September 1965, Dining Hall, Menlo College, Menlo Park, CA

The Warlocks played Menlo College in Atherton, CA around September 1965

I was recently fortunate enough to have a lengthy conversation with someone who was one of the very first fans of The Warlocks. I quizzed her about some hitherto mysterious legends about the performing history of The Warlocks and received some surprisingly specific answers. The Warlocks history is usually treated like a "Creation Myth" rather than as the actions of actual people, and I have been anxious to pin down some very vague rumors. Rock Scully, who did not even meet the band until several months later, had alluded to a performance at Menlo College in his autobiography, but since he described the band as "debuting" at Menlo College it seemed impossible.  My source knew perfectly well that the Warlocks had debuted at Magoo's Pizza, since she was there. However, she could confirm the Menlo College performance as well, since she was there also. Thus, we now have an eyewitness account of The Warlocks performance at Menlo College, and I will pass on what I have pieced together.

Early Warlocks
My source was one of the first two Warlocks fans. The internet being what it is, I won't identify her by name, although she may choose to reveal herself in the Comments (some scholars will figure it out anyway). In any case, she was a Palo Alto High School student (class of '66) who saw the Warlocks at Magoo's, Frenchy's and numerous other places where she was able to get in the door. She distinctly recalls seeing The Warlocks at Menlo College. She remembers that it was in some sort of dining hall or "rec room," and that numerous tables had to be pushed against a wall to allow everybody to dance. Her memory was that the purpose of the show was probably to encourage Menlo College students to recommend The Warlocks for paying gigs at school dances.

The performing history of The Warlocks remains murky. They played every Wednesday in May, 1965 at Magoo's Pizza, at 635 Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park, but at the end of that run Phil Lesh replaced Dana Morgan Jr as the band's bass player. Apparently, however, the Warlocks raucous fans violated a local ban on dancing, and the shows at Magoo's had to end. Lesh debuted when The Warlocks played at Frenchy's in Hayward, on June 18, 1965, but they were fired after the first night of a three night engagement. Up until recently, the band's activities for the balance of the Summer had remained a mystery, but my source recalls that the Warlocks regularly played The Top Of The Tangent on a regular, if informal basis.

My source doesn't recall when the band played Menlo College. However, given the California school year, it seems pretty likely that the Menlo performance must have been at the beginning of the next school year, around September of 1965. The school would not have had student events in the Summer, and an informal event in a dining hall seems like a beginning-of-term event.
update: a Menlo alumnus tells me 

[I] remember what you call sock hops, but were actually called "mixers."  They weren't held in the dining hall, which was called the Commons, but in the student union building toward the entrance of the school with parking nearby.  I remember bands, but can't recall if it was the Warlocks or not.

By the end of the Fall session, the Warlocks would have more likely been looking farther North than school dances in Menlo Park. As a result, I am marking the Menlo show as September, 1965, although I am open to any recovered memories anyone may have.

Menlo College
Menlo College was a very peculiar institution for the West Coast, as it was an East Coast style Prep School located in the West, far from its native habitat. The Menlo School for Boys, at 50 Valparaiso Street in Atherton, had been formed in 1924, taking over a Military Academy on the same site. In 1927, the Menlo School for Boys also formed Menlo College, which was a sort of junior college that prepared students to go straight into the upper division. Menlo College was and still is located at 1000 El Camino Real in Atherton. Thus, the Warlocks appearance at Menlo fits in with the band's slow march up El Camino Real towards San Francisco.

Atherton, a very wealthy Peninsula town, was literally across the street from the town of Menlo Park, so the name was appropriate. Menlo students were given a program where they would be prepared for college, and then spend the first two years of college in their Prep School itself, transferring straight into their junior year at their chosen University. Menlo School always had close ties to Stanford University, and the programs were generally designed to get students directly into Stanford as juniors.

The public schools in the South Bay generally had a very good reputation, so private schools had to fill certain niches. By the 1960s, and certainly into the 1970s, Menlo School filled a very specific niche. There was a certain kind of South Bay teenager--one lived across the street from me--who were pretty bright but not very academically motivated, and who did not necessarily do well in the public schools full of  the children of college professors and the like. Menlo was a place where--for a price--they could get more attention and do the first two years of college, thus setting the table for their transfer to Stanford or a similar school, which is what their parents desired. Many of the Menlo students, besides being smart but not academic, were also very good at sports, a fact not lost on colleges looking for transfer students.

Thus the boys who went to Menlo School or College--remember, you could go to Menlo from 9th Grade until your Sophomore year of College--were often well off, good at sports and slackers, a clear recipe for fun. Yet where would these handsome lads find girlfriends? The nearby private girls school of Castilleja, in Palo Alto, was one possibility, and the former Grace Wing (later Slick) had gone there, so that wasn't nothing, but really the best bet was the public school girls at the public high school of Menlo-Atherton, located just a mile away (at 555 Middlefield). Menlo was in the Menlo-Atherton district limits, so the Menlo boys had to know who the prettiest girls at M-A were, and the M-A girls had to know there were some real catches at Menlo. Bob Weir, along with Bob Matthews, Matt Kelly (and later Steve Marcus, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) all went to M-A, but the real money would have been at Menlo.

Warlocks Plans, 1965
Magoo's Pizza, where the Warlocks had played there first shows, was in the Menlo Atherton district, but there's no way the buzz hadn't gotten over to Menlo College. Indeed, Menlo School was full of boarders, some from quite far away, and Magoo's was just a block away from the school (Menlo was up on El Camino).  There's no way some of the Menlo boys didn't walk over to Magoo's on those Wednesday nights. Warlocks fans from M-A looking to drum up business for the band would have definitely found a way to get them in at Menlo School. The story about pushing aside tables in a dining hall leads me to suspect that the band played an informal sort of sock-hop early in the school year, hoping to get hired on for Proms or Formals later in the season. Of course, by the time the big events at Menlo College rolled around, the Warlocks were playing the Acid Tests, the Trips Festival and the Fillmore, so they weren't so concerned about the missed opportunities.

Still, we can now confirm that some Menlo boys with ambitious parents found themselves at a sock hop event in their school cafeteria in about September, 1965. They were probably hoping for some pretty girls from Menlo Atherton High School, and they probably found some. They also found a strange, noisy band of barbarians playing something they had only heard on car radios in the middle of the night on the wrong side of town, but as long as the girls wanted to dance, it probably didn't matter to them who the strange guys were that were playing that weird, dangerous music.

A picture sleeve for the Rolling Stones "Little Red Rooster"/"Off The Hook" single

Off The Hook
My source had one other, peculiar, unique memory about the Warlocks playing Menlo College. She and a friend had the duty of writing down the lyrics to songs that the band wanted to learn, many of them Rolling Stones songs. One thing she recalled about the Menlo gig was that the band had learned the Rolling Stones song "Off The Hook"  (released in the US in February 1965 on the album The Rolling Stones Now). My source had carefully explained to Jerry Garcia that when Mick Jagger sang the lyrics "it's off the hook, " Jagger had mimed holding a telephone to his ear. Whether she knew that from having seen the Stones, or from some television appearance isn't quite clear.

Nonetheless, my source recalled Jerry not only singing "It's Off The Hook," but miming the telephone bit. He even smiled at her when he did it, to show he'd learned his part. How often the Warlocks played "Off The Hook" after that remains unknown, and I doubt Jerry mimed the phone much. But he did it once, at least, even if the Menlo boys had their eyes somewhere else.

John Kahn Live Performance History 1971 (John Kahn V)

John Kahn played bass for Brewer & Shipley's appearance at Carnegie Hall

Jerry Garcia's musical history outside of the Grateful Dead is remarkable for its breadth and longevity. Notwithstanding the Grateful Dead's extensive touring schedule throughout its 30-year history, Garcia played a remarkable number of shows with his own aggregations for 25 of those years. Garcia's principal right hand man for his own endeavors from 1970-1995 was bassist John Kahn, who besides playing exceptional electric and acoustic bass also took care of the musical business of the Jerry Garcia Band. Kahn hired and fired musicians, organized rehearsals and often helped choose material. Although Jerry approved every move, of course, without Kahn's oversight Garcia could not have participated in the Jerry Garcia Band. In many respects, the Jerry Garcia Band (under various names) was to some extent the Jerry Garcia and John Kahn Band; if Garcia had not met Kahn he would have had to be invented.

Most Deadheads are at least generally aware of Kahn's importance to Garcia's non-Dead music. However, Kahn is usually viewed through the filter of Jerry Garcia and his music. For this series of posts, I am looking at Jerry Garcia through the filter of John Kahn. In particular, I am looking at John Kahn's performance history without Garcia. Kahn's extensive studio career has been largely documented on the Deaddisc's site, so I don't need to recap it beyond some specific references. The posts so far have been:

• John Kahn I: Performance History 1967-68: A review of John Kahn's migration to San Francisco, his transformation from an acoustic jazz bassist to an electric R&B bass player and some history of his early live work.
• John Kahn II: Performance History 1967-68-T&A R&B Band and Memory Pain: A closer look at the history of Kahn's two original bands during this period
• John Kahn III: Performance History 1969: An analysis of John Kahn's participation in the somewhat casual Mike Bloomfield Band, with Nick Gravenites and others, who played regularly at Keystone Korner.
• John Kahn IV: Performance History 1970: while continuing with Mike Bloomfield, John Kahn starts to jam with Howard Wales at the Matrix, and then with Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
• John Kahn IX: Bottom Line, NYC July 1974: For various reasons, I skipped ahead and wrote about an East Coast by Garcia-Saunders at the Bottom Line in July 1974, in conjunction with some Maria Muldaur dates. Kahn was in both groups

This post will focus on John Kahn's live performance history for the year 1971.

John Kahn, Early 1971
In early 1971, John Kahn had the unique status of being the bass player for the part-time nightclub bands of not one, but two legendary guitarists, Mike Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia. One of many special features of the Bay Area rock scene at the time was how the City's resident rock stars regularly played around Bay Area nightclubs in different configurations. Bloomfield, Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen were among the best known guitarists in San Francisco, and yet they could be found on weeknights in local clubs, jamming away with their own little ensembles. No other city had such a scene at the time.

However, by early 1971, Mike Bloomfield had lost some of his taste for playing nightclubs. The always mercurial Bloomfield never wanted to be predictable, and once he became an expected commodity at the Keystone Korner, he started to play fewer gigs. Also, the extremely casual Bloomfield band also used a lot of substitutes, like a jazz group, and on occasion Doug Kilmer played bass instead of Kahn. The San Francisco studio scene was still booming in early 1971, so Kahn worked on a fair number of sessions, and he played in Los Angeles studios as well. Kahn was still close to his family, who lived in Los Angeles.

Kahn's friends recall that he would go to Los Angeles for weeks at a time, playing a few sessions but mostly just hanging out at home. While Kahn lived like a hand-to-mouth hippie like all his other musician friends in Forest Knolls, it was clear that his mother (an extremely successful Hollywood talent agent, like Kahn's late father) must have helped him out with money from time to time. This allowed Kahn to focus on making the music he wanted to, whether in the studio or on stage, rather than having to take some lucrative but dull Top-40 gig.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Up through 1969, Garcia had been a regular attendee at jam sessions around San Francisco. Starting with the New Riders of The Purple Sage, however, Garcia seems to have become more interested in developing his music with regular ensembles. His appearances at Howard Wales's Monday night jam sessions in March 1970 had led to his introduction to Kahn and Bill Vitt, and when Wales was replaced by Merl Saunders, Garcia had himself a little band, even if they initially only played the Matrix.

