7, 1967 Loading Zone, SF Mime Troupe

May 28, 1967 Loading Zone, Steve Miller Blues Band, Mad River, Purple Earthquake

May 30, 1967 New Delhi River Band, Motor, Purple Earthquake

Purple Earthquake were a Berkeley High School band, regular performers in Provo Park, who would later evolve into the band Earthquake, who had a number of albums on A&M and Berserkely in the 1970s (h/t Ross for all the Provo scans).

This was a Tuesday event, probably related to Memorial Day.

June 25, 1967 Loading Zone, Steve Miller Blues Band, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, Motor
Although the Steve Miller Blues Band were some ways away from their first album, they were a popular group locally. Later in the week they would appear second on the bill to Chuck Berry at the Fillmore, and they backed him on stage (part of it was released on the 1967 Chuck Berry album Live At The Fillmore on Mercury).

July 9, 1967 Country Joe and The Fish, Notes From The Underground, Second Coming, Haymarket Riot
Country Joe and The Fish were established rock stars by this time, regular Fillmore and Avalon headliners with a popular debut album (Electric Music For The Mind And Body). Nonetheless, they played Provo Park for free, too, just as the Dead played in Golden Gate Park as a statement of purpose.

September 17, 1967 Mad River, Notes From The Underground, Savage Resurrection, Hades Blues Works
Savage Resurrection were from Richmond.

September 24, 1967 Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, New Delhi River Band, Strawberry Window
Strawberry Window were from San Leandro.

September 24, 1967 Initial Shock

Initial Shock was newly arrived from Montana. Guitarist Bill ‘Mojo’ Collins had been assigned to an Air Force base there, and had stayed to play lucrative bar gigs for a while. The band eventually left Montana for warmer weather and a chance to make it bigger.

October 8, 1967 Second Coming, Zuckerman Clavichord, Liquid Blues Band

The photo was taken on August 11, 2009, about half way back on the lawn from the Martin Luther King Jr Way side (Grove Street), looking at the whole stage

April 14, 1968 Country Joe and The Fish, Mad River, Loading Zone, SF Mime Troupe
This would have been a fairly substantial event. Country Joe and The Fish were huge, relatively speaking, and Mad River, Loading Zone and the Mime Troupe all had local followings as well.

May 12, 1968 Phoenix, Martha’s Laundry, Creative Arts Guild Improvisational Ensemble
Phoenix and Martha's Laundry were both San Francisco based groups. The fact that they were playing for free in Berkeley meant that bands recognized the adage that playing for free was a good way to get known.

May 19, 1968 Mad River, The Circus, Crystal Syphon
Crystal Syphon were from Merced. The Circus may have been The Flying Circus, from Mill Valley.

June 8, 1968 35th Annual Berkeley Old-Time Fiddlers Convention

The Finger of Scorn, The Golden Toad, Jose’s Appliances, Dr. Humbead’s New Tranquility String Band and Medicine Show, Styx River Ferry, Stayton Family, Diesel Ducks, others, Fiddle Contest, Banjo Contest

Back when Berkeley was actually subversive, the idea was fairly inspired. In the liner notes to the Berkeley Farms lp on Folkways, Rita Weill explains the genesis of the event, which was:

Conceived in the back of a Volkswagen bus, on the way to a party in Marin County, by a group of people who wanted to retain the good music and interplay they’d witnessed at Southern fiddle-banjo contests, without the competition and corruption extant there.

In true deconstructionist Berkeley style, bribes and drunkenness were encouraged, and performers were judged on unfair criteria that were never explained. Since first prize was 3 pounds of rutabagas (second prize was 6 pounds of rutabagas), no one cared. Second prize was awarded to someone who wasn’t there, so the rutabagas were thrown into the crowd. A hilarious eyewitness description is provided by banjoist Winnie Winston, newly arrived from the East Coast, startled to see Berkeley hippies smoking joints while the policemen watched placidly.

The local enthusiasm for this event was instrumental--so to speak--in the foundation of The Freight And Salvage, Berkeley's long-running club for traditional folk music (and other cool stuff).

July 10, 1968 Big Brother and The Holding Company, Phoenix, Lazarus
This was a Benefit for Balloon, who provided free food in Provo Park (similar to The Diggers). How a free concert functioned as a Benefit isn't quite clear--I assume they asked for donations.

Big Brother and The Holding Company were already a popular Bay Area headliner, but when Cheap Thrills was released shortly after this, they promptly went global, and free concerts in Berkeley would have overwhelmed the park.

July 21, 1968 Sky Blue, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, Crome Syrcus
Crome Syrcus were from Seattle, and had an album. The fact that they played for free meant that at least the hipper parts of the industry recognized that Provo Park was a valuable place to get known.

July 28, 1968 Silver Apples

August 10, 1968 All Man Joy, Mad River, Immaculate Contraption
"GI Teach-In"
All Man Joy was a San Francisco band (Duane and Gregg Allman had been in a different group in Los Angeles, called The Hour Glasss).

October 6, 1968 Youngbloods, Santana, Sons of Champlin, Frumious Bandersnatch
This too must have been a major event. The Youngbloods had moved to the Bay Area the previous year, and they were a headline act by this time. Santana was still a year away from their debut album, but they were a popular local band, as were The Sons of Champlin and Lafayette's Frumious Bandersnatch.

November 4, 1968 Notes From The Underground, Mad River, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, Sky Blue, Country Weather
Rain is almost never a threat in the Bay Area, and the temperatures are always mild, so outdoor concerts in November were a perfectly reasonable proposition.

March 2, 1969 LeConte School, Berkeley Loading Zone, Lazarus, Purple Earthquake, Dementia

An article in the Berkeley Barb (Feb 28 1969) says that this show was an effort to move the “Provo Park” scene indoors, and suggests that this was the first of five shows. However, I've never been able to identify any of the other events, if there were any.

March 23, 1969 MC5

April 6, 1969 Sons of Champlin, Lamb, Frumious Bandersnatch, Ace of Cups, All Spice Rhythm Band
This may have been the show when Berkeley guitarist Charlie Cockey (ex Melvyn Q Watchpocket) sat in as an Ace because one member of Ace Of Cups was late.

April 13, 1969 Crabs, Lazarus, Mungo's Forest

April 20, 1969 Joy of Cooking/Clover/Flying Circus/Metropolitan Sound Company
Joy Of Cooking were a newly-formed Berkeley band, holding down a popular weeknight residency at Mandrake's (at 10th and University near San Pablo Ave). Clover and Flying Circus were popular Marin bands, and Metropolitan Sound Company was a Hendrix-style "soul rock" band from Oakland.

May 4, 1969 Loading Zone, All Spice Rhythm Band, This Ole World, Gentle Dance

June 21, 1969 17th Annual Old Time Fiddler's Convention
The 17th Annual Old Time Fiddlers Convention, held that day in Provo Park downtown (several blocks away from the Freight) was actually Berkeley’s second. The first, held the previous year, was the 35th Annual Old Time Fiddler’s Convention (see June 6, 1968 above).

The second event was named the 17th Annual contest, and similar lunacy ensued, with a sort of after-party that night at the Freight And Salvage. Note that the proceedings were broadcast live on KPFA--I wonder if anyone thought to tape it?

The contest lasted one more year, and then became too formal and successful, thus defeating its purpose. However, after a brief 34-year hiatus the Festival and Contest were reactivated in 2004 as a multi day event.

September 7, 1969 Lazarus, Syriatuscan, Hades Bluesworks, Eddie's Blues Group, Backwater Rising
"Bahai Fiath Gathering"

September 21, 1969 Maximum Speed Limit, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, The Crabs
This event was organized by Judy Jackson as a showcase for the local group Maximum Speed Limit.

September 28, 1969 The Tunnel, Sunny Street Blues Band, Purple Earthquake, Brother Brown's Band, Syndicate
"Celebration Of The Solstice"

October 12, 1969 Septentrionalis, Purple Earthquake, Lazarus, Floating Bridge

Floating Bridge were from Seattle, and their twin-guitar act is fondly remembered by those lucky enough to see them. The group had just finished a week at Berkeley's New Orleans House.

November 23, 1969 KiddAfrica, Lazarus, Scrapple

Berkeley continued to have free concerts at Provo Park, and to my knowledge continues to have them to this day, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale and much more occasionally. However, the taste for free concerts waned over the years, as the crowds got potentially bigger and the expectations higher. We do know of a few additional dates:

April 11 1970-Festival of Toads
April 18, 1970-Kentucky Suckers, Rhythm Aces, Artichoke Jones, Emily
May 19, 1970-Youngbloods (partially released on their album Rock Festival)
July 5, 1970-Osceola
August 8, 1971-Mike Finnegan, Pendergrass, Dry Creek, Your Own Backyard
April 2, 1972-Country Joe McDonald, Joy of Cooking, Commander Cody
July 30, 1972-Country Joe McDonald, Banana and The Bunch, Asleep At The Wheel

For Berkeley's 100th Anniversary in April 2, 1978, Country Joe McDonald headlined at Provo Park over reformed-for-the-day Joy Of Cooking and Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen, and all the acts mentioned from the stage that it was good to be back in Provo Park. Provo Park is quieter now, and a significant free concert would cause a major parking problem, but it remains largely unchanged from its days as a concert venue. Its easy to stand on the field and stare at the modest stage, thinking about weekend afternoons long ago.

March 3-4, 1970 The New Orleans House, Berkeley: Hot Tuna/Dry Creek Road

2010-06-27T23:27:00.000+01:00

Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady of the Jefferson Airplane recorded the first album of their band Hot Tuna at Berkeley's New Orleans House (at 1505 San Pablo Avenue) on September 16-18, 1969. The self-titled album was released on RCA Records in July, 1970. Outtakes from that weekend were recently released as Live At The New Orleans House (Collectors Choice Records). Although there have been some fallow periods, Hot Tuna has remained an active band since 1969, while the Jefferson Airplane is a distant (if fond) memory. Hot Tuna's second appearance at the New Orleans House, on March 3-4, 1970, shows what a flexible band Hot Tuna has always been, and highlights an unrecorded and largely undocumented lineup of the band.

In 1969, the Jefferson Airplane were San Francisco's most successful bands, and one of the top rock acts in the country. The idea that a couple of members of the group would play a different style of music in a different band was an unprecedented development in rock. Now, of course, every band has a spin-off band or two within hours of their formation, and fans expect that creative musicians need multiple outlets. In 1969, however, the concept was unknown.

Kaukonen and Casady had started playing around Bay Area clubs in about February 1969. The earliest known dates seem to be at The Matrix (January 29 and/or February 19). Initially, Jorma and Jack seemed to have played as an acoustic duo, sometimes abetted by harmonica player Will Scarlett, previously of the Cleanliness And Godliness Skiffle Band. When Jorma and Jack played acoustically (Jorma on acoustic guitar, and Jack on an electric bass), it was similar to the sort of music they played in hotel rooms when the Airplane were on the road. As 1969 wore on, Jorma and Jack sometimes played in an electric configuration as well, with drummer Joey Covington and whichever of their musical friends felt like sitting in. The electric configuration was similar to the sort of loud, intricate blues music Jorma and Jack played during Airplane concerts when Grace and Paul stepped aside.

Throughout 1969, however, the name "Hot Tuna" was never used.The first appearance of the name Hot Tuna may have been on the New Year's Eve 1969/70 poster for Winterland (BG209). When Jorma and Jack had recorded their September 1969 performance at the New Orleans House, they had been billed as Jorma Kaukonen And Jack Casady; a few months earlier in Santa Rosa (June 27-28), the electric configuration had been billed as Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and Joey Covington. By early 1970, however, the name Hot Tuna was known. However, the Airplane were bigger than ever, so when Hot Tuna played a nightclub, they seem to have done it on a rather sub rosa basis. When Hot Tuna came back to the New Orleans House on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 3-4, 1970 there seems to have been little advance notice beyond a reference in Ralph Gleason's column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Gleason reviewed the band in his column on Monday, March 6 (the Chronicle column is excerpted above). Gleason enthusiastically wrote

One of the best examples of the difference between playing and PLAYING is what happens when Jack Casady, bassist with the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, is merely picking at the strings of the bass and when he is digging in and playing it.

The other night he stood on the stage at the New Orleans House for a couple of minutes while Hot Tuna was getting itself together and he picked. It sounded pretty and nice and very musicianly. Then he was joined by Jorma Kaukonen, lead guitarist in HT and JA, drummer Joey Covington and a rhythm guitarist whose name I did not catch.

They began to play a walking bass blues introduction, eight to the bar like an old boogie woogie record. They could have swung Mt. Tamalpais right over to Vallejo. They are really something else again.

Hot Tuna is the group that Jack and Jorma have formed and which has already cut an RCA Victor LP due out this month, I believe.

Gleason goes on to enthusiastically (and somewhat inaccurately, I think) describe Hot Tuna's music, as well as commenting on the rest of the evening. Drummer Joey Covington sang some numbers (I wonder which ones?), and Marty Balin of the Airplane joined in for a few numbers as well. Marty regularly sang with Jorma and Jack in the "Hot Tuna" sections of Airplane concerts, and while I found his R&B singing to be unimpressive, I still give Marty credit for trying to get outside of the slot he had built for himself in the Airplane.

Its remarkable to consider that in the bare year of the band's existence, Hot Tuna had already been through a variety of iterations, and it was still only an adjunct to the Jefferson Airplane. It had started out in 1969 as an acoustic duo (or trio if Scarlett was present), and had an alternative configuration as a sort of electric power trio with guests. The great Hot Tuna debut album recorded the acoustic configuration, but that lineup had effectively ceased to exist by the time the album was released in July of 1970.

Any New Orleans House patrons in March 1970 who were repeat visitors from the 1969 expecting intricate acoustic blues would have instead heard an electric quartet (Paul Ziegler, formerly of the San Jose band Weird Herald, was the other guitarist). The Spring 1970 configuration of Hot Tuna featured three vocalists (Jorma, Covington and Marty Balin) playing loud, improvised blues, musically on a similar model to the acoustic lineup but with a completely different effect.

The Spring 1970 Hot Tuna remains largely undocumented as well. Covington soon took over the Airplane drum chair from Spencer Dryden (Gleason alludes to this at the end of his review), and for reasons that aren't clear Paul Ziegler did not remain with Hot Tuna. Covington, meanwhile, had met a jazz violinist known as Papa John Creach, and his addition gave Hot Tuna a unique sound that was different from any other electric blues band on the scene in the early 1970s, even though Covington shifted over to the Airplane full time. By the time of the second Hot Tuna album, also recorded live (in 1971 at The Chateau Liberte in Los Gatos), the fully electric Tuna was Jorma, Jack, Papa John, a re-enlisted Will Scarlett and a transplanted Texas drummer named Sammy Piazza.

Where had Piazza come from? According to Airplane historian Craig Fenton, Piazza came out from Texas to drum with a Bay Area band called Dry Creek Road, and through that, he met Jorma and Jack. Ironically enough, Dry Creek Road were opening for Hot Tuna at the March shows at New Orleans House, although it appears that Piazza did not join the group until August 1970 (I assume Piazza met the band when Dry Creek Road opened for the Airplane at Filmore West on September 14-15, 1970).

Hot Tuna's classic debut album and its recently re-released companion (Live At New Orleans House) were a snap shot of a configuration of the group that no longer existed by the time the album was released 9 months later. The March 1970 appearance at New Orleans House also appears to be a configuration that was not repeated, even if it was not so classic as the ones that preceded and followed it. Since the mid-70s, of course, every Hot Tuna show has been taped by somebody, so we have a pretty good idea of the band's evolution right up to the present day, but Gleason's review is all that remains of a long gone lineup.

