March 20, 1967 Club Fugazi, 678 Green Street, San Francisco, CA Grateful Dead (album release)

It has been established for some time that Warner Brothers Records had an album release party for the Grateful Dead's first album at a North Beach venue called Fugazi Hall, at 678 Green Street. Up until this time, I had been unable to uncover any other information about it. However, Ralph Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle attended the Monday night party, and wrote about it in his March 22, 1967 column

In Antonioni's Blow-Up there's a wonderful moment in a rock club scene when guitarist Jeff Beck first belts the amplifier and then wrecks his guitar at the frustration at the problems of electronics.

Monday night's part [sic] for the Grateful Dead was aborted when the power failed and the set was chopped short. So everything you see in the movies isn't fantasy.

Whatever the cultural dynamics of the 1967 Grateful Dead playing in a tiny hall for a weird mixture of record company promotional staff and a few lucky hippies might have been, it seems to have been cut short.

Club Fugazi
Club Fugazi is a theater in a building that was called Fugazi Hall. It was originally an Italian social club. Its construction was financed by John Fugazi, one of the founders of the Transamerica Corporation insurance company. In the 1950s and early 60s, Club Fugazi was a common venue for readings by Beat Poets, and it was even mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl."

For the last few decades, Club Fugazi has been the home of a long-running San Francisco stage show called Beach Blanket Babylon. This show is impossible to explain to non-residents, so I will skip it. Suffice to say, the section of the street in front of the theater has formally been named Beach Blanket Babylon Boulevard, so the address is now technically 678 Beach Blanket Babylon Boulevard.

December 22, 1969, Napa Valley Sports Camp, Napa, CA Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Rejoice/The People/Loading Zone

The "Scenedrome' entertainment listings of the December 19, 1969 Berkeley Barb yielded the unexpected information that the Grateful Dead would headline a benefit concert on Monday, December 22 in  the Napa Valley. In its entirety the listing says

ROCK CONCERT: Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Rejoice, The People & Loading Zone. Disc jockeys from local stations will mc the event. Napa Valley Sports Camp, 5 miles west of Napa on Highway 12 in the quiet and beautiful Brown's Valley. $3.50 and tickets can be purchased from St. Mary's High School, Albina and Hopkins Streets. Berk, call Bill Doherty 555-1039.

 You now know as much as I do.

Some interesting points:

The Dead would have played The Old Fillmore on December 19, 20 and 21 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday), and did not have a gig until Texas on December 26. While non-Californians may wonder at an apparently outdoor concert on a Monday in December, remember that many people are on holiday during Christmas, and daytime winter temperatures are about, oh, 65 degrees or so. This show would be very plausible in terms of the Grateful Dead touring schedule as known.

As near as I can tell, the location would have been in between Napa and Sonoma, probably around the current location of the Domaine Carneros Winery. In those days, Napa was fairly rural and agricultural, so while hippies may not have been entirely welcome, they would have been mainly only bothering cows.

What is particularly rare about this show is that it may represent a 1969 show by Quicksilver Messenger Service. There is no good Quicksilver tour history on the Web yet (I haven't gotten to it), but this would be only the 8th known show of 1969. The band definitely included John Cipollina, Nicky Hopkins, David Freiberg and Greg Elmore. Dan Healy occasionally played guitar and bass on stage with them during this period. Gary Duncan and Dino Valenti would rejoin the group on New Year's Eve, though perhaps they used this as a warmup gig. Their album Shady Grove had just been released in November.

The People were probably the San Jose band, although I'm surprised they were still together. Rejoice is a common band from bills at the time, and The Loading Zone were old friends from the early days of The Fillmore.

As to what this was a benefit for, or any other details, I am counting on the magic of the Internet.

[update 20240910]: and the internet came through! thanks to an anonymous Commenter who cited an article in the Napa Register, we know the show didn't actually happen. Too bad

See page 1 if the Napa Register from December 16 1969 (headline: "Rock Fete Denial Is Applauded")

March 5, 1967 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco Moby Grape/Big Brother and The Holding Company/Country Joe and The Fish/The Sparrow with special guests The Grateful Dead

The March 5, 1967 poster for a Benefit at The Avalon Ballroom is well-known. It was not a Family Dog show, but the poster advertises a Benefit Concert with Moby Grape, Big Brother and The Holding Company, Country Joe and The Fish and The Sparrow. All of these groups were popular bands in the San Francisco Underground, and quite legendary now (The Sparrow, then living in Sausalito, would move to Los Angeles in June and transform into Steppenwolf). The benefit was for "New Stage and The Straight Theatre." The Straight Theatre was a converted movie theater at 1702 Haight Street, which various community members were trying to convert into an Avalon/Fillmore type venue, with much resistance from the City. It is a credit to Chet Helms, whatever his complex motives may have been, that he allowed his own venue (The Avalon) and band (Big Brother) to be used for a benefit to help create a competitor.

