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| The Barn in Scotts Valley, was open from late 1965 until 1968, and rock shows were put on there in 1966 and Spring '67. The address was 3486 Granite Creek Road. This is the only known photo of the exterior. The site is now a parking lot for a Christian school. |
What we know as the modern rock concert can be directly traced to Bill Graham's first weekend at the Fillmore Auditorium, when he presented Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service on February 4, 5 and 6, 1966. The brew of amplified electric music, multi-colored lights and ecstatic dancing crowds took rock concerts from conventional personal appearances to serious artistic presentations. Such rock concerts were an underground sensation that merged with the great music coming out of Los Angeles, London, New York and elsewhere. By the end of the 1960s, Fillmore-style concerts were the anchors of the booming International rock concert industry.
In every big city and every college town in America, adventurous promoters and bands tried to produce their own version of Fillmore and Avalon concerts, whether with local acts or visiting ones from San Francisco. Often, there wasn't much to go on. By 1967, a lot of people had a friend or cousin who had been to San Francisco, and many had seen reproductions of the famous posters, and here and there magazines like Life had a picture or two. Some people scrutinized early psychedelia like the debut album of Country Joe & The Fish. Most cities had pieced something together by 1967 or '68. Of course, the booming rock market overwhelmed the tiny hippie ballrooms in every town, and rock started to move to Civic Auditoriums and basketball gyms by 1970.
The City of Santa Cruz followed the arc of many other places in the 1960s, but with a completely different time frame. Santa Cruz had been just a resort town on the Monterey Bay, just 75 miles down the coast from San Francisco. With the opening of a new University of California campus at Santa Cruz in Fall of 1965, the city and surrounding county rapidly evolved. The once-quiet Republican enclave of Santa Cruz suddenly found themselves infiltrated by beatniks and hippies. Santa Cruz County even hosted the very first Acid Test, on November 27, 1965, at Prankster Ken Babbs' crumbling ranch house.
Santa Cruz didn't need to wait to read about the Fillmore and the Avalon, as the local hippies found out first hand. By Fall 1966, Santa Cruz County had its own little Fillmore, at The Barn in Scotts Valley, a few miles East of the city. The local residents were not pleased, and engaged in a lengthy legal battle with Barn owner Leon Tabory, trying to shut down his ballroom. Meanwhile, local bands like The New Delhi River Band had a place to play and a chance to build an audience. Jefferson Airplane even played a concert at the downtown Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. Change was coming, whether Santa Cruz liked it or not. The 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival, 40 miles South at the Monterey Fairgrounds, included the Airplane and the Butterfield Blues Band. Change was coming, whether Santa Cruz wanted it or not. I detailed all these developments in my previous post, covering Santa Cruz and Monterey rock concerts in 1965 and '66.
This post will look at psychedelic rock concerts in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties during 1967. A thriving rock scene culminated in the Monterey Pop Festival in June, 1967, only to slide away when the rock concert market simply go to big for the sparse population on the coast. If anyone has memories, corrections, insights, new information or informed speculation, please include them in the Comments. Flashbacks welcome.
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| The infamous statues outside of the Hip Pocket Bookstore in Santa Cruz, circa 1965. The Hip Pocket was the first intruder of the 60s in the city, but not the last. |
Status Report, January 1967, Santa Cruz and Monterey County Rock Concert Scene
The most significant psychedelic rock interloper in Santa Cruz County had been The Barn in Scotts Valley. Scotts Valley was a mostly agricultural community in the foothills a few miles East of Santa Cruz. The building, at 3486 Granite Creek Drive had been built as a dairy barn in 1914, but over time had been converted into a basketball gym and later an antique shop. in 1965, Eric "Big Daddy" Nord had turned it into a coffee shop and art gallery, and ultimately used the upstairs (the former gym) to present folk and jazz music as well as movies. Scotts Valley residents weren't pleased. By early '66, Nord had abandoned The Barn, but by mid-year it had been taken over by Santa Cruz clinical psychologist Leon Tabory.