Lion’s Share, San Anselmo

2010-06-06T13:45:00.005+01:00

Slightly off the beaten track for Berkeley, but hey. An article by Dale Curtis that appeared in the October 3-9, 1969 edition of the Berkeley Tribe:

Remember the little places? The coffee houses? The folk-rock bistros?

They were the spots where, for a reasonable cover (or none) you could get beer and wine and coffee and some of the finest music in the world the music that grew up and took over the Avalon and the Fillmore and the whole country as the "San Francisco Sound."

Most of those places have died off now, or priced themselves out of the market, leaving only nostalgia behind.

But. if you are one who remembers: Be Informed! The Lion’s Share Lives again in San Anselmo.

Mike Considine, who operated the Share in Sausalito in the mid sixties, is back in business. In those days he presented such top people as Sandy Bull (whose manager he used to be), the New Lost City Ramblers, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Dino Valenti, and Rejoice (which made its first public appearance there).

After a couple of years of good times like this, Considine suddenly found himself fighting in the Marin County Board of Supervisors and in the Sausalito City Council to keep from being evicted.

The main complaint from the neighbors was noise: but the understood beef was the longhaired types who hung out at the Share.

Considine and his friends packed the Sausalito Council meeting and convinced the village elders that he was not too noisy. They voted 50 to keep him open. Mysteriously, the next night the Lion's Share burned down.

That was in November of'68. There was no fire insurance on the place, and Considine was out of business. One of the REALLY GOOD little folk-rock places seemed gone forever.

Not so! The new Lion's Share, at 60 Red Hill Avenue, does its predecessor proud. It has only been open a couple of weeks operating on Considine's friendships and on goodwill instead of bread, but already the clean sounds of Rejoice, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, and ROM have been tilling the night air.
The atmosphere is dark with beam ceilings, brick walls, tiffany lamps and relaxed. There are some problems with the sound system, but none with the performers. Saturday night, for example, the bill included guitarist Jeffrey Cain, Universal Medicine, and Dan Hicks. All were smooth, accomplished acts that worked well with a surprisingly full house (there has been virtually no advertising thus tar.

At present, the Share's schedule goes like this: dark Monday and Tuesday, new groups and no cover on Wednesday and Sunday. $1.50 cover on Thursday, $2.00 cover Friday and Saturday when the more established groups perform.

To eat: pizza, sandwiches, wine, beer, cider et cetera.

It is definitely no tie (tie? what’s a tie?) Enjoy.

This Katz Where It's Happening

2010-06-02T11:58:00.008+01:00

The following article, penned by Jef Jaisun - then Phoenix bass player and Barb jounalist - appeared in the August 25, 1967 edition of The Berkeley Barb. The photograph of Mr Katz was taken by Gsheidle.

Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, West Coast Natural Gas, Melvyn Q.

The names are readily recognizable to anyone who frequents Bay Area dance halls, collects posters, or buys records. And to a greater or lesser degree each of the above groups has contributed to the creation of what the national music industry is today calling the San Francisco "Sound."

There is, however, a much more common yet lesser known meeting ground for the four groups; they all came up through the spotlight ranks while under the knowing managerial guidance of one man.

His name is Matthew Katz (pronounced like "dates") and his business is music.

"You can pay $50 an hour for studio time, press 1000 records, and put them out on the market make two million bucks if it's that easy," Katz recently told the Barb. “But out of every 8,800 records cut, only one makes it. In this scene you've got to have ideas; or you don't make it."

Katz, a 37-year-old Sagittarius who towers well over six feet in his bare boots, began a show business career 15 years ago. I was an entertainer who went into folk music, not only because I liked folk music but because I couldn't stand what was passing for rock and roll."

Though he sports a neatly trimmed beard and longish hair, Katz clings to no particular cultural category, “I wasn't accepted by hippies - they said I was plastic. I wasn't accepted by the straights because I was a hippie. I kind of got squashed between them and I was melted into both."

During the folk boom of the early sixties Katz broke into managing, with dubious results. "I produced a lot of straight music that never made it.

Then about two and a half years ago he received a call from a young singer named Marty Balm. “I’d heard Marty sing before and I told him I’d be glad to help him anytime. As far as I’m concerned, he's still the best male vocalist around."

The call from Balin eventually developed into what has become a national phenomenon, the San Francisco "Sound", an outgrowth of rock and folk, a driving, bluesy, sometimes soft, often screaming expression of musical freedom.

"Jefferson Airplane is a Happening. It's like the Beatles. Not because of singles, not because White Rabbit is number three on Cash Box with a bullet to go higher.” Jefferson Airplane started a musical thing that is turning on the world to an entirely different sound. It's a real sound. "That's what the Beatles were when they hit here. They were real. The S.F. Sound should hit Europe like the Beatles hit the States”

“Go to a record store and you probably find the Dead, Moby Grape, the Airplane. There are 30 or so other groups all trying to get into the psychedelic thing. But they're not San Francisco groups, and, there is definitely a San Francisco sound.”

Where does it come from? "It's brought about by drugs like grass and LSD, which eventually they (musicians) get off because it blows their thing. But it's the mind opener. They get on stage, the audience gets into it, digs it, trips out, and people groove. This is it - the SF Sound!"

Katz' optimism was not nearly as high on the subject of local cooperation in publicizing the Sound. "So far we've done a piss-poor job of getting it out-because no one will get together to work. It’s got to be a family. Everybody pretends it is, right?"

Katz cited the current Joint Show Art Exhibit as the kind of cooperation needed in the music scene.

"If the musicians can just take a lesson from the artists. That five cats can get together and put on a joint show - Kelly and Moscoso and those guys deserve one hell of a lot of credit."

The lack of unity in the SF music community has had a profound effect on Katz. He is currently involved in a multi-thousand dollar breach of contract suit with the Airplane and Fillmore Auditorium owner Bill Graham.

Katz, under whose direction Moby Grape rocketed to the top of national record charts in two short months, always has his ears open for new talent. The recently-signed West Coast Natural Gas from Seattle received a standing ovation at the Avalon two weeks ago, and Katz has even bigger plans for them.

"There's a formula for putting together an outstanding group, and it's not that hard. All you need is four or five better than aver age musicians who can sing - and I mean sing together – and you work like like hell.

"Then you find someone to tell a guy, 'Sorry, man, but we need a new bass player who’s heavier'."

“The reason most groups don’t make it is not because they don’t get the recognition. It's because they don't deserve it."

Katz' latest project is the renovation of the Orkustra, a popular local jazz-rock group into a "musical happening" called It’s A Beautiful Day. "We've added two chick singers and a new sound.”

He also has a formula for getting the San Francisco Sound out to the world. "Five years ago I turned down a thing with Dylan on a TV show because I thought he would hurt the image of the folk group I was handling. The place where I was five years ago is where the big industry is now. They don’t understand yet. They've GOT to know.

“Whatever's happened in the last two and a half years has got to be put into a crash program. Everybody's got to see the whole thing; not garbage, but the real thing delivered by the people who created it”

"We may not make a lot of money, but we’ll deliver the message.”

And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

2010-05-20T12:41:00.005+01:00

From the January 20, 1967 (Issue 75) edition of the Berkeley Barb:

Unless the East Bay's only living coffee house, The Jabberwock, gets a swift transfusion from the hearers of folk beasts, it will lie down and curl up its toes, alongside the now extinct Questing Beast, Berkeley's second-last coffee house. The diagnosis: starvation. No bread.

The Jabberwock was roaring during the summer and early fall. Rock bands drew large crowds, and the 'Wock was flying high. Then came complaints about the night-time noise. The choice was to turn down the sound, or close. The Jabberwock decided to sing more quietly in a folky way. Lighting, amplification, and the stage were rebuilt for the return to the softer sound. A small group of people in mid November formed a Jabberwock workers' co-operative to breathe new life into the coffee house. But old bills, inherited errors in bookkeeping, and new unavoidable expenses hacked away at the cooperative effort.

This week, The Jabberwock opened with $4 in the bank. The rent is long past due, and the friendly, patient landlord is starting to twitch. The workers at the Jabberwock say they are beginning to feel forsaken by Berkeley's lovers of folk music, wherever they are. The house stays nearly empty. Is it because of the quality of the performers? The feel of the coffee house? The Jabberwock doesn't think so.

"In the past months we've had traditional performers and people we think are doing new and interesting things in music. It's the only place in the Bay Area where new performers are completely welcome to try new things." Manager Dan Paik pointed out. He mentioned John Fahey, The New Age, Mark Spoelstra, and the Sweets Mill Mountain Boys as examples of known and new musicians recently at The Jabberwock.

To avoid the quick death of the moribund folk beast, they will hold two benefits. The first will be Monday, January 23, to pay their bill to the Berkeley Free Press - which is also ill from lack of funds. A marathon show next weekend, January 27, 28, 29, will--if successful--revive The Jabberwock and put it back on its trail of exploring new folk sounds. It will begin around 8 PM each evening and will end only when all the performers drop out, probably around dawn.

If they can stop the flow of red ink, the Jabberwock workers hope to make the coffee house a center for all the performing arts, open to anyone who would like to use their stage and sawdust. Meanwhile, they are seeking donations of an (at least 25-wait) amplifier, 2 mikes, 2 speakers, filing cabinets, advertising, sculpture, curtains, artwork, beer mugs, chairs and small round tables, candles, cups, and a huge Silex coffeemaker, And money.

In trade, they hope to offer a focus for an East Bay renaissance in the performing arts.

For the January 23 benefit for the Free Press bill, The Smokey Grass Boys, Larry Hacks, The New Age, Phil Marsh and other folk musicians will play, "All we really need to make it is for enough people to come and listen to what's happening in folk music here," Dan Paik said.

So the next two weeks will show whether Berkeley is a place that can support even one scene of traditional and new folk sounds. And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Bill Ehlert's Oregano

2010-05-19T14:20:00.007+01:00

The following article was published in the May 20, 1966 (Volume 2, Number 20) of the Berkeley Barb. It is a story about the Jolly Blue Giant, or simply Jolly, Bill Ehlert who was the owner of the Jabberwock - a coffee house on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.

Sadly Bill passed away in October 2007, but he did tell me that he never got his can or oregano back.

“Pot” Bust beat With “Lie” Test

Bill Ehlert, owner of the Jabberwock coffee house, passed a "lie detector" test on Tuesday. Charges of possession of marijuana were dropped the next day.

Ehlert told Barb he was asked a number of questions about possession, use, and sale of marijuana. Then he was asked whether he had knowledgeable possession of an envelope of fresh-cut marijuana. He told them "No".

"The polygraph and its operator both said I was telling the truth, which I was," Ehlert said. The polygraph measured his respiration and blood-pressure.

The "possession" charges were made on February 23, after the Jabberwock management called the police.

"I had left the Jabberwock about 2 a.m., and left William Tallman alone to clean up. Around 3 a.m. Tallman pounded on my door and said three cats were at the Jabberwock smoking pot, and wouldn't leave" Ehlert said.

"I went back with Tallman and we asked them to leave .They wouldn't. I signaled Tallman to call the police. When the police arrived, I placed the three under citizen's arrest.

"The police searched them and found roaches in their possession and in the ashtrays where they were sitting," he said. "The police looked for a stash on the premises, and left.

"Then Tallman and I discovered a pan and strainer with fresh debris. We called the police again, they returned, and searched again. This time they found another strainer with old, dried debris, and a pan with 20 or 30 seeds and a cigarette roller in it. We were arrested.

"Later, at the jail, they told us they'd found an envelope of raw, fresh-cut weed in plain sight on the floor of the main room. Ehlert paused in his narration. Then he said, "Oh yes, and they confiscated a five-pound can of .oregano-which I still haven’t gotten back.

Wooden boxes in Chinatown and the bumper sticker ...

2010-05-15T19:26:00.010+01:00

From the hand of Country Joe McDonald as published in the first and only copy of the Intergalactic Fan Club magazine Fish Rapper in May 1967. Joe and Janis Joplin were courting at the time.

Janis and I went out to see this movie, and it turned out that she thought that it was a big drag and I thought it was groovy. She said that she would stay and watch the rest of the movie and then we could go around and get some of those wooden boxes in China town, so I said OK. We went down to China town, it was about 1:30; I dropped Janis off when she saw a bunch of boxes and told me to stop. She ran out and started looking there and I asked her what to do with the car, she said to take it and park it. I started driving around and I went all around the block and I couldn't find a place to park. I got mad 'cause I couldn't find a parking place and double parked it on the corner, stopped the car and left it there. I went over to see what Janis was doing and she was still hunting around for boxes. She was fucking around with the boxes. I looked back over and saw there was a cop car over there by the car. I knew that they were going to get me for parking the car right there. So I went back and just walked over and got inside the car and drove off, you know. I figured that if they were going to do anything they would go ahead and do it.

They followed me around the corner and I pulled over and they pulled up behind me. They asked me if I knew that my car had rolled down the hill and I said "No, that I didn't know that," because it hadn't rolled down the hill.

They said, "oh, well, you were double parked."

They checked the car and they said there was a tail light out. No, they didn't see the tail light, oh yeah, they did see the tail light. So they got me for the tail light and then they saw this Fuck Communism bumper sticker that I had on the back. Two patrolmen come walking by on the beat, they talked to the two cops that were in the car and then pretty soon another cop car pulls up and it's got in it this like lieutenant person who comes over and says, "how’s everything going?" and smiles at me. I said, "just fine." He goes over and talks to the guy and gets out a book and they look it up to see what to do about the sticker. Then they have a photographer come in. They decided that its got to be photographed, but I have a choice, I can either take it off or leave it on and they'll photograph it and send our pictures to the D.A. and if he wants to press charges against me he'll do it. I said well ok, we'll do that. They photographed it and this lieutenant person or sergeant left. Then one of the cops knelt down beside the car and looked at me and said, "you know I wouldn't want my children to see a word like that." I just listened and then he said sort of to himself, "of course they're not old enough to read yet."

Then I was stopped another night. We went down to get some more boxes and got stopped on the freeway by the highway patrol for a tail light being out and they cited me for outraging the public decency, by having the Fuck Communism bumper sticker.

There appears to be a ruling, something about topless dancers, that makes it ok to have a Fuck Communism bumper sticker, and our lawyer is appealing it in court now. It will probably be dropped.

I took the car in to get the tail light fixed in Berkeley and the cop told me that if I didn't already have a ticket for that bumper sticker he’d arrest me on the spot.

Rag, Maybe…… Jon Lundberg

2010-05-13T15:28:00.004+01:00

Due to time constraints, I have taken to publishing other folks work and hoping nobody notices. The following piece is from the January 7, 1966 (Vol 2 No 1) issue of the Berkeley Barb, and was written by Jon Lundberg, the purveyor of fine fretted instruments.

This week on the Berkeley scene we had John Fahey, Joe McDonald, Robbie Basho and others at the ‘Wock; the New Brothers, Clarence Van Hook, the Friendly Strangers with Sandy Rothman et al at the Questing Beast; and CJ Motors featuring Ian Underwood’s Jazz Mice, Jeanne Lee, the Congress of Wonders and Ned’s Mob.

Lundberg’s piece was submitted to seemingly soften the blow of Rag Baby being late on the streets. The issue in question eventually made it out but sadly ended up to be the last paper publication.

Shiftless Publishing Company (Shifpubco) of Berkeley announced today its plans for a forthcoming series of mags, baby. These latest efforts in What's Happening Journalism will be titled @ and specialized as follows:

Stag Baby - Local happenings of interest to bachelors, with some hunting features.
Nag Baby - For young marrieds.
Fag Baby - Gay nite life in the Bay Area.
Shag Baby - The comings and goings of John Paul, where to reach him at which hours of the day, schedule of Nevada trips. $5 the copy.
Drag Baby - Schedule of dull concerts, lectures, parties, etc. What's happening In Ohaha. Keep cool.
Bag Baby - Brown paper and a, new unusual format. Editorial content will be secondary to volumetric capacity. And a stakes flavor! For 25c you can get the one we're in. (or the one YOU'RE in.)