Since much of the audience for the Fillmore and the Avalon actually came from the Haight-Ashbury, to some extent the Straight Theater was seen as a community resource--I think that is what "Newstage" referred to. Nonetheless, there was an extensive struggle to get the venue a Dance Hall Permit to allow concerts to be held, so it was unquestionably conceived as a competitor to the Fillmore and the Avalon. Its remarkable that Helms was so willing to help; perhaps he had designs on the space himself. In any case, at this time, with public events not permitted, it was used as a rehearsal hall by a group called The Outfit. Later in the Spring--I am not sure of the exact date--the Grateful Dead moved their rehearsal hall from Sausalito Heliport to the Straight. They only rehearsed there for a few months, before moving again to the Potrero Theatre (on 308 Potrero).

The poster for the Straight Benefit is well known because it was created by B. Kliban, who became extremely well known in later years. However, up until now, like everyone else, I have assumed that 4 legendary Bay Area bands--Big Brother, Moby Grape, Country Joe and The Fish and The Sparrow--were enough. But apparently not, since the February 28, 1967 San Francisco Chronicle (above) includes a brief notice, certainly from a press release, that the Grateful Dead and poet Michael McClure would be special guests at the event.

The Grateful Dead were in town, because they played a show at Winterland on Friday, March 3, 1967. They had played a previous Straight Theater benefit on May 19, 1966 and in any case it became their rehearsal hall, so its not surprising to see them onboard.

February 12, 1970 Ungano's, New York, NY 210 West 70th Street The Grateful Dead

Ad ad from the Village Voice of February 12, 1970, promoting a scheduled Grateful Dead show at Ungano's in Manhattan

This mysterious, somewhat controversial show was advertised on page 36 in the Village Voice of February 12, 1970 (scroll to the right of the article).The advertisement for the show in the Village Voice begs four questions

• Did the event actually occur?
• Why did the Grateful Dead schedule a gig at a tiny club during a Fillmore East weekend?
• Why did Bill Graham allow the show to be advertised?
• What were the Grateful Dead doing in New York City in the first place?

Before I discuss the club and the possible performance directly, let me take a rare sideways step to consider process, a step I normally avoid. Way back in the dark ages before the Internet, I spent a great week in New York one summer in 1983. A pioneering Deadhead friend of mine invested a bunch of money at a flea market or something to buy a huge collection of Village Voices so we could look for Grateful Dead ephemera (Bobby F--if you're out there, contact me!). Amazingly, we found this ad for the Grateful Dead playing Ungano's, a club about which we knew nothing.

At the time, the "Janet Soto" list and the Paul Grushkin Book Of The Deadheads list (just released in 1983) were the only circulating lists, so every new date was a "found date." At some point, I passed on the information about the Ungano's date, to John Dwork, Dennis McNally and John Scott of Deadbase. As the rise of Deadbase and then the Internet formalized tape trading (all for the better), various bits of knowledge began to intersect, and an audience tape  began to circulate as "Feb 12 1970 Ungano's," which seemed like exciting confirmation to me that the show really occurred. Much research ensued (which can be pursued on Deadlists and elsewhere), revealing the tape to be from the early show at Fillmore East on February 13, 1970. Whatever the backstory on the tape, some probably well-meaning soul had taken a grainy audience tape and put it together with the date I had found (and no doubt confirmed by others), so rather than being "proof" of a missing show, it was in effect helping to create its own unverified verification (this is how modern political discourse works, but I digress).

I had largely forgotten about this peculiar chain of events until I recently found a quite amazing blog about NYC rock and roll venues of the prior century. It had a particularly detailed post about Ungano's, which while not revealing anything new about the Dead's performance, it caused me to rethink the gig in general. The particular question is not only whether the gig occurred, in itself an open question, but why the gig was even advertised at all, which to me is an even bigger question.

First to briefly summarize what I learned about Ungano's:

Ungano's was a club at 210 West 70th St (between Amsterdam and West End). It seems to have been open from about 1964 to 1971, and run by two brothers, Arnie and Nicky Ungano. Despite its modest size, it seemed to have been a sort of "showcase" club where major acts could play for record company people, talent agents and other important folks, and where celebrities could hang out and perhaps perform under the radar. Clubs like these are not uncommon in entertainment capitals like New York, Los Angeles or London. A comparable venue in New York was The Scene, which was a club primarily aimed at promo men and journalists.

Ungano's appearance, however, seemed to be a sort of a leftover from a prior era, according to ace researcher Mike Fornatale, who described it as "a bit of a holdover from the Copacabana Era." More intriguingly, singer Genya Ravan said, after having played the club about 1964, that it was "another Italian-owned club." This implies a mob connection, although I will say having worked in Manhattan for a number of years that many places in New York City enjoy the cachet of a rumored Mob "connection" when in fact any actual association is ancient, distant or imaginary.