Dr. Tabory was already somewhat notorious in Santa Cruz County, having testified in an infamous trial about The Hip Pocket bookstore. He had grand plans for The Barn, planning an entertainment venue that would serve beer. Scotts Valley was so threatened by him that they incorporated as a town just to create zoning laws to stop him. Tabory did present psychedelic rock shows in the Fall of 1966, with light shows and loud music. Local groups like The New Delhi River Band were the main acts, and Big Brother and The Holding Company had come down from San Francisco, too. Tabory's Scotts Valley neighbors hated it.
In the previous post, I detailed the rock shows, the zoning hearings and the court cases that took place at and about The Barn. By the end of 1966, the newly-founded city of Scotts Valley still had not been able to shut down The Barn. In order to successfully appeal the injunction against him, however, Tabory had to spend some money, and he was also unable to modify the Barn nor serve beer. So The Barn would continue to present shows in the Winter of 1967, but Tabory was treading water until the court cases were resolved.
Meanwhile, at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and the downtown Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, there were regular rock shows. Often rock bands from San Jose were the headliners, as San Jose teenagers were regulars in Santa Cruz anyway. San Jose had a booming rock scene, and there were some great bands. At the same time, some bands from Santa Cruz and Monterey counties were not only popular at home, but found an audience in San Jose and south. So rock and roll was luring teens, even if most of those teens hadn't heard about The Barn. They had heard about the Fillmore, though--everyone had. Something was brewing, and it was coming to a boil quickly in Santa Cruz, because it was nearer to San Francisco than the rest of the United States.
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| An ad for The Barn in the SF Oracle for the week of January 14, 1967. The art was by Los Gatos student Eve Miyasaki. There are no concert dates on the ad because it was trying to establish the upcoming schedule beginning Wednesday January 18. |
The ad posted above has circulated on the internet for many years. Many people, including myself, initially thought that the date at the bottom was "Jun 3-6" (1967), and this was an attempt to re-open The Barn. My first effort to lay out the story of The Barn, however flawed it was, generated a lot of great emails from actual participants. In this case, Eve Miyasaki, the artist who drew the ad, explained the background. At this time, Miyasaki was a Los Gatos High School student. Although Los Gatos is in the next county, it is only about 20 minutes from Scotts Valley. Miyasaki explained (in a personal email):
The above promo art announces the addition of two new nights, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The announcement was published in the San Francisco underground newspaper, "San Francisco Oracle", and was intended to coincide with the "Human Be-in" scheduled for January 14, 1967. From the beginning, the Barn had been open on Fridays and Saturdays only, except for special events. The date on the above flyer was not indicated because it was an change of scheduling beginning, Wednesday, January 18, 1967, ongoing after the date of publication in the Oracle.
Auditions were held [on Sundays] to book acts for the additional nights of Wednesday and Thursday. This schedule change, began on January 18th, continued until the Barn closed down.
Miyasaki recalled that the New Delhi River Band played The Barn up to four nights a week in early 1967, unless they had a booking somewhere else. Peter And The Group, who were also local, played many dates there as well. For this chronology, I have not filled in dates for the New Delhi River Band nor Peter and The Group when I do not have other confirmation, but its reasonable to assume they played many nights at The Barn in the Winter of 1967.
The New Delhi River Band were Palo Alto's second psychedelic blues band. David Nelson and Dave Torbert, later of the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, anchored the band. Nelson had been a bluegrass picker before this, but he plugged in for the NDRB. Torbert had been in The Good News, who had been Redwood City's first blues band. Drummer Chris Herold (later in Kingfish with Torbert) had also been in the Good News. Singer John Tomasi and guitarist Peter Sultzbach had been in the Los Altos group Bethlehem Exit. I have discussed the history and formation of the New Delhi River Band in great detail elsewhere.