The possibilities are endless, but so, apparently, is the patience of the reading public. Publication date for the above was originally set for 15 January, but we hit a snag, baby. We had intended to use the services of the Free Press, but word has reached us just today that this organization is not only not free, but may have NO PRESS! (Each and every copy is hand lettered in Hong Kong and flown in.) This would cause an additional delay of nearly two weeks, and as our editing and layout (and ad sales) time has run into more than we had anticipated, it's not likely we'll be on the streets before summer.

In addition to the above we have projected plans tor the publication of a completely new (Vol 1 No 3) Folk scene magazine to appear sometime after the others, perhaps late next fall, and to be called RAG BABY! Watch your news stands for this one. And keep an eye peeled for the Second Coming of Christ, too.

Jabberwock, 2901 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA Joe McDonald, Peter Krug, Paul Gilbert, Betty Reid, Carl Shrager, Bill Steele (MC): 11 October 1965

2010-04-24T23:57:00.006+01:00

A Topical Song Workshop and Concert performed as a benefit for DMB Publications - Rag Baby and Et Tu. Whilst Joe McDonald had already been given the moniker Country Joe by ED Denson, he was still playing regular acoustic sets under his own name. Rag Baby is Country Joe’s own magazine and record label and both still run today; albeit the magazine is now in electronic form has remained a work in progress for the past few years. Rag Baby Records continues to release albums by both Joe and a few others. Et Tu was a short-lived magazine that Joe McDonald edited whilst in Los Angeles. The first issue came out in August 1964 shortly before he headed to the Bay Area to become a beatnik.

Advertised in Issue 2 of Rag Baby as a songwriters' contest, the following review appeared in Issue 3 (the fourth and final issue of the original Rag Baby magazine). It was written by Paul Armstrong: Hoot MC, Instant Action Jug Band member and for the first six months of 1966, a member of Country Joe and The Fish. I have left Paul’s words unmolested.

Berkeley Songwriters’ Contest

When I listen to a performance of a song, I'm listening hardest for some indication of where the performer is at. Song content and song de- livery are inseparable for me. What I'm looking for is some kind of communication between us. Of all the ways of presenting a song, the most meaningful for me occurs when the singer, honestly and deeply moved, rises up without a shadow of embarrassment and proceeds to exhibit himself to my cold and glazed eye. That’s when I usually feel kinship with him. And, strangely enough, the more personal the song, the stronger, deeper, and more intense is this feeling. Correspondingly, the more remote the distance between singer and song, the more remote the distance between singer and me.

I offer all this not as argument, but as statement - it seems that the same principle applies to criticism. In this light the topical songwriters’ con- cert at the Jabberwock last week caused the following two reactions in me: first, I liked most the singers - songs with whom I felt the strongest kinship, as outlined above. Second, as it turned out, the material of these singers was the vast personal of all. (Before starting on a dissection of individual performances, however I’d wish to offer a speculation. Speculation: why does every modern songwriter I ever heard feel the urge to write a song of the you-know-I-love-you-but-dear-me-I-got-to-ramble-babe genre? All the male singers at the Jabberwock concert had a song of this nature, and Shrager had two. Krug's was the worst and MacDonald's the best in a very slow race. Nevertheless, Joe should sell his to Sonny & Cher and then support us all for a year.)

Bill Steele's songs appealed to me the least; however, his performance of them raises them up to an honorable level. He seems to possess that rare talent which is the ability to laugh at one-self. He has a fine sense of the Ironic absurdity of his (whose?) position, and when he cracks up in the middle of a song I crack up along with him. I've heard him referred to as the “Pete Seeger of Marin County,” but the Wally Cox of Sausalito would be more appropriate.

Betty Reid's songs were by far the most introspective. Several had political tones with overtones of social criticism, but what I liked best was the way these songs go beyond this level to something else. Mrs Reid spoke of them as "something made up in my head," an old-fashioned Walnut Creek expression which no doubt refers to what we Berkeley moderns would call "thought dreams." She did one song about her musings after her child had left for school in the morning, which is ostensibly the thoughts of a worried mother thinking of the fate of a brown-skinned 6-year-old out on his own in the middle of Walnut Creek on a weekday. But out of her lonely questioning comes something more for all of us. Mrs. Reid's style goes even farther beyond the borders of modern "topical" singing - with jazz chording on the guitar and progressions that will demand much more musicianship of the folkie of the future. (When you start hearing minor ninths on KYA you can say you read about it first in Rag Baby.)

Peter Krug's style, by way of comparison, is neo middle-Dylan and the words of several of his songs are also evocative of the ravings of last season’s Dylan. But, like Dylan. Krug seems on the verge of bigger and better things. At his worst, he's pretty bad. "Talking LSD" is really an abominable song (to say nothing of its being a misrepresentation of the facts), and “Empty Highway" is another poor man’s “Hard Travellin." However, Krug seems well aware of their shortcomings. "Johnny’s Gone in the War" is a pretty good song melodically. The best was "Fire In The City," also socially oriented, but I liked it be- cause Krug is here starting to go beyond the social to more personal issues. The problem in the song is the melody, which ought to be two melodies, for a lot of the song's effectiveness was lost, on me anyway, while I held my breath as the singer struggled across the bridge from one part to the other. Listening to Krug I get a real sense of ambiguity. Not the same kind of ambiguity I get from, say. "Mr Tambourine Man, " but rather an ambiguity of the singer's purpose. His songs seem to be objectifications of his inner feelings, and in the process of objectifying something is lost. What I’m trying to say is that I'm in the dark as to where Krug is at, and I think that maybe he is too.

(I might add that writing about Krug was difficult for three reasons. First, I heard him a lot during the week after the concert, and found myself liking the songs more. Second, I watched the faces of a large group of VDC marchers as they listened to "Fire In The City," and lastly, all week long Rag Baby's editors were asking me such indirect questions as, "Just what is It about that song that you don't like, Paul?").

Gary Rusch was a surprise, a relief, a ray of optimism. In the first place, he really is from the south. His songs are mostly blues-based with good melodies and fine lyrics. His rambling highway song is called - hallelujah - "Bright New Highway," and instead of "I Can't Find No Satisfaction”, he sings, “When I'm Satisfied." He says he's interested in "breaking every chain that ever bound me, forgetting my old lonesome lullaby..." which is a hell of a lot better way of dealing with loneliness than to cram it down the throats of captive listeners who undoubtedly have hang-ups of their own. Rusch doesn't fall prey to that modern disease which Is to confuse loneliness with aloneness and to blame the former on the latter. "A lie ain't no better when it's sung,” says Rusch, and that's hitting the nail right on the head.

Carl Shrager, fortunately, is fines performer; he really knows how to do that thing with an audience. I heard him do Krug's "Talking LSD" a few nights later, and he brought it off well. His own "Talking Hitchhiker” is filled with all the standard hitchhiking clichés, but. I still like it after three listenings. He has a nice touch for lyricism in most of his songs (with the rather blatant exception of “The Desert"), and the subject matter is pretty good, but he’s much better as performer than as composer. His “experiments" for guitar are nice to listen to, but they bear about the same relationship to real guitar experiments of the kind that Robbie Basho is doing, for instance, as does the Gilbert Chemistry Set Company to Sandoz Laboratories.

Joe McDonald was the star of the concert in several ways. Along with Rusch, he is the only singer with enough knowledge about traditional folk music to call himself a folk-singer. (He's the best ragtime singer I've heard in this area.) He also can work an audience, and is the most tied up with song writing on a full time basis of any of the singers. He’s involved on a social level, but doesn’t seem to confound the outer issues with the inner ones. He writes some good melodies, and lyrics like: "sittin' here wonder-in' will a matchbox hold my brains?" Some of his songs are pretty sentimental, but he seems aware of this himself. As if to prove this point, he walked off stage leaving the last chord progression of "Tell Me Where You're Bound" unresolved, which in turn left me unresolved for the rest of the night. A lot of his more personal songs seem concerned with the problem of memories and the past, and he doesn't seem to have resolved these questions as well as Rusch has. In one song he says that: "things done before have no ending, “but for the most part when he sings of the past, it's with a tone of nostalgia. He also does some fine bawdy material, an area of protest that hardly anyone touches on. His songs are good now and I think he's on the verge of some really fine ones.

P. S. Two days later Ale Eckstrom, who wanders around the west in the house he built on the back of a '38 Chevy dump truck, dropped into the Jabberwock with his concertina and played a song he wrote called "Deep Water." It put all of the above to shame.

Paul Armstrong

Berkeley and East Bay Rock Concerts July-September 1966 (Berkeley IV)

2010-02-25T03:15:00.002Z

This post continues a project listing the major Berkeley and East Bay rock concerts from 1965 to 1969, and is part of our Berkeley Music Project. Previous posts have been

This post lists rock concerts from July to September 1966.

Our interest is in rock bands who played the Fillmore or Avalon during this period. I have tried to define this as broadly as possible, generally including bands who at least wanted to play the Fillmore (even if they didn’t), but I have generally shied away from pop acts. I have included some comments about the bands and venues, where relevant, but they are not exhaustive. I have assumed that anyone who actually reads this knows about, say, The Doors or Bill Graham.

In order to keep the scope of these posts plausible, I have generally refrained from listing shows that only featured local "garage" bands made up of mostly High School students, even though some of them had fairly substantial followings. I have also consciously excluded the popular groups who played teenage dances throughout the East Bay (for Bill Quarry and others) as those scenes have been fairly well documented.

Venues include, but are not limited to

•    Berkeley Community Theater
•    Provo Park, Berkeley
•    Harmon Gym , UC Berkeley
•    Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley
•    Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley
•    Oakland Auditorium, Oakland
•    Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland

I have also included events at nearby Maple Hall in San Pablo and The Rollarena in San Leandro when there was a meaningful headliner, but the list is not exhaustive for those two venues. The list does not include performances at East Bay clubs, which we are covering in other lists (currently we have completed The Jabberwock, The Questing Beast, The New Orleans House and The Freight and Salvage, with more to come). Scholars who are more focused on the posters, handbills and more site-specific information about the venues should look on the Berkeley Art page.

Like all scholarship, this project is an ongoing work in development. This information is the most accurate available to us at this time. Parties with corrections, insights, information or recovered memories should Comment or Email.

Berkeley and East Bay Rock Concerts July-September 1966
The San Francisco Underground rock explosion that would lead to "The Summer of Love" was rolling full speed ahead in San Francisco. However, although Berkeley and East Bay hippies made up a significant portion of the audience at the Fillmore and the Avalon, the absence of a viable rock venue in Berkeley meant that with the University of California on Summer break, there were only intermittent rock concerts in the East Bay, mostly at San Leandro's Rollarena, 18 miles south of the UC Campus.

July 3-4, 1966 ASUC 9th Annual Berkeley Folk Music Festival
The Berkeley Folk Festival had been a popular annual event since 1958, but for 1966 one of the headline acts was a rock band, namely the Jefferson Airplane. At this distant remove, the Jefferson Airplane seem to be peripheral to folk music. However, that was not the view of either Paul Kantner or manager Mathew Katz. Kantner had been an aspiring folksinger in Venice Beach and San Jose, and specifically sought out a female singer to give his band Weavers-like harmonies. Jorma Kaukonen, though more focused on blues guitar, was well-known in local folk circles, so the Airplane would have felt very comfortable at a Folk Festival. Manager Katz, meanwhile, had originally tried to peddle the Airplane to booking agents as a “FoJazz” band. The Airplane thus became the first electric rock group to play the Berkeley Folk Festival.

Festival Highlights
>>July 3, 1966 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley Jefferson Airplane, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Alice Stuart Thomas, The Gypsies “Special Gypsy Fiddle Program” (afternoon)
The Airplane’s role in the Gypsy Fiddle Program remains unknown.

>>July 3, 1966 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and The Fish, Greenbriar Boys    “Dance Happening” (evening)
Pauley Ballroom was a low-ceilinged room in the second floor of the Student Union. While well-situated, the room was designed for visiting lecturers, and the low ceilings insured horrible sound for electric music. Country Joe and The Fish, Berkeley's newly-electric folk rock band, had also been established folk musicians. This Pauley event was an implicit concession that the Berkeley audience wanted a Fillmore style show to go along with the workshops and panel discussions of the Festival.

>>July 4, 1966   Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley Pete Seeger, Jefferson Airplane, Robert Pete Williams, Greenbriar Boys, Alice Stuart Thomas, Sam Hinton, Charley Marshall, Phil Ochs, John Fahey, others (afternoon finale with all performers)
In the early 1960s, college age folk musicians had split into various camps, amongst them those who liked commercial folk music like the Kingston Trio, and those who were ‘serious’ about folklore and accurate reproductions of original musical styles. The latter camp was more into jazz, more pretentious and more into drugs and for the most part leaped into long-haired rock and roll with both feet. There was still a viable folk scene for East Coast bands like the Greenbriar Boys, but California folk music abruptly disappeared in a haze of feedback and funny smelling smoke.

Pete Seeger had been the folksinger most upset by Bob Dylan’s electric performance at Newport the previous year, but I do not know whether he cared that he was ‘co-headlining’ with a rock band full of used-ta-be folkies. Electric rock acts were becoming more and more common at college folk festivals in any case.

July 22, 1966 Rollarena, San Leandro Love
Since AM radio differed throughout the country, San Francisco radio often played quite different songs than were popular elsewhere. As a result, groups like Love (who were on the charts with “My Little Red Book”) sometimes headlined teen shows at the Rollarena, even though they were a progressive Underground band from the Sunset Strip. Without eyewitness accounts, its hard to say whether Love came off well or poorly to the suburban audience.

There certainly would have been other local acts on the bill, but they are unknown to me.

July 29, 1966 Rollarena, San Leandro Jefferson Airplane, Soul Venders, System of Soul
The Jefferson Airplane were on the verge of splitting with their manager, Mathew Katz. Most of the disputes were about money. However, one very real issue was that Katz wanted the increasingly successful Airplane to follow the path to stardom blazed by the likes of Paul Revere and The Dave Clark Five. Needless to say, Messrs Kantner and Balin did not share this goal, and were determined to become successful as serious artists, like Bob Dylan.

This gig sums up the crossroads that the Airplane had reached. Although no account or tape of this show survives (to my knowledge), it is clear that the photogenic, tuneful Airplane could have moved over to the Teen circuit quite easily. Remember that Paul Revere and The Raiders were still appearing weekly on ABC-tv’s Where The Action Is, and many areas had local ‘Shindig’-like TV shows (Shindig itself had been canceled). Nonetheless, save for a few exceptions like this one the Airplane steadfastly focused on the Fillmore and “serious” shows.

System of Soul and The Soul Venders were Oakland “teen” bands.

August 26, 1966 Rollarena, San Leandro The Yardbirds, The Harbinger Complex, Peter Wheat & The Breadmen, The Just VI
This show was presented by Bill Quarry’s Teens And Twenties, and featured a Friday night show (August 25) at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom (two years before Bill Graham moved the Fillmore there and called it the Fillmore West).

For a teen show, this was actually quite an inspired booking. The Yardbirds were a popular British Invasion band, but unlike some British bands the Yardbirds were genuinely special. This lineup featured Jeff Beck on lead guitar. The great single “Over Under Sideways Down” had been released in the US in June 1966 and was a big AM hit. Producer and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, a key component of the Yardbirds sound, had left the group to become a producer (he would later have big hits producing Cat Stevens). Replacing him on bass was veteran British session guitarist Jimmy Page. There was a general idea that Page would ultimately switch with rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja, but there had been no time to rehearse.