In early 1971, the unnamed Garcia/Saunders aggregation had a little crisis, in that The Matrix closed. As a result, they began to play regularly at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. I have to think that Kahn's regular appearances with the Bloomfield band at the club made him suggest it to Garcia. It was a fruitful partnership, since Garcia and Kahn would go on to play for Keystone owner Freddie Herrera an incredible 400 times over the next 16 years.

The Garcia/Saunders group still didn't play that many shows, as much of Garcia's excess time was taken up with his pedal steel guitar duties for the New Riders. However, knowing what we now know, there is good evidence that Garcia was thinking about making the Garcia/Saunders band his primary side project. We know that when Garcia met Buddy Cage in Canada in the Summer of 1970, he proposed Cage as his replacement. Garcia had recorded the NRPS debut album, which was released in October 1971. Garcia continued to play with the New Riders for most of the Grateful Dead's fall tour. The Riders (and the Dead) were broadcast live in every city that the band played, and Garcia's presence helped publicize the group.

However, we know that Buddy Cage had been rehearsing with the New Riders since September 1971, and although it may have been a surprise to the audience when Cage took over the chair (on October 31, 1971), it had been planned all along. Looking at the arc of Garcia's career, however, it seems that as he stepped aside from the New Riders he already had his next project up and running, even if the band did not begin to step out until 1972.

Tom Fogerty
Although it can be difficult to track exactly when Tom Fogerty played with the Garcia/Saunders group, his first appearance as rhythm guitarist seems to have been August 11, 1971. While I am not certain that Fogerty played every subsequent Garcia/Saunders show, he does seem to have become a regular member of the group. Fogerty, of course, had been a member of the hugely successful Creedence Clearwater Revival. However, various conflicts between his older brother John and the other band members caused him to leave the group, which broke up by the end of 1970 anyway. Tom Fogerty was a solo artist on Fantasy Records, and as a result he was friendly with his label-mate Merl Saunders. Fogerty played Stax-style rhythm guitar and sang the occasional lead vocal, and as a result the group was less focused on Garcia.

Brewer and Shipley
Brewer and Shipley were a folk rock duo out of Kansas City, via Los Angeles. They were on Kama Sutra Records, and Nick Gravenites had produced two successful albums for them at Wally Heider's  Studio in San Francisco. Gravenites used his stock studio players, who included Kahn on bass and Bill Vitt and Bob Jones on drums. "One Toke Over The Line," one of the tracks from the duo's Tarkio Road album, had become a substantial Top 40 hit. The song spent 10 weeks on the Billboard charts Peaking at #10 on March 13, 1971. A top 10 single in those days represented substantial sales, and the terrific Tarkio Road  probably got significant FM airplay in many cities. Kahn had played bass on every track of the album, so he must have heard his own work on the radio many times.

While Brewer and Shipley usually toured as an acoustic duo, for at least a few dates on their December 1971 East Coast tour, they had a band with them. In his Golden Road interview, Kahn alluded to having played Carnegie Hall with Brewer and Shipley in 1971, and I have been able to track the date to December 3, 1971. I assume there were a few other dates, but I don't know what they were.

I would presume that Brewer and Shipley still would have done some of their songs as a duo, as they usually did, and then brought out a band for some numbers. I assume that Bill Vitt was the drummer, because I know Bob Jones didn't go on the tour, but it may also have been Billy Mundi, a Los Angeles drummer with old connections to Mike Brewer (see below). I have to assume that there was a pianist and a guitarist as well, most likely Mark Naftalin and Fred Burton, although I don't actually know. It is interesting to contemplate the idea that while The Grateful Dead were playing Boston (Dec 1&2) and New York (Dec 4&5), Jerry Garcia's rhythm section was touring around the East Coast as well. Indeed, Garcia was free the night that Kahn played Carnegie Hall, and on his way to New York--too bad he didn't show up and sit in, but Carnegie Hall wasn't the Keystone Korner.

[Update: correspondent Randal G found this remarkable information on the Brewer and Shipley website, about Kahn's appearance with the duo on The Tonight Show, April 21, 1971]

Joey Bishop guest hosted the night we appeared.  John Kahn flew out to New York from the West coast and joined on bass but the show didn't want to pay to show John.  Also, they neglected to turn on his microphone, so he was there and he played, but couldn’t be seen or heard. To add insult to injury Tom's wallet was stolen out of his hotel room that was furnished by The Tonight Show. Ah, showbiz!

Other guests: Shelly Berman, Abe Drazed, Ashley Montagu, Romina Power

Richard "Zippy" Loren
Richard Loren, a former talent agent, was David Grisman's production partner. On September 20, 1970, they visited the Fillmore East to talk to Garcia about what city they should use to break their act, the Rowan Brothers (Chris and Lorin, not Peter). Garcia encouraged them to move to San Francisco, and by 1971 Grisman, Loren and the two younger Rowans had moved to San Francisco. By Fall 1971, Richard Loren had also become Jerry Garcia's manager for his non-Grateful Dead projects.

Up until this time, if Garcia had had a plan for his other musical endeavors, he hadn't told anyone and would barely have had time to execute it. With his own manager, however, Garcia had someone to book shows, negotiate contracts and make plans for him. Garcia's non-Dead career rested on the triangular pillars of Jerry, John Kahn and Richard Loren, who was known (on album liner notes at least) as "Zippy."

Garcia had a lot of obligations at the end of 1971, but he also seemed to be in a position where he was getting to do some things that he wanted to do. He recorded a solo album in July of 1971, he finished the New Riders album and toured with them, even though his hand picked substitute (Buddy Cage) was waiting on deck, all amidst the usual furious schedule of Grateful Dead concerts. Garcia's decision to have his own manager was a commitment to engage in real projects on his own, rather than just tagging along in jams or as a sideman. Although the relationship between John Kahn and Richard Loren is rarely discussed directly, without both of them all the various Jerry Garcia enterprises that followed after 1971 w0uld likely have never happened to the extent that they did.

Annotated John Kahn 1971 Performance List

February 2-3, 1971: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Garcia had a busy Winter, recording with Paul Kantner and probably the New Riders as well. Between the recording projects and occasional Dead gigs, there weren't a lot of free nights for Garcia/Saunders gigs. At this juncture, Kahn probably mainly saw playing with Garcia as a fun part-time thing, rather than a career. 

February 12-13, 1971: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

February 19, 1971: Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Friends
The activities of Bloomfield were always murky, and a number of gigs may have featured Doug Kilmer on bass rather than Kahn. During this period, however, Bloomfield did play a few larger gigs. This show featured Kahn on bass along with future Reconstruction member Ron Stallings on tenor sax. A tape circulates, and it's quite a good show.

A listing from the Oakland Tribune Teen Age section from February 27, 1971

March 2-3, 1971: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Originally Garcia and Saunders were booked for March 2 and 3, but the Grateful Dead played the Airwaves Benefit at Fillmore West on March 3. This doesn't rule out the possibility that Saunders, Kahn and Vitt played the Matrix anyway on the second night, possibly with another guitarist, such as Nick Gravenites or Tom Fogerty. 

April 1, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
This show would have marked the first performance by Garcia and Kahn at the Keystone Korner. Keystone Korner, at 750 Vallejo, was owned by Freddie Herrera. Herrera (with various partners) would go on to own the Keystone Berkeley, Keystone Palo Alto and The Stone, and Garcia would play for him over 400 times. 

April 8, 1971: Civic Center, Long Beach, CA: John Mayall/Mike Bloomfield & Friends-Chicago Slim
With the Grateful Dead on tour, John Kahn was free to tour with Bloomfield.  Chicago Slim was a friend of Bloomfield's named Noel Schiff. John Mayall's band at the time featured Harvey Mandel 9guitar), Sugarcane Harris (electric violin), Larry Taylor (bass) and Paul Lagos (drums).

April 16, 18, 19: The Ash Grove, Los Angeles, CA: Mike Bloomfield
The Bloomfield history site knows about the booking, but there is no certainty as to who played. Of course, with Garcia on tour with the Dead and his family in Los Angeles, a few stray SoCal gigs for Kahn make plenty of sense.

April 21, 1971: NBC Studios, New York, NY: The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson: Brewer And Shipley
Brewer And Shipley were booked for The Tonight Show, and John Kahn was flown out to accompany them. As described above, Kahn was neither shown nor miked.

April 29-May 2, 1971: Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA: Mike Bloomfield-Chicago Slim/Bola Sete/Mike Finnegan
Bloomfield was still a big enough name to headline at Fillmore West, but he was uncomfortable with his stature. From this point onwards, Kahn plays fewer and fewer gigs with Bloomfield, with Doug Kilmer taking over the primary bass duties. The strange nature of working with Bloomfield, however, meant that Kahn probably still subbed occasionally for Kilmer, just as Kilmer originally subbed for him. The Bloomfield history site has done an exceptional job of documenting his career, but it's impossible to say which band members played a Bloomfield gig during this period without a photograph, tape or review, since substitutions were common.

May 11, 1971: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
I'm not certain of this date.  The Matrix was on its last legs and the club may have closed before the show was played. A brief tape does circulate with this date (a 19 minute version of "Save Mother Earth"), but I have no reason to believe either that the date or the venue are correct.

May 14-16, 1971; Golden Bear, Huntington Beach, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Mark Naftalin
The Bloomfield history site lists Kahn as the bass player for these shows.

May 20-22, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
From this point onwards, the Keystone Korner becomes the principal venue for the Garcia/Saunders group, as the Matrix has closed. 

May 26, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

June 4-5, 1971: New Monk, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
These shows were Jerry Garcia's first at 2119 University Avenue (at Shattuck), the site of the future Keystone Berkeley.  During this period, it appeared that Freddie Herrera was helping with booking the New Monk, and he would buy the club later in the year and change its name. Thus, while Jerry Garcia played 2119 University over 200 times (206 by my count), John Kahn had played there even more than that.

June 15-16, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

June 26-27, 1971: New Monk, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

July 10-11, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Jerry Garcia recorded his solo album at Wally Heider's in July of 1971, playing all the instruments himself, except for drums. Afterwards, I don't believe he used anyone other than John Kahn as a bassist in the studio for his solo work, save for some 90s recordings with David Grisman.

July 18, 1971: Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Friends

July 23-25, 1971; Golden Bear, Huntington Beach, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Mark Naftalin

August 11-12, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Tom Fogerty was advertised at these shows, so I am marking his presence as having started here. There's no reason not to think he had already jammed with them on stage somewhere, as there would have been no comment or documentation of it in the press. I'm not certain Fogerty played every show in 1971, but I think he was a regular presence from this point until December 1972.

August 17-18, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

August 29-30, 1971: New Monk, Berkeley, CA: Van Morrison/Mike Bloomfield & Friends/John Lee Hooker
Van Morrison was working with John Lee Hooker during this period, so if Kahn really played these nights it would have been a pretty memorable evening of the blues.

August 31-September 1, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

September 10, 1971: Harding Theater, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
The Dead seemed to be experimenting with the Harding Theater, on 616 Divisadero. There was an apparent September Dead date--maybe--and a poorly attended New Riders show (September 23) as well as this performance, about which nothing is known save a newspaper listing. If the show really happened, it would have been the first "concert" performance of the Garcia/Saunders band, outside of the few hip clubs they had played up until this time. If the show happened, it was well below the radar.