The Grateful Dead at Ungano's, Manhattan February 12, 1970
Returning to our original questons about the advertisement for the show in the Village Voice

• Did the event actually occur?
• Why did the Grateful Dead schedule a gig at a tiny club during a Fillmore East weekend?
• Why did Bill Graham allow the show to be advertised?
• What were the Grateful Dead doing in New York City in the first place?
  

I will address these in reverse order.

What were the Grateful Dead doing in New York City in the first place?
The Grateful Dead's touring schedule for the beginning of 1970 was actually quite strange. With a new album (Live/Dead) out in November, an East Coast run at the end of 1969 made a lot of sense. New Year's Eve in Boston was followed by a weekend show at the Fillmore East on January 2-3, 1970. Presumably the band returned home, but what follows is quite odd.

January 2-3, 1970 Fillmore East
January 10, 1970 Community Concourse, San Diego
January 16-17-18, 1970 Oregon
January 23-24, 1970 Hawaii
Presumably also partially a vacation. 
January 30-31, 1970 New Orleans with Fleetwood Mac
Busted down on Bourbon Street, they add an additional show on February 1
February 2, 1970 St. Louis MO
Why did they fly to St. Louis for a Monday night gig before returning home?
February 4, 1970 Family Dog, San Francisco
Filming a TV Special on a Wednesday night with Quicksilver and Santana
February 5-8 Fillmore West, San Francisco
A Thursday thru Sunday headline weekend at their home court

Why did the Grateful Dead fly to New York at all for a return gig at the Fillmore East? Sure, it was a profitable gig, but Bill Graham and the Dead had a great relationship by this time, and they could headline any weekend they wanted at the Fillmore East. The next weekend they were in Texas--why fly to New York?

The answer has to be that the Grateful Dead needed to be in New York that weekend, and Fillmore East gave them a profitable excuse to be there.

Why did the Grateful Dead schedule a gig at a tiny club during a Fillmore East weekend?
Fillmore East shows followed a very strict pattern. Headliners played double shows Friday and Saturday night, with the early show being the "industry" show for reviewers and record company types. Big acts like Crosby Stills Nash & Young,  or acts popular in New York sometimes added a Thursday and/or Sunday show as well. Tuesday night was "audition night" for local bands. Any open days on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday were sometimes filled by benefits or special events, not always involving rock acts at all.

I'm quite knowledgeable about the history of the Fillmore East, and there was no other remotely similar instance where a headliner played Wednesday night, skipped Thursday, and then headlined the weekend. This means that Bill Graham was confident he could sell out six shows, but wasn't able to book the Dead on Thursday, so he booked them on Wednesday. The only plausible explanation was that Graham knew the Dead were going to be busy Thursday, so he scheduled around it, to the mutual financial profit of all involved.

Why did Bill Graham allow the show to be advertised?
Most rock promoters were pretty benign about the fact that groups like the Dead might "drop in" around town or play a free concert. The Dead had definitively shown that the buzz was good for business. But promoters like Graham generally had strict contractual arrangements with their headliners limiting how other shows in the area could be promoted. A typical rider might be that, for example, a Fillmore East or West headliner could not have an advertised show within two weeks or 50 miles of the venue, or terms to that effect. With advance ticket sales a big part of the business, the need to insure that your headliner's presence was an "exclusive" was paramount. Graham was probably matter of fact about locally-printed flyers on telephone poles by this time, but an advertisement in the Village Voice takes some planning.

The ad for Ungano's in the February 5 Village Voice ends at February 11, and does not mention the Dead. The February 12 voice would have hit the street on Wednesday February 11, and the Grateful Dead stand out as the most prominent act. The acts listed were:

Wednesday February 11-Rotary Connection
Thursday February 12-The Grateful Dead
Friday February 13-The Illusion ("every Friday")
Saturday February 14-Teddy Boys
Sunday February 15-Tuesday February 17-Creedmore State and Funkadelic
The ad says "Shows 10 and Midnight. Dancing Nightly."

Rotary Connection were a popular psychedelic soul band from Chicago (with lead singer Minnie Ripperton) but little known outside of the Midwest. George Clinton's mighty Funkadelics had a record contract and were popular in their home base in Detroit, but unknown beyond Clinton's hometown of Plainfield, NJ.

The Grateful Dead could have packed tiny Ungano's (capacity a few hundred) with one announcement from the Fillmore East stage. Since an advertisement had the potential to violate Bill Graham's contract, why advertise the show at all, for what amounted to one day, since most people would not get in anyway? The answer has to be that Graham expected and accepted the advertised gig at Ungano's, most likely because the Dead's presence at Ungano's was the very reason he was able to book the group at Fillmore East in between weekends in San Francisco and Texas. 