After a performance at Catalina Island on August 23, the next night in Monterey was canceled, and then Jeff Beck became quite ill. With no time whatsoever to rehearse, Page took over lead guitarist duties for the Yardbirds on Friday night at the Carousel, with Dreja switching to bass. Although Beck rejoined soon after, he only stayed a few more months. Page remained the Yardbirds lead guitarist until the band broke up in July 1968. Its remarkable that Page's Yardbirds debut as lead guitarist came at the future location of the Fillmore West.

The Carousel bill from the night before was repeated at The Rollarena on Satrurday, August 26. The Harbinger Complex and Peter Wheat and The Breadmen were both from Fremont and were punky garage-rock bands. Both of them released a few singles (Harbinger Complex on Mainstream, The Breadmen on Amber). The lead singer of The Harbinger Complex was reputedly asked to leave his Fremont high school as a result of causing too many teenage pregnancies.

September 6, 1966 Finnish Brotherhood Hall, Berkeley Wildflower
The Finnish Brotherhood Hall was a tiny building on 1970 Chestnut, just off University. The Wildflower probably had a bit of a following of their own by this time, and could try and headline a small hall.

September 11, 1966 Tilden Park, Berkeley Blues Project, Country Joe & The Fish
The Blues Project were playing at The Matrix all week, but this was an afternoon show. Tilden Park was the big city park in Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills, and regularly used for folk shows. However, this is the only rock show that I know of at this venue.

September 13, 1966 Finnish Brotherhood Hall, Berkeley Wildflower

September 17, 1966 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley Quicksilver Messenger Service, Loading Zone
By mid-September, school was back in session, or close to it, and activities started up again in campus buildings. This show at Pauley Ballroom was on a Saturday night. An eyewitness reports that it was poorly attended. At this point, while Quicksilver Messenger Service had a sterling (and well-deserved) underground reputation from the Fillmore and Avalon, they would have been merely a rumor to most students.

September 23, 1966 Rollarena, San Leandro 13th Floor Elevators, Staton Brothers, Elements of Sound
The 13th Floor Elevators were from Austin, TX, and after a pot bust and a hit single they had relocated temporarily to the Bay Area. Since the Elevators had an electrifying effect even on people used to seeing the likes of Quicksilver and The Airplane at the Fillmore, its difficult to comprehend how they may have appeared to a teen audience in the suburbs. Roky Erikson certainly took as much acid as anyone in San Francisco, and was an intense, weird guy by any standard. The mystical, intense aspect of the Elevators was plausible at the Fillmore or the Avalon, but very far from a roller rink, so it’s an intriguing question how the band was received in the suburbs.

Staton Brothers and Elements of Sound were both local bands.

September 24, 1966 Veteran’s Memorial Hall, Oakland Deed of Shame, The Friendly Stranger, Motley Crew, Iron Butterfly
This quite obscure gig has nonetheless received a certain amount of attention for having its boxing style poster reproduced in Paul Grushkin's book The Art Of Rock. This gig featured the first known out-of-town gig by the then San Diego based Iron Butterfly. Veteran’s Memorial Hall, at 200 Grand Avenue, was a tiny hall (capacity a few hundred) across from Children’s Fairyland in Lake Merritt. The venue had been used occasionally for “teen” dances featuring local bands.

Deed of Shame and Motley Crew are unknown to me, although I have seen a photo of the Motley Crew (spelled Mottley Crew in the photo caption) and they may be a Richmond High band. The poster says “A Beautiful Thing”, but this appears to be the name of the dance (or the promoter), not a band. The Iron Butterfly, then called The Palace Pages, had opened for the Friendly Stranger in the San Diego area, and had been so impressed with the “psychedelic’ vibe that they changed their name. This presumably accounts for an unknown San Diego band appearing at obscure Bay Area venues.

The Oakland Veterans Memorial Building, at 200 Grand Avenue, as it appeared in August 2009

September 30, 1966 California Hall Deed of Shame, Universal Joint, Friendly Stranger
Another “A Beautiful Thing” show. As the rock market expanded, the relatively tiny Veterans Memorial Auditorium, with poor parking and far from Berkeley, was shunted aside as a rock venue. To my knowledge it was not used for rock shows after 1966. The building has subsequently been refurbished, and continues to be used for local community events.

Next: East Bay Rock Concerts October-December 1966

Berkeley and East Bay Rock Concerts April-June 1966 (Berkeley III)

2010-02-24T21:42:00.001Z

This post continues a project listing the major Berkeley and East Bay rock concerts from 1965 to 1969, and is part of our Berkeley Music Project. Previous posts have been

Berkeley I: October-December 1965
Berkeley II: January-March 1966

This post lists rock concerts from April to June 1966.

Our interest is in rock bands who played the Fillmore or Avalon during this period. I have tried to define this as broadly as possible, generally including bands who at least wanted to play the Fillmore (even if they didn’t), but I have generally shied away from pop acts. I have included some comments about the bands and venues, where relevant, but they are not exhaustive. I have assumed that anyone who actually reads this knows about, say, The Doors or Bill Graham.

In order to keep the scope of these posts plausible, I have generally refrained from listing shows that only featured local "garage" bands made up of mostly High School students, even though some of them had fairly substantial followings. I have also consciously excluded the popular groups who played teenage dances throughout the East Bay (for Bill Quarry and others) as those scenes have been fairly well documented.

Venues include, but are not limited to

•    Berkeley Community Theater
•    Provo Park, Berkeley
•    Harmon Gym , UC Berkeley
•    Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley
•    Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley
•    Oakland Auditorium, Oakland
•    Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland

I have also included events at nearby Maple Hall in San Pablo and The Rollarena in San Leandro when there was a meaningful headliner, but the list is not exhaustive for those two venues. The list does not include performances at East Bay clubs, which we are covering in other lists (currently we have completed The Jabberwock, The Questing Beast, The New Orleans House and The Freight and Salvage, with more to come). Scholars who are more focused on the posters, handbills and more site-specific information about the venues should look on the Berkeley Art page.

Like all scholarship, this project is an ongoing work in development. This information is the most accurate available to us at this time. Parties with corrections, insights, information or recovered memories should Comment or Email.

Berkeley and East Bay Rock Concerts April-June 1966

April 1, 1966 Harmon Gym, UC Berkeley Jefferson Airplane, The Skins
April 2, 1966 Harmon Gym, UC Berkeley Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Exiles
Delano Grape Strikers Benefit
I have had to make some assumptions about these shows, as they are usually listed as “April 1-2 Jefferson Airplane/Skins/Quicksilver/Exiles.” I believe it is the way I have it here, however. Unraveling the Berkeley concerts is complicated by the full schedule of rock shows in San Francisco. The Jefferson Airplane were headlining the Fillmore on Friday night (April 1), Saturday night (April 2) and Sunday afternoon (April 3). The Quicksilver Messenger Service were co-billed with the Airplane at the Fillmore on Friday night, and playing a different benefit at the nearby Geary Temple (at 1859 Fillmore) on Saturday night.

There are at least two different circulating handbills that I know of (above), and possibly more. Its remarkable enough that the Airplane were headlining two shows in Berkeley and San Francisco on the same night, but I find it impossible to believe that both Fillmore acts on Friday night were also playing Berkeley--who was going to be playing the Fillmore? That is why I have interpreted the ad to mean that the big Underground bands (the Airplane and Quicksilver) would highlight one show each night.

Even as early as April 1966, Bill Graham would not have wanted his headline act (the Airplane) playing Berkeley without his imprimatur, and Graham’s involvement is tipped by the listing of The Skins. The Skins was an informal name for three conga drummers Graham hired to play between sets (they included lightshow man Jerry Abrams and jazz musician Ulysses Crockett). I assume Graham saw the Airplane’s benefit show as publicity for the Fillmore shows, and given how few people would have actually heard the Airplane, this was very shrewd.

My assumption is that on Friday night, the Airplane played early in Berkeley, while Quicksilver and probably another band opened the Fillmore. The Airplane would have made it over to the Fillmore in ample time for their first set, probably around 10pm.

Meanwhile, Quicksilver could have played in the middle of the Saturday night Harmon Gym show, still leaving them plenty of time to get over to Geary Temple to participate in the Benefit, which probably went until at least 2am. Both events probably had additional performers, as well as speakers, since Cesar Chavez's UFW strike in Delano, CA was an important political cause in Berkeley.

April 6, 1966 Oakland Auditorium Arena, Oakland Paul Revere and The Raiders, Harbinger Complex, English Shillings, Peter Wheat and The Breadmen, The Baytovens, Wm Penn and His Pals
This show was presented by Bill Quarry’s Teens N Twenties Presents and MC’d by KYA dj Johnny Holliday. Quarry usually presented local bands at smaller venues, but periodically he had a big event. Paul Revere and The Raiders were a hugely popular band at the time, appearing almost weekly on ABC-TV's show Where The Action Is. The supporting groups were almost all East Bay “garage” bands popular at Quarry’s dances. The exception was Wm Penn and His Pals, a Paul Revere-styled South Bay band featuring organist Gregg Rolie, later in Santana and Journey.

April 9, 1966 Veterans Memorial Hall, Berkeley The Loading Zone, The Answer
“Trip A-Go-Go”
The Veterans Memorial Hall was a fairly small downtown auditorium at 1931 Center, (between Shattuck and Grove and near the High School). The Loading Zone were an Oakland-based "psychedelic soul" band, perhaps the first. The Answer was a band of Berkeley High School students.

April 15, 1966 Harmon Gym, UC Berkeley Clifton Chenier, Mance Lipscomb, Lighning Hopkins, Muddy Waters and His Chicago Blues Band featuring Otis Spann & James Cotton
Parts of this show were released on an album on Arhoolie Records, featuring Chenier and Lipscomb (who recorded for Arhoolie), from a tape for campus station KAL-fm.

April 15, 1966 The Bear’s Lair, UC Berkeley Bethlehem Exit, The Answer, The Exiles
“Trip Dance”

April 16, 1966 Harmon Gym, UC Berkeley Butterfield Blues Band, Jefferson Airplane
This was a Bill Graham show. This bill was playing the Fillmore, but instead of a Saturday night Fillmore show, the bill played at Berkeley’s Harmon Gym instead. This may have been a concession to the synagogue next door to the Fillmore.

April 24, 1966 North Field, UC Berkeley Country Joe And The Fish, Malvina Reynolds, Wildflower, Dan Paik, Chris Selsor, Gothic Cathedral Jug Band, Bethlehem Exit
Robert Scheer For Congress Benefit
Bob Scheer was the anti-Vietnam war candidate, running in the Democratic primary. I’m not sure where North Field was. Knowing UC Berkeley, I’m sure it’s a building now.

May 6, 1966 Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley Latin All-Stars, John Handy, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Bethlehem Exit
“Beaux Arts Ball.”
Wurster Hall was the newly-constructed building for the Department of Architecture. The current configuration of the building would not support a dance/concert. However, I think the building was not fully utilized at the time, so the open architecture of the interior could simulate a ballroom environment.

The Beaux Arts Festival was a week long Arts Festival at the University, and the Friday Night Ball was the culminating event.

May 7, 1966 Harmon Gym, UC Berkeley Grateful Dead, Jaywalkers, Billy Moses Blues Band
“Peace Rock 3”
The Dead’s performance was reviewed in the UC Berkeley student newspaper (The Daily Cal) by one Jann Wenner, who went on to found Rolling Stone magazine the next year. This was a benefit for The Vietnam Peace Day Committee. A peculiarity of Berkeley student events was though they were run as commercial enterprises (bands were paid, etc), since University funds were used, no profit could be made by the students, so a charity always had to be designated.

The Charlatans and Great Society opened along with Billy Moses Blues Band (The Charlatans were also playing the Avalon, but they could have played both shows). The Great Society were a Palo Alto based group featuring the inimitable Grace Slick on vocals and keyboards.

The Jaywalkers featured guitarist Charlie Cockey. Billy Moses Blues Band is unknown to me.

May 12, 1966 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley Blues Project
Robert Scheer For Congress Benefit
Pauley Ballroom was a moderate sized Ballroom with a very low ceiling, on the second floor of the new Student Union building on Bancroft and Telegraph (the Bear's Lair was in the Basement). It overlooked both Upper and Lower Sproul Plaza. Student groups apparently could reserve the Ballroom for a relatively token fee, so many events were put on there, even if it doesn't sound that great when the music is loud. Pauley Ballroom has a capacity of several hundred at most.

The Blues Project, from Greenwich Village, were performing around California at this time.

May 14, 1966 Veterans Memorial Hall, Berkeley Grateful Dead, Final Solution
Berkeley was a principal source of attendees at the Fillmore and Avalon (for obvious reasons), but despite continued efforts no suitable rock venue was ever established in Berkeley. Ironically, the failure to find a suitable venue in Berkeley helped insure the vitality of the San Francisco ballroom scene. Since Harmon Gym was a University facility, it could never take on status as a regular venue (bad sound and poor parking notwithstanding), and the same was true of the Berkeley Community Theater, located at the High School.

The Veterans Hall was (and is) a tiny hall in downtown Berkeley, and bands like The Dead were already too big for this venue, even by this early date. The Final Solution were a San Francisco State band, well connected to the scene and led by Ernie Fosselius. Well regarded by their peers, if undanceable, they were quite embarrassed years later when they figured out why Holocaust survivor Bill Graham only booked the band one time at the Fillmore. Fosselius went on to become a filmmaker, best known for some animated features he created in the early 1970s for Sesame Street.

May 20, 1966 Rollarena, San Leandro Neil Diamond, The Spyders, The Harbinger Complex, Mack and The Uptowners, The Epics
Bill Quarry's TNT presented Neil Diamond, backed by a local group, The Spyders. Apparently, Diamond was picked up at the airport by promoter Quarry, spent a day rehearsing with The Spyders,and was paid $1000. The flyer says “Direct From New York!!! Singing his hit ‘Solitary Man.’” The next night (Saturday May 21) Diamond played Frenchy’s in Hayward where he was backed by the other band on the bill, The Mothers (really). Diamond flew back East after the weekend.

May 21, 1966 Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley Lovin’ Spoonful, Charlatans, Syndicate Of Sound
The Greek Theater was a faux “Greek” Theatre nestled on a hillside at Hearst St and Gayley Rd, on the Berkeley campus, that seated about 8700. The sound was beautiful and the site was perfect. The University allowed occasional rock shows in the 60s and early 70s, mostly on Sunday afternoons, but otherwise prevented shows from taking place. Ironically, this perfect East Bay dance-concert venue was there all along, but UC Berkeley for its own reasons chose to limit access. The Grateful Dead triumphantly returned to the venue in 1981 and the Greek Theater became a major Bay Area rock venue throughout the 80s.

Sometime in 1966, probably around the time of this show, Lovin Spoonful guitarist Zal Yanofsky was busted in San Francisco for marijuana possession. The police let him go after he gave up his dealer, who was a member of The Committee. Yanofsky, a Canadian, was afraid of getting deported and losing his chance at stardom. Word got around the underground rapidly, however, and Lovin Spoonful was no longer invited to play the Fillmore and The Avalon, and in fact they never played either venue.

Although the Spoonful's records remained successful, it would turn out that the road was the only place for bands to make money. When Lovin Spoonful was cut out of the nascent underground touring scene, their chance to establish themselves as ‘artists’ like the Airplane or the Blues Project was destroyed. Zal Yanofsky left the Spoonful once the story broke publicly in Spring, 1967, but the damage had already had been done. The underground was now strong enough to not only make bands, but also to finish them.

May 27, 1966 Rollarena, San Leandro Them, Peter Wheat and The Breadmen, Canadian Fuzz
Van Morrison and Them were on the typical mid 60s “British Invasion” tour, appearing as headliner on top of numerous local bands. Them were small change compared to the Dave Clark Five or The Animals, much less the Beatles or the Stones. Nonetheless, Them were very popular in California and were revered by many young musicians, since their immortal “Baby Don’t Please Don’t Go”/”Gloria” single in November 1964. That record had been shockingly raw for 1964 radio.

