March 9, 1968 Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco: Buck Owens And The Buckaroos

(an ad from the Sunday, March 3, 1968 San Francisco Chronicle for Buck Owens and His Buckaroos at the Carousel Ballroom on Saturday, March 9, 1968)

The traditional saga of The Grateful Dead alludes to how The Dead and other San Francisco bands took over the Carousel Ballroom at 1545 Market Street in order to compete with Bill Graham and Chet Helms, and how it was a glorious failure, ending when Graham himself took over the lease of the Carousel and converted it to the Fillmore West. All this is true, more or less. The timeline for the Dead's management of The Carousel has always remained surprisingly vague for such an important event. However, I can not only shed some interesting light on the sequence of events of the Dead's brief reign there, but a remarkable piece of World Historical fact as well.

It had never occurred to me to wonder who was the last act to play the Carousel before the Dead and then Bill Graham took over the Carousel. What a surprise to find out that on Saturday, March 9, 1968, The Carousel featured the first San Francisco appearance of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos. Certainly Owens had played the Bay Area many times, but this was apparently his first time in the City proper, a sign of Buck's increasing mainstream success. The musical and industry importance of Buck Owens is hard to overstate, and that is without considering Owens's enormous success as a Television star on Hee Haw. As a musician, Owens pioneered what is known as the Bakersfield sound, a potent mixture of country, rockabilly and rhythm and blues that battled Nashville for supremacy throughout the 1970s and 80s.

Rock musicians who loved country music all leaned towards the Bakersfield sound, and players like Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman and Jerry Garcia were foremost among them. Since The Eagles are the founding fathers of modern popular country music, the fact that The Eagles were an Angeleno rocker version of Bakersfield music means that Owens decisively won his "battle" against the staid Nashville sound of the 60s and 70s.

Buck Owens influence on Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead is no less fundamental. Owens and his Buckaroos played clean, rocking music that was the blueprint for Workingman's Dead, and Garcia specifically mentioned Owens's inspiration many times. The biggest success of the Bakersfield musicians was Merle Haggard, and some of Haggard's songs ("Mama Tried" and "Sing Me Back Home") also made it into the Grateful Dead repertoire. People interested in some of the roots of Garcia's twangy Fender sound of the early 70s would do well to listen to Buckaroo guitarist Don Rich.

Owen's influence on Garcia doesn't stop with Merle Haggard and Don Rich. Old Garcia pal Pete Grant recalls driving somewhere with Jerry Garcia in mid-60s and hearing Owens's 1964 song "Together Again." The pedal steel guitar solo by Tom Brumley was so beautiful that Grant and Garcia agreed on the spot that they had to learn pedal steel. Grant learned before Garcia, as it happened, but the Buckaroos music was one of the signposts for the future Garcia, even if it lay dormant for a few years (and I should add that the New Riders occasionally played "Together Again").

Hegel says that progress comes from  contradiction and negation, so to a crypto-Hegelian like me it makes perfect sense that while the Grateful Dead were planning to take over the Carousel Ballroom, the last booking by an outside promoter featured an artist that most hippies would have dismissed outright. Jerry Garcia, of course, had he not been otherwise booked on March 9, 1968 (playing two shows at the Melodyland Theater at Disneyland with the Jefferson Airplane), would have been very excited to see Buck Owens and The Buckaroos in concert (Garcia, David Nelson and Herb Petersen apparently saw Buck and Merle back in 1964). What a surprise for any time traveling Deadheads to find out that just two and half years after Buck played The Carousel, the new Grateful Dead album would sound like a Buck Owens album.

Carousel Timeline

(part of Ralph Gleason's Chronicle column from March 13, 1968)

The chronology of the Grateful Dead's Carousel adventure has been permanently obscured by the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper strike that took up most of January and February 1968. Ralph Gleason was the major source of information for historians of the major San Francisco bands, and with Gleason mute, details for the January and February period are lost. It does seem, however, that the various San Francisco bands put on two shows at the Carousel essentially as clients, and decided to make a permanent arrangement in March.

From 1965 onward, the ballroom was had usually been open for Dinner and Dancing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, usually with a big band providing the music. Various promoters would rent the hall at times, usually on Saturday night, which is how The Yardbirds and even the Grateful Dead (on October 31, 1967) came to play there.

Gleason's March 13 column says

The Grateful Dead and a group of other San Francsico bands, including the Jefferson Airplane, have taken a lease on the old Carousel Ballroom on Market Street (formerly the El Patio) and beginning Friday night will run dances there regularly. Friday, Saturday and Sunday the Airplane and the Dead will play there for dancing. Next weekend, Chuck Berry and the Buffalo Springfield will appear.

The Carousel is owned by Bill Fuller, the Irish ballroom operator who has similar properties in Chicago, New York, Boston, London, Manchester and throughout Ireland. As part of the current arrangement, it is hoped to organize a European tour later this year with some of the San Francisco groups based on Fuller's ballrooms.

None of this came to pass of course. The Carousel Ballroom was just an early example of various peculiar business decisions that characterized the Dead's history, just one of many reasons I find it comical that the Dead are now promoted as business icons. Although the idea of an acid-drenched tour of Irish Ballrooms throughout North America and the United Kingdom and Ireland is fascinating to contemplate, and we can only wonder at the "Peggy-O">"Dark Star">"Whisky In The Jar" medley that we missed, I am happier with the Universe as presently constituted.

Irish music was a fixture at the Carousel, along with Big Bands, and Saturday night rock bands. As far as I know, only one country act played there, right before the Carousel's transformation into a rock palace, and it turns out to be the Buckaroos who posted the signpost to new space. And I might add, all they had to was "Act Naturally."

Grateful Dead Tour Itinerary January 1970

I have been constructing tour itineraries for the Grateful Dead for brief periods of their history. There is so much information circulating on websites and blogs (including my own) that go beyond published lists on Deadlists and Dead.net that these posts make useful forums for discussing what is known and missing during each period. So far I have reviewed

• The Warlocks May-December 1965
• The Grateful Dead January-April 1967
• The Grateful Dead May-June 1967
• The Grateful Dead November-December 1967
• The Grateful Dead March-April 1968
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia July-August 1969
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia September-October 1969 
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia November 1969 
• Grateful Dead December 1969 

Rather than go in strictly chronological order, I am focusing on periods where recent research has been done by myself or others. Over time I hope to have the entire 1965-70 period. My principal focus here is on identifying which dates have Grateful Dead shows, which dates might have Grateful Dead shows, and which dates are in dispute or may be of interest. Where relevant, I am focusing on live appearances by other members--mostly Jerry Garcia, as a practical matter--in order to get an accurate timeline.