Did the event actually occur?
 My assertion is that it was very likely the Dead played Ungano's on Thursday February 12, 1970, because that is why there in New York in the first place. The historic Fillmore East gigs were simply a profitable byproduct of the Ungano's gig, or else someone else has to find different answers to the above questions.

It is a delicious thought to think that the supposed Mob connections at Ungano's hide a secret story of wads of cash and perhaps a mobster's daughter, but I think the answer is considerably more prosaic. Ungano's was a record company hangout. Warner Brothers had invested a ton of money (125,000 1969 dollars) in the poorly-selling Aoxomoxoa, but they had a happening album on their hands with Live/Dead. The Grateful Dead had a sort of outlaw reputation in the 1960s (with some justification) but in fact they were a terrific live band willing to tour nonstop, not so common a combination as you might think. Warners probably had an inkling of what was coming on Workingman's Dead, and may have figured they had a chance to sell some records if talent agents, radio people and promotional staff got a chance to see the Dead in person.

I think the February 12 Ungano's gig was a Warner Brothers Records showcase, probably tied in with a convention or sales event at the same time. I think Warners, The Grateful Dead and Bill Graham arranged the Fillmore East gigs to happen at the same time, but Warners was driving the date. There are no tapes or eyewitness accounts of the show because no civilians got in--Warner Brothers and the club itself would have controlled the guest list.

The Dead would not have used their own sound system, since it was on the way to Texas, as they used the Fillmore East house PA while there. On an inferior sound system, its unlikely Owsley would deign to show up, much less tape. The "advertisement" in the Village Voice was to make Ungano's look cool--important in Manhattan--but a moot point since Warners had all the tickets. As such, Ungano's was not competing with the Fillmore East, assuaging any business concerns of Bill Graham. If I'm correct, it would be no surprise that Spring 1970 was when the Dead started to break out to the college market in the Northeast.

Can't prove it, probably never will. But I think in the midst of one of their great concert stands, the Grateful Dead rocked a tiny club at 210 West 70th Street.

Appendix: A Note About Peter Green

The Grateful Dead's late show on Wednesday, February 11, 1970 is one of their most legendary performances. They had met the opening act the Allman Brothers, but never heard them play until that night. Duane and Gregg Allman, Berry Oakley and Butch Trucks joined the Dead for an epic jam that included Peter Green, Danny Kirwan and Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac. What were the Mac doing at Fillmore East that night?

According to the definitive source, Christopher Hjort's book Strange Brew (Jawbone Books, 2007), the Mac were between a February 5-7 weekend at the Boston Tea Party and a Friday, February 13, 1970 gig at Madison Square Garden opening for Sly And The Family Stone. A scheduled gig at Massey Hall in Toronto was canceled, so the band came to New York early. Fleetwood Mac and the Grateful Dead had been good friends for some time, and Green had jammed with the Dead just two weeks early in New Orleans (Feb 1). Green, a fantastic guitarist himself, was particularly excited and intrigued by Jerry Garcia's creative approach to music, so its no suprise Green and other bandmembers took a free night to hang with the Dead.

Let's speculate: Peter Green loved Jerry and The Dead to the point where he dropped by Fillmore East to jam on a free night. Fleetwood Mac was on a sister label (Reprise) to Warner Brothers, just  10 weeks earlier the Mac had played four nights at Ungano's themselves (November 30-December 3, 1969), and Fleetwood Mac had no gig until Friday night. After Wednesday's epic jam, if Jerry said, "hey, we're playing uptown tomorrow night, " do you think Green missed the party?

I'm just sayin'.

Guest Flute Players with The Grateful Dead: June 13, August 3 and August 21, 1969

I recently wrote about the Grateful Dead's performance at the Aqua Theater in Seattle, WA on August 21, 1969. During this show, they were joined by a flute player for a few numbers, the third time it happened in 1969. This peculiarity has never been directly discussed, to my knowledge, so I will address it here.


Charles Lloyd

I was recently looking at an excellent blog post that summarized all the known guest appearances with the Grateful Dead from 1967-75. Clicking on all the links, mostly to the archive site, I was reminded that every time a flute or saxophone player sat in in with the Grateful Dead, people have always asserted that it was Charles Lloyd. This gets repeated so often that it became gospel, and the archive site lists Charles Lloyd as the guest on Aug 21 (with a question mark), with similar (albeit skeptical) comments on June 13, 1969 in Fresno and August 3 at The Family Dog.

In fact, I think there is a lot less evidence that Charles Lloyd played with the Grateful Dead after 1967, much as he may have wanted to, and that the flute player on the August 21 Seattle show and the June 13 Fresno show was actually one of the horn players for the group San Paku, although I have not been able to determine that individual's name. August 3 is a different matter, which I will deal with at the end.