Van Morrison’s success in the 1970s has left fans with an image of an insular, brooding crooner. However, in 1966 not only were Them popular as wild rockers with songs like “Gloria” and “Mystic Eyes”, but Van had come out of Irish “Showbands”, which were quite the opposite of Celtic mysticism. Reports from every city on the 1966 American tour not only tell of how great Van’s singing and music were, but his wild James Brown-style showmanship as well. The showstopper for Them was a high-octane version of Bobby Blue Bland’s “Turn On Your Lovelight.” Bill Quarry reminisces (in Bruce Tahsler’s book) that Them’s performance had the biggest crowd ever to see a show at the Rollarena, and fans were lined up at 3:00 pm when Quarry’s staff pulled in to set up the show.

Everything changed for Van after this show, in an alley behind the venue, when Van bumped into 19-year old Janet (Planet) Rigsbee, his future wife and the world’s Brown-Eyed Girl. She had gone to see the show, and was trying to get backstage to meet him afterwards.

Peter Wheat and The Breadmen were the KYA ”house band”, which suggests that this may have been a KYA sponsored event. The Canadian Fuzz were apparently actually Canadians who lived in California.

May 28, 1966 Community Theater, Berkeley Simon & Garfunkel

June 26, 1966 Oakland Auditorium Arena, Oakland Them, The Association, The Grass Roots, The Baytovens, The Wildflower, The Harbinger Complex, William Penn and His Pals
Leander Productions Presents
This was another big "Teen" show, featuring a wide variety of groups playing brief sets. Note, however, that Oakland's psychedelic Wildflower were on the bill along with various teen bands. The Grass Roots were Fillmore and Avalon regulars (for complicated reasons), and Them would play some historic shows at the Fillmore a few days after this event. So while this Oakland Auditorium show was in many ways typical of teen rock shows throughout the country, the migration of rock music from radio "entertainment" to Fillmore-style "Art" was already happening.

Next: East Bay Concerts July-September 1966

Berkeley and East Bay Rock Concerts January-March 1966 (Berkeley II)

2010-02-24T03:42:00.001Z

This post continues a project listing the major Berkeley and East Bay rock concerts from 1965 to 1969, and is part of our Berkeley Music Project. Our first entry listed rock concerts in Berkeley and the East Bay from October to December 1965. This post lists rock concerts from January to March 1966.

Our interest is in rock bands who played the Fillmore or Avalon during this period. I have tried to define this as broadly as possible, generally including bands who at least wanted to play the Fillmore (even if they didn’t), but I have generally shied away from pop acts. I have included some comments about the bands and venues, where relevant, but they are not exhaustive. I have assumed that anyone who actually reads this knows about, say, The Doors or Bill Graham.

In order to keep the scope of these posts plausible, I have generally refrained from listing shows that only featured local "garage" bands made up of mostly High School students, even though some of them had fairly substantial followings. I have also consciously excluded the popular groups who played teenage dances throughout the East Bay (for Bill Quarry and others) as those scenes have been fairly well documented.

Venues include, but are not limited to

•    Berkeley Community Theater
•    Provo Park, Berkeley
•    Harmon Gym , UC Berkeley
•    Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley
•    Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley
•    Oakland Auditorium, Oakland
•    Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland

I have also included events at nearby Maple Hall in San Pablo and The Rollarena in San Leandro when there was a meaningful headliner, but the list is not exhaustive for those two venues. The list does not include performances at East Bay clubs, which we are covering in other lists (currently we have completed The Jabberwock, The Questing Beast, The New Orleans House and The Freight and Salvage, with more to come). Scholars who are more focused on the posters, handbills and more site-specific information about the venues should look on the Berkeley Art page.

Like all scholarship, this project is an ongoing work in development. This information is the most accurate available to us at this time. Parties with corrections, insights, information or recovered memories should Comment or Email.

Berkeley and East Bay Rock Concerts, January-March 1966

In 1966, Berkeley concerts were a mixture of popular folk and pop acts and small, strange underground events of uneven quality. Almost any available hall or room that could be rented was tried at one time or another for a rock venue.

January 14, 1966 Open Theater, Berkeley The Loading Zone
January 15, 1966 Open Theater, Berkeley Big Brother & The Holding Company
Open Theater Benefit

The Open Theater was an experimental theater group in Berkeley, on 2976 College Avenue (at Elmwood). The troupe did shows that would now be called ‘Performance Art’, with light shows and music. They auditioned to perform at Mother’s (at 430 Broadway in San Francisco), but Tom Donahue declared that they had “too much nudity” for Broadway. The Open Theater, while well-regarded, was never financially successful, and so they began to put on musical events.

The Loading Zone were based on East 14th Street in Oakland, and were a white group playing R&B music with psychedelic lead guitar. They were a rare band that played both East Bay soul venues and Bay Area psychedelic ballrooms. Big Brother and The Holding Company were a San Francisco band managed by local scenemaker Chet Helms. One of the nude performers at the Open Theater had been Chet Helms housekeeper.

Helms had been putting on Wednesday night events in the basement, and the band of residents played in the basement. Chet Helms invited neighbor Bill Ham (from 1839 Pine and the Red Dog ) to put on light shows, and groups like the nascent Big Brother performed. At the ‘rent parties,’ visitors contributed what they could. Peter Albin’s parents owned the rooming house at 1090 Page, and his older brother Rodney managed the building.

The Open Theater performance was Big Brother and The Holding Company’s first advertised show, where the public was invited. The band’s lineup was James Gurley (guitar), Sam Andrew (guitar, vocals), Peter Albin (bass, vocals) and Chuck Jones (drums).

January 28, 1966 Open Theater, Berkeley Congress Of Wonders, Ned’s Mob
January 29, 1966 Open Theater, Berkeley Loading Zone
Congress of Wonders were a comedy trio who were a regular part of The Open Theater. Ned’s Mob are unknown to me.

Februrary 25, 1966 Community Theater, Berkeley The Byrds, The Dillards
The show was billed as a ‘Byrds Bash.’ It was a benefit to raise money for The Board of Control Treasury (supposedly $1000 was raised, according to Byrds chronologist Christopher Hjort). The Byrds had their original 5-piece lineup with Gene Clark. Their second album Turn, Turn, Turn had been released in December, 1965 and the single reached Number 1 soon after.

The Dillards, a bluegrass group from Missouri, whose exceptional chops had made them modestly successful in Hollywood (they were best known as ‘The Darling Family’ on The Andy Griffith Show), had electrified their bluegrass sound. They played electric instruments, like The Byrds, and had Dewey Martin on drums. Shortly after these shows, they would dispense with Martin’s services (he would join the newly formed Buffalo Springfield) and return to a more traditional bluegrass format.

March 25, 1966 The Bear’s Lair, UC Berkeley The Wildflower, Bethlehem Exit, Frantic Folk-Kick
The Bear’s Lair was a coffee shop in the basement of the Student Union building at Bancroft and Telegraph. Shows were presented there intermittently. The show also featured movies from “Kesey’s Trip” and “Sassy Sophie from El Cid” (presumably a burlesque dancer). Wildflower were an Oakland band, formed at the California College of Arts and Crafts, and Bethlehem Exit were a Los Altos band, formed at Foothill College. I’m not clear whether “Frantic Folk-Kick” was a band or the theme of the event—probably the latter.

March 25, 1966 Harmon Gym, UC Berkeley Jefferson Airplane, Mystery Trend, Morning Fog
“Vietnam Day Committee Peace Trip”
Harmon Gym was the UC Berkeley basketball venue. By modern standards, it was quite small, only holding a few thousand people. It has since been replaced by a much larger structure with the same name at the same location.

The poster for this show bills it as a ‘Rock & Roll Dance Benefit.’ It must have been University sanctioned, and almost certainly University funded student entertainment. The Airplane’s willingness to play gigs at Berkeley accompanying political events endeared them to Bay Area college students. Political commitment was something that separated San Francisco bands from ‘straight’ entertainers.

California colleges (and probably most or all American colleges and universities) could not legally allow student events to profit, formally speaking. As a result, any excess funds had to be dedicated to some charity. That is why all UC concerts at the time generally list a non-profit beneficiary on the poster. Its a reasonable assumption that all the bands got paid, and its not at all certain that much (or any) money was necessarily raised for the designated charity.

March 25, 1966 Oakland Auditorium Arena, Oakland Kingston Trio, We Five
We Five were a Bay Area folk-rock group who shared management with The Kingston Trio.

March 26, 1966 Harmon Gym, UC Berkeley Bill Cosby, Ian and Sylvia
The next night was more typical student entertainment. Bill Cosby was a hip, if straight comedian. A local group called Womenfolk may have replaced Ian and Sylvia on the bill.

Next: East Bay Rock Concerts April-June 1966

Berkeley and East Bay Rock Concerts October-December 1965 (Berkeley I)

2010-02-24T00:00:00.006Z

This post begins a project listing the major Berkeley and East Bay rock concerts from 1965 to 1969, and is part of our Berkeley Music Project. This post is focused on the first rock concerts in the East Bay in later 1965.

Our interest is in rock bands who played the Fillmore or Avalon during this period. I have tried to define this as broadly as possible, generally including bands who at least wanted to play the Fillmore (even if they didn’t), but I have generally shied away from pop acts. I have included some comments about the bands and venues, where relevant, but they are not exhaustive. I have assumed that anyone who actually reads this knows about, say, The Doors or Bill Graham.

In order to keep the scope of these posts plausible, I have generally refrained from listing shows that only featured local "garage" bands made up of mostly High School students, even though some of them had fairly substantial followings. I have also consciously excluded the popular groups who played teenage dances throughout the East Bay (for Bill Quarry and others) as those scenes have been fairly well documented.

Venues include, but are not limited to

•    Berkeley Community Theater
•    Provo Park, Berkeley
•    Harmon Gym , UC Berkeley
•    Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley
•    Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley
•    Oakland Auditorium, Oakland
•    Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland

I have also included events at nearby Maple Hall in San Pablo and The Rollarena in San Leandro when there was a meaningful headliner, but the list is not exhaustive for those two venues. The list does not include performances at East Bay clubs, which we are covering in other lists (currently we have completed The Jabberwock, The Questing Beast, The New Orleans House and The Freight and Salvage, with more to come). Scholars who are more focused on the posters, handbills and more site-specific information about the venues should look on the Berkeley Art page.

Like all scholarship, this project is an ongoing work in development. This information is the most accurate available to us at this time. Parties with corrections, insights, information or recovered memories should Comment or Email.

East Bay Rock Pre-History: 1965
In the fall of 1965, the first rumblings of the psychedelic rock underground were felt in San Francisco. The initial Family Dog event was held at Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco on October 16, 1965. Berkeley and San Francisco had been linked closely for about 100 years, and this was no exception. The first marks of pyschedelia were visible in 1966 as well.

October 30, 1965 Harmon Gym, UC Berkeley Larry Hankin/Jefferson Airplane
This show was bassist Jack Casady’s first show with the Airplane, replacing Bob Harvey. Casady considered the Airplane unprofessional and unrehearsed. Harmon Gym was the UC Berkeley basketball arena (the current Harmon Gym is at the same location, but its a new, much larger facility).

The University of California had a substantial budget for student entertainment, and enterprising students could get on the appropriate school committees and invite who they wanted. Folk and jazz artists played Harmon Gym regularly, and the Airplane were probably considered a "folk" act. Larry Hankin was a featured player at The Committee, and he was the headliner. The poster says “Presented by Local 1570, AFT”.

November 5, 1965 2000 Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley The Fugs/Allen Ginsberg/Country Joe and The Fish
Presented by The Pretentious Folk Front
Transient members of the Instant Action Jug Band played their first show where admission was charged outside of their home base, the Jabberwock. They were billed as Country Joe and The Fish, since the name was somewhat identifiable as a result of the Rag Baby record. Barry Melton played electric guitar in public for the first time, and Richard Saunders played bass. Barry recalls We played with Richard, as a trio, for a number of gigs in that period including, but not limited to, a gig in the City at the Coffee Gallery and at least one, if not two, at the Cabale (Ed: it would be called the Questing Beast at this time).

Berkeley was a hotbed of activism and excitement, but there were no gigs outside of coffee shops. The Pretentious Folk Front was a joke organization of ED Denson and others created for the sole purpose of getting access to a University venue, using bassist Richard Saunders (then a student) as a front man. 2000 LSB was a 300-seat lecture hall well-known to Berkeley students. Unlike San Francisco, Berkeley lacked any unused ballrooms or easily available commercial buildings, so campus venues were initially the most likely candidates for rock concerts.

The Fugs were a political New York folk-rock group who sang songs like “Kill For Peace”. Their members included future author Ed Sanders (Helter Skelter) and the infamous Tuli Kupferberg, and their touring ensemble included Holy Modal Rounder Steve Weber (as well as drummer Ken Weaver). The Fugs were doing a tour of college campuses and other political hotspots. Allen Ginsberg was the legendary Beat poet, of course, and regularly appeared at political events.

November 27, 1965 Peter Voulkos Studios, Berkeley Mystery Trend
Peter Voulkos was an artist in Berkeley, and this event was more like a private party at his studio on 1306 3rd Street (at Gilman). 3rd Street, now a trendy shopping district, was a largely deserted industrial area near the San Francisco Bay. The Mystery Trend (named after a mis-heard Bob Dylan lyric) featured artist/musician Ron Nagle, among others.

December 3-4, 1965 Community Theater, Berkeley Bob Dylan
The Berkeley Community Theater at 1930 Allston (at Mivia) was a 3,500 seat auditorium. It was both a civic building and part of the Berkeley High School campus. It was regularly available for rent, but its public function insured that it could never be any sort of permanent venue, as it had no concessions or parking, and generally insisted on a curfew of 11:00 pm or midnight.

Bob Dylan brought his electric band to Berkeley, where he was enthusiastically received (unlike on the East Coast). Dylan played an acoustic set and then a 40 minute electric set backed by The Hawks, who would become The Band some years later (although session drummer Bobby Gregg had temporarily replaced Levon Helm). The electric set of December 4 circulates as a bootleg (often called Long Distance Operator).

December 30, 1965 Oakland Auditorium Arena, Oakland Beach Boys, The Turtles, Jackie Lee, others
The Oakland Auditorium Arena was at 10 Tenth Street, and had been the main venue for Oakland events since it was built in 1913. The Arena had a capacity of about 7000. Everyone from Buffalo Bill to Elvis Presley had appeared there. The Beach Boys were a huge act, and the Turtles were popular as well. This would have been a typical, if high profile, rock show at the time.

The Turtles had already headlined in the East Bay, at a "Teen" dance club headquartered at the Golden Gate Fields horse track in Albany, but Teen "Go-Go" dances were a slightly different animal than rock concerts.

December 31, 1965 Rollarena, San Leandro Peter Wheat and The Breadmen, Emeralds
One of the principal promoters of Teen shows in the East Bay (and indeed the whole Bay Area) was Bill Quarry. He promoted many shows in the East Bay, and a fair share in San Francisco, usually under the name Teens and Twenties (TNT). The typical teen show had a headline act with hit on the radio, and several local acts in support.

One of Bill Quarry’s main East Bay venues was The Rollarena, a roller skating rink in San Leandro (10 miles south of Oakland) at 15721 East 14th Street. Roller skating rinks, like ballrooms, were left-over bits of architecture that could be converted for use by rock and roll (and in some cases were converted ballrooms in the first place). Many roller skating arenas had terrible sound and were not remembered fondly by musicians or fans. Many British Invasion bands played shows like these throughout the United States, supported by local acts.