September 16, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

September 17-19, 1971; Golden Bear, Huntington Beach, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Mark Naftalin
If Kahn in fact played all the shows at The Golden Bear, it fits in with his friends' assertion that he liked going to Los Angeles to visit his family and play the odd session.

September 24-25, 1971: Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders/Jerry Corbitt, Billy Cox and Charlie Daniels
The Lion's Share was a well-known musicians watering hole in Marin County. It was a tiny place, too, and it appears that there were early and late shows both nights, in order to turn over the house. For these shows, Bill Kreutzmann replaced Bill Vitt on drums. The truth is that we have very little idea how regularly Vitt and Kahn played with Garcia. Perhaps there were substitutes all the time, or perhaps this was the first time. We actually have almost nothing to go on besides newspaper ads that would have been prepared some time in advance. Ironically, tapes survive of both the early and late shows, so the earliest tape of the Garcia/Saunders ensemble features a substitute drummer (I'm not counting the uncertainly-dated May 11 tape).

The billing gives me good reason to think that the Garcia/Saunders booking was added at the last minute. Since Garcia could easily pack the Lion's Share, there would have been no need for an opening act, beyond perhaps a folk singer to keep people amused between sets. However, there was another act booked, featuring artists with actual albums in the stores. That band would not have booked if Garcia had already been signed on. I think the other act was scheduled, and when Garcia asked to be put on, the owner agreed and simply left the original act on the bill.

The other band was actually the original version of what became the Charlie Daniels Band. At the time, Daniels was a Nashville session man and producer who had released a solo album on Capitol in 1971. Daniels also produced Jerry Corbitt, who had been the guitarist in the Youngbloods, whom Daniels had also produced (Daniels played violin on "Darkness, Darkness" by the way). Corbitt and Daniels decided to team up, and added Billy Cox on bass (from Jimi Hendrix and Band of Gypsies), Jeff Myers on drums and Taz De Gregorio on drums. The story is very complicated, but in the end Daniels and De Gregorio went on to form the Charlie Daniels Band and they are still playing together today.

>September 24-25, 1971: Pepperland, San Rafael, CA: Mike Bloomfield & Friends/Stoneground/Clover
The Bloomfield history site lists John Kahn as Bloomfield's bassist for these Pepperland shows, along with Buddy Miles on drums, but in this instance we happen to know that Kahn was playing with Garcia and Saunders at the Lion's Share. Or do we? Do we know for a fact that Kahn played bass at the Lion's Share? Was he announced from the stage?

The opposite scenario is also possible: Kahn may have been booked to play with Bloomfield for some weekend shows with Bloomfield and Buddy Miles at Pepperland, and Bloomfield backed out of the booking (a common enough event). Garcia and Kahn might have put together a gig quickly, which was how they ended up at the Lion's Share on a weekend when another band was booked.

October 3, 1971: Frost Amphitheater, Stanford U., Palo Alto, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders/Bobby Hutcherson-Harold Land Quintet/Big Black
This show was in some ways the public debut of the Garcia/Saunders band, as hitherto they had only played nightclubs in San Francisco and Berkeley. Stanford had banned rock concerts from Frost Amphitheater at this point, but the show was billed as a jazz concert, and Garcia/Saunders seems to have qualified. JGMF wrote an interesting post about this show. 

October 8-9, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

October 15-16, 1971: Keystone Korner, San Francisco, CA: Nick Gravenites, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty, John Kahn, Dave Getz
JGMF first noticed this show, and pointed out that Garcia was otherwise unnocupied this weekend, so may have shown up anyway. Regardless, I think the most revealing thing about this booking is how it reveals the working lives of the musicians. Nick Gravenites, Merl Saunders and Tom Fogerty all had solo careers of some kind, but no real working band. So they teamed up for the weekend with some players they knew: Kahn had worked with Gravenites in the Bloomfield band, and drummer Dave Getz had played with Gravenites in Big Brother in the previous year as well. In this context, to Merl and Kahn the weekend's gig would have been no different a booking than playing with Jerry Garcia, making a few bucks playing good music with your friends when you had nothing else going on.

December 3, 1971: Carnegie Hall, New York, NY: Brewer & Shipley/Steve Goodman
As discussed above, Brewer and Shipley were playing more substantial dates on the East Coast due to the success of "One Toke Over Line," and Kahn recalls playing with them at Carnegie Hall. It's possible that Bill Vitt was in the band, but it may have been Billy Mundi on drums, and probably a pianist and guitarist as well. I have to assume there were a few more East Coast dates for Kahn, but I haven't been able to track any down.

Opening act Steve Goodman would go on to write many great songs ("City Of New Orleans," "You Never Even Called Me By My Name") before his untimely death in 1984 (the ad at the top of the post is from the Village Voice, November 18, 1974, h/t All The Streets You Crossed).

December 10-11, 1971: Fenway Theater, Boston, MA: Mike Bloomfield-Paul Butterfield
Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield had a weekend reunion show of sorts in Boston. The Bloomfield history site lists Kahn as the bassist, along with Mark Naftalin on piano and Billy Mundi on drums. This is why I think Naftalin was also playing with Brewer and Shipley, and it's not impossible that Mundi (an old B&S friend from Los Angeles, formerly in the group Lamp Of Childhood as well as the Mothers of Invention) played with them too, rather than Vitt . However, knowing that Kahn was in New York City the weekend before makes it plausible that Bloomfield would use him in Boston the next weekend. Bloomfield stopped playing Bay Area clubs for some time after this, and save for a concert at Winterland in 1973, I don't believe Kahn and Bloomfield played together again on stage.

Geoff Muldaur also sang a song with the band on December 11, a minor point but one that would have significant implications for John Kahn's future career (but not in the way you think). Update: I now think John Kahn recorded with Geoff and Maria Muldaur in Woodstock in December, 1971 during the time surrounding the brief Brewer and Shipley tour and the Butterfield weekend in Boston. Bloomfield was well-connected to the Muldaurs, and must have recommended Kahn as the bass player, probably part of a package to get Kahn to come East for a little while. The full importance of this session will be explained in the 1972 entry, and it has almost nothing to do with Maria.
Update II: an incredible video of one of the Butter/Bloomfield shows at Fenway can be seen here on YouTube

December 23, 1971: Little Theater, Berkeley, CA: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
The Little Theater was a small auditorium associated with Berkeley High School, a sort of adjunct to the Berkeley Community Theater.

February 2, 1974, Keystone Berkeley: New Riders of The Purple Sage with Jerry Garcia (Home, Home On The Road)

An ad for the 1974 NRPS album Brujo celebrates the band's popularity in NYC

I am not someone who keeps track of tapes, since there are so many people who do that so well. Recently, however, a tape surfaced on Sugarmegs that shed new light on a very obscure Jerry Garcia appearance. The Jerry Moore recording is worth hearing in its own right, but it also caused me to reflect on the little remarked fact that Jerry Garcia produced the 5th New Riders of The Purple Sage album on Columbia Records, the live album Home, Home On The Road. I can't recall any interviews or serious discussion about that fact at the time or since. Nonetheless, I think it marked the end of an era for Garcia and the Riders, and it was fitting that it took place at the Keystone Berkeley, the venue Garcia played most in his career. This post will consider both Garcia's guest appearance on six string electric guitar with the New Riders during most of their second set at the Keystone Berkeley on February 2, 1974, and attempt to frame it in the context of interlocking careers of Jerry Garcia and the New Riders.

The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, February 2, 1974
Columbia Records had signed The New Riders of The Purple Sage in 1970 on the strength of John Dawson's songs and their association with Jerry Garcia. Although Columbia label chief Clive Davis was unable to snag Garcia for his label until several years later (with Arista), his skills as a "record man" were legendary, and the New Riders were proof of that. I don't think that the Riders got a huge advance, but in the early 70s they sold a heck of a lot of albums. They weren't necessarily candidates for gold records, but a record company could make money on an album long before the artists did, so Columbia made plenty on the New Riders.

By the release of the New Riders fourth album, The Adventures Of Panama Red, in mid-1973, the New Riders seemed extraordinarily well placed in the record industry. The Grateful Dead, with whom the Riders would always be associated with, were more popular than ever. More importantly, "Country Rock" and "Outlaw Country" (essentially Country Music for longhairs) were growing in popularity. Artists like The Eagles, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson seemed to point towards a convergence of music styles, and the New Riders seemed hip enough for the outlaws while melodic enough for the radio. They also played great live shows, with lengthy and varied sets in the style of the Dead. With three singers and two writers, and a great soloist in pedal steel guitarist Buddy Cage, the Riders seemed primed to break out of the middle levels and hit the big time.

The only fly in this ointment was the unexpected departure of bassist/vocalist David Torbert at the end of 1973. John Dawson had written a huge batch of songs prior to the first album, and they had made up the bulk of his contributions for the first three albums (NRPS, Powerglide and Gypsy Cowboy), so Dawson was initially the de facto lead singer. However, by mid-73 Dawson was contributing fewer songs to the band. Although Torbert seems to have been initially recruited as just a  bassist and harmony singer, it turned out that he was an excellent singer and writer, and a nice contrast to Dawson. When Dawson and Torbert's contrasting styles were mixed with the sound of David Nelson singing old and new honky tonk music, the New Riders seemed to cover the whole spectrum of country rock. Torbert's handsome, laconic surfer look was an appealing counterpoint to Dawson's Cosmic Cowboy persona.

Thus when Torbert left the rising New Riders at the end of 1973 for unstated "opportunities," it cast a quizzical note on what had so far been a steady rise on the band's fortunes. As a replacement, the New Riders signed up veteran bassist and singer Skip Battin. Battin (1934-2003) a few years older than the rest of the band, who had once had some AM hits with the duo "Skip And Flip" (along with Gary Paxton), when other members of the New Riders were just finishing High School. After various other endeavors, Battin had ended up becoming the bassist for The Byrds from 1969 through 1972.

Although the New Riders were headlining mid-size halls throughout the country, and had just headlined Winterland the prior December (Torbert's last show had been at Winterland on December 15, 1973), the band seemed to want to break in Battin with some safe club gigs. According to the NRPS site, Battin's first show would have been January 29, 1974 at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, a famous Marin musician's hangout. This show was followed by shows on February 1 and 2 at the Keystone Berkeley. The Friday and Saturday night shows were probably lightly advertised but sound packed to the gills.

The Second Set
Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA February 2, 1974
A pretty good audience tape endures of the New Riders' Saturday night show at the Keystone, thanks to the great taper Jerry Moore. According to the tape notes, Garcia joins the band for the entire second set, but I don't hear him until mid-set. I also have to add that the audience is pretty prominent between songs, and I don't hear the usual shouts of "Jerry!" and "Casey Jones" for the first few numbers. I also wonder how he got on the stage without being noticed, since the Keystone had no 'backstage' as such, and performers simply had to walk through the audience. It's a striking image in my mind to think of dancing, stoned New Riders fans grooving between the tables on the Keystone floor, while Garcia casually maneuvers between them on his way to the stage.

Garcia may join the New Riders for the instrumental "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," a Joe Zawinul tune made famous by Cannonball Adderley, the fifth song of the set. He's definitely on board for "Truck Drivin' Man," "Glendale Train," "You Should Have Seen Me Running," "Crooked Judge," "LA Lady" and "Take A Letter Maria."  Jerry lays back on some tunes, but he lets it fly on "Truck Driving Man," "Crooked Judge" and "Take A Letter Maria." It's particularly interesting to hear Garcia go at it on "Crooked Judge," the only known instance where he performed this Hunter song (amusingly, Nelson introduces the song by saying "the old crank himself wrote this," probably as much for Garcia's benefit as anyone else).