Charles Lloyd and The Grateful Dead
Charles Lloyd was an exceptional modern jazz musician who excelled on both the tenor saxophone and flute. He rose to prominence with drummer Chico Hamilton's great Los Angeles groups in the early 1960s, featuring Gabor Szabo on guitar and Albert Stinson on bass. In the mid-1960s Lloyd formed his own quartet, with Keith Jarrett on piano, Ron McClure on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Lloyd was one of the first jazz musicians to see the commercial and musical possibilities of crossing over to the Fillmore market, and he played the Fillmore and Avalon a number of times (His Atlantic album Love-In was recorded at the Fillmore on January 27, 1967, when he was opening for Paul Butterfield).

Exactly where Charles Lloyd met the Grateful Dead isn't clear, but he was part of the San Francisco music scene in early 1967. In early January 1967 group was playing a club near the Haight called The Both/And (at 350 Divisadero--the ad above is from the January 24, 1967 Chronicle) and somehow Lloyd ended up onstage with the Grateful Dead at the Human Be-In, adding flute to "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl." A few months later, Lloyd played several nights with the Grateful Dead at a place on Mission Street called The Rock Garden, and probably jammed with them there as well. Lloyd and Garcia apparently hit it off, but efforts to record or tour together never came to fruition. Lloyd largely dropped out of playing live jazz for most of the 1970s, although he returned fully charged in the 1980s and remains an exceptional performer today.

Although Lloyd actually played more tenor sax than flute, Lloyd was one of the few flautists playing aggressive Coltrane-style jazz on the instrument (Eric Dolphy and arguably Herbie Mann and Jeremy Steig were among the others). Some of Lloyd's recordings, such as his great 1965 Columbia album Of Course, Of Course (with Szabo, Ron Carter and Tony Williams) were seminal recordings for jazz flute. As a result, Lloyd is so influential as a flautist that even though the August 21 flute playing (on "Minglewood" and "China Cat Sunflower") sound like Lloyd, most modern jazz flute players owe a lot to Lloyd, and most rock ones too (Ian Anderson certainly included). So the fact that the flute-playing on the August 21tape sounds like Charles Lloyd means less than you think, since most forward looking players at the time owed a lot to Lloyd.

Charles Lloyd is a great musician, and I love the idea that his 1967 jamming with the Dead was so memorable that he turned up in Fresno, San Francisco and Seattle two years later to sit in with them. I just don't think there's much evidence beyond wishful thinking to support it. A hard-nosed look at the history of Grateful Dead guests always points towards members of bands on the bill or players who live or have a gig in the town the Dead were in. I find the idea that Lloyd played tenor sax on "Dark Star" at the Family Dog quite plausible, since the Southern California based Lloyd might have had reason to be in San Francisco, but from that point of view John Handy is more plausible, and Lloyd in  Fresno and Seattle are an awful reach, much as I'd like it to be so. Lloyd wasn't working much in 1969, for personal reasons (he was interested in Transcendental Meditation) but I actually think that makes him less likely to go to strange places to jam with his peers.

San Paku
San Paku was a now little known band managed by the Bill Graham organization, and booked by Bill Graham's Millard Agency. During the 1968-69 period, the Millard Agency also booked the Grateful Dead. Other groups working with the Millard Agency included Santana, Elvin Bishop, Cold Blood, Aum and Its A Beautiful Day. A look at Northern California and West Coast rock poster from late 1968 through 1970 shows that all these bands played together many times, so the musicians all must have hung out regularly. It is not surprising to find out that members of those bands were periodic guests, studio collaborators or jamming partners with the Dead or Garcia: Bishop, Wayne Ceballos (of Aum), David LaFlamme (IABD) and Santana band members (including Carlos) were among the most prominent.

Its my understanding that San Paku was an eight-piece jazz rock group, perhaps with a Latin tinge, and they played with the Dead a number of times. I just find it more plausible that a guy from the opening act was a jamming partner in a place like Fresno or Seattle, far from home, than a jazz musician with no specific ties to either area. There are no circulating recordings of San Paku, so I have to guess as to their true sound. I know their lead singer was Rico Reyes, who worked with Santana and Quicksilver and later helped lead the fine group Azteca, and the guitarist was Sacramento musician Mark Pearson, later of Nielsen/Pearson Band. Supposedly they were a hopping group, but they broke up in Fall 1969, and I have been unable to follow up on my theory--hopefully a San Paku band member is out there and can confirm or reject my theory that the flute on the June 13 and August 21 shows was actually one of the players in San Paku.