Quarry had been booking and promoting shows at various smaller halls around the East Bay (including Carpenter’s Hall in Hayward), but established an agreement to promote shows at the Rollarena in San Leandro on Friday nights, starting on New Year’s Eve 1965/66. The Rollarena was a skating rink most of the week, and Quarry’s staff took it over at 5 pm on Friday nights and converted it to a concert venue, and broke it down after midnight. Groups played ‘dances’ every weekend, sometimes headlined by popular out-of-town acts.

Next: East Bay rock concerts January-March 1966

New Orleans House Performance List August 1969

2010-02-16T23:18:00.000Z

We have created an extensive list of performers at Berkeley's New Orleans House from the years of 1966 to 1969. However, we still have some periodic gaps. As a result of some research I have been doing, I now have a list of performers at the New Orleans House for August 1969, and I am presenting it here without comment.

August 1-2, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Phoenix, Freedom Highway

August 3, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Fourth Way

August 5-6, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Maximum Speed Limit

August 8-9, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Sons Of Champlin, South Bay Experimental Flash

August 10, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA The Fourth Way

August 13-14, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA The Crabs
August 13-14, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA The Crabs, Congress Of Wonders

August 17, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA The Fourth Way

August 19-21, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Sea Train

August 22-23, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Elvin Bishop, Mother Bear

August 24, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Fourth Way

August 27-28, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Mendelbaum

August 29-30, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA Loading Zone, Fast Bucks

August 31, 1969 New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA The Fourth Way

We will add these to the full list when the opportunity presents itself.

September 16, 1969 - Hot Tuna at the New Orleans House, 1505 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, CA

2010-02-05T16:46:00.004Z

In September 1969 Hot Tuna were scheduled for a three day run at Berkeley's New Orleans House. Jorma and Jack, as billed were joined on harmonica by local denizen Will Scarlett on harmonica and support was provided by the all-girl band the Ace of Cups (on the 16th) and the redoubtable Mt. Rushmore (on the 17th the 18th) who were concluding their career at that time.

The tape box shown above is in the ownership of Jeff Gold or Record Mecca. Jeff has it up for sale at present at what is a remarkably low fee - particulary given that is an alternate mix given to Ralph J Gleason.

The New Orleans House was located at 1505, San Pablo in West Berkeley. Kitty Griffin, the proprietor, taught handicapped children by day across the street and ran the club at night. The club was open from August 1966 to 1975 as a restaurant and music venue, shifting quickly from the traditional jazz that gave it its name to a rock venue. While the New Orleans House always had a diverse mixture of music, including blues and zydeco, its principal focus was on rock. Rock bands playing original music dominated the bookings, and there was usually a light show on weekends. Bands that were 2nd or 3rd on the bill at The Fillmore or The Avalon would headline at the New Orleans House, and newer bands would get their start there also. Since the concept of “Roots” or “Americana” had not yet been invented, the New Orleans House was known as a “Music” club. In the mid 70s, the new Orleans House briefly becomes West Dakota.

The first night was the basis for the first Hot Tuna album, with Jorma and Jack playing acoustic along with Will Scarlett on harmonica. The show was advertised as Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy [sic] recording for RCA. The favourite remains the tribute to the recently late Steve Mann - Mann's Fate.

09 July 1967: A Wake for the 'Wock

2010-01-21T02:28:00.010Z

The Jabberwock closed officially on July 8, 1967. The last notes were played by Doc Watson, banjoist Rick Shubb and fiddler Hank Bradley (then in Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band). Doc Watson was certainly the featured act. At the time, Shubb and Bradley regularly joined in at the end of Doc’s Bay Area shows to perform as an old-timey trio.

Although the Jabberwock had survived financial difficulties since the start and a number of brushes with the authorities, it was the Berkeley Health and Building Departments that finally drove the Jabberwock out of business. The building was re-classified “due to increased occupant load” - the result of which was the need for remodelling that simply was not financially viable.

Jef Jaisun (regular 'Wockite, member of Phoenix and massively successful (Narco Agent) pop star) wrote an obituary for The Jabberwock in the Berkeley Barb (Volume 5, Number 1 (Issue 99) dated July 7-13, 1967). He knew the end was near.

By the following week, the Berkeley Barb (Volume 5, Number 2 (Issue 100) dated July 14-20, 1967) was left to report on the final knockings:

A Wake for the 'Wock

The Jabberwock, in finest tradition, went down swinging last weekend.
After full houses jammed the now extinct coffeehouse both Friday and Saturday nights to hear Doc Watson, old time "wocknies" gather for a good old traditional wake on Sunday.

Characteristic of the change in modern music, much of the night was devoted to electric blues sounds. And as musicians played, others rolled back the tables and danced, sang, cried a little, and drank a lot.

The Jolly Blue Giant was on hand to give the "Wock" a royal send-off, while 75 freebies completely obliterated any and all crumbs of food that remained in the kitchen.

The evening would not have been complete without a visit from The Man, and sure enough, at 1:30 am two of Berkeley's finest attempted to literally pull the padlocked front door from its hinges. When informed that it was a private party they became very paranoid and fell back on the fire code.

"You'll have to either unlock this door or clear the place in five minutes." Ah, sweet memories.

A scribbling on the outside blackboard mourned, "The Jabberwock hath been slain."

In the immortal words of the Carter Family, "All the good times are past and gone." RIP.

While some folk music bookings were picked up by the newly opened New Orleans House (1505 San Pablo Avenue, in West Berkeley), the true successor to the ‘Wock on the Berkeley Folk scene was the Freight and Salvage. That club opened in June 1968 (at its original location of 1827 San Pablo), and although it has moved a couple of times, it remains open today.

The site of The Jabberwock is currently a parking lot.

Photographs are from the Campbell Coe Collection. Thanks are due to Sandy Rothman and Tom Weller for making them available.

Freight and Salvage 1968-69 Performers Update: Salt Creek, John Schank, Chris Kearney

2009-12-05T21:27:00.001Z

Earlier this year, we published an extensive list of performers at Berkeley's Freight and Salvage during 1968 and 1969, covering the first 18 months of the club's existence, as part of our ongoing Berkeley 60s Music project. Above is a recent photo (August 2009) of the building at 1827 San Pablo Avenue that housed the original Berkeley Freight and Salvage, now Berkeley Auto Body. The Freight has moved, first to 1111 Addison (the "Middle Freight") and now to a brand new venue.

Despite our best efforts, we were not able to identify every performer, and we published a list of performers unknown to us. Many correspondents wrote in--some of them the "unknown" performers themselves--and I published the information in a previous post. Due to the magic of the Internet, more information about some hitherto unknown performers, and I will share it here. Two regular Freight performers from that era, bassist Hal Arnold and guitarist Rik Elswit, wrote in and recalled various details about the band Salt Creek and performers John Schank and Chris Kearney.

Arnold wrote about Schank and Kearny, whose first listed performances at the Freight were August 13, 1968 for John Schank (shortly after the Freight opened) and September 4, 1969 for Chris Kearny (like many Freight performers, it seems clear that there actual debuts were earlier appearances at Hoot nights). Arnold recalls

I do remember both John and Chris, since I played bass behind them both [maybe for those shows at F and S, but most probably at the hoots]. At the time, I was playing with Rik Elswit and we occasionally included either John or Chris in our gigs or we played with either of them on theirs, depending on who'd gotten the gig.

John Schanck was a folkie in San Fransisco, I've tried to look him up over the years, but don't have any idea where he ended up. He was a pretty good flat picker.

Chris Kearney was a family friend of John Stewart and Gordon Lightfoot and was originally from Toronto. He made an album a number of years back; I think with James Rolleston [who used to back up Tom Rush and others and was in a band with me in LA in the mid sixties. Circles and circles]. Chris used to remind me of Gordon or Ian Tyson. He had a nice voice and played a decent guitar.

My memory might be playing tricks, but the name "Salt Creek" sounds like a name Rik and I were using in the late 60's;

Rik Elswit was a guitarist who played many gigs at the Freight and Salvage with a trio called Ripple, and who later (about 1971) joined Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show. Elswit confirms that the group Salt Creek was the name for a country rock outfit featuring Elswit, Arnold and others. Eslwit recalls

I completely lost touch with John Schank. Hope he kept that old Fender Duo-Sonic we gave him. But his heart was in acoustics. I heard that he became a dealer in old guitars.

I ran into Chris Kearney again in Toronto in the late 70s. He was fronting a rock and blues band in the local bars with two other guitarists, bass and drums. They sounded great, actually. Haven't seen him since.

And yes. Hal and I, and whoever we could pull in to play guitar, were going by the name "Salt Creek" which I liked the sound of when I found out that it was the title of the fuddle tune Steve Stills uses as an intro on the first tune on the first Buffalo Springfield album.

It seems safe to infer that "North Country with Chris Kearney and John Schank," who debuted at The Frieight on September 4, 1969, was a Country rock styled group featuring Kearny and Schank, since both played guitar and liked country stylings, and "North Country" is appropriate for a Canadian Country rock ensemble.

Thanks to these clues, I was able to discover that Christopher J. Kearny (as he is known) actually has an extensive recording career, including 3 albums on Capitol Records Canada in the 1970s, and a series of other albums and projects in ensuing decades. He now apparently lives in San Diego, and remains an active musician, as can be seen on his MySpace page, and seems to have a current album as well.

Remaining "Unknown" Performers from The Freight and Salvage 1968-69
Below is a list of performers from the first 18 months of the Freight who are not known to us. They are known to someone, however, and hopefully we will find out more. Anyone with further information about who these performers might have been, where they where from, and anything about their music is urged to Comment or contact me.

Please note: this entire post makes little sense unless you have looked at the original Performances list. Listed below are the performers, as spelled in the Calendar or Berkeley Barb, their first scheduled performance date, and any identifying information about their style of music.

Dementia 8.2.68: improvisational theatre troupe

Don Copeland 8.5.68

John Dillon 8.11.68

The Maelstrom 8.11.68

Thursday January 20, 1966: Questing Beast, 2504 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley, CA

2009-11-17T13:53:00.004Z

Although advertised as a Joe McDonald show, evidence points to this being the first true Country Joe and The Fish show as a band. Country Joe McDonald, Barry Melton, Paul Armstrong, David Cohen, John Francis Gunning and Bruce Barthol played "Bass Strings" and other songs. There is a chance that David Cohen, who was also still playing regular solo shows, was not present on this occasion.

In Joel Selvin's book San Francisco: The Musical History Tour, Selvin discusses an Instant Action Jug Band show in late 1965 that took place at the Cabale Creamery. By his account McDonald, Melton and Barthol played "Bass Strings". If this were correct then it would date it to well before late 1965 as the Cabale had been closed since the Spring. After November 19, 1965 the 2504 San Pablo location was home to the Questing Beast - the venue having also been called The Good Buddy and Caverns West since it was the Cabale Creamery. Therefore either the date is wildly incorrect, or (much more probably in my view) the location correct (2504 San Pablo) but the venue name and date incorrect. Furthermore, in an interview with Mojo Navigator (Issue 10), John Francis Gunning states that the first Country Joe and The Fish show was at the Questing Beast. The implication is that earlier shows had either been Instant Action Jug Band shows or Country Joe and The Fish as the McDonald/Melton duo - with augmentation by others – typically the Jabberwock irregulars.

The first steady line-up of Country Joe and The Fish featured Joe McDonald and Barry Melton (The Fish – or Blind Ebbets Field), Bruce Barthol, David Cohen, John Francis Gunning and Paul Armstrong. Armstrong would stay until the June of 1966 when he would be unable to sustain his commitment to the band.

At the time of this performance, the band would still have been very much an acoustic set up.

Norton Buffalo Remembered

2009-11-09T15:29:00.006Z

Update: This is now a two day event. The first day of Norton's Benefit is Sunday November 22nd and is sold out. They have added another show Monday evening November 23rd and have added Maria Muldaur, Barry Melton's Band, Linda and David La Flamme, and others. $40 General Admission. Toll Free 1-877-397-3363 for tickets. Lisa wants the proceeds from the second show to go to PPAC in Norton's name because he loved the theater and was working to save it before he passed.

Somewhat off topic, but I have been asked if I could provide a little pointer to a good cause or two.

November 22, 2009: A Benefit for Norton Buffalo

Tickets are now available for the Benefit for Norton Buffalo at Paradise Performing Arts Center. Carlos Reyes & Friends, Tom Rigney & Flambeau, and Roy Rogers & The Delta Rhythm Kings will perform at Norton's request.

The benefit will be held on Sunday November 22nd. Call toll free 1-877-397-3363(10am-10pm) to order tickets with a credit card, or call to reserve your tickets. Send check payable to PPAC to Bill Anderson, 6848U Skyway, Paradise, CA 95969. Tickets are $40 General Admission. I will mail the tickets to you or hold them at Will Call. Doors open at 5:30pm, show starts at 6:30pm.

The family are looking forward to seeing all of Norton and Lisa's friends at the show! For those who cannot attend but still want to support the benefit, donations may be sent to Norton Buffalo and/or Lisa Flores, 5905D Clark Road, Paradise, CA 95969. Norton and Lisa's wish is for you to not forget others who may be in similar circumstances but may be less fortunate than they are.

January 23, 2010: A Celebration of Life: A Tribute to Norton Buffalo

Fans and musicians will gather to honor the Buffalo during a concert in early 2010. A Celebration of Life: A Tribute to Norton Buffalo will feature the Steve Miller Band, the Doobie Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Huey Lewis and others that worked with the harmonica over the years. The concert will take place January 23 at the Fox Theater in Oakland.

1967 Berkeley Folk Festival Film

2009-10-31T12:04:00.006Z

This interesting little item cropped up in the August 11, 1967 television listings shown in Massachusetts' Lowell Sun newspaper. It identifies a showing on Channel 2 of a programme entitled Summer Sampler. The description refers to Folk music and rock ‘n’ roll from the Berkeley campus. The only acts listed are Reverend Gary Davis together with Country Joe and The Fish. This was film taken from the July 1967 Berkeley Folk Festival and also featured performances by Kaleidoscope, Doc Watson, Crome Syrcus, Jimmy Cotton's Chicago Blues Band and the Red Crayola. If copies survive I have never found them.

The title Summer Sampler would be reused for at least one more KQED production (featuring Steve Miller in Golden Gate Park). KQED were also responsible for “A Day in the Life of Country Joe and The Fish” which was filmed that spring and included interviews with each of the band members. KQED would later go on to produce the Vibrations series of short films later in 1967 and again one featuring our epic travelers Country Joe and The Fish. Sadly much of the original KQED film appears to have been lost.

Also being shown at 10:00pm is a re-run of an episode of the Avengers described as The East and West join to find out who’s murdering spies and why. Readers of this column will no doubt be aware that the episode being referred to is Brian Clemens’ classic The Correct Way To Kill.

The Name Game

2009-10-21T16:47:00.005+01:00

There are no words that can adequately express my views on this brief article that was culled from the May 6, 1967 edition of Billboard. Mere words just don't seem to be enough.

Of course this is not just a Berkeley artifact, but an item covering the entire Bay Area - the San Francisco Scene captured in a few short paragraphs.

Freight and Salvage 1968-69 Performers: Unknown Performers

2009-09-22T14:41:00.001+01:00

Earlier this year, we published an extensive list of performers at Berkeley's Freight and Salvage during 1968 and 1969, covering the first 18 months of the club's existence, as part of our ongoing Berkeley 60s Music project. Despite our best efforts, we were not able to identify every performer, and we published a list of performers unknown to us. Many correspondents wrote in--some of them the "unknown" performers themselves--and I published the information in a previous post.

Above is a recent photo (August 2009) of the building at 1827 San Pablo Avenue that housed the original Berkeley Freight and Salvage, now Berkeley Auto Body. The Freight has moved, first to 1111 Addison (the "Middle Freight") and now to a brand new venue. Below is a list of performers from the first 18 months of the Freight who are not known to us. They are known to someone, however, and hopefully we will find out more.