What follows is a list of known Grateful Dead performance dates for January 1970. I am focused on which performances occurred when, rather than the performances themselves. For known performances, I have assumed that they are easy to assess on Deadlists, The Archive and elsewhere, and have made little comment. As a point of comparison, I am comparing my list to Deadlists, but I realize that different databases may include or exclude different dates (I am not considering recording dates, interviews or Television and radio broadcast dates in this context).

My working assumption is that the Grateful Dead, while already a legendary rock band by 1968, were living hand to mouth and scrambling to find paying gigs. Even by 1970, most paying performances were on Friday and Saturday nights, so I am particularly interested  in Friday and Saturday nights where no Grateful Dead performances were scheduled or known.

In January 1970, the Grateful Dead were starting to reap the benefits of their great new album Live/Dead, released in November 1969, which was receiving plenty of airplay now that FM rock stations were all over the country. One interesting note about the month of January 1970 was the fact of only one scheduled show by the New Riders of The Purple Sage, and no guest live appearances by Jerry Garcia. Given the surprisingly numerous NRPS shows in November, I cannot think this was simply a coincidence. We have discussed possible reasons for the paucity of NRPS shows between December 1969 and April 1970 elsewhere, so I will not recap it except to say that it appears the Riders did not have a bass player.

I have linked to existing posters where available.

January 2-3, 1970 Fillmore East, New York, NY: Grateful Dead/Cold Blood/Lighthouse
The Grateful Dead finished their brief, if lengthy National tour with a weekend at the Fillmore East. They played early and late shows on both Friday and Saturday night, which was the standard arrangement there.

Cold Blood was booked by Bill Graham's Millard Agency, as were the Dead. Lighthouse were a Canadian group who played a sort of orchestral pop, similar in some ways to Blood, Sweat & Tears.

January 10, 1970 Golden Hall, Community Concourse, San Diego, CA: Grateful Dead/Sons Of Champlin/AUM
The Grateful Dead returned to the West Coast and played a Saturday night in San Diego. San Diego was not a big enough market for the Dead to play two nights, but it seems surprising they did not wedge a Friday night show (on Jan 9) somewhere in the Los Angeles area. Of course, the band had just been there the previous month, but they played a small venue in Hollywood (The Thelma, Dec 10-12) and one in distant San Bernardino (The Swing on Dec 13).

The San Diego Convention Center was at 202 C Street. A former San Diego resident explained it to me

San Diego Convention Center consisted of 2 concert venues:   Golden Hall and Exhibition Hall.  Only a lobby between the 2 rooms. Golden Hall had seats, auditorium style with a rise and a high roof. Exhibition Hall was a low roof, no seats, concrete floor affair.  Community Concourse was another earlier name for the entire building including both halls

The Sons Of Champlin actually substituted for Savoy Brown at the last minute. The Sons road manager recalled that the stage had an Vaudeville-style platform that could be raised and lowered. The Sons went on too long for the promoter's liking, and when they launched into another number--"Turn On Your Lovelight," amusingly enough--the promoter lowered the stage as a warning, and The Sons descended out of sight, rocking away. At this time, "Lovelight" was a popular nightclub cover version, and had been since Bobby "Blue" Bland had a great hit with it in 1961. Both the Dead and the Sons (and a thousand other groups) had been performing it live for some time.

January 15, 1970 [venue], Seattle, WA: Grateful Dead [unconfirmed]
Another blogger pointed out that Tom Constanten mentions the Dead playing the Aqua Theater in Seattle on January 15, 1970. While this is clearly a spurious venue--the Dead had played the final show at the Aqua Theater on August 21, 1969--I wouldn't discount the date. Constanten has clearly been using a diary or some other form of reference, and some of his most interesting dates fit very clearly into the Dead's touring schedule, even though they are unremarked elsewhere (for example, September 16, 1967 in Las Vegas).

Although January 15, 1970 was a Thursday, I would not at all rule out that there was at least a show scheduled in Seattle, even if it wasn't played.

January 16, 1970 Springer's Ballroom, Gresham, OR: Grateful Dead/River
Springer's Ballroom was apparently the ballroom in an old resort. It was in suburban Gresham, about 15 miles East of downtown Portland. I have written about this venue at length elsewhere, to the extent that  that I could find out about it. The building was located on West Powell Boulevard (US 26) at SE 190th Avenue. There has been considerable development since then and no trace of the building appears to remain.

River was a Portland band.

January 17, 1970 Gill Coliseum, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR: Grateful Dead
Gill Coliseum was the basketball arena for Oregon State. Built in 1949, the venue has a current capacity of 10, 400. I do not know what its capacity was in 1970, but even so it must have been one of the larger places that the Dead headlined in those days.

January 18, 1970 Springer's Ballroom, Gresham, OR: Grateful Dead
The Dead returned to Springer's two days after their previous appearance. Bob Weir's comment from the stage about the sparse crowd shows why the band didn't add casual dates more often. Gresham was in the suburbs, and underground word-of-mouth wasn't as effective as it might have been in Manhattan or San Francisco.

January 19, 1970 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley, CA: New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band Benefit For Center For Educational Change
Joe discovered this obscure show quite recently. There are many strange things about it, not least a Monday night show after the Dead had just returned from Portland. Nonetheless, it is the only booked New Riders show between November 1969 and March 1970, and if it was played it was the only one played between November and April 1970.

I asked Brian Voorheis of The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band if he recalled the show, and he didn't, but of course CGSB played Pauley many times, so that's hardly definitive either way. The bigger question about a January New Riders show remains who might the bass player have been, or is supposed to have been. It does appear that after steadily playing around through November, Phil Lesh simply lost interest. If there was a one-off show, perhaps there was a one-off lineup of the New Riders as well.

January 23-24, 1970 Civic Auditorium, Honolulu, HI: Grateful Dead/The Sun And The Moon/September Morn/Pilfredge Sump/Michael J Brody
Some lists include the Jefferson Airplane on the bill, but I am reliably informed that they were not part of the show. I don't think the Dead could really have filled two nights at the 8,800 capacity Honolulu Civic, but of course Hawaii was different than every other state for many obvious reasons, so its tough to generalize. I have seen a number of Hawaii bills from the 60s where there was a major headliner and a series of local bands.