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| Country Joe & The Fish's debut album, Electric Music For The Mind and Body, was released by Vanguard Records in May 1967. The cover was a montage of four photos of the band performing in front of the Magic Theatre light show at The Barn (albeit w/ negatives reversed) on the weekend of January 20-21, 1967. These Paul Kagan shots are the only known interior shots of The Barn as a psychedelic venue. |
January 20-21, 1967 The Barn, Scotts Valley, CA: Country Joe & The Fish/New Delhi River Band (Friday-Saturday)
Country Joe & The Fish were already Berkeley's leading psychedelic band by early 1967, not least because they had been the first one. Originally a folk duo, Joe McDonald and Barry Melton had seen the Butterfield Blues Band at the Fillmore in early '66 and decided to "go electric." They gathered some friends and some amplifiers and some drums and went to a local club called The Questing Beast. By mid-66, the band had released a 3-song EP which had sold 15,000 copies. Vanguard Records signed them in December '66, on the condition that they withdraw the EP and change drummers.
Vanguard producer Sam Charters had rented The Barn for two weeks in December 1966 so that Country Joe & The Fish could break in their new drummer (Gary "Chicken" Hirsch) and rehearse for the album. They played a gig at The Barn to begin the rehearsals (on December 3, 1966). Now, after opening for Otis Redding at the Fillmore (December 22) and New Year's Eve at the Avalon, the band was returning for a weekend at The Barn.
Country Joe & The Fish's debut album, Electric Music For The Mind
and Body, would be released by Vanguard Records in May 1967. The cover was a
montage of four photos of the band performing in front of the Magic
Theatre light show at The Barn (albeit w/ negatives reversed, so the guitar players appear left-handed) on the
weekend of January 20-21, 1967. These Paul Kagan shots are the only
known interior shots of The Barn as a psychedelic venue.
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| Eve Miyasaki flyer for The Barn on the weekend of February 17-18, 1967 |
February 17, 1967 The Barn, Scotts Valley, CA: Spirits/Peter & The Group (Friday)
February 18, 1967 The Barn, Scotts Valley, CA: New Delhi River Band/Peter & The Group (Saturday)
The configuration of weekend bands for February 17-18 is known because the Eve Miyasaki flyer has survived. Apparently some combinations of these three bands played most shows in January, February and March, possibly including some Wednesday and Thursday events, too.
There were likely flyers for most shows, but only a few have survived. I got an email from a former Fremont teenager who said that he drew flyers for Leon Tabory in return for free admission, but none of them had survived. It turned out that quite a few teenagers from Fremont and Hayward regularly attended shows at The Barn. Fremont was anchored by a Ford plant (now a Tesla plant), and the two cities were smaller and more working class than they are today. Parents who would not have approved of their kids taking the family station wagon to Berkeley or San Francisco shrugged at a trip to Santa Cruz. Scotts Valley was only about 45 minutes from Fremont.
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| Inside A Hippie Commune by Holly Harman (2012) |
We don't know much about Peter & The Group, but we know a lot about Spirit, listed on the poster as The Spirits. Holly Harman, then a teenager living in Ben Lomond, was an integral part of the scene at The Barn. When I posted our initial research into the venue, she was kind enough to get in touch and sort out some details. In 2012 she published an evocative memoir, Inside A Hippie Commune, which gives a broad picture of coming of age in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She was friendly with Leon Tabory and many of the others from the era, so she is the best kind of ground zero witness.
Harman's book has some detailed memories of Spirit, whom she recalls from back in the day. As it happens, she ended up marrying the lead guitar player (very convenient for fact-checking), but they did not become a couple until a few decades later. The history of the Santa Cruz Mountain band Spirit has been confused by the more famous Los Angeles band with the same name (featuring Randy California). The Topanga Canyon Spirit was called Spirits Rebellious in early 1967, and only played in Southern California at the time (that Spirit would ultimately sign with Ode Records and release four albums from 1968 to '71).