Please note: this entire post makes little sense unless you have looked at the original Performances list. Listed below are the performers, as spelled in the Calendar or Berkeley Barb, their first scheduled performance date, and any identifying information about their style of music. Anyone with further information about who these performers might have been, where they where from, and anything about their music is urged to Comment or contact me.

Dementia 8.2.68: improvisational theatre troupe

Don Copeland 8.5.68

John Dillon 8.11.68

The Maelstrom 8.11.68

Bryson Collins 8.12.68: “Crayon Encounter”
John Schanck 8.13.68
Kazz 8.18.68
Neo Passe String Band 8.26.68
Mike Scott 8.27.68
Fowler, Krech Paul X 9.10.68: Poets Theater Workshop
Bob Georgio 9.10.68
Quarter Dozen String Band 9.21.68
Ken Carter 10.18.68
Gil Turner 11.24.68
New York Slew 12.6.68
Jim Lynch 12.26.68: Country and Western
Tim Ryan 2.3.69
Joe Friedman and Barry Aiken 2.5.69: Classical Blues
Julie Meredith 2.13.69
Dallas Williams 2.14.69
Tom Maddox 3.17.69
Genny Haley 3.20.69
Kevin Barry 4.7.69
Salt Creek 5.8.69: Country Rock
Rusty Elliot: 5.19.69
Bob Parsons 6.4.69
Gary Solaman 7.16.69
North Country with Chris Kearney, John Schank 9.4.69
Steve Young 10.17.69
Tim Williams 10.22.69
Solari and Carr 11.13.69: “hip vaudeville”
Renaissance Catch Singers 12.10.69

Freight and Salvage 1968-69 Performers: Update

2009-09-22T05:44:00.001+01:00

Earlier this year we published our attempt to identify every performer at Berkeley's Freight and Salvage for 1968 and 1969. We did a fairly good job (if I do say so myself), and it fit in nicely with our project to document the Berkeley music scene in its entirety from 1966 to 1969. Of course, once something is published on the Web, all sorts of new and fascinating information arrives in the mailbox. A full update of the Freight and Salvage Performance List remains in the future. However, at the end of the list we made a list of performers unknown to us, and asked for help in identifying them. I have been fortunate to have many details filled in, in many cases by the performers themselves, and I present them here.

A word of caution: if you haven't read the complete list, it won't be clear why I am simply filling in certain performers. The ones listed here are performers that were unknown to me at the time of publication (April 2009), but whom I have now found out about. Of course, when I list their first Freight performance it refers to the first performance listed on a calendar or ad.

A word of constraint: This post will not correct and update every entry in the Performance List, but that remains ongoing. Thanks to those correspondents who have given me information, and we will be providing a full update of the listing when the decks clear. In the meantime, this post should serve as an interim list. Anyone with additional memories, insights, corrections or revelations should feel free to contact me or Ross, or (better yet) post a comment.

Mike and Debby (first Freight show August 9, 1968)
"Debby" was Debby McClatchy, who writes

yes, it was me. What great memories you have dredged up.Mike was Michael Finbar Heintz, who played guitar and mandolin, I played guitar. We played the Freight almost once a month in those days. A generic coffeehouse duo, mostly trad, Irish, and old-time influenced material. Carter Family, fiddle tunes, Clancy Brothers, etc, with lots of close harmonies. With Larry Fitzpatrick on squeezebox we were also the Sunshine Ceili Band, playing Irish bars in San Francisco. We left the Bay Area in early 1969 to live and work in Ireland; hence our disappearance from the Freight calenders.

Dave Allen (first Freight show August 17, 1968)
George Ball reports

Dave Allen - a multi-instrumentalist and singer whose solo act reminded me both of Pete Seeger and Jimmy Stewart, although he didn't look like either of them. Also performed in ensembles or street bands, playing whatever instrument was needed.

Wanda Ultan (first Freight show, December 6, 1968), now La Wanda Ultan, still lives in Berkeley.

George Ball (first Freight show, December 7, 1968)
George Ball (for it is he) describes himself as

George Ball (myself) - guitar player and singer. Solo act was comprised of vintage country tunes, original songs, and pop standards. Also enjoyed playing in impromptu ensembles on the Tuesday hoot nights.

Carl Dukatz (first Freight show February 6, 1969)
Tony Marcus reports

Carl Dukatz worked as a guitar repairman at Lundbergs, the well known fretted instrument shop in Berkeley that operated from 1959 on. He later moved to Reno (ca. 1978?), where he had a guitar store (SilverState Music) for some years.

Sunny Goodier (first Freight show March 20, 1969) sang traditional Carter Family sorts of music, often with musical partner Katy Jako (who was partnered at the time to Jim Ringer).

Jose's Appliances (first Freight show April 3, 1969)
George Ball reported that Jose's Appliances

was a trio formed and led by Hank Bradley. Their signature song was a mock commercial for Jose's Appliances sung to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner, performed a cappella. Dave [Allen] was very mechanically minded and was adept at repairs of cars and all kinds of things, so much so that Hank Bradley made him an honorary member of Jose's Appliances and awarded him the shirt monogrammed "Jose".

Hank Bradley's brother (David) was apparently a member of the trio. An apocryphal story circulates that the name came from some bowling shirts found at a thrift shop. A band was formed so they could wear the bowling shirts.

George Inskeep (first Freight performance June 1, 1969) was an airline pilot who was also a bluegrass bass player, most notably with Vern and Ray.

While I am refraining from a confusing post that corrects and updates every listing--it would be unreadable--I appreciate all the ongoing input, and we will issue an updated listing, sometime in the future.

[Graphic: Freight and Salvage Calendar, November 1969, courtesy of Andrea]

Joel Beck

2009-09-17T13:21:00.006+01:00

In its first issue of 1966, The Berkeley Barb presented a full page comic section by Joel Beck, new to the Barb but well known in Berkeley. Beck, then 22, developed his extraordinary artistic talent in childhood during a three year period when he had spinal tuberculosis and immobile except for the use of his hands. During these years Joel drew constantly and by his tenth birthday his room was cluttered with his own homemade comic books. After his recovery Joel attended De Anza High School where he was asked to participate in the design of the year book. That year the De Anza yearbook won first place in the yearbook competition for the state of California, and that particular yearbook issue came to be known .as "Joel's book". Lenny of Laredo and other books have remained both popular and collectable. Beck would go and produce a number of posters and handbills for The Jabberwock in exchange for a relaxation of his bar tab.

Kevin Fagan wrote Beck's obituary for the San Francisco Chronicle following his 1999 death:

Joel Beck, whose cutting-edge cartoons in the 1960s in the Berkeley Barb and elsewhere made him one of the founding oddballs of underground comics, died in his sleep of natural causes last week at home in Point Richmond. Mr. Beck, 56, had been ill off and on for years from complications related to tuberculosis and alcoholism, family members said, but he was still inking artworks for fans and advertising clients until the end. The quirky, irreverent humor that spilled from his personality into his pen made him a beloved figure in the tiny Contra Costa County community he had called home for the past two decades. When word of his September 14 death got out, people from all over the area began to show up at Point Richmond's Santa Fe Market, where Mr. Beck often hung out, to drop off mementos. Yesterday, the market's front window was plastered with more than 50 cartoons, letters and articles paying tribute to the artist whose 1960s fame continued to make him a legend long after his career waned. "People just keep bringing this cool stuff in. They loved Joel," said market owner Bob Peckham, a longtime friend. "He was different. He had a great wit."

2976 College Avenue, Open Theater, Berkeley, CA 1965-1966 History

2009-09-16T02:47:00.001+01:00

The Open Theater in Berkeley is most famous for debuting Big Brother and The Holding Company, and for being one of the incubators of the Trips Festival, which we have covered elsewhere. Indeed, another blogger discovered a listing in the Oakland Tribune Theater section that listed one of (if not the) first advertisements for "Psychedelic Music" at the Open Theater. Following the lead of this blogger, I reviewed the Theater Sections of The Oakland Tribune for 1965 and 1966, and managed to piece together the brief, but interesting history of the organization. I apologize in advance for any serious Theater scholars who have stumbled across this, as my focus is more on the musical side of the venture.

The Oakland Tribune first mentions the Open Theater on July 21, 1965. Founders Ben and Rain Jacopetti had formed a group called the Berkeley Experimental Arts Foundation "for the presentation and study of new art forms and trends". After opening on September 30, 1965, the Open Theater began presenting shows every weekend, and sometimes on weekdays as well. The first listing above (under the heading Little Theaters, from the Sunday, November 7, 1965 Tribune) was typical of their Fall 1965 offerings. There was new theater on Fridays and Saturdays, and on Sunday they had "Sunday Meeting," a spontaneous meeting. Sometimes music was advertised, as presented by either Ian Underwood or The Jazz Mice, Underwood's trio.

It was the Sunday Happenings that seemed to be one of the precursors to The Trips Festival. According to Charles Perry's 1984 book Haight Ashbury: A History, there was apparently multi-media performances, with lights and nudity (too much nudity for San Francisco's Broadway), music by Underwood and others, an Art Gallery featuring contemporary art, and so on. The bass player for the Jazz Mice was artist Tom Glass, known also as Ned Lamont, and a painting of a huge comic book-style painting of his graced the lobby.

In January, the open theater begins to shift somewhat more towards music. The second (split-up) entry is from the Sunday, January 9, 1966 edition of Oakland Tribune. The Sunday night happening is followed by an apparently musical performance by Day Wellington and The Poor Losers. The next weekend is January 14 and 15, when The Loading Zone and Big Brother make their debuts, in evenings of "rock and roll and theatrical improvisation".

The weekend of January 21-22-23 was the Trips Festival, in which the Open Theater participated. They surely contributed some multi-media, and Ian Underwood's Jazz Mice played the first night. On the Saturday night (January 22), Underwood and others presented an avant garde musical performance. The last day of the Trips Festival, however, the Open Theater has its Sunday Meeting as usual, although perhaps some of the regular participants may have been a little worse for wear.

The last clipping is from the Sunday January 23 edition of the Tribune, noting the Happening, and also upcoming musical events. They are

Thursday January 27, 1966
Ramon Charles McDarmaid and Don Buchla, Movies by Bruce Baille
Don Buchla had constructed the Thunder Machine for Ken Kesey's Pranksters, a sort of electronic percussion device.

Friday, January 28, 1966
Performances by Congress of Wonders and Ned's Mob, introducing new material.
Congress of Wonders were a comedy trio, also regulars at the Open Theater, who did hip comedy and performance art (they later released a few albums). Ned's Mob are unknown to me.

Saturday, January 29, 1966
Rock and Roll dance featuring The Loading Zone
This would have been The Loading Zone's third performance, to our knowledge, the first two having been two weeks earlier at the Open Theater (Jan 14) and then at the Trips Festival (either Jan 21 or 22). The Loading Zone was based in Oakland.

The Open Theater continued to present performances through early March. They presented a John Cage piece on February 4 and 5 (reviewed by the Tribune) and a few other shows. Ian Underwood was now mentioned as the Musical Director, and per the March 12, 1966 Tribune it appears that Ben and Rain Jacopetti had left, and the Open Theater was under new management. However, by the end of March the Open Theater had closed. Ian Underwood said the Theater group was looking for a different space, but it was not to be.

October 15-16, 1965: A Busy Time For Country Joe McDonald

2009-09-15T13:56:00.009+01:00

Joe McDonald, Mark Spoelstra, Ken Kesey, Lou Gottleib, Malvina Reynolds, Paul Krassner, Jon Hendricks, Tom Paxton, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and many, many others who spoke, sang and marched at the VDC organised International Days of Protest.

15 October 1965: Lower Sproul Hall Plaza, University of Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA [Morning - 09:00 to 11:30] Joe McDonald with Malvina Reynolds, Carvel Bass, and others [International Day of Protest and Vietnam Day Committee Teach-In]. The Teach-In took place in the grass field that is now Zellerbach Hall. Anecdote from Joe: It was there that I sold the first EP and was put in charge of a small stage in "Lower Sproul Plaza" It had a microphone and I sang songs to the crowd that passed by going to the field where the speakers spoke, among them I. F. Stone and Ken Kesey. Malvina Reynolds came by with her guitar and asked if she could sing and I said yes and she sang a bit. My memory is that no one paid much attention to either of us. The "Random Notes" in Issue 3 of Rag Baby reported that Folk Music on the Peace March was Omnipresent. Spontaneous choruses of the well known Freedom songs and older gospel ("We Shall Overcome", "This Little Light of Mine", "Down by the Riverside"") seemed to break out along the mile plus length of the demonstration. From the sound truck folksingers tried with varying degrees of success to get the crowd singing, but only the first thousand or so could hear. Attempts at singing Phil Ochs' "I'm Not Marching Anymore" (sic) (odd thing to sing while marching) and the liberal song were more or less soli, but the whole crowd knew "Help". In the morning the early demonstrators heard Malvina Reynolds, Joe McDonald, Carvel Bass and other folksingers and that night after the tear gas, the Instant Action Jug Band featuring Paul Armstrong on the jazz kazoo, did world favorites like "Bring It With You When You Come" and songs from the RAG BABY TALKING ISSUE, which was having its world premier at the International Days of Protest. Joe was credited in the Final Program for the International Days of Protest as organizing the folk singers.

15 October 1965: Lower Sproul Hall Plaza, University of Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA [Afternoon - 11:30 to 12:00] Joe McDonald with Lou Gottlieb.

15 October 1965: Peace March, Berkeley, CA [Night - Lower Sproul Plaza] Instant Action Jug Band and Malvina Reynolds. The line up of the Jug Band at this event most closely resembled what was to become "Country Joe and the Fish" - the band. In attendance were Joe McDonald, Barry Melton, Bruce Barthol, Paul Armstrong and Carvel Bass amongst others. It is unclear if John Francis Gunning was present. At UC Berkeley, a Teach-In on campus is followed by a march on the Oakland Army induction center. "That evening, some 15,000 demonstrators left the campus marching toward Oakland. Marchers include children, grandmothers, and a busload of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters along with college and high school students. The Oakland and Berkeley authorities had refused a parade permit. As the marchers approached the Oakland city limit they could see about 400 Oakland police wearing riot helmets, brandishing special riot weapons, blocking the way. The march stopped less than a hundred yards from the police line. As spectators and a group of about 100 right-wing counterdemonstrators filled the gap between the march and the police, a previously agreed-to subcommittee held a swirling, confused discussion on what to do." ... [After negotiation, the march proceeded to Oakland Civic Center Park , where the teach-in was continued and another march called for the next day." [Halstead, p. 87; Rorabaugh, pp. 96-97]

15 October 1965: Army Terminal, Oakland, CA [Night 11:00 to 11:45] Joe McDonald.

The following day (October 16), the marchers return. (About 100 had remained in the park overnight). When the two to five thousand protesters reach the Oakland City line, they are stopped by police. The police ask the protestors to sit down in the street to avoid violent confrontations. Poet Allen Ginsberg chants "Hare Krishna" at the front of the march. The Hell's Angels motorcycle gang appears, rips down banners, and attacks protestors, yelling, "Go back to Russia you fucking communists!" The police attack the Angels. When the Angels threaten to attack the next peace march, Ginsberg, Kesey, and Pranksters subsequently visit the home of Angels president Sonny Barger to discuss the situation and share some LSD with Barger and his friends. By dawn the two groups had chanted together. [Barlow. Intrepid Trips: "Allen"; LAT, 10/17/65]

16 October 1965: Lower Sproul Hall Plaza, University of Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA [Morning - 08:30 to 09:00] Joe McDonald

16 October 1965: Lower Sproul Hall Plaza, University of Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA [Afternoon - 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm] Joe McDonald, Tom Paxton, Mark Spoelstra

Open Theater, 2976 College, Berkeley, CA

2009-09-14T13:50:00.005+01:00

The Open Theater, at 2976 College, was a venue for “Happenings” that would now be called Performance Art. The directors were a Berkeley Drama School dropout named Ben Jacopetti and his wife Rain. Among their innovations were a light show that featured significant (if arty) nudity. When the performers auditioned for Tom “Big Daddy” Donahue’s psychedelic nightclub Mother’s on Broadway (home of Carol Doda and numerous topless clubs), Donahue rejected the show for having too much nudity.