January 30-31, 1970 The Warehouse, New Orleans, LA: Grateful Dead/Fleetwood Mac/The Flock
The Warehouse was a recently opened venue that created a Southeastern stop on the "Fillmore Circuit," which had hitherto been focused more on the I-80 route through Chicago and the Midwest. The Warehouse, at 1820 Tchopitoulas St. (at Felicity), was an old railroad storage warehouse, generally lacking in ventilation (in the Summer, ice trucks would be lined up next to the building, spraying cool air into the second story windows to be fanned out into the auditorium).

Fleetwood Mac had been pals with the Dead since early 1969. Much of the weekend is described in great detail from by Mac soundman Dinky Dawson in his fine book Life On The Road (Billboard Books, 1998, p. 121-124), although fortunately the Mac missed the notorious bust after the second show.  As if getting busted didn't make the weekend momentous enough, the Dead decided to fire Tom Constanten as well, and his last official show with the band turned out to have been January 24, although I believe he "sat in" (in a sense) on some numbers in New Orleans.

The Flock were an interesting band from Chicago that featured electric violinist Jerry Goodman. Goodman, a tremendous player, used his violin as the lead instrument in the horn section, an approach borrowed (consciously or not) from Texas Swing music but applied to a hard-driving "soul-rock" sound. Goodman later played in the first Mahavishnu Orchestra and a later lineup of Dixie Dregs.

February 1, 1970 The Warehouse, New Orleans, LA: Grateful Dead/Fleetwood Mac Bust Benefit
After the bust, the Dead are out of cash, a clear sign of the hand-to-mouth life of a touring band in those days. They add an extra show at The Warehouse on Sunday night. Fleetwood Mac agrees to play as well, as they do not have a show until February 5 in Boston (The Flock had to move on, according to Dawson). The show is well attended, thanks to the local FM station. Unlike suburban Portland, word travels fast in a City.

According to Dawson, although the New Orleans cops are out in force looking to bust pot smokers, buckets are passed around for people to drop money in to help the Dead, and in thanks the band passes around bottles of Cold Duck (a cheap champagne-like concoction). They announce from the stage "its Electric Duck, so only take a few sips," and the New Orleans police, used to 200 years of vice, somehow miss the reference. Peter Green, and probably other members of Fleetwood Mac, end up on stage during "Turn On Your Lovelight" (and who does that strange rap at the end?).

Since the Grateful Dead's next show was in St. Louis on Monday night (February 2), I have always wondered how they got the sound system 700 miles North in time for the show. My theory is that the equipment truck left New Orleans Sunday morning (February 1) and the Dead played on Fleetwood Mac's sound system. The Dead and the Mac were among the first two bands to tour with their own PAs, and Dinky Dawson and Owsley were good friends and professional peers. Expedience notwithstanding, the Dead would have known they could put on a quality show using the Mac's equipment. I'm assuming that the band members themselves were going to fly to St. Louis in any case, so their plans would not have changed. 

Anyone with updates, corrections, insights or other valuable information should Comment or email me.

8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA The Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA 1969

(a photo of Friar Tuck's Pub at 8201 Old Redwood Highway, Cotati, CA, taken on July 12, 2010. The sign for The Inn Of The Beginning is visible at the top of the wall)

It is often a tricky enterprise attempting to photograph the sites of old venues. Addresses change, buildings are torn down or remodeled, roads and sight lines change, and what might be the site of an old venue may turn out to be misleading or mistaken. Not so with the Inn Of The Beginning in Cotati, California, where Jerry Garcia and The New Riders of The Purple Sage played at least four low-key shows in late 1969. Although the venue closed many years ago, the sign for the old club hangs proudly above the entrance, no doubt in the interest of aiding Rock Prosopographers everywhere.

The Inn Of The Beginning
Cotati was a sleepy, iconoclastic community that dated back to the 19th century, and a generally interesting place, for a rural area. As development expanded beyond Santa Rosa, the largest city in the County, Cotati was in danger of being annexed by Rohnert Park, a growing suburb of Santa Rosa. As a result, the town incorporated as a city in 1963 to control its own destiny.

As part of the dramatic expansion of state-funded education in California, Sonoma State College was founded in Santa Rosa in 1960 (taking the faculty, staff and facility of San Francisco State’s Santa Rosa Center, founded in 1956). However, by 1966 the entire Sonoma State campus had relocated to a new site in Rohnert Park. Calling the campus and the county “bucolic” does it a cruel injustice; year-round balmy weather and a beautiful setting made Sonoma State a desirable campus immediately. Eccentric Cotati, just next to Rohnert Park, immediately became the ‘college town’ associated with the Sonoma State campus.

The free-thinking history of Cotati made it a nice fit with the newly expanding Sonoma State campus. The Inn of The Beginning was founded in 1968 as a coffee shop and bar that provided both a  watering hole and a venue for local groups. The opening night band on September 28, 1968 was Bronze Hog, featuring guitarist Frank Hayhurst. Hayhurst, at one point, became co-operator of the Inn, and now owns a music store in Cotati.  The Bronze Hog played The Inn Of The Beginning in all its incarnations for decades, and the band still plays around the city periodically, and that sums up Cotati in a nutshell (for more on Cotati in the 1960s, see here).

Cotati’s friendly atmosphere and convenient location of The Inn made it an attractive place for the many world-class musicians who lived in Marin to use the Inn of The Beginning as a venue to work on new material or try out a new lineup. Over the decades, the likes of Van Morrison and Jerry Garcia played there many times, often with very little publicity. Ironically, this has led to an expansion of the legend beyond its actual width; the New Riders of The Purple Sage played there in 1969, but this has led to the unsustainable story that the Grateful Dead used to play there “every Tuesday.” Janis Joplin is reputed to have joined Big Brother there one night in 1970, and it is impossible to say whether she did for certain.

In 1969, however, after many major San Francisco rock luminaries had moved to Marin County, a show at the tiny Inn Of The Beginning in Cotati was an easy drive from both San Francisco and Marin. Thus the venue was an extra booking for working bands, and a chance for higher profile bands to play for a friendly audience without a lot of pressure. Jerry Garcia and his new band The New Riders of the Purple Sage took advantage of the Inn Of The Beginning to play 4 (or possibly 5) shows there:

September 18, 1969
A tape circulates from this Thursday night performance. It is unique in that Garcia shares the vocals with John Dawson, and he does not just la-la along on the background vocals. Since we have no other tapes until 1970, its impossible to say how typical this was(all clips are from Ralph Gleason's San Francisco Chronicle columns).

October 9, 1969
The New Riders played another Thursday night.

November 6, 1969
Yet another Thursday night. During this period, acts that played San Francisco clubs (like Elvin Bishop or Dan Hicks) mostly played weekends, so I presume local groups played on other nights. It seems that these discreet shows were effectively "extra" nights for the Inn Of The Beginning, when San Francisco club headliners weren't usually playing.