August 3, 1969 The Family Dog At The Great Highway

The Grateful Dead played The Family Dog At The Great Highway on Sunday, August 3, and for the first three numbers ("Hard To Handle", "Beat It On Down The Line" and "High Heeled Sneakers") they are joined by flute and electric violin and later "Dark Star" they are joined by a tenor sax and electric violin. The archive notes list David LaFlamme on violin and Charles Lloyd on tenor, both of which seem like conventional choices. However, since there is flute on the first number and great tenor sax on "Dark Star", Lloyd seems like a pretty likely possibility. Lloyd probably lived in Los Angeles at the time, but its not so unlikely to think he would be in San Francisco (as opposed to Fresno).

There were so few electric violin players in San Francisco, or anywhere, that LaFlamme is a reasonable choice too. However, I wouldn't rule out Michael White as a possibility. White had pioneered electric violin playing in jazz with John Handy's mid-1960s group, based in San Francisco. By 1969, White was in the jazz rock group The Fourth Way, who were regulars at The New Orleans House rock club in Berkeley. In fact, The Fourth Way were scheduled at the New Orleans House on August 3, but that gig may have been earlier in the evening (bassist Ron McClure, formerly of Lloyd's quartet, was in The Fourth Way, so there were plenty of connections).

To my ears, the playing on "Dark Star" sounds more like White than LaFlamme to me, but we'll have to wait for some firmer evidence, as LaFlamme is still a plausible choice. The presence of the electric violin and tenor sax on this night make the "Dark Star" very different than most 1969 versions, and that is why I am inclined to think top-of-the-line players like Charles Lloyd and Michael White are participating. The version of "High Heeled Sneakers" is unique as well, with the electric violin triggering the song and a strange swinging tempo.

August 20, 1969 unnnamed bar, West 15th Street, Seattle, WA Grateful Dead

Many years ago Dennis McNally let me have a copy of his notes on Jerry Garcia's non-Dead appearances (which I still have somewhere). One interesting fact that I transcribed was his marking that the Grateful Dead and the New Riders of The Purple Sage were scheduled to play the Green Lake Aqua Theatre in Seattle, WA, on Wednesday August 20, but they were rained out, and so played the next day (August 21) instead. There are a number of interesting points from McNally's notes

• The confusion of on the dating of the August 21 tape is made clear; the show was scheduled for August 20, but actually played the on August 21, accounting for the confusing dating on Bear's tape of the show (which he correctly identified as August 21).
• The Aqua Theatre show seems to have been the first joint performance of the Dead and the New Riders, certainly the first "proof of concept" out of town performance
• On the night of the 20th, the Dead, and possibly the Riders, played a bar on West 15th Street in Seattle. Update: the bar was apparently El Roach, at 5419 Ballard Avenue NW, in the suburb of Ballard (just Southwest of Seattle proper).
  

The last item is the most tantalizing. I love items like these. Somewhere this Christmas Eve, some old biker was saying "yeah, one Summer we were hanging out at the bar one rainy day, and the Grateful Dead rolled up and jammed all night, " and his grandkids rolled their eyes and said "Mom, Grandpa's had too much eggnog." This time, at least, Grandpa's memory may have been right.

There is not actually a West 15th Street in Seattle (the streets are on different axes), so I have to assume the unnamed bar was either around 15th Ave NW a few miles West of Green Lake or else on 15th Avenue, near Downtown and Seattle University, about 7 miles South. The bar must have had a stage and some facility for power, and thus certainly must have regularly presented music, so it couldn't be completely unknown. Any suggestions as to the mystery club are certainly welcome (update: El Roach was just 2.8 miles from the Aqua Theatre, not far from 15th Ave NW). 

Green Lake Aqua Theatre, Seattle, WA
The Aqua Theatre on Seattle's Green Lake was built in 1950 to accommodate a Water Ballet at the Seattle Summer Sea Fest. The stage of the Theatre was actually on the shores of Green Lake, with a huge reflecting pool in front of the stage. The arena initially seated about 5,200, later expanded to 5,582. Various visiting shows and musical performers appeared at the Aqua Theatre over the years. Some high profile events were scheduled there for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, but there were problems due to the unpredictable Summer Weather, and the venue fell out of favor with promoters. By the late 1960s it was somewhat of a white elephant for the city of Seattle, but it was still used sometimes by rock music promoters.

The most famous rock show at the Aqua Theatre was on May 11, 1969, when Led Zeppelin performed there (with Three Dog Night as the opening act). Led Zeppelin sites have some great photos of the venue and recollections of the concert. This photo in particular gives an interesting perspective on bands performing at this unique venue (note how relatively little equipment Led Zeppelin had in 1969).

The Grateful Dead performance on August 21, 1969 apparently caused some concern about the grandstands. They were inspected, and structural flaws were found that caused the venue to be closed, making the Grateful Dead performance the last concert at the venue (whatever Led Zeppelin had not destroyed, the Dead seemed to have finished off). The venue was torn down in 1970. Parts of the grandstand still remain, and a historic marker identifies the site at 5900 W. Green Lake Way N.