While some of the numbers may seem surprising for Garcia to have joined in on, I only recently realized that Garcia would have just finished mixing Home, Home On The Road, and would have been completely familiar with the band's entire repertoire. While I find it unlikely that Garcia actually rehearsed with the Riders, if he knew the material he would have no problem fitting in, and that's plain when you hear him rip through "Crooked Judge" with Nelson and Cage at full speed. I have always insisted that the sound of the pedal steel guitar, rather than the notes themselves, was one of the principal attractions to Garcia. When you hear him rock through New Riders material on (no doubt) his Doug Irwin Tiger, there's no doubt that Garcia could have played six string on all the New Riders songs and the music would have been just as distinctive.

The cover of the 1974 NRPS album Home, Home On The Road

Home, Home On The Road
The New Riders were slowly climbing in popularity, but had not yet consolidated their following outside of the East and West Coasts. In the 1970s, one standard record company practice for a band with a couple of good albums under their belt was to record a sort of "Greatest Hits Live" album, with a few covers or unreleased songs thrown in for the hard core fans. The most famous example of this strategy was A&M's release of Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive, recorded in 1975, but the practice had been around for years. In fact, Live/Dead would have been a signpost for many record executives of how a band could make an exciting live album to allow FM radio to "catch up" to a group.

Whether Columbia and the New Riders had made the decision to release Home, Home On The Road before Torbert gave notice isn't clear, but certainly once he left a live album allowed the band to tread water while they worked in their new bass player. When the album came out, Jerry Garcia's presence as the producer didn't seem too surprising, but following the Spring 74 release of the album the New Riders started to spin out of each other's orbit somewhat, so in that respect Garcia's production work and final live guest appearance with the band on February 2 were a sort of swan song to Garcia's close relationship to the band, even if that wasn't entirely seen at the time.

Producing a live album is less of a time commitment than producing a studio album. The producer's job would generally be to listen to all the material, select the best tracks and mix them down. In some cases, producers would also overdub additional instruments or vocals onto "live" albums--the Grateful Dead did that a few times--but I doubt that Garcia did that with the New Riders. As far as I know, Columbia professionally recorded two New Riders shows at the Academy of Music in New York City on November 23 and 24, 1973, and those were the shows that Garcia would have chosen the album from.

Producers were usually paid fairly well for their work, and my guess is that the Riders wanted a friendly comrade, but only Garcia had the clout to actually get a paycheck from Clive Davis. Put another way, Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor might have done the job just as well, but a New York label would not have trusted them as much as a big rock star. Keep in mind that in late 1973, the Grateful Dead were complete free agents, having turned down Warners and Columbia to start their own record company. It was a sign of Clive Davis long running courtship of Garcia that Garcia was hired to produce the Riders live album. As a footnote, remember also that producers usually get royalties for their work, so potentially at least if the album had been a big hit, Garcia would have had a continual stream of income.

New Riders Management
Home, Home On The Road represented a high water mark for the New Riders. A live album after a hugely successful studio album, particularly if produced by a famous friend, would have been intended as a place holder for the band's next big splash. However, the following album, Brujo, was kind of a letdown, and the last Columbia album, 1975's Oh, What A Mighty Time, seems like contractual filler, as the band was leaving Columbia after seven albums in five years. The New Riders signed a no doubt lucrative contract with MCA Records. Frank Zappa, it should be noted, always referred to MCA as "The Music Cemetery Of America" and the label's attempt to make the New Riders more Nashville-like was never successful. The band had a variety of ups and downs for several years, but they finally ground to a halt around 1982.

One factor that seems to have gotten lost in the New Riders history was that somewhere around 1973 or '74 the group changed management. The credits for Panama Red, recorded and released in mid-1973, list Jon McIntire (Uncle John himself) as the band's manager. By 1975, however, I know that the Riders were managed by one Joe Kerr, who also managed Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. I'm not sure when the transition occurred, but I think it was late '73/early '74. The Garcia produced live album appears to also be the last Riders album that was part of the Grateful Dead managed universe, whether or not they had fully made the switch to Joe Kerr.

Kerr was a college friend of George "Cody" Frayne, and Frayne regretfully says now that Kerr stole most of the Cody band's money. I have to think that the New Riders did not escape unscathed. Although I don't know why Torbert left when he did--I have never found his minimal explanations convincing--when someone quits a rising band, money is never far from the hierarchy of motives. Either Torbert was not happy with the NRPS partnership, whatever it was, or he had some doubts about the recent or impending participation of Joe Kerr,  Torbert's departure presaged the long decline of the band.

Fortunately, however, David Nelson and Buddy Cage, with a little help from Robert Hunter, have revived the New Riders for the 21st century, honoring the band's past while upgrading them for the present. The band began touring again in 2005, just thirty-one years after Garcia got on stage with them at the Keystone Berkeley one night in 1974, ready to jam because he knew all the songs.

Appendix
New Riders Of The Purple Sage with Jerry Garcia
Keystone Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 
February 2, 1974

Second Set (57 minutes)
01 - Hi Hello How Are You
02 - Dim Lights, Thick Smoke
03 - Parson Brown
04 - Linda
05 - Mercy Mercy Mercy
06 - Truck Drivin' Man*
07 - Glendale Train *
08 - You Should've Seen My Runnin' *
09 - Crooked Judge *
10 - L.A. Lady *
11 - Take A Letter Maria *
12 - On The Amazon

The New Riders of The Purple Sage
Buddy Cage-pedal steel guitar
David Nelson-lead guitar-vocals
John Dawson-guitar, vocals
Skip Battin-bass, vocals'
Spencer Dryden-drums
plus:
  *Jerry Garcia-lead guitar (tracks 6-11)
  unknown-piano (track 12)

notes: it's not impossible that Garcia plays on "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" and "On The Amazon." The last number, a Skip Battin song, is rather hurried and Dawson quickly announces that they've run out of time and have to shut down, so it may not have been planned as the last song.

Summer 1965, The Top of The Tangent, 117 University Avenue, Palo Alto, CA: The Warlocks

117 University Avenue in Palo Alto, the site of The Top Of The Tangent, as it appeared in 2006. The restaurant Rudy's is on the ground floor, approximately where The Tangent pizza parlor was located

The performing history in The Warlocks is shrouded in myth and legend. Like many events from over 40 years ago, as stories get repeated over and over even the people who were present remember the stories and lose sight of their actual memories. Members of the Grateful Dead have been interviewed many times about their early days, but like many musicians they only had and have a performer's perspective. They may remember clearly how it felt and what it was like, but they hardly recall where or when they actually played. Dennis McNally and Blair Jackson did fantastic research in pinning down some facts about where the Warlocks actually played before they became famous, and in an earlier post I framed known facts about those venues in the context of the South Bay rock scene at the time. Only a few venues can actually be identified, and there is no certainty about the dates.

The outlines of the Warkocks saga are well established, however. The Warlocks first shows were at Magoo's Pizza Parlor, at 635 Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park, every Wednesday in May. Phil Lesh saw the final show, and accepted Jerry Garcia's invitation to replace Dana Morgan, Jr on bass guitar. Phil's first show was at Frenchy's, in Hayward (at 29097 Mission Blvd), on June 18, 1965. The band was not invited back. By the end of the Summer of 1965, the better rehearsed Warlocks had an agent, Al King, and he started booking them in some clubs on El Camino Real on the Peninsula, including the Cinnamon Tree, Big Al's Gashouse, The Fireside Room and ultimately the In Room in Belmont. The six-week stint at The In Room, on about the 800 block of Old County Road, made the Warlocks as a working band. They started to become regulars at Ken Kesey's events, and by the end of the year they were the Grateful Dead.

I have always been intrigued, however, by the fact that the Warlocks narrative has an empty space between the band getting rejected at Frenchy's in June and starting to find a little success on El Camino Real as the Summer ended and Fall began. While it's clear that the Warlocks were rehearsing during that time, no evidence had ever surfaced about any performances during this period. Recently, however, I had the pleasure to meet one of the very first Warlocks fans, and posed to the question to her as to where the Warlocks might have played during the Summer of 1965, and I received a logical and quite amazing answer: the Warlocks regularly played at The Top Of The Tangent throughout the Summer, the very same place that they had played in the previous year as Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band.

The Internet being what it is, I'm not going to identify my eyewitness, although she may choose to identify herself in the Comments. She did not specifically request anonymity, but this is a blog, not a newspaper. Experienced scholars will probably suspect who it is in any case--suffice to say she is a Palo Alto High School graduate, class of 1966, and she saw the Warlocks at Magoo's, Frenchy's and many times thereafter. It turns out that no one had ever posed the question to her as to where the Warlocks had played in the Summer of 1965, so there was nothing secret or special about this information--it was just a question that had never been asked.

Rudy's Restaurant at 117 University Avenue in Palo Alto, as it appeared in June, 2011

The Top Of The Tangent, 117 University Avenue
The Tangent was a deli and pizza parlor at the very end of University Avenue in Downtown Palo Alto, near the train station. It was right on "The Circle," for those readers who know Palo Alto geography, and across the street from the Paris Theater, for those who recall 60s and 70s Palo Alto. The Tangent was at 117 University, two doors down from the building at 135 University that would become The Poppycock in 1967, Downtown Palo Alto's own little rock palace from 1967-71. The Tangent was owned by the Feldman family, and it was a typical local food joint. It also sold beer, a significant point in a city that did not allow bars downtown. Thus places like The Tangent were a little more of a hangout than you might think for the local bohemians, since there were no bars to lounge around in.

McNally reported (p.47) that The Top Of The Tangent was started by two doctors at Stanford hospital, Stu Goldstein and David Schoenstadt, who were looking for something interesting to do. The Top Of The Tangent was, as the name suggested, just a room above the pizza parlor, and it opened in January 1963. The room seated perhaps 75 people. While the Tangent kept regular restaurant hours, the Top Of The Tangent seems to have only been officially open for Wednesday night "hoot night," and on weekend evenings. Weekend admission was $1.50.

Nonetheless, there seems to have been only one other folk club downtown, a coffee shop called St. Michael's Alley (at 436 University, now a Peet's), and plenty of folk musicians to go around, so The Top Of The Tangent thrived in a quiet sort of way. All of the South Bay folk musicians played The Top Of The Tangent, and they booked touring folk musicians as well, although not particularly famous ones. While old Palo Altans used the names "Tangent" and "Top Of The Tangent" interchangeably, strictly speaking musicians performed at the Top Of The Tangent, and The Tangent was the deli/pizza parlor.

Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band champions was formed by Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir in mid-1964, and it featured numerous members, including Ron McKernan and David Nelson. Jug Bands were very popular around 1964, building on the popularity of The Jim Kweskin Jug Band in particular. Garcia and others had seen the Kweskin band in Berkeley, probably at the Cabale in February of 1964. Some Stanford students recorded Mother McRee's at the Top Of The Tangent in 1964 for Stanford radio station KZSU-fm, and the tape was ultimately released as a cd. Once the jug band fad was over, however, Mother McRee's found themselves at loose ends, and Pigpen made the immortal suggestion that they could become an electric blues band.