November 28/29, 1969
Ralph Gleason's column implies that the New Riders and Joy Of Cooking (from Berkeley) would play on Friday and Saturday November 28 and 29. His phrasing suggests that both bands would play both nights, but I actually think the New Riders played Friday and Joy Of Cooking played Saturday.

The New Riders were booked to play a show at The Inn Of The Beginning on March 12, 1970, another Thursday. After an exhaustive discussion on this blog, we decided that it was extremely unlikely that the group actually played the show.

(a photo of The Inn Of The Beginning and the attached bar "Spancky's", at 8201 Old Redwood Highway, taken on July 12, 2010)

The Inn Of The Beginning may have had a slightly different configuration in 1969 than it does now. There is a bar "Spancky's" at one end, and a small leather repair shop at the opposite end, all at the same address of 8201 Old Redwood Highway. I suspect that the 60s era club extended throughout the whole building, but as you can see it is not a large place. Thus I find it unsupportable that the Grateful Dead proper ever played there, charming as the idea might be. I would find it plausible, however, that the "acoustic" Grateful Dead played a show there in 1970, as it would be a good place to try out new equipment or material. If such a show took place, it was probably on a weeknight around either April or July 1970, and there was probably no publicity.

Aftermath
The Inn Of The Beginning lasted through the mid-70s in its original incarnation. It re-opened in the early 80s under the name The Cotati Cabaret At The Inn Of The Beginning, when it merged with an establishment across the street. The Inn remained a venue at least into the 1990s, but I'm not certain when it turned into an Irish Pub. Cotati and Sonoma remains as beautiful as ever, although the wine business has made the price of property formidable indeed, in return for which it has made the County a destination for food and drink of all types.

Grateful Dead Tour Itinerary December 1969

(A scan of the poster for the Grateful Dead at McFarlin Auditorium at SMU, Dallas, TX December 26, 1969)

I have been constructing tour itineraries for the Grateful Dead for brief periods of their history. There is so much information circulating on websites and blogs (including my own) that go beyond published lists on Deadlists and Dead.net that these posts make useful forums for discussing what is known and missing during each period. So far I have reviewed

• The Warlocks May-December 1965
• The Grateful Dead January-April 1967
• The Grateful Dead May-June 1967
• The Grateful Dead November-December 1967
• The Grateful Dead March-April 1968
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia July-August 1969
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia September-October 1969 
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia November 1969 

Rather than go in strictly chronological order, I am focusing on periods where recent research has been done by myself or others. Over time I hope to have the entire 1965-70 period. My principal focus here is on identifying which dates have Grateful Dead shows, which dates might have Grateful Dead shows, and which dates are in dispute or may be of interest. Where relevant, I am focusing on live appearances by other members--mostly Jerry Garcia, as a practical matter--in order to get an accurate timeline.

What follows is a list of known Grateful Dead performance dates for December 1969. I am focused on which performances occurred when, rather than the performances themselves. For known performances, I have assumed that they are easy to assess on Deadlists, The Archive and elsewhere, and have made little comment. As a point of comparison, I am comparing my list to Deadlists, but I realize that different databases may include or exclude different dates (I am not considering recording dates, interviews or Television and radio broadcast dates in this context).

My working assumption is that the Grateful Dead, while already a legendary rock band by 1968, were living hand to mouth and scrambling to find paying gigs. Even by 1969, most paying performances were on Friday and Saturday nights, so I am particularly interested  in Friday and Saturday nights where no Grateful Dead performances were scheduled or known. One interesting note about the month of December 1969 was the complete absence of any shows by the New Riders of The Purple Sage, nor any guest appearances by Jerry Garcia. Given the surprisingly numerous NRPS shows in November, I cannot think this was simply a coincidence. We have discussed possible reasons for the paucity of NRPS shows between December 1969 and April 1970 elsewhere, so I will not recap it except to say that it appears the Riders did not have a bass player.

I have linked to existing posters where available.

December 4, 5, 7, 1969  Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA Grateful Dead/The Flock/Humble Pie
The Grateful Dead were booked from Thursday to Sunday at Fillmore West. The Saturday night show (December 6) was canceled because of Altamont. Notwithstanding the Dead were scheduled to play at Altamont, the entire potential audience for the Fillmore West show would have been there anyway.

The Flock were a very interesting group from Chicago featuring electric violinist Jerry Goodman, later in Mahavishnu Orchestra and Dixie Dregs, among other groups. Humble Pie were a British group on their first American tour, fronted by guitarists Steve Marriott (ex-Small Faces) and Peter Frampton (ex-The Herd). At this time, the Pie tried to sound more like The Band, with a bit of Soul edge; their hard rock sound would come in another year or so.

December 6, 1969 Altamont Speedway, Livermore, CA Rolling Stones/Jefferson Airplane/Flying Burrito Brothers/Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young/Santana
The infamous Altamont event has been written about so much that I will try not to add anything. Suffice to say the Dead were scheduled to come on last, after The Rolling Stones, but chose to return to the safety of the San Francisco Heliport instead. Ironically, they ended up back at Fillmore West, hanging out and recovering from the strange day.

An ad for the Grateful Dead at the Thelma in West Hollywood, probably from the LA Free Press They were playing December 10-12, 1969, right after Ike & Tina Turner.

December 10-12, 1969 Thelma, West Hollywood, CA Grateful Dead
[update] Mysterious are the ways of The Google. With the impending release of Dave's Picks Vol 10, featuring recordings from December 11 and 12 at the Thelma, more information has bubbled to the surface, including a newspaper ad (above). It turns out I had the address wrong (per a comment by higthyme on the Dead.net forum). It was at 8917 Sunset Blvd, a few doors down from the former Galaxy, but still in the heart of The Sunset Strip.

The Thelma was at 8849 8917 Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood, just past the Los Angeles City Limits, had previously been known as The Galaxy. Around late 1966, Iron Butterfly had been the house band there. The venue was in the heart of the Sunset Strip, and the legendary Whisky A Go Go was just down the street.

The Thelma club had opened on November 12, 1969, probably with Poco as the headliner. The implication seems to have been that the Thelma would be some sort of upscale rock club, but it was an idea some years ahead of its time. I don't know who backed or booked the venue. It doesn't seem to have lasted very long. The Dead played Wednesday through Friday, as I assume they were looking for a booking to fill out the weekend along with the San Bernardino show. Stephen Stills dropped by to jam with the Dead on Wednesday, December 10.

The famous Viper Room is across the street (at 8852 W. Sunset).