August 5, 1966 English Bay Beach Bandstand, Vancouver, BC Grateful Dead (first free concert)

(The Bob Masse poster for the Grateful Dead's performance at the Pender Auditorium in Vancouver. H/t Ross for the scan)

Free outdoor concerts are an essential part of the story of the Grateful Dead and San Francisco rock. Part of the international fascination with the San Francisco music scene in 1967 was the idea that popular bands simply played for free in a  public park, and anyone who wanted to could come hear them. They weren't scheduled events, they just happened, because the musicians felt like playing. Such an idea was unprecedented in popular culture, and it had enormous ramifications. The Human Be-In of January 14, 1967 was picked up by the National TV networks, presaging the Summer of Love. By Spring there had been Be-Ins of different sorts around the country, and through 1968 at least, when the Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Airplane played a new city, they played somewhere for free in a public park.

Up until the Summer Of Love, making money in the Entertainment industry had been about reducing access, not granting it. Touring performers--whether 19th century opera singers, early 20th century vaudeville performers or late 20th century singers--made sure that their public performances were a rare and exclusive commodity. Musicians were initially nervous about the radio until they discovered that radio airplay increased audiences for public appearances, but of course a 2-minute recording was hardly an entire concert. As Television rose up in the 1950s, musicians and their managers rapidly figured out that TV appearances would increase ticket sales, but it too was a limited medium. As far as live appearances went, it was considered strategically important to make each show a special event, so that people would pay for the privilege. Playing for free was for unknowns, has-beens or the desperate.

In 1966 and 67, The Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and other San Francisco bands were all headlining at the Fillmore and The Avalon. Their recording careers were just starting, but they were already stars around town, making a modest hippie living by headlining the local dance halls. It defied all business knowledge to simply play in the park for free. Ironically, however, the Dead and other bands' willingness to play for free evinced a confidence that the more you heard them, the more you would want to, to the point where you would pay for the privilege. In that respect, the Grateful Dead anticipated Internet marketing before the Internet was even invented.

It is particularly ironic then that the first free Grateful Dead performance in a public park actually took place not in San Francisco but in Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia on Friday, August 5, 1966. The first Grateful Dead performance in the Panhandle, just East of Golden Gate Park and in the center of Haight Ashbury, did not take place until October 6, 1966. I am aware that there are various assertions (such as on Deadlists) that the Dead played for free in San Francisco in the Summer of 1966, but that is sadly wishful.

In fact, the Dead did not even live in San Francisco until around September of 1966. After they had moved from Palo Alto to Los Angeles in February of 1966, putting on Acid Tests with Owsley and the Pranksters, they returned not to San Francisco but Marin. They lived at Rancho Olampali, where many famous (and well-photographed) bacchanals took place, and then spent several weeks at a disused Summer camp in Western Marin. The band did not fully relocate to 710 Ashbury until September, so the chances of playing casually in San Francisco prior to that are fairly unlikely.

The Vancouver Trips Festival
The Grateful Dead and Big Brother and The Holding Company were invited to perform at the Vancouver Trips Festival from July 29 to 31, 1966. This event kicked off psychedelia in earnest in Vancouver. Vancouver, British Columbia, a free thinking seaport with balmy weather, had a very interesting music and arts scene in the 1960s. One of the peculiar characteristics of Canadian hippiedom, however, was that it had very little political strife attached to it, as Canada was neither involved in a ruinous war in Southeast Asia nor had a history of oppressing black people. As a result, though Vancouver hippies were no less enthusiastic than anyone else on the West Coast, the scene was more about music and the arts, with considerably less of the "Us vs Them" confrontation between straights and squares that characterized America in the 60s.


Raw color footage (silent, unedited, never broadcast) filmed by the CBC of the Vancouver Trips Festival

Vancouver promoter Jerry Kruz had a club called The Afterthought, which was putting on shows at the Pender Auditorium (at 399 Pender). He invited the Grateful Dead to stick around Vancouver and play a show on Friday, August 5, for which the above Bob Masse poster was made. Opening the show was a band of hip high school students, the United Empire Loyalists. Up until a few weeks earlier, they had called themselves The Molesters, as a cheeky joke, but Kruz told that they needed a more reasonable name if they expected it to be on rock posters around town, so they adopted the name of Americans who had resettled in Canada after the Revolutionary War. The Vancouver teenagers found themselves as the hosts of the Grateful Dead between Sunday's Trips Festival event and Friday's concert.