According to my correspondent, the Warlocks spent the Summer of 1965 rehearsing. Her job, among others, was to write down the lyrics to songs that the band was learning, mostly Rolling Stones songs. The Warlocks went down and set up their equipment at The Top Of The Tangent and played various times simply to practice playing in public. Most of them had been going down there to play every week or so for some time, and in Jerry's case for years, so really this was no change. Although The Top Of The Tangent was a folk club, there was no specific prohibition against electric music, and in any case in 1965 blues was considered "folk" music so it wasn't really out of place.

The same few people who saw Mother McRee's saw The Warlocks. I don't think the shows were advertised in any way. It's even possible that the shows weren't even authorized, exactly. I have some reason to think that The Top Of The Tangent was always accessible from the pizza parlor itself, even if nothing was going on. Mountain Girl has told the story of going to The Tangent after work in 1963 or so and hearing banjo music from upstairs. Further investigation found a very determined man with dark, curly hair obsessively practicing the banjo.

My source doesn't recall how often The Warlocks played The Top Of The Tangent, but it was several times. The band may have simply invited themselves there on nights when nothing else was scheduled, perhaps on Wednesday hoot nights, and since they were mostly regulars anyway, they attracted no special attention. Thus by the time the Warlocks had an opportunity to perform to a slightly wider audience, the band had already had a series of public rehearsals in a comfortable space that they knew well. The Top Of The Tangent has always been cited as a source for the foundation of the Grateful Dead, but it's amazing to find out that the very same room played a much larger role in the band's founding than I had originally thought.

The Tangent-Aftermath
The Top Of The Tangent was a folk club, and folk clubs were fairly passe by 1966. By the end of 1967, Palo Alto had it's own rock club, The Poppycock, just two doors down from The Tangent. Although The Poppycock wasn't large by rock standards, probably holding somewhere between 300 and 500 patrons, it dwarfed The Top Of The Tangent. Nonetheless, the Tangent itself remained open, and in doing newspaper research I have seen bookings at least as late as 1969. I have a feeling that the upstairs room remained part of the restaurant, and was used occasionally for various folk or theater performances.

Around 1969, The Tangent became home for a weekly local songwriters "collective," started by an engineer named Chris Lunn. The events were basically "open mike" nights, a continuation of the Hoot Night folk tradition. The best of these songwriters played around Bay Area clubs under the name "Palo Alto Folk And Blues Collective." Ultimately Lunn moved to Tacoma, WA, for professional reasons, and continued his weekly songwriting workshops. Eventually it became well known under the name Victory Music, and it appears to be thriving to this day. The longest standing member of the collective was San Jose native Jim Page (no, a different Jim Page) whom some Deadheads may recognize for a song about "Going Down To Eugene" to see the Grateful Dead.

The door to the upstairs office of MindTribe, at 119 University Avenue in Palo Alto, likely in the same space as The Top Of The Tangent

117 and 119 University Avenue Today
I think The Tangent, or The Top Of The Tangent, anyway, changed it's name to The Trip Room in 1970 or '71. However, there was a large fire that burned down The Poppycock building in 1972 (which by this time was a jazz club called In Your Ear), and I have to think the Tangent building was damaged too. Thus the current building must not be the same as it was back then. Downstairs, at 117 University is a restaurant called Rudy's, which has a reputation as one of Palo Alto's last "regular" joints where you can get a burger and a beer instead of the more typical exotica (e.g. Croatian-Italian-Asian Fusion) that Palo Alto is now famous for.

There is a different entrance to the stairs to the second floor of Rudy's, and the door is marked 119 University. I have to think that the area of the offices of 119 University are roughly the same as The Top Of The Tangent, where The Warlocks were born and took some of their earliest steps. Earlier this year, the sign on the door shows it to be the offices of a company called MindTribe. MindTribe is a technology consultancy whose mission is "to develop successful products that expand the realm of human possibility."

If I'm correct, Mindtribe is not the first organization at the site whose mission was to expand the realm of human possibility. Right on cue, a look at their website tells us that just recently (August 25), Mindtribe moved to San Francisco (near Market & Third), so perhaps the aura of that corner of University Avenue at The Circle retains some surprisingly powerful Mojo.

September 2, 1967 Cabrillo College Football Field, Aptos, CA: Grateful Dead/Canned Heat/others (Canceled?)

The poster for a rock festival at the football field at Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA on September 2-3, 1967

Both the Grateful Dead and the University of California at Santa Cruz were founded in 1965, after many years of planning, so UCSC made a suitable home for the band's archives. I have written at length elsewhere about the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia's various appearances in Santa Cruz County between 1967 and 1987. The nearest that the Grateful Dead themselves got to the campus, however, as a performing entity at least, appears to have been their very first performance in the County. According to a well-circulated poster the Dead headlined a rock festival at Cabrillo College, just a few miles from the UCSC campus, on September 2, 1967. Since the Grateful Dead played Rio Nido the next two days (September 3 and 4), and those dates are fairly well confirmed, everyone, and most especially me, has presumed that the Dead headlined the first day of the Cabrillo College "Magic Music" Festival, on Saturday September 2.

I have always romanticized this event, entranced by the idea of the Grateful Dead headlining an outdoor show at the tiny Cabrillo stadium. Sadly, however, I am now leaning towards the conclusion that the show never took place. I would be delighted to be wrong, but difficult as it is to prove a negative, I can find no evidence that the show actually occurred, and I find it difficult to fathom that such a seemingly remarkable event in the history of Santa Cruz County rock music in the 1960s would pass by thoroughly unremarked.

[Update 2: thanks to the invention of the Internet, another researcher has found a newspaper listing from the August 29, 1967 Santa Cruz sentinel that the event was canceled].
Commenter Steve Hathaway tells us

It was indeed cancelled. The Tuesday August 29, 1967 edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel has a short article headlined "No 'Rock' Festival At Cabrillo." Full article:
Contrary to information being circulated on handbills, the Magic Music Festival will NOT be held at Cabrillo College September 2 and 3. The performances of the rock and roll bands has not been authorized by the college, according to Cabrillo officials.
Hope that puts it to rest. BTW, I have one of the handbills and have posted images of it and the article at:http://www.45worlds.com/memorabilia/item/nc490994us 

What Is Known About The Event?
The "Magic Music Festival" is only known from a poster that appeared in Paul Grushkin's book The Art Of Rock. Since The Art Of Rock preceded the internet, posters published in that book were a principal source of original research for show lists, not least because the excellent reproductions allowed much of the fine print to be read. However, AOR (as it is known), was appropriately enough about the Art of rock posters, rather than as a sourcebook for archival research. As a result, many fine posters of canceled or re-scheduled shows were published there without comment, since the purpose of the book was not to document events. As a result, publication of a poster in that book indicates nothing about whether the event occurred.

The poster itself says

2 Days And Nights Of Magic and Music
Dancing On The Green
Lights By STP
Arts Crafts Lights Color Sound Displays
Sat Sun Sep 2-3 
3-12 PM
Cabrillo College Stadium
Tickets $2.50 At The Door

The bands listed are

Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, Leaves, Andrew Staples, Sons of Champlain (sic), New Delhi River Band, Second Coming, New Breed, Bfd. Blues Band, Gross Exaggeration, Yajahla tingle Guild, People, Jaguars, Art Collection, Morning Glory, Ben Frank's Electric Band, New Frontier, Chocolate Watch Band, Other Side, E types, Mourning Reign, Imperial Mange Remedy, Omens, Ragged Staff, talon Wedge, & Others.

The entire event sounds deeply logical. September 2 and 3, 1967 was the Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day Weekend. The Monterey Pop Festival had just happened an hour South of Santa Cruz a few months earlier, and the Cabrillo College Football Field was larger than any facility at the newly opened University of California at Santa Cruz (and may still be, as the UCSC Banana Slugs do not play football to my knowledge). There were three bands of the status to headline the Fillmore or Avalon, namely the Dead, Canned Heat and the Chocolate Watch Band, as well as a number of popular local hippie and hip rock groups.

It's worth noting, however, that all that is known about this event is that there was a poster published in the Art Of Rock. To my knowledge, every other reference to this show stems ultimately from this poster. Almost all the groups on the poster are the sort of hip band favored by collectors, archivists and 60s scholars like myself, and various websites, blog posts and articles in magazines like Cream Puff War or Ugly Things have covered these groups in some detail, as even the most casual google search will reveal. Yet I have been unable to find a single reference to this show actually happening--no band remembers opening for the Dead or Canned Heat at Cabrillo, nobody recalls a drug bust or LSD freakout or meeting their girlfriend at what would otherwise be a memorable event in Santa Cruz County. I realize it's impossible to prove a negative proposition, but am I supposed to believe that the first and still biggest rock event in Santa Cruz County happened at the end of the Summer Of Love and left nary a trace?

To give just one example, I looked again at the history of Talon Wedge, the last band mentioned on the poster. At the time, Talon Wedge was a Cream-styled heavy blues band in Santa Cruz. By 1969 they had evolved into a terrific band called Snail, who ruled Santa Cruz County bars and clubs for many years. Snail even released two underrated albums (Snail and Flow) in the late 1970s, and future Elvin Bishop and Jerry Garcia Band drummer Donnie Baldwin was a member of the band for a large part of that time. A great site called Garage Hangover has a great overview of Talon Wedge and early Snail, and includes a copy of the poster, but nothing is ever mentioned about the show. An absolutely amazing Comment thread recaps the entire history of Snail, with many of the members of the band and their friends weighing in with great, detailed memories. Yet among all 53 Comments, not a single one recalls an outdoor show opening for the Dead. If the show had been held, would none of the Santa Cruz teenagers remember it?

The Poster
A closer look at the poster suggests that it was a preliminary poster for a planned event, but the event itself was not close to occurring. Whether the poster was printed long in advance of the show, or whether the poster was just wishful thinking by an ambitious promoter remains unknown at this time. However, a number of things stick out about the poster. First of all, while the poster says "Cabrillo College Stadium," there is no map, no indicator of what city Cabrillo College was in and no directions of how to get there. It's one thing for a poster of a school dance to have no "directions" (the students know where the gym is), but this is a regional rock festival. Cabrillo is easy to get to, but shouldn't it say "Park Avenue exit off Highway 1, six miles South of Santa Cruz?" or something to that effect.

Also, the bands are listed in some kind of random order. Once a two-day event gets close to happening, prospective patrons want to know who will be playing what day. A poster that just listed the bands would have to have been a promotional item pushing an event some time off in the future. The band listing is why I think that the poster was published in mid-Summer, anticipating a Monterey Pop-like event that never actually happened. I have done considerable research on the 60s rock history of Santa Cruz County, with respect to The Barn in Scotts Valley, the New Delhi River Band and a variety of other tributaries. As a result, I have been in contact with a lot of people from that time, and not a one has mentioned this event, even when I specifically asked them about it, so I just can't buy that the event actually occurred.

Some Speculation
The Monterey Pop Festival took place on the weekend of June 16-18, 1967. Although the event did not really make economic sense, as all the bands played for free, a flurry of similar events were promoted up and down the West Coast over the next 18 months. I have to think some enterprising promoter thought that the Santa Cruz area would make a good candidate, given a resort area on Labor Day weekend. Cabrillo College would not have been in session until after Labor Day, so some College functionary may have given a provisional OK to use the football field.