December 13, 1969 Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA Grateful Dead/Country Joe and The Fish
The Dead played their first of a number of shows at the Swing Auditorium on December 13, 1969. The Swing, on E Street in San Bernardino (I'm not certain of the precise address) had been built in 1949 and had a capacity of up to 10,000, making it one of the largest indoor venues the Grateful Dead had headlined up to this point. Many bands played the Swing over the years, and the Dead played there again a number of times.

Many non-Californians assume that San Bernardino is part of Los Angeles, but that is only true in a very broad sense. The city of San Bernardino is actually 60 miles from Downtown Los Angeles, and even further from Santa Monica or the Coast. Given the history of Southern California traffic, that can sometimes be two hours of more of driving, at any time of the day or night. Thus San Bernardino was really new territory for the Grateful Dead, far away in many senses from Los Angeles proper.

I had never seen a poster or review of this show, but a reader sent me in the poster of the show (above-thanks Brad!). Its not surprising to see that given the size of the venue, the Dead were sharing the booking with Country Joe and The Fish and The Flying Burrito Brothers. There are also photos, incidentally, and it appears that Jerry Garcia played a Fender.

In September, 1981 a small plane crashed into the venue, and the resulting damage lead to the building being torn down.

Update:
December 14, 1969 Aquarius Theater, Los Angeles, CA Grateful Dead
Another blogger has pointed out that Tom Constanten's own self-history includes a date at the Kaleidoscope Theater in Los Angeles on December 14, 1969. I am starting to warm to this possibility, for a number of reasons. The theater called the Kaleidoscope, at 6230 Sunset Boulevard, had a long entertainment history. By late 1969, The Kaleidoscope was called the Aquarius Theater, and it mostly featured a musical production of Hair several nights a week. However, the theater was used by record companies for concert showcases on nights when Hair wasn't playing, mostly Sunday and Monday.

Following this logic, December 14 was a Sunday, making it a plausible candidate for a concert event at the Aquarius (I'm assuming any theatrical performance that day would have been in the afternoon). The Grateful Dead had a new album out (Live/Dead), and it was typical record company practice to have "showcase" events in Los Angeles and New York for new albums. Warner Brothers had such an event in New York at Ungano's, on February 12, 1970, as we have discussed at length, so it makes sense that there was a West Coast one as well. Since tickets would have been distributed by Warners and other industry players, it wouldn't be surprising that there was little or no publicity and few regular fans attended, and thus the show wasn't taped and there is little recollection of it.

I don't consider December 14, 1969 at the Aquarius Theater to be confirmed, but its well within the realm of the probable.

December 19-21, 1969 New Old Fillmore, San Francisco, CA Grateful Dead/Osceola/Rhythm Dukes/Jef Jaisun
Bill Graham had vacated the Fillmore Auditorium for the Fillmore West in July of 1968. In mid-1969, another group took over operation of the old Fillmore, led by Al Kramer and members of the band The Flamin Groovies. The New Old Fillmore attempted to compete directly with Graham. The Dead were the largest group to play there, both on the weekend of November 7-8 and this weekend. The New Old Fillmore faded away as a rock venue in Spring 1970, although we know it was not finished yet.

The opening numbers of Friday, December 19, feature what appears to be the Grateful Dead's first acoustic set. Garcia and Weir play some acoustic duet, apparently because Phil Lesh has been delayed.

Ross has written at some length about this weekend. The poster says 'Rhythm Dukes (Moby Grape)' because the band featured ex-Moby Grape members Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson (along with the bassist and drummer from the group Boogie). To my knowledge no member of the Grateful Dead would play the Fillmore after December 21, 1969 until a jam session at a Thanksgiving party on November 27, 1985, when Bob Weir and Mickey Hart joined in.

December 22, 1969 Napa Valley Sports Camp, Napa, CA Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Rejoice/People/Loading Zone [not on Deadlists]
This long lost Dead show was discovered in the entertainment listings of the Berkeley Barb (December 16, 1969). Ross found a notice in the December 13, Oakland Tribune which sheds a little light on the matter:

St. Mary's College High in Berkeley is participating in a high school-sponsored rock festival to be held Dec. 22 at the Napa Valley Sports Camp. The 40-acre site is located about five miles west of Napa on Highway 12 in Brown's Valley. Groups scheduled to appear are The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Rejoice, The People and The Loading Zone. Booths selling food and merchandise will be located throughout the site for the duration (9 a.m.- 5 p.m.) of the festival. Tickets are now available at St. Mary's.

I have written about this show extensively elsewhere, although its mostly just speculation on my part.

December 26, 1969 McFarlin Auditorium, Southern Methodist U., Dallas, TX  Grateful Dead/Zephyr
The Grateful Dead were heading East to a three-day New Year's Eve stand in Boston. However, equipment traveled by truck, and the despite their fame the band led a hand-to-mouth existence. Thus the Dead played a few shows on the way East, essentially to finance the trip. Live/Dead had just been released, so it was even more in the Dead's interests than usual to play a few high profile shows across the country.

McFarlin Auditorium is a 2386-seat theater built in 1926 on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It is not often that the Dead played venues that had also hosted Winston Churchill. Playing a small theater in Dallas in 1969 when school was out of session seems like a financial risk, and I don't know how many people actually attended the show. However, since the Dead's equipment had to cross the country anyway, it was probably financially worth it, even if Dallas was not really Grateful Dead territory in those days. Thanks to a helpful Commenter, we know that the opening act was Zephyr, a great band from Boulder, CO. Zephyr was a great band that featured guitarist Tommy Bolin and singer Candy Givens. Besides being the pride of Boulder, they had opened for the Dead at least once before (July 3, 1969 in Colorado Springs).

The Dead opened the show with their second-ever acoustic set. Garcia and Weir played a half-dozen numbers on acoustic guitars, apparently waiting for Bill Kreutzmann to arrive. A few more members joined in for a semi-acoustic "Uncle John's Band," and then the electric show began in earnest. The two acoustic shows in December both seem to be covering delays, and the relative rarity of them suggests that Garcia and Weir weren't that happy with the duo setup. After various other attempts in the next few months, they seemed to have worked out the two-guitars-and-rhythm-section configuration that Garcia first saw with Pentangle in February 1969.

December 28, 1969 Miami-Hollywood Speedway, Pembroke Pines, FL
Santana/The Band/Canned Heat/BB King/Grateful Dead/Johnny Winter/Vanilla Fudge/The Turtles/Mother Lode/Butterfield Blues Band/Hugh Masakela/Tony Joe White/Amboy Dukes/Sweetwater/Cold Blood/others
This was a three day festival, and the Dead played the middle day, in between Dallas and Boston. I don't know all the bands who played the festival, only the ones listed on the surviving ad that circulates, and I don't know who played which day.