The Open Theater seemed to be only open for a year or 18 months, but it was an important part of the scene, as the Open Theater was a big part of the Bay Area underground prior to the Fillmore. Berkeley comedy duo The Congress of Wonders got their start as part of the Happenings and Gary “Chicken” Hirsch (later in Country Joe and The Fish) sometimes played in the house jazz group. George Hunter and Alton Kelly artwork graced the lobbies. Thus the fact that Big Brother’s first public show (on January 15, 1966) was a benefit for the Open Theater seems only fitting. Charles Perry in his book Haight Ashbury - A History (Vantage 1985) has a brief but excellent history of the Open Theater.

Peter Voulkos Studio, 1306 3rd Street, Berkeley, CA

2009-09-14T13:12:00.003+01:00

Peter Voulkos was a an accomplished potter and artist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1959 until his retirement in 1985. In the early sixties he shared at studio on Shattuck around Ashby with Jimmy Suzuki and another guy "that was going blind from Glaucoma". Jesse Cahn remembers when he first visited Peter Voulkos' studio in 1961 or 1962 "really big canvasses .... already decorating in Ballentine scotch bottles and girlie pix...". Later Voulkos moved the 3rd Street off-Gilman studio ... "with poker and basketball and ....well.... you can imagine". Voulkos died February 16, 2002 in Bowling Green, Ohio - his art, and in particular his ceramic, are highly collectable.

On November 27, 1965 Voulkos hosted a performance by the Mystery Trend, a group from the San Francisco Art Institute scene and one of the founding father bands of the whole San Francisco Scene. The line-up of the Mystery Trend included San Francisco ceramicist Ron Nagle (vocals, clavinet), Bob Cuff (guitar, vocals), Larry Bennett (bass), and John Luby (drums, vocals). By all accounts named after a misinterpretation of the Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" line, "the mystery tramp", the Mystery Trend's musical legacy was the Verve single Johnny Was A Good Boy b/w House On The Hill released in March 1967. Subsequent archive releases include an EP released by the nice folk at Sundazed in 1996 and and album of studio recordings put out by Big Beat in 1999. Ron Nagle went on to perform with the Durocs and will be putting in a performance on September 24, 2009 for the opening of the "Somethin's Happening Here" exhibition at the Museum of performance and Design in San Francisco.

The Canyon Shows

2009-09-12T11:40:00.005+01:00

The tiny out-of-the-way town of Canyon, CA can be found in the hills behind Berkeley (between Berkeley and Moraga). Canyon was a peculiar outpost for avant-garde filmmakers like Robert Nelson, and there were many Berkeley connections, not least folk singer Paul Arnoldi who was a regular on the Bay Area "scene" was a local resident. The two known concerts in Canyon in 1967 were held outdoors, one in a Eucalyptus Grove and the other at a private school.

The first show on July 16, 1967 show was a benefit for the local store and Paul Arnoldi hand crafted a cardboard poster advertising the perfomanves of Country Joe and The Fish (who had played a 1:00 to 1:45 afternoon set at the Fantasy Faire in Devonshire Downs - a few hundred miles south), The Youngbloods, Blackburn & Snow and the Notes From The Underground as well as himself. The one off poster has now made its way to the UK and is being held hostage by a renowned collector in the West Country. No doubt efforts will be made to free it at some point. The event ran from 2 pm through midnight and featured dacing amongst the 200 year old trees and the After Dark Light Show. Handbills were also produced for the event and these appear now and again on different coloured paper.

In September 1967 Country Joe and The Fish returned to play a party at a Private School in Canyon. Little is known of the event other than Country Joe and The Fish were joined by the Grateful Dead and Johnny Talbot & De Thangs. If you know of any advertising for this event, or can even specify an exact date in September we would be really grateful. This was a turbulent time for Country Joe and the Fish - they had completed an East Coast tour in August and very early September but by October 6 the Berkeley Barb was reporting that Joe had left the band. This would result in Joe taking off to perform in the Pacific Northwest and the band to play a number of shows under the name The Incredible Fish.

April 19, 1967: 101 California Hall, UCB

2009-09-12T11:15:00.003+01:00

Most Berkeley academic buildings had a large lecture hall, and 101 California was the lecture hall for this building. It seated about 400 and April 19, 1967 saw the Friends of Mingus present The Orkustra at 101 California Hall. The Friends of Mingus appear to be as elusive as other shows at 101 Cal.

The Orkustra were of course much better known. The story of The Orkustra, the Magick Powehouse of Oz and Light Shows for the Blind are told by Bobby BeauSoleil. Raymond Dumond of RD Records released Light Shows for the Blind as a beautifully packaged vinyl - and I thoroughly recommend it. So, any information about other shows at 101 Cal Hall, Berkeley - not to be confused with the California Hall over the bridge on Polk and Turk - would be appreciated.

October 15, 1962: Closing of Tsubo's, Berkeley, CA

2009-09-04T20:42:00.000+01:00

We have been extensive chroniclers of the story of Berkeley's Jabberwock. This item in Russ Wilson's "World Of Jazz" column in the October 21, 1962 edition of the Oakland Tribune details the exact date of the closure of the Berkeley jazz coffeehouse Tsubo's. Tsubo's was at 2901 Telegraph, and its closure made it available to be turned into the Jabberwock.

Tsubo's brief pre-Jabberwock history is best known for the immortal guitarist Wes Montgomery's album Full House, on Riverside Records. The album was recorded live at Tsubo's on June 25, 1962, with tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin and Miles Davis's rhythm section (Wynton Kelly-piano, Paul Chambers-bass, Jimmy Cobb-drums), recorded right before a Davis date at San Francisco's Blackhawk. The 2006 liner notes to the re-released cd, by producer Orrin Keepnews, reveal that the suggestion to use Tsubo's came from Wes Montgomery himself. Montgomery was staying in the Bay Area with his brothers, and apparently Montgomery had an open invitation to work on Monday nights.

Whether Wes Montgomery worked any Monday nights at Tsubo's besides June 25, 1962 isn't clear. Presumably, with Monday nights regularly open, Keepnews and Riverside Records were able to book the date at the last minute. Whether Montgomery played only one or several Monday nights at Tsubo's, he helped initiate a long string of exceptional music at 2901 Telegraph for the next five years.

The Lucky 13, 1106 Solano Avenue, Albany, CA (at San Pablo)

2009-08-01T11:24:00.000+01:00

At the junction of San Pablo and Solano in Albany there was a somewhat mysterious place called The Lucky 13. “Lucky 13” was the tag for a popular Oakland soul station (KDIA 1310 AM), and the Lucky 13 was an after hours teen club, only open between 2-6 am. East Bay soul groups (like Tower of Power) would play there, promoted by the radio station, but the history of this venue has been very hard to unravel - so any memories would really help out.

Finnish Brotherhood Hall, Chestnut off University Avenue, Berkeley, CA

2009-08-01T11:01:00.008+01:00

The Finnish Brotherhood Hall was a small hall just West of downtown, on Chestnut off University Avenue (University Avenue runs from San Francisco Bay to the Campus). Again only a handful of shows took place - Country Joe and The Fish, The Wildflower came over from the City and the short-lived but historically significant Melvin Q Watchpocket palyed. On May 21, 1967 the Finnish Brotherhood Hall hosted a Benefit for the Berkeley Free Press. A number of local bands gave their support: Country Joe and The Fish, Loading Zone, Ulysses S Crockett and his Afro Blues Persuation, Motor, Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band and Haymarket Riot. Today, the Finnish Brotherhood Hall is still used as a community resource with regular meetings, dance classes etc.. It would great to hear some more about those shows in the mid sixties.

Open Theater, 2976 College, Berkeley, CA

2009-08-01T09:28:00.003+01:00

The Open Theater, at 2976 College, was a venue for “Happenings” that would now be called Performance Art. The directors were a Berkeley Drama School dropout named Ben Jacopetti and his wife Rain. Among their innovations were a light show that featured significant (if arty) nudity. When the performers auditioned for Tom “Big Daddy” Donahue’s psychedelic nightclub Mother’s on Broadway (home of Carol Doda and numerous topless clubs), Donahue rejected the show for having too much nudity.

The Open Theater seemed to be only open for a year or 18 months, but it was an important part of the scene, as the Open Theater was a big part of the Bay Area underground prior to the Fillmore.
Berkeley comedy duo The Congress of Wonders got their start as part of the Happenings and Gary “Chicken” Hirsch (later in Country Joe and The Fish) sometimes played in the house jazz group. George Hunter and Alton Kelly artwork graced the lobbies. Thus the fact that Big Brother’s first public show (on January 15, 1966) was a benefit for the Open Theater seems only fitting. Charles Perry in his book Haight Ashbury - A History (Vantage 1985) has a brief but excellent history of the Open Theater.

Cabale Creamery, 2504 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley

2009-08-01T09:00:00.004+01:00

The Cabale, at 2504 San Pablo Avenue (at Dwight), was a folk club founded in late 1962 by Rolf Cahn and Debbie Green (two Cambridge, MA folkies) along with Howard Zeem and Red Dog alum Chandler A. Laughlin III (later known as Travus T. Hipp). Cahn had previously owned the Blind Lemon at 2362 San Pablo.

The Cabale opened to the public on January 4, 1963 and ran until mid-1965, when the folk action moved to the Jabberwock. Somewhere along the way Carroll Peery, manager of the Chambers Brothers and Big Mama Thornton, happened to acquire a majority interest in the Cabale. Jesse Cahn, son of Cabale founder Rolf and folksinger Barbara Dane, recalls "I was the one who cleaned the johns and swept up and practically lived there until 1965 ...". Jesse went on to play with Tongue & Groove (with Lynne Hughes and Michael Ferguson) and the Chambers Brothers. After some time on the East Coast he returned to manage the Jabberwock for Bill "Jolly Blue" Ehlert when he moved across to San Francisco to run the Matrix. The name of the venue was changed from the Cabale to the Cabale Creamery in August of 1964.

Banjo player extraordinaire Sandy Rothman has written a brief but excellent memoir of the Cabale as part of a project on the great Clarence White, and Jorma Kaukonen recorded his album "Cabale Creamery" here in 1964.

When the Cabale finally folded, probably sometime in the summer of 1965, the 2504 San Pablo premises briefly became The Good Buddy then Caverns West before being taken over, by Terry Sullivan and Tony Sage, and re-opened as the Questing Beast on November 19. Subsequently it became Tito's and the Longbranch. Today the building houses a business called “Good Vibrations” (more Duracell than the Beach Boys).

Given how pivitol the Cabale was to the Bay Are folk music scene, very little has seemingly been written about it. Memories are scarse so any input we can get is good input.

CJ Motors, 2566 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley (between Blake and Parker)

2009-07-11T10:26:00.002+01:00

Certainly one of the more unusual venues in Berkeley. CJ Motors was, at the time, an English Ford dealership owned by CJ Felt and Sales Manager John Bolander. Bolander raced Lotus Cortinas in his spare time. Little is known about how CJ motors came to host a number of somewhat diverse shows between December 1965 and April 1966, but there you have it.

02 December 1965: New Brothers
14 January 1966: Jazz Mice, Jeanne Lee, Congress of Wonders, Ned's Mob
10 February 1966: Saint James Five, Loading Zone
17 February 1966: Port Said Band
24 February 1966: Gigi's Port Said Band with Exotic Dancers, Mike Thatcher Trio
24 March 1966: Loiellet Chamber Ensemble, Ron Chinn
26 March 1966: Loiellet Chamber Ensemble, Ron Chinn, Michael O'Rourke
14 April 1966: Laney College Chorus

The 2566 Tele location is now a co-operative run Works Dance and Exercise Studio.

It would be great if someone could shed some light on this whole matter.

1845 Alcatraz, Berkeley, CA

2009-07-11T10:04:00.005+01:00

1845 Alcatraz is in the same building as 1837 Alcatraz. Strangely, this whole end of Alcatraz Street has adopted a somewhat bizarre numbering scheme for the properties. On January 27, 1967 Golden Sheaf Bakery presented Melvyn Q Watchpocket, Lee Michaels and The Justice League at 1845 Alcatraz. As far as I can see, no other shows took place at this venue.

1837 Alcatraz, Berkeley, CA

2009-07-11T09:57:00.005+01:00

The only show I know of at the 1837 Alcatraz location is from February 10 and 11, 1967 with Country Joe and the Fish, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Melvyn Q Watchpocket. The show was promoted by the "Golden Sheaf Bakery". The building contains both the 1837 address and the 1845 which hosted a couple of shows as well. It is now the home of the Most Worshipful Sons of Light Grand Lodge. If you attended this show or know of any others, it would be great to hear from you.

The Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave, Berkeley, CA

2009-07-11T09:07:00.003+01:00

The Albatross was opened by Bill Scanlon and Phil Randall as a "pub" in 1964. It soon changed hands coming under the ownership of brothers Val and Bob Johnson for the next 30 years. It remains open today. Looking through the list of shows so far identified it seems the focus was very much jazz based.

15 August 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
19 August 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
22 August 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
26 August 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
29 August 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
02 September 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
05 September 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
09 September 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
12 September 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
16 September 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
19 September 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
23 September 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
26 September 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
30 September 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
03 October 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
07 October 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
10 October 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
14 October 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
17 October 1965: Ron Chinn - Classical Guitar
21 October 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
24 October 1965: Scott-McLean Quartet
28 October 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
31 October 1965: Scott-McLean Quartet
04 November 1965: Dixieland Jazz
07 November 1965: Scott-McLean Quartet
11 November 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
14 November 1965: Scott-McLean Quartet
18 November 1965: New Orleans Jazz Band (Dick Oxtot, Pete Allen, Earl Scheeler, Bob Mieke) - Traditional Jazz
21 November 1965: Scott-McLean Quartet
28 November 1965: Scott-McLean Quartet
05 December 1965: Scott-McLean Quartet[3-7 pm], Flamenco
19 December 1965: Scott-McLean Quartet
13 January 1966: John Handy Quintet
14 January 1966: John Handy Quintet
15 January 1966: John Handy Quintet
27 January 1966: John Handy Quintet
28 January 1966: John Handy Quintet
29 January 1966: John Handy Quintet
03 February 1966: John Handy Quintet
04 February 1966: John Handy Quintet
05 February 1966: John Handy Quintet
18 February 1966: Danny Zeitlin
19 February 1966: Danny Zeitlin
25 February 1966: Danny Zeitlin
26 February 1966: Danny Zeitlin
03 March 1966: Archie Shepp
04 March 1966: Archie Shepp
05 March 1966: Archie Shepp
06 March 1966: Bob Mielke
10 March 1966: John Handy Quintet
11 March 1966: John Handy Quintet
12 March 1966: John Handy Quintet
13 March 1966: Bob Mielke
14 March 1966: Archie Shepp
17 March 1966: Hampton Hawes Trio
18 March 1966: Hampton Hawes Trio
19 March 1966: Hampton Hawes Trio
20 March 1966: Bob Mielke
24 March 1966: John Handy Quintet
25 March 1966: John Handy Quintet
26 March 1966: John Handy Quintet
27 March 1966: Bob Mielke
04 April 1966: Jamar Colt Trio
17 April 1970: Robert Savage
18 April 1970: Black Ghost
19 April 1970: Black Ghost
21 April 1970: Auditions, Virgin Forest
22 April 1970: Chambray
23 April 1970: The Roaches
24 April 1970: Purple Earthquake