Cabrillo College was a junior college that had opened in Aptos in 1959. It was the first institution of Higher Education in Santa Cruz County. It was a lively, interesting place, and had a well regarded Music Festival, featuring 20th Century composers, that started in the early 1960s. The campus itself is in a beautiful setting that most resorts would envy. It was a forward looking place and would not have been inherently hostile to a rock show presented on its campus.

However, Santa Cruz County was considerably smaller and less populated than it was today, and the "hippie" population was still tiny and not well liked (as opposed to now, where the opposite is the case). No rock concert (of the paying variety) had ever been held on the Cabrillo campus, to my knowledge. I can't imagine that the college would have tolerated a giant, Monterey Pop event on the sleepy little campus. The local roads and parking lots would have been completely overwhelmed. If the two-day festival was ever a serious proposition, I think it got shot down long before it came anywhere near fruition. All that remained was a poster of what might have been.

The Carl Connelly Stadium at Cabrillo College, June 2011

Having come to the mournful conclusion that the Cabrillo show never took place, I decided to look at the facility as it stands today. The venue is now called The Carl Connelly Stadium. While I'm sure that the stadium did not have artificial turf as it does today, the location of the stadium on the site (see photo above) indicates that it could not have been bigger or significantly different that it is today. As is typical of Junior College athletic fields, there are almost no bleachers. There were almost certainly fewer buildings in those days, so there may have been considerably more room to allow people to dance and watch the show, but it is not a large site. I have to think that after the size of Monterey Pop became known, any willingness on the school's part to host such an event evaporated. More's the pity.

Please Prove Me Wrong!
I normally write blog posts with the intention of being right, but I'd much rather be wrong in this case. I would love it if after I posted this, some close personal friend of the Yajahla Tingle or someone would chime in with memories of the event, whether or not the Grateful Dead played. It would still be the first outdoor rock concert of any size in Santa Cruz County, and almost all the bands have their share of fans. So here's to hoping against all the evidence that maybe there was an outdoor concert overlooking the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, September 2, 1967, even if all the evidence points in the other direction.

Updates: I May Actually Be Wrong--Hooray!

Ross weighs in with a listing from the Berkeley Barb from that week. He is confident that the event occurred, and the listing hints that the event may have been a one day affair. It says "Dead, Staples, 2nd Coming, Morning Glory, Canned Heat, 8 more: Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz, 3pm-midnite, $2.50 benef LMN, SPAR, others, info Pat Sullivan, 1838 W. Bayshore Rd, Palo Alto."

I do not know what organizations "LMN" and "SPAR" represent, but all campus events would have had to benefit some outside organization (students could not use a college facility on a for-profit basis). Whomever Pat Sullivan may have been--hey, maybe he's a reader!--that is the first indication of a promotional entity behind the event. West Bayshore was a sleepy residential part of Palo Alto, so the address was probably just the promoter's house.

It's great to be wrong--now to look for some eyewitnesses...

Update 2: I spoke to soon. As quoted above, commenter Steve Hathaway found a notice in the Santa Cruz Sentinel  of August 29, 1967 that the show was canceled, because the college had not approved the two-day rock and roll performance. A Santa Cruz-area musician (Larry Hosford of the E-Types) told me that he had played dances on that field, but I suspect this event was far larger than the school was willing to countenance.

June 8, 1974 Oakland Coliseum Stadium, Oakland, CA: Grateful Dead/Beach Boys/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

The SF Chronicle newspaper ad for the June 8, 1974 Coliseum show

The June 8, 1974 show at Oakland Coliseum Stadium headlined by the Grateful Dead was both a harbinger of things to come, and completely different than almost all the stadium shows that would follow it. An analysis of the show makes an interesting object lesson on the Dead's status in the industry in mid-1974, and an assessment of what was and would never be. Of course, such analysis is made easier by the fact that I was there. I was still in High School, and while I made every effort to be as cool as possible, I was still completely unconnected to the greater network of Deadheads, and in that respect my observations would have been more like those of a typical rock fan. This post will attempt to put the June 8, 1974 show in the context of the time, rather than consider it from the vantage point of today.

"Day On The Green" Concerts
Thanks to Bill Graham, the Bay Area was generally ahead of the curve when it came to rock concerts. The modern rock concert was an outgrowth of the Trips Festival at Longshoreman's Hall (January 21-23, 1966), and it was Bill Graham and Chet Helms who presented it at the Fillmore on February 4, 1966. Various other trends had ebbed and flowed, but Bill Graham had either been on the forefront of innovation or quick to capitalize on growing trends. Outdoor rock concerts had evolved from the carefully organized Monterey Pop Festival, itself based on jazz and folk festivals, and on to the rock festival that featured music 24/7 in a muddy field out in the middle of nowhere. Woodstock was the most famous of these festivals, but there were a lot of other ones: Sky River (the first), Isle Of Wight, Atlanta Pop and numerous others, the Bay Area's own Altamont concert the most notorious of this breed.

Rock Festivals were tried with varying success throughout the early 1970s, culminating with the Bill Graham organized Watkins Glen Festival in New York on July 28, 1973, featuring the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers and The Band. Although it was the most successful and best-run event of its kind, as 600,000 people attended the show at the New York racetrack with nary a hitch, the outdoor rock festival was already a dinosaur by the time of  Watkins Glen. Communities were tired of the traffic problems, fans were tired of the privations, and most importantly such events inevitably turned into free concerts, undermining the promoter's goal of maximizing the dollars involved.

In 1973, Bill Graham Presents had been among the first promoters in the country to figure out how to translate the appeal of the Rock Festival into a convenient one-day event at a stadium. Numerous shows had been held at Football and Baseball stadiums up until this point, but BGP capitalized on both fans desire to go to an all-day outdoor event while still having access to food, water and bathrooms. The fact that stadiums had parking lots and turnstiles made the events easy to control and monetize. In contrast to the stadium shows that were to follow from the mid-70s onwards, featuring mega bands that were huge draws, the early Bay Area stadium shows were more like mini-rock festivals. They featured a couple of popular acts, but there was no pretense that the show would sell out. Rather, patrons were encouraged to spend the day catching some rays, dancing and hanging out to a variety of different bands. Tagging the concerts as a "Day On The Green" was a conscious effort to give the event a pastoral feel that was actually at odds with the pedestrian architecture of a modern "multi-use" stadium like the Oakland Coliseum.

Even for BGP, defining the 'Day On The Green' concept was not without its hiccups. The first Bay Area stadium concerts in 1973 were at Kezar Stadium, in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Kezar, located in the Southeast corner of Golden Gate Park (at Frederick and Stanyan), had been the home of the San Francisco 49ers, but they had moved to Candlestick Park after 1971. The largely unused Kezar would have made a perfect concert venue for BGP, but a number of factors got in the way. BGP put on two legendary shows in the early Summer of 1973: May 26 headlined by the Grateful Dead (supported by Waylon Jennings and the New Riders of The Purple Sage) and June 2 headlined by Led Zeppelin (supported by Joe Walsh and a then-unknown club band called The Tubes, among others).

The first show, with the Grateful Dead, was a smashing success. The event was not (to my knowledge) sold out, but a healthy crowd had plenty of room to dance and relax and a great time was had by all. The New Riders were their sparkling 1973 selves, Waylon Jennings showed that there was a closer link to the Dead and "Outlaw Country" than had previously been suspected, and of course the Dead played three massive sets. While it must have been a strain on parking and the neighborhoods in general, back in '73 Golden Gate Park was still Home Court for the Dead, so everything generally went swimmingly.

The next weekend's Led Zeppelin show was a different matter. The biggest issue was that because of the way the stage was constructed, the PA was pointed in a certain direction that made the sound echo all over the district, and this did not go over well with the non-rockin' residents of the area. The show was also a sellout, or close to it. I do recall that it was an easy ticket in my High School, but as a result of being an easy ticket, lots of people went (I was a lowly tenth grader without transport, so there was no chance of me attending daytime shows in San Francisco regardless of who was playing). In addition, the significant increase in attendance for Zep over the Dead must have put a much bigger strain on the neighborhoods. Finally (if I may so), based on an analysis of parking lot behavior in my High School (I am eminently qualified in this field, but I won't digress), Deadheads with a buzz on were a lot easier on a neighborhood than liquored up Zep fans, and that can't have gone unnoticed, even if the noise factor was the stated issue. In any case, the noise complaint prevented BGP from holding any further commercial rock concerts in Kezar Stadium.

BGP's solution to the lockout on Kezar was to move the next stadium concert to the Oakland Coliseum. Although the prosaic Oakland Coliseum Stadium, next door to the Arena (both opened in 1966), generally lacked charm, it was easy to get to, easy to park and had few neighbors to be bothered. The move to Oakland Coliseum was a winning decision, not surprising given the fact that the Oakland Coliseum complex inevitably housed winners in the early 1970s (the mighty Oakland A's won three World Series in a row from 1972-74, the Oakland Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1977 and the Golden State Warriors changed basketball by winning the NBA title in 1975).

Hayward Daily Review, July 27, 1973

The first Bay Area "Day On The Green" was on August 5, 1973, at the Oakland Coliseum Stadium. The headliners were Leon Russell and Loggins & Messina. Leon Russell was an established star at the time, and Loggins & Messina were rising, but neither were mega at the time. Also on the bill was local favorite Elvin Bishop. The "Day On The Green" title was to make it clear that the show was general admission, and that everyone would be able to sit out in centerfield rather than be forced to watch from a distance. My impression (from reviews) was that about 20,000 showed up for that concert, in a venue that could have handled above 60,000, but that made for a very relaxed afternoon and a much bigger crowd than would have likely seen any of the acts by themselves. The formula was set: the convenient Oakland Coliseum was the venue, and a relaxed multi-act show was on offer, with the idea that the facility would be spacious enough to accommodate everyone without standing in line and struggling all day. For teenagers who had missed the rock festivals of the 60s, or older people who had actually suffered through them, it sounded pretty good.

June 8, 1974: Day On The Green #1
BGP kicked off the 1974 outdoor concert season the same way they had in 1973, with a stadium concert featuring the Grateful Dead. As the ad shows, however, they shared top billing with The Beach Boys, and the New Riders of The Purple Sage and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen filled out the day's entertainment. Tickets were just $8.50, and the bands would start at the unrock and roll hour of 10am. Even in the 1970s, $2.00 per band was a very low number, so it was a great deal if you were looking to see a bunch of bands for very little money.

The Oakland Coliseum was also considerably more accessible than Kezar Stadium, and in particular it was much nearer to the East Bay suburbs. Because the show was on a Saturday, patrons could come to the stadium by BART, the new Rapid Transit train that had only opened in 1972 (BART did not run on Sundays in those days). The mechanics of the show made it particularly accessible to High School and College Students, since it was cheap, all ages and BART-eligible. Also, parents (like mine) were perfectly casual about sending their kids off to a baseball stadium--my Dad and I had been to the Oakland Coliseum Stadium many times, and they didn't think twice about letting me and my friend (and his girlfriend) spend the day there. It might have been different if this was some muddy field in Northern California (or a quarter mile oval racetrack in Altamont), but this was an established venue.

As a prospective fan, I found going to the stadium very appealing. I had read about Woodstock and heard about Watkins Glen in detail from my cousin, and while I envied the music, I was too urbanized to tolerate all the various privations. The Coliseum on the other hand--I knew where to park, there were bathrooms, food and drink and anyway I was a huge A's fan. All good.