There is a fair amount of information about this concert on the Internet, although most of the news stories and reminiscence are about the festival in general, rather than anything specifically about the Grateful Dead. Also, there were three rock festivals at Florida race tracks in late 1968 and late 1969, and the locations are often confused with one another:

December 28-30, 1968: Miami Pop Festival, Gulfstream Park, Hallandale, FL
Gulfstream Park is a horse-racing track in Hallandale, which is just North of Miami Beach. The Dead played the middle day (Dec 29 68) of the three-day festival. Michael Lang, one of partners at Woodstock, was one of the principal organizers of this festival. Sometimes this event is referred to colloquially as the "Hollywood" Festival. Hollywood, FL is the town just North of Hallandale.

November 28-30, 1969 Palm Beach Pop Festival, Palm Beach International Raceway, Jupiter, FL
The Rolling Stones headlined this three day event, in their last performance prior to Altamont. The Grateful Dead did not perform, although its possible Ramrod and Rex Jackson were there as part of the Rolling Stones crew.

Jupiter, FL is on the Coast, near Palm Beach, about 90 miles North of Miami. Palm Beach International Raceway was a road racing course built in 1964. It was used for various rock events in the 1960s and 70s, but Florida always had a tense relationship to outdoor rock festivals. Throughout the 1980s, the course was known as Moroso Motorsports Park. The facility is still an active race track, currently undergoing upgrading, and has returned to using the name Palm Beach International Raceway.

December 27-29, 1969: Miami Pop Festival, Miami-Hollywood Speedway, Pembroke Pines, FL
Once again the Dead played the middle day (Dec 28 69) of a three-day Festival. Pembroke Pines is North of Miami and West of Hollywood. Hollywood Speedway was a small oval track for stock cars, and also a Drag Strip. The site is now a housing development  and shopping center. The approximate address is 15285 Pines Blvd, Pembroke, FL 33027, which was the address of the Hollywood Sportatorium (built 1975, torn down 1988), where the Dead played on May 22, 1977, and the race track was adjacent to the Sportatorium. Sun-Life Stadium (formerly Joe Robbie Stadium), where the Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins play, is also located near Pembroke Pines (in the town of Miami Gardens).

December 29-31, 1969 Boston Tea Party, Boston, MA Grateful Dead
The Boston Tea Party was effectively Boston's Fillmore, and it had opened on January 20, 1967 at 53 Berkeley Street. Over the years the Tea Party had become part of the "Fillmore circuit," and most of the major 60s touring bands had played the venue. Boston's first FM rock station, WBCN, started broadcasting out of the backroom of the Tea Party as well, so it was the pre-eminent Boston rock venue.

The Boston rock market was huge, since the City had numerous colleges and Universities to provide a ready-made audience. So it was no surprise that other venues arose to compete with the Tea Party, including the Psychedelic Supermarket at 590 Commonwealth (the Dead played there twice in 1967) and The Ark at 15 Landsdowne Street, where the Dead had played a three night stand in April 1969. However, on July 12, 1969 the Tea Party building at 53 Berkeley caught fire and the building was burned out. The Boston Tea Party then took over the site of The Ark at 15 Landsdowne. Thus when the Dead played there only New Year's Eve show outside of San Francisco, it was at a venue they had already played, albeit under a different name.

15 Landsdowne Street has remained a music venue under various names, and is now the site of The House Of Blues. I do not know how different the current building is from its time as The Boston Tea Party.

January 2-3, 1970 Fillmore East, New York, NY Grateful Dead/Cold Blood/Lighthouse
The Grateful Dead finished their brief, if lengthy National tour with a weekend at the Fillmore East. They played early and late shows on both Friday and Saturday night, which was the standard arrangement there.

Cold Blood was booked by Bill Graham's Millard Agency, as were the Dead. Lighthouse were a Canadian group who played a sort of orchestral pop, similar in some ways to Blood, Sweat & Tears.

Anyone with updates, corrections, insights or other valuable information should Comment or email me.

December 27-28, 1975 La Paloma Theater, Encinitas, CA: Jerry Garcia Band--Did They Happen?

I have previously alluded to the historical reality that in the pre-Internet era one of the few useful sources of new information about Dead shows in other cities was chatting with strangers between sets at Dead shows. I learned many interesting things over the years, and many of them turned out to be true. Yet after all these years, some of those conversations remain unresolved in my mind. One of the many benefits of the Internet is that I can put these questions out there for review--who knows? The person I spoke with may read it and weigh in.

One night in Winterland in 1977--sorry, even I don't recall when--I was talking to some guy about the Jerry Garcia Band. I mentioned how much I liked seeing Garcia with Nicky Hopkins, even though at times Hopkins seemed a bit out of it. He told me about seeing Garcia and Hopkins in San Diego at a theater in San Diego which he called "Paloma Blanca." He said that after a few numbers, Hopkins just collapsed, seeming to burst into tears. Garcia went over and talked to Nicky, and then after a while Jerry came to the microphone and told everyone that the show was canceled and they could get their money back.

Over the years, as Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia scholarship has improved, little pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. The Jerry Site lists Jerry Garcia Band shows on December 27-28, 1975 at La Paloma Theater in Encinitas (at 471 1st Street), a few miles North of San Diego. La Paloma Theater in Encinitas is close enough to "Paloma Blanca" that I reasonably assumed it was the event in question, but I have waited in vain for any more information.

I do notice that there were no tapes, set lists or reviews for either night in 1975 at La Paloma, however. Maybe my acquaintance' story was true, and there are no set lists or tapes because the shows weren't played, beyond a few numbers the first night. Garcia only played one more show with Hopkins, on New Year's Eve, and perhaps Hopkins's breakdown was the last straw. Garcia epitomizes the sort of player who will go on stage with a myriad of personal, financial or health problems and still focus on his playing, so as a musician Jerry can't have been willing to keep working with someone who couldn't get through a show.

The Garcia Band returned to La Paloma Theater in Encinitas just two months later, on February 21 and 22, 1976. The band played double shows (early and late) on two nights, and tapes confirm that the shows did indeed happen. La Paloma Theater had not been part of any regular rotation of Garcia shows. Could the return engagement in February with Keith and Donna Godchaux have been a makeup show for the abortive December shows with Hopkins? It's possible.