The band's website picks up the story from here, from drummer Richard Cruickshank:

However, between the Sunday and the Friday The Dead needed at least one practise; and unbeknownst to Richard's parents who were away on vacation, that practise ended up chez Cruickshank. The one problem lay in the location of the Cruickshank residence being in staid, upper middle-class West Vancouver: "Picture this: nobody'd seen people with hair that long - people with shoulder-length hair. Nobody here had hair that long!" remembers Richard.

Jeff [Ridley, the guitarist] also recalls: "So we all paraded into Dick's parents' place with The Grateful Dead and their hippie entourage and all the neighbours peering out from behind their curtains!"

"This was an upper middle-class neighbourhood of dentists and businessmen and retired people, and nobody could believe this was happening!" continues Richard, "They rehearsed on our equipment, and the neighbours could hear it. They made our equipment sound good too! As a sixteen year-old, you tend to think that you'll sound good when you can afford better gear. But there was not a single problem; the only damage that was caused was by me: I left a cigarette in an ashtray which burned a hole in the top of my parents' stereo cabinet. And all our food went missing - the fridge was empty, but at least it was clean! They were the nicest people as I remember them, really sweet guys. Very good people." Naturally, after the practise extended well into the evening and eventually turned into a party, a neighbour did call the police and shut the festivities down.

Then comes the interesting part. By Friday, the Loyalists are driving around Vancouver in the band's van, when serendipity strikes. Ridley:

"They wanted to do some publicity for the gig they were playing that night so they were driving around Vancouver and saw the bandstand at English Bay. Without getting any permission, they decided they'd play there; they set up and were promptly shut down by the police. Everywhere they went they got shut down! Another time they were planning on playing Kits Beach on a flatbed truck which was all set up for that and we opened up. But by the time we finished out set the cops had already arrived and shut the whole thing down and again they didn't play."

Stanley Park is a huge bayside park on the water, and English Bay is on the Western edge of the city. There appear to be a number of bandstands on the English Bay side of Stanley Park, which may have been revised considerably over the decades, so I will leave it to British Columbians (past or present) to attempt to parse the exact location of the performances. Rock Scully recounts another version of the story, from the Dead's point of view, and I have read another interview with a Loyalist that recaps the stories as well.

The essence of it seems to have been that the Dead simply pulled up to a stage in Vancouver's largest public park, set up quickly and began to play. After a few numbers the police came along and shut it down, since the Dead had no permission whatsoever. Since it was Vancouver and not America, however, while the cops can hardly have been pleased, there was no harassment or hostility as there would have been with American police. So the Dead of course simply followed the teenagers directions to another bandstand and pulled the stunt again, until the cops came, and then again (at Kits Beach), this time letting the Loyalists play a number before the police stepped in.

Aftermath

By the time of Friday night's show at the Auditorium, there must have been some kind of buzz around town, since the gig seems to have gone off well. By the time the Grateful Dead return to California and migrate into San Francisco (once Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin have found room for them at 710 Ashbury), the Dead adopt the San Francisco version of the Vancouver trip. Starting with the Panhandle show on the day LSD was made illegal in California (October 6, 1966), the Dead and then other groups made a regular habit of appearing in the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park without even beginning to ask for permission. Similar events started to occur in Berkeley, in Provo Park, and bands rapidly figured out that without an album there was no better way to get heard. The implicit confidence that the more you heard a band the more you would want to hear of them evoked the idea that San Francisco rock bands were making Art, not just disposable entertainment.

The Grateful Dead's final free concert was November 3, 1991 at the Polo Grounds, in a memorial to Bill Graham.

The Afterthought moved from Pender Auditorium to the Kitsilano Theatre at 2214 West 4th. It closed by 1969, but it was fondly remembered (along with the Retinal Circus) from the golden age of Vancouver psychedelia.

The United Empire Loyalists, after having spent a day racing around Vancouver playing guerilla shows with The Grateful Dead, decide that its a rock and rollers life for them and become one of Vancouver's leading underground bands. They were a popular and successful band in Vancouver, although save for one single they did not release an album while they were still together, because Vancouver wasn't a big enough market. The band managed to have some remarkable adventures, including opening for Cream and nearly becoming Country Joe McDonald's backing band (too long a saga to explain here), but the group started to split up by 1969, and completely ended in 1970. Fortunately, however, a 1998 cd of demos and live performances gives a good idea of their sound.

Afterthought on The Afterthought
Existing lists of Grateful Dead concerts show the band playing the Afterthought (at Pender Auditorium) in Vancouver on Friday and Saturday, August 5 and 6, 1966. In fact, the poster (above) does not support that--it clearly states the band as playing only August 5. Initially, I thought that there may have been no gig on Saturday, August 6, but apparently the Bob Masse poster is commemorative, so the Dead very well could have played Saturday night as well.

The next Grateful Dead gig was Sunday August 7 at the Fillmore, which doesn't answer the question either way.