The Beach Boys' Endless Summer
The Beach Boys co-billing with the Dead was a very odd but in the end very shrewd booking. At the time, the Beach Boys had spent a few years in the wilderness, derided as an oldies band who weren't capable of making "serious" music. The group had struggled desperately to be hip, but their efforts had largely failed. Nonetheless, at the same time AM radio had lost a lot of ground to FM, and were countering it by playing more and more oldies, so 60s Beach Boys hits were well known to most local radio listeners. The co-sponsor of the show was KFRC (610), the biggest AM music station in the Bay Area. The Beach Boys were a regular part of their playlist, and the Dead gave a cachet of hipness to KFRC that it didn't deserve, but probably served them well.

BGP's goal in booking cool local favorites with an over-the-hill LA hit machine was to draw from two different fan bases. I now realize that BGP recognized that people were going to come by the carload, and the Beach Boys essentially appealed to a lot of people who wanted to go with their friends, but didn't like or know about the Grateful Dead. The Beach Boys, on the other hand, were known to everyone who was under 30 and not deaf, because even if you didn't know the names of their songs, even someone who only listened to classical music knew the opening strains to "Good Vibrations" or "Fun Fun Fun." In those days, the Grateful Dead were a "cool" band, but not to everyone's taste, and their popularity was definitely finite. The whole idea of Deadheads as a weird cult had not developed yet. Of course, Dead fans had a reputation as long-haired stoners, but Bay Area High Schools in the 1970s were full of long haired stoners (or would-be ones, anyway), so the Dead weren't out of step with the times.

In 1975, the Beach Boys would release a double album of their greatest hits, called Endless Summer, which would establish them as America's premier oldies band, a title I believe they hold to this day. In 1974, however, this wasn't fully established. Nonetheless, stations like KFRC were playing their old songs, and music fans (myself included) were starting to notice that amidst the catchy hooks and dopey lyrics, the Beach Boys had made some pretty well sculpted music. Thus in 1974, the Beach Boys were on the verge of a comeback. BGP would book the Beach Boys with more current groups at a number of stadium shows in the next few years, and they went over very well, but this June booking with the Grateful Dead was the first test of the concept.

Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen
We arrived at the show well before the 10am kickoff. The stage was in Center Field, extending from Left Center to Right Center. The infield was blocked off, but the outfield grass was open for sitting or dancing. Almost all the seats in the stands were available, too, but there were no reserved seats. As it happened, there were "only" about 30,000 people there, so there was plenty of room to hang out and run around. Those who wanted to get close to the stage had a relatively easy time doing so, but we hung out in mid-centerfield, near enough to see the action, but still with plenty of room to relax.

The most dramatic sight upon entry was the Dead's legendary "Wall Of Sound" looming behind the stage. This was my fourth Dead show (Dec 12 '72, then Feb 9 '73, then Feb 22 '74), so I had seen portions of the system, but it was somehow more dramatic to see it blocking out the back of the stadium (for Oaklanders: this was way before Mt. Davis ruined the view). I realize some or perhaps many people had seen the Dead at the Cow Palace (March 23 '74), but for me personally it was a dramatic tableaux. Even more remarkably, in retrospect, there was an entirely different sound system rising up from both sides of the stage. This system was for the other three acts, who would not be using the Dead's system, and this made for an entire mountain range of equipment, with the Wall as the towering peak.

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen kicked off soon after 10am with (I think) "Armadillo Stomp." I was a huge fan of the group, and they were suitably great and did many of their best known songs from their four albums. I now realize this was on purpose--they were trying to make new fans, and thus played their best known or most convincing material, but I couldn't have been happier. There had been some minor changes in the band lineup (Ernie Hagar was on pedal steel instead of Bobby Black) but it was a great way to start the day as far as I was concerned.

About half-way through their set, the band brought out Commander Cody from behind his piano by playing a little intro music and saying, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the 29-year old Perfect Master himself, Commander Cody!" (extra points if you recognize the contemporary Guru Maharaj Ji reference). Cody stalked out front and stared at the crowd. Then, quite hilariously, he said "how come I don't see more of you hippies at baseball games?" In 1974, the "jock" and "stoner" crowds in most High Schools and Colleges were still pretty separate, but Cody and his band had bridged that gap long ago (by virtue of being from Ann Arbor, MI). I was a huge A's fan, and this was at odds with most of the rock fans I knew, particularly older ones. Cody and the Airmen were ahead of the curve here, but Cody's remark was the only reference all day to the fact that the event took place in a sports venue. Of course, Cody launched into "Smoke That Cigarette" and the inevitable "Hot Rod Lincoln" and brought down the house. People were still coming into the Coliseum in great numbers throughout Cody's set.

The New Riders Of The Purple Sage
Cody and the Airmen probably played about an hour. The New Riders of The Purple Sage must have come on about 11:30 am. I was a huge New Riders fan, and had all their albums. I was a lot less knowledgeable about country and country rock than I am today, so I saw the Riders as more unique than they actually were, but that hardly mattered. Under normal circumstances it would have been difficult or impossible for me to see them live in the Bay Area, and here I was seeing another band I really liked for the first time. Dave Torbert had left the New Riders several months before, much to my dismay, and the band had not yet recorded with new bassist Skip Battin, but I was still thrilled to see them.

I no longer recall precisely which songs the New Riders played, but since I had all their records and knew every song by heart it hardly mattered. The only song I didn't like was a new one by Battin, but I had only just heard it. Buddy Cage was awesome, just as I had hoped. Given that it was in a baseball stadium, albeit an only half-filled one, the most interesting thing was that mid-set the Riders invited out mandolinist Frank Wakefield to sing and play his song "Teardrops In My Eyes." Now, the Riders had recorded it on Panama Red, with Nelson singing lead, so I knew the song, and I recognized Wakefield's name from the songwriting credits [update: an astute correspondent points out that "Teardrops" was written by Red Allen and Tommy Sutton, and Wakefield didn't play on the record, so I'm imposing something on my own memory--I didn't actually know who Wakefield was]. I don't recall whether Nelson or Wakefield sang lead at the stadium, but to me this was what concerts were supposed to be like: if a band had a friend in town, they invited him up on stage to sing a song.

Of course this wasn't some gig at the Keystone Berkeley, but rather a showcase event at a baseball stadium, and the Riders had probably carefully rehearsed the performance. Knowing what I know now, I realize that David Nelson, Frank Wakefield and The Good Old Boys were going to open for the Great American String Band at Keystone Berkeley a few days later (June 13-14, discussed at length by JGMF), so there was nothing casual about it at all. But what did I know? It was only later, when I became more knowledgeable about bluegrass, that I realized that Wakefield was not just (or only) a pal of Nelson's, but the man who, in David Grisman's phrase, "split the bluegrass mandolin atom." About 23 years later, I saw Wakefield at the Freight And Salvage, and I knew what I was hearing, but in 1974 he was just a guy who came on stage.

However, as if to cement my ideas that musicians were just happy-go-lucky guys who liked to hang out, Commander Cody joined the New Riders for the last two numbers, which were "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)" and "Glendale Train." Cody had played on the first NRPS album, so it all made sense to me, even if it gave me an inaccurate picture of reality. In the mid-70s, the Airmen and the Riders had the same manager (Joe Kerr) and played many bills together, so Cody had probably played these two songs many times with the band. While I'm sure it was fun, it was a safe and popular thing to do. Nonetheless, it sure sounded good to me.

The Beach Boys
The New Riders must have left the stage by or before 1:00pm. There was the usual rapid set change, and after a little while people were getting restless in the hot sun, looking forward to seeing the Beach Boys. I was less interested in the Boys than the other groups, but there was nothing to do and I wanted to see them or anyone rather than just bake. After more than half an hour, people were starting to get restless. Eventually, someone--maybe Bill Graham--came on stage and announced that the Beach Boys were having travel problems and were going to be late, but that the Dead had given up some of their time to let them do their set.

Well, even if this was just musician's courtesy, it didn't sit well with me, baking in the sun so a band I didn't really want to see could play their entire set, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. It did leave ample time to socialize with the people in the crowd. The most surprising and telling thing was the discovery nearby of two girls from my high school, neither of whom liked the Grateful Dead, and thus rather less likely to be found at such a concert. In the interests of not embarrassing their no-doubt-by-now-adult children, I will redact their names, but while they sort of liked rock music, they were both violinists in the Youth Symphony and knew nothing about rock beyond The Beatles. One of them claimed to have never heard of or heard the Beach Boys.

The two of them had come to the show with two older guys from San Jose (shocking to a Palo Altan). In fact the boys were probably about 19 and must have been San Jose State students, but it was an interesting marker of how the show appealed to different sorts of people. Here were two girls from my High School who would never have attended a Dead show, but because it was an easy ticket at a convenient venue, and two (presumably) college guys invite them on a double date, so here they were. Now, to give the violinists their Palo Alto cred, they had arrived during the New Riders and slept through them, because they were too stoned--at 11:30am. It was another mark of the half-filled Coliseum that patrons could cheerily take a nap in right field (Reggie Jackson territory in those days) whenever they felt the need. At about 2:00, when we bumped into them, they were still three sheets to the wind.

The Beach Boys came on at about 2:30 or even 3:00pm. Lead singer Mike Love irritated many people by saying, "sorry about being late, man, but we're all on Universal Time," a sentiment not shared by me. However, that aside, the Beach Boys played and sang very well, and ended up winning over the Deadhead crowd along with entertaining violinists and other more casual fans. While Brian Wilson had stopped touring many years before, obviously, the other two brothers (guitarist Carl and drummer/singer Dennis) and cousin Al Jardine (guitar) were still in the band. Bruce Johnston took Brian's parts, so the band's five part vocals (Love, Johnston, Jardine, the Wilsons) were still intact. The rest of the band was pretty solid too, including Blondie Chaplin (lead guitar) Ricky Fataar (guitar and drums) and Billy Hinsche (on piano--from Dino, Desi and Billy; don't tell me you've forgotten them?). I no longer recall if producer Jim Guercio played bass on that tour.

The Beach Boys were real professionals, cranking out all their 60s hits (and "Sail On Sailor") with enthusiasm, hitting all the high notes, and putting in just enough genuine guitar solos to seem like they belonged in the 1970s to pull off playing in a baseball stadium. Whatever reservations Deadheads like me may have had about the group were forgotten while we all sang along to "Help Me Rhonda" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice." I looked over and saw my violinist friends singing along too--it turned out they knew a bunch of Beach Boys songs, even if they hadn't known that beforehand.

The Main Attraction
As I recall, the changeover to the Grateful Dead was relatively quick. This must have been because the Beach Boys were using one sound system and the Grateful Dead were using another, but in any case the wait wasn't too long. By this time we had all been baking in the sun for many hours, and we knew that the show would not go on into the dark (I don't know how we knew this but we did). Now, of course, we would pay the price for the Beach Boys lateness by losing out on the Dead. Again, considering what I now know, the Dead had played three sets at Kezar the year before, and they only played two at the Coliseum, so thanks to the Beach Boys transit issues, I personally lost a set of primo 1974 Dead.