This exhausts my knowledge of the December 27-28, 1975 Jerry Garcia Band shows with Nicky Hopkins at the La Paloma Theater in Encinitas--a casual conversation on the floor at Winterland, some time in 1977. But I have lots of other memories, too, like a guy who told me in December 1977 that the Dead had played an unforgettable show in Binghampton the month before, and he turned out to be right, even if it took me many years to finally hear the tape, so I'm not dismissing it yet. I would be delighted to find out that Garcia and Hopkins played a few shows between Winterland (Dec 19-20, 1975) and Keystone Berkeley (Dec 31, 1975), but I need to hear from some Southern Californians whether the La Paloma Theater shows happened or not.

• Did the Jerry Garcia Band interrupt themselves and cancel a show because Nicky Hopkins couldn't play?
• How many shows were canceled? If the first show on the first night was canceled, as many as four shows could have been canceled?

If it went down anything like it was described to me, it would have been a unique if unfortunate event in Garcia history, when a show started and was not completed. I can't think of another instance where Garcia made it onto the stage and did not complete the show of his own volition.

September 11, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway: Grateful Dead

An audience tape with a single song, "Easy Wind," ostensibly from an unknown venue on September 11, 1969 has circulated for many years. The Family Dog on The Great Highway has usually been suggested as the most likely venue. Over the years I have relentlessly insisted that this must have been a spurious date, but in recent months, my opinion has reversed 180 degrees. While I cannot prove anything, I am now confident that I can assert plausible justifications not only for the performance date but for the peculiar persistence of such a brief audience tape. Although I have alluded to my views in various places, I thought it would make sense to collect them here.

In the past, I had objected to the September 11, 1969 date for the following reasons:

• I could find no evidence of an advertisement or publicity for a September 11, 1969 Family Dog show, and I have done considerable research in that area
• September 11 was a Thursday, and the Family Dog almost never had Thursday shows, making it seem more unlikely that they would do so without publicity
• The audience tape sounded surprisingly well-recorded for a 1969 tape
• Any hard-core Head who recorded a 1969 tape would be highly unlikely to leave the balance of the tape uncirculated
• An unknown guest slide guitarist plays along, and he seems to know the song, legislating against a performance of a song that had probably been written only a few weeks earlier

Over the years, I kept expecting some sharp-eared tape expert to find this version of "Easy Wind" as part of some other, longer tape, allowing us to put aside the September 11 Family Dog date, but it never happened. In the last few months, I have come around to thinking the date and the tape are valid. Let me enumerate the various reasons here.

I could find no evidence of an advertisement or publicity for a September 11, 1969 Family Dog show, and I have done considerable research in that area
Some detailed research by Ross revealed that for a brief period in Late Summer 1969 (at least), the Family Dog had afternoon jams for working musicians. The August 28, 1969 tape with Howard Wales and some members of the Grateful Dead, labeled as "Hartbeats," falls into this category. Afternoon jams obviate the question of who was working: it didn't matter if anyone had a show Thursday night, as the jamming was taking place in the afternoon. Of course there was no advertising--it wasn't a "show," in that sense of the word.

September 11 was a Thursday, and the Family Dog almost never had Thursday shows, making it seem more unlikely that they would do so without publicity
There would have been no audience for these afternoon jams, save for a few lucky hippies who wandered by (and there wouldn't have been that much foot traffic out there, either). These afternoon jams would explain not only August 28 and September 11, but the peculiar September 7, 1969 tape with members of the Airplane and the Dead playing rock and roll oldies.

The audience tape sounded surprisingly well-recorded for a 1969 tape
Any hard-core Head who recorded a 1969 tape would be highly unlikely to leave the balance of the tape uncirculated
What put me over the top on the Sep 11 tape was an interesting observation on the blog Grateful Dead Guide about Garcia and the Dead's penchant to experiment with audience tapes even when they had a soundboard

Those who might scoff at the idea that the Dead, with all their piles of tapes, would set up audience mikes at the same time they were taping the SBDs, should recall that even years later in summer '73, Garcia was still having Kidd Candelario make "AUD" recordings of some shows alongside the SBD reels! These are a couple examples that have surfaced:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1973-06-30.aud.weiner.100346.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1973-07-28.aud.weiner.106794.flac16
From the notes: "Reels dubbed in 1979 by Will Boswell from Jerry Garcia's personal collection. Original recording made by the sound crew at the soundboard."

My new theory about the September 11, 1969 audience tape was that it was made by some member of the Grateful Dead sound crew, most likely Owsley himself. Naturally it sounds better than typical audience tapes of the era: it was recorded by a professional on a real microphone and a good reel-to-reel deck,  not some handheld cassette job from the pre-D5 era.

While the purposes of the audience recording may have been multi-faceted, if Dead staff recorded the show, it explains why the balance of the tape never circulated. The recording was made for the Dead's purposes, not as a souvenir of a concert for future listening. The recording may not have been of the entire performance, and even if it was, recording tape was expensive (and the Dead were always broke) so only part of it may have been preserved. This would explain why a single song from a nice sounding tape was preserved in isolation from any other recording.

Given that this was a jam session, while of course I would be fascinated to hear the whole thing, regardless of the presence of many or all of the Dead members, the balance of the tape may not have been of much interest to the Dead themselves.

An unknown guest slide guitarist plays along, and he seems to know the song, legislating against a performance of a song that had probably been written only a few weeks earlier
 I have theorized in the past that the most plausible guess for the slide guitarist on September 11 was Robbie Stokes. Stokes was the guitarist for Devil's Kitchen, the "house band" at the Family Dog at the time. Stokes was a good slide player, and he would later move to Marin when the rest of Devil's Kitchen returned to Carbondale, IL. Stokes played on Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder album and Robert Hunter's Tales Of The Great Rum Runners, and was part of the Novato "crowd" until he too returned to Carbondale in 1985, so he was definitely welcome on the scene.

In 1969, slide guitar was a known technique, but largely confined to acoustic or pedal steel guitars. Electric guitarists (like Garcia) occasionally fooled with it, but very few players used a slide regularly on electric guitar. Duane Allman was the one who gave the technique credibility, but although the Allman Brothers had formed by mid-1969, very few outside of the Southeast had heard him play. Allman himself had actually learned the technique in Los Angeles the year before (in the South, in a manner of speaking) from Ry Cooder (listen to Ry in 1968 on Taj Mahal's "Statesboro Blues"). Thus the universe of slide players comfortable enough to jam with the Grateful Dead was considerably smaller in 1969 than it would be a year or two later, and Stokes is a very likely choice.

The other fact to consider is that if my supposition was correct, September 11, 1969 was an afternoon jam, and they could have played "Easy Wind" more than once, so Stokes would not have been flying blind. In fact, my theory of the September 11, 1969 tape is that the sole purpose of the recording was to preserve "Easy Wind." The Dead had just started performing the song, and there had been 5 (known) performances starting August 21, 1969 in Seattle. Why exactly they needed a tape of "Easy Wind" can't be certain, but I do know that in order to publish and establish copyright to a song a recording of the song had to be submitted, so perhaps the band taped a performance in order to submit a publisher's demo. Its true that the band had other recordings, but there may have been mundane practical reasons that a competent audience tape would have been easier to record and duplicate than some tapes buried in the vaults.

Conclusion
My current working hypothesis is that the September 11, 1969 audience tape of "Easy Wind" was recorded by Owsley or another crew member at an afternoon jam at The Family Dog on The Great Highway. Although it was an "audience" tape, there was hardly an audience, and the recording was made with better equipment than was available to civilians at the time. The main purpose of the recording was to preserve a copy of "Easy Wind," for a publisher's demo or some other practical reason. A slide guitarist sat in (whether Weir is on the tape isn't clear to me), but he probably had a chance to hear a run through or possibly try out the song before the recording. There is no "missing" part of the tape, since the recording was only made to preserve that song.

June 21, 1970 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA Grateful Dead/New Riders/others

Ross unearthed a clip from the Berkeley Barb that sheds some light on a hitherto very obscure event. A tape endures of the Grateful Dead at UC Berkeley's Pauley Ballroom from June 21, 1970, but other than the vague assertion that it was an "American Indian Benefit," I knew nothing about it. The tape is quite short, about an hour, and Deadlists speculates that the show may be longer. However, given the reality of the concert, it now seems that the tape is probably complete save for a song or two. The listing for the show would be

June 21, 1970 Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA Grateful Dead/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Osceola/Sandy Bull/The Hog Farm/Indian Puddin and Pipe/Fananang
Benefit for The Pit River Indian Legal Defense Fund

The Barb clipping has a picture of a guitar player, and the caption suggests that it is Jerry Garcia. Although the photo is grainy, it doesn't look like Jerry to me. Any ideas on who it might be? Harvey Mandel, maybe? The photo caption says

JERRY GARCIA and The Grateful Dead will join half a dozen other bands and performing groups in a benefit this Sunday (June 21) at 8:30 pm for the Legal Defense Fund of the Pit River Indians who are fighting to regain their lands in the Shasta area and have been arrested trying to reclaim camp grounds now being trespassed upon by P, G & E. The contribute-what-you-can benefit sponsored by The Hog Farm and Native American Studies will be held at UC Berkeley's Pauley Ballroom. Groups lined up each day (and more are coming in each day) include The Dead, the New Riders of The Purple Sage, Osceola, The Hog Farm, Sandy Bull, Indian Pudding And Pipe and Fananang.

An intriguing remark on the Review thread for the audience tape on the Archive says

I'm trying to find out, if this show was opened by Sandy Bull, and The New Riders of the Purple Sage. someone was handing out lsd and doobies at the door. Wavy Gravy was the m.c. If it was, I was there, and sat and rapped with Jerry, outside, on the veranda. Please, help me here, as my memory is a little jaded, and dates are vague to me! Doctor R.O'C.

Doctor R.O'C surely attended this show, and its not surprising that Wavy Gravy was the MC, if "The Hog Farm" were listed as "performers." Wavy was probably the connection to the Grateful Dead, also. At this time, I don't think Wavy and the Dead were particularly connected, and this may have been one of their first of many collaborations. I'm sure that Hugh Romney (Wavy) and the band had met, but Garcia had said in the past that most of the benefits they did were because they met someone with whom they got along, rather than a devotion to specific causes. 

Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley

This photo from March 12, 2009 shows the ASUC Building at the back of Lower Sproul Plaza. Pauley Ballroom fills the rear (nearest to the camera) half of the second floor, with the 30-foot windows. The Bear's Lair coffee shop is in the basement. The ASUC Building was built in the mid-1960s, and its basic layout remains the same today as it was then. Pauley Ballroom is a 9000 square foot ballroom, used by the University of California for a variety of events (for internal pictures, see here; in a concert configuration, the shades would be drawn, and I'm not certain where the stage had been located). The university rates it as a capacity of 999, so probably a few more than that could be squeezed in.

The Grateful Dead had played Pauley Ballroom once before, on December 2, 1966, sharing the stage with Country Joe and The Fish. However, both such groups had long since outgrown this relatively modest venue. I have not tried to do an exact analysis, but other than unadvertised "stealth' shows, such as at The Matrix or Great American Music Hall, the Pauley Ballroom was not only the smallest venue they had played in some time, but the Dead never played an advertised show at a venue this small ever again. Even if we can find an exception, the band was long past such modest venues. Wavy Gravy must have given a heck of a pitch for the band to go for it.

I'm intrigued also by the phrase "contribute-what-you-can benefit." Did this mean people could get in for free if they wanted to? Wavy snuck a fastball past the University of California if that was the case. The co-sponsors of the event along with the Hog Farm was the Native American Studies department. A University organization would have been required to get access to the building, but the University would not want to sanction an almost-free concert by a Fillmore West headliner. My suspicion is that the concert was booked in advance, but the Dead were added relatively late, which would account for the tone of the caption in the ad.

The Concert
Whatever the caption may say, I'm inclined to believe Doctor R. O'C. and think that only the Grateful Dead, The New Riders of The Purple Sage and Sandy Bull performed. Its possible that Doctor R.O'C. arrived late and other acts had already played, but I don't think so. According to the caption, the benefit began at 8:30 pm, and a Sunday night Campus event had to end at 11:00 pm (I'm sure that's still true today). An opening set by Sandy Bull, followed by the New Riders and then an hour or so by the Dead would put the concert at around 2 1/2 hours.

There's an equipment issue as well. I can't even figure out how the Dead got their 1970 rig into Pauley Ballroom in the first place. However, Sandy Bull was a solo performer (albeit with multiple guitars and electronic effects) and the New Riders and the Dead would have used the same rig. Thus however difficult it was to muscle the Dead's equipment into Pauley, Sandy Bull could set up in front of it, play his set and then the Riders could step up, followed by the Dead. If there were a couple of other bands, I don't see how their equipment could have fit in, even if there was time.

For what its worth, Osceola was a familiar band at the Family Dog, although I know nothing else abut them,  and Indian Puddin and Pipe and Fanangang (usually spelled Phanangang) were from Seattle and Boston respectively, and were associated with former Moby Grape manager Matthew Katz.