Since the tapes circulate widely, I won't bother to analyze them, as there are better people than me for that, and I will just confine myself to a few observations. First of all, the Wall Of Sound was absolutely amazing. Concert sound has improved tremendously in the last few decades, and I assume that the qualities of the Wall Of Sound can be duplicated by modern technology. For 1974, however, it was light years ahead of its time. Most rock sound systems in the day were loud enough, but had all sorts of holes in them--you couldn't hear the piano, or the highs were fuzzy, or the bass sounded different all over the house, or whatever. Standing in Center Field at the Coliseum that day, however, I really felt I was peering into the Future Of Sound. The band played loud enough that I could hear every note, yet at the same time I could carry on a conversation in a normal tone of voice with my friend. I recall watching Kreutzmann at one point, and seeing him break a stick. Now, breaking a drumstick is a common enough thing, but I could hear the audible 'click' on the mic as it broke, and I was absolutely amazed.

Mars Hotel would not be released until the end of June. In 1974, there was little access to the secret world of tapes or even word-of-mouth. I know now when various songs were debuted, but "Scarlet Begonias," "US Blues," "Ship Of Fools" and "It Must Have Been The Roses" were all new to me. I realize that many people would have heard these songs at the Cow Palace or elsewhere, but even for those people they mostly would have heard them once. Indeed, I had heard "Wave That Flag" at Maples the year before, but of course I had no idea.  I was locked in enough by this time that I recalled all the songs and recognized them on Mars Hotel (and Tales Of The Great Rum Runners, in the case of "Roses"). It was exciting to get a foretaste of the next Dead album, and to be excited about the songs on it.

The highlight of the show, in person and on tape, was the lengthy "Playing In The Band>Wharf Rat>Playing In The Band." My recollection was that it was quite hot, and that the stadium blocked the usual bay breeze, so we were all pretty melted, so the laid back jamming was right in tune with the day. I do recall a Hammond organ on stage, covered over but seemingly ready to go, and wondering if Keith or anyone else was ever going to play it. I have often wondered if they bought the organ to every show or just a few of them, or if they ever asked Keith if he was going to play it. The few times that Keith played organ he seemed quite good (Oct 27 '73 comes to mind), but I guess it was one of those weird non-confrontational Dead things. Still, it was only much later when I thought about the fact that it was sitting on stage unplayed.

Who knows what we missed by the Beach Boys lateness. Was there supposed to be a Phil and Ned "Seastones" set? Would I have gotten a third set "Dark Star"? In any case, the June 8, 1974 Oakland Coliseum Stadium show laid out the blueprint for the next several years of Day On The Greens (or DOGs, as they were affectionately known): a couple of headliners with distinct audiences, some fun opening acts, and a relaxed atmosphere, with some occasional great moments mixed in. Having established the structure of the Bay Area "Day On The Green," however, the Grateful Dead would not play another one on home turf until they played with Bob Dylan in 1987. By that time, stadium concerts were just really big concerts with a single headline act, sold out to the gills and no different than any other concert  

[Update: An alert Commenter pointed out that I completely forgot about the October 9-10, 1976 Oakland Stadium concerts with The Who and The Grateful Dead. Whoops--particularly galling, since I attended the second one. However, The Who/Dead extravaganza, although still presented in the all-day format of other DOGs, was yet another harbinger of Things To Come. There were two mega-headliners and no opening acts. The shows were expected to be totally sold out, although in fact for a variety of reasons that was not the case. Nonetheless, despite my brain fade, the Who/Dead shows were more like 80s stadium concerts than 70s rock festivals in a stadium. The big event of the Summer of '76 had been Peter Frampton/Fleetwood Mac/Gary Wright shows on April 26 and May 1, and although Frampton had "come alive" by then, Fleetwood Mac and Gary Wright were just breaking out. High School attendance was probably better at the Coliseum that day than it had been the previous Friday at Bay Area schools.]

Aftermath
The multi-act Day On The Green concept was very popular in the Bay Area for the balance of the 70s, and spread to other cities. The next DOG was CSNY/The Band/Joe Walsh/Jesse Colin Young, at Oakland Stadium on July 13-14, 1974. All of the 70s Day On The Greens in the Bay Area were held at Oakland Coliseum (SNACK was at Kezar, but that was a Benefit held under a different aegis). The Dead were supposed to play a DOG in early Summer '78 with the Steve Miller Band, but the booking fell through for unknown reasons. The Beach Boys were regulars at many DOGs, even headlining one on July 2, 1976.

In 1974, the size and expense of the Wall Of Sound required the Dead to play huge venues with certain kind of technical accommodations (indoor arenas had to have concrete floors, and so on).While the June DOG was a big success, and the Dead were surely well compensated, in order for the show to happen they had to be double billed with another act who ended up cutting into their time. As professionals, I don't think the Grateful Dead dwelt on it per se, but it was another way in which the Grateful Dead were going to have to act like a "normal" band, and on some level it must have given them pause. This and many other factors combined to force the band to go on a performance hiatus after the five night stand at Winterland on October 16-20, 1974.

Had I been really cool and not just a high schooler, I would have known that Jerry Garcia was playing at the Great American Music Hall on the night of June 8. Imagine--four hours in the sun, and then killing the evening by funking out with Merl Saunders and John Kahn late into the night. According to legend, anyway, Jack Casady and Stephen Stills showed up to jam. Wow--maybe musicians did just like to jam and hang out.

At least one of the two violinists saw the Grateful Dead again, during the Dead's "last five nights" (as they were known) back in October 1974. I recall quizzing her relentlessly about it at school--I'm sure she has forgotten it--but it was just a date to her, and she had no useful information. Still, I took some measure of satisfaction that she had liked the Dead enough to be willing to go again. Within a few years, I took to hoping that people wouldn't like the Dead, because I didn't want competition for tickets. From what I know (fifth hand), she has managed to live a happy and productive life, so at the very least it didn't harm her.

Update I: Backstage Report
I am fortunate to be in touch with keyboardist Ned Lagin, who had a unique perspective on the Grateful Dead's music in the first half of the 1970s. I asked him

do you recall if Seastones (or "Phil and Ned") was supposed to play in Oakland Stadium on June 8, 1974? The Beach Boys were also on the bill, and they were late, so the Dead agreed to shorten their show to help out. The band still played two full sets and an encore, so I wondered what was missing. I know that you started appearing between sets later in June.

While it turns out that Lagin was not scheduled to play, he was indeed present, and had a remarkable story to tell

My girl friend and I rode to the gig with Phil and his girl friend, all four of us happy and excited, flying (in Phil's car) over the Bay (on the Richmond Bridge) and down the east shore of the bay to Oakland. Everything (the PA) was set up when we arrived and the NRPS were playing, but after walking in through the performer's entrance area, and seeing the NRPS finish, the real story of that day for us became quickly apparent - that the Beach Boys were seriously afraid of the GD and possible psychic or liquid or other physical "infection" or contact, or the appearance of contact or association. It seemed that an underlying reason they as co-headliners were booked to go on first (meaning before the GD played and things got loose, but after CC and NRPS) was for them to play and get away unharmed, untainted (and, the thinking was, the Beach Boys' audience as well if they wanted). The Beach Boys did not allow any one from the GD on stage or backstage with minor exceptions. They put yellow police crime tape all around the sides of the stage and the back stage area to keep the GD out while they were present. I remember them being very late in starting (but not so late arriving as Bill Graham said at the gig) - only that they were there but didn't come out on stage for a very long time, for whatever reasons. I had great respect for the singing abilities of the Beach Boys, and their becoming a part of mainstream Americana, but really otherwise didn't care much about them one way or the other - seeing them in some full GD phobia mode was hysterical to say the least (even knowing their personal history). They did put on a good show that was them, the Beach Boys. But I'm not sure why no one ever reported one of the more bizarre and funny occurences in Rock and Roll, especially since it was the first (Oakland) Day on the Green and an important bell-weather for Bill Graham's future stadium summer gigs. I guess out of respect for the Beach Boys. The GD played as long really as they wanted (or felt the need to, given the constraints on Graham to have a reasonably well controlled and contained, and hence reproducible, stadium event). 

Phil and I had no plans to play (it wasn't considered) because no one thought it would be a good start (for us) at a large outdoor party show. Particularly one with such an eclectic mix of mainstream outdoor summer pop audience attendees. (Soon on tour though we would play outdoors at Hollywood Bowl (much smaller, but with CC and Maria Muldour on the bill), and Roosevelt Stadium, and do well....). We also skipped the first cities on the tour because we (prejudicially) thought it unlikely to get a reasonable response from Southern audiences. As it turned out the least favorable response we ever got was later in (northern liberal) New Haven.

So, it turns out that the "story" about the Beach Boys being late was concocted for the crowd, and much more mysterious behavior was happening backstage. On the positive side, it seems that the Grateful Dead played more or less what they wanted to. 

Update II: Another Backstage Report
As if this post weren't great enough already, I was contacted by Kevin Smith, one of the road managers of the Beach Boys' 1974 tour, who had yet another perspective:

There are a few inaccuracies I'd like to correct.  I am qualified to do so because I was also there that day on the green!  I was the roadie/stage manager for the Beach Boys in 1974.  We arrived in Oakland with the Beach Boys backline gear June 7th to set up gear that evening.  We were set and ready to go as specified by the Grateful Dead's crew.  I had met the Dead in Chicago in October of 1971.  They were playing the Auditorium Theatre great shows!!  Phil had just got the first quadraphonic bass from Alembic and was really jazzed!!  So I knew the Dead's crew already and they showed me the in and outs of the wall of sound concept.  Amazing!!  No monitor console, they each mixed their own monitors onstage!  
   Which is why the Beach Boys had their own PA system.  Our production manager didn't trust the concept of the wall of sound.  In regards to the band line up.  Yes Ricky Fataar was playing drums but Blondie was long gone from the band then. If I recall the band line up was Dennis and Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Billy Hinshe, Carlos Munoz, Ed Brewer  and Ricky Fataar.   Al or Carl played the leads.  James Guercio, Chicago's producer didn't join us until later that year. 
   Your assumption that the Beach Boys had you waiting in the sun because they had some problem with the Dead is totally untrue.  The reason the Boys were late is because they chose to stay in San Fransisco instead of Oakland like the crew did.  They misjudged the amount of traffic going to Oakland and got stuck in it.  Believe me I was dealing with Bill and his staff regarding there tardiness. That is why Bill Graham's people came onstage and made that announcement!  We knew we were holding things up by being late!!   I was waiting for them to arrive at the backstage entrance.  The last thing we wanted to do was screw up a Grateful Dead Show.  The Beach Boys have a lot of respect for Grateful Dead!  When they arrived I escorted them directly to the stage and put them on!!  I don't recall any yellow tape being around the stage at all.  If there was it might have been there to keep people from wandering into the tech area where the Dead's crew had several of their McIntosh Power Amps in various states of repair.  They were the weak link in the system since they would literally shake themselves to pieces during transport. 
   There was one fact that you neglected to mention although you may not have been aware of it at the time.  After we did the set change, Osley Stanley came up to me on the side of stage to ask me why the Beach Boys weren't using the wall of sound.  He told me he had designed the PA himself and was a bit upset by our decision not to use it. I explained to him it was not my call.  We had gotten most of our gear down and in the truck when an EMT wagon showed up backstage.  It was there for Stanley who had fallen off the scaffolding while pulling down the PA we had just used.  He broke his leg!!
    I felt really bad about it and told Jerry Garcia so as he was making his way to the stage and I was making my way to my truck. You were right about one thing, we did do a really good show once we got there.

Thanks Kevin, for letting me include this. It's amazing to imagine the idea of the Beach Boys' harmonies soaring out over the Wall Of Sound, although I hardly blame their crew for not wanting to try out a new system in front of a whole stadium.