The Santa Cruz Mountains band Spirit lived at the Holidays Commune in Ben Lomond, at the former Holidays Resort Camp, where Harman also lived. Eric Levin (later Harman's husband) played guitar and other instruments, and was the principal singer and songwriter. David Russek played lead guitar, Mike Swerdlow played rhythm guitar, Bob Tressler played bass and Charlie Hawk played drums. Other residents of the Holidays Commune (including Holly Harman) were part of the Love Lights Productions light show, and often they performed together. The band and the light show would go to events at The Barn or elsewhere in a psychedelically painted school bus.
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| Eric Levin, guitarist and songwriter for the Santa Cruz Mountains band Spirit, released some historic and current material for this 2009 soundtrack for a projected video. Jerry Garcia played pedal steel guitar on one track recorded in 1969. |
By 1967, Levin and Russek had moved to San Franciso and formed a group called The Cloud Brothers, with the infamous Curly Jim Stalarow. In 1969, Russek and Levin would record some demos as The Cloud Brothers, later released in 2009. One of the tracks featured Jerry Garcia. It was one of Garcia's first recordings on his then-new pedal steel guitar.
February 25, 1967 The Barn, Scotts Valley, CA: Big Brother & The Holding Company/Congress Of Wonders (Saturday)
Big Brother & The Holding Company had only released some singles, so hardly anyone had heard them. Yet they were already famous from the Fillmore and Avalon posters that were already in wide circulation. Thus, the group was already a "name" band even though they were largely unheard. The February show at The Barn was the third time the group had played there. They had played in the Spring of '66, before Janis Joplin had joined, and then again for a weekend in November.
Peter Albin of Big Brother and The Holding Company recalled (in a private email) that “I know that the last time we played the Barn was without David [Getz] as he was very ill. We used a drummer we knew from SF State."
For most shows at The Barn, there was a performer downstairs, before or between acts, and the headliners played in the larger upstairs area (the former basketball court). Usually the downstairs performer was a solo guitarist. On occasion, however, a Palo Alto duo called the Mercy Street Blues Machine (and sometimes The Hershey Gumbo Band) would perform downstairs. Chris Recker and Ralph Saunders were from Los Altos and Palo Alto, respectively, and hung out with the New Delhi River Band crowd. They were a few years younger than David Nelson and the others, at an age when a few years difference was significant. Chris Recker has been one of my principal sources about The Barn, along with Holly Harman, and I actually met Ralph Saunders Palo Alto in days gone by, because I was friendly with his brother. At the time, however, I knew nothing of The Barn, much less his role.
Recker and Saunders didn't play songs, as such. They both played guitar, and Saunders played steel guitar, too. They also had a bunch of percussion instruments. The pair would play sort of free, experimental music, not quite jazz. Sometimes their friends would join in on percussion, and sometimes they would let strangers from the crowd join in. The music could get noisy. They were playing at one of the Big Brother shows (in November or February), and their performance encouraged so many people to come downstairs that a peeved Janis Joplin came down to see what was going on.
Big Brother played in San Francisco on the Friday night (February 24), so we know they didn't play both shows at The Barn. The New Delhi River Band had a San Jose gig on this Saturday night. So it's likely that the New Delhi River Band played at The Barn Friday night but I have no way of confirming that.
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| Revolting, the 1970 debut album on Fantasy Records by Berkeley's Congress Of Wonders |
Congress Of Wonders, recalled by Albin as the openers, were a hip Berkeley comedy trio. They had played The Barn in December. They originated from the UC Berkeley drama department and were later part of Berkeley’s Open Theater on College Avenue, a prime spot for what were called “Happenings” (now ‘Performance Art’). Congress Of Wonders regularly performed at the Avalon and other rock venues.
Ultimately a duo, Karl Truckload (Howard Kerr) and Winslow Thrill (Richard Rollins) created two Congress of Wonders albums on Fantasy, Revolting (1970) and Sophomoric ('72). Pieces like “Pigeon Park” and “Star Trip”, although charmingly dated now, were staples of San Francisco underground radio at the time. Earl Pillow (actually Wesley Hind) was the original third member. March 3, 1967 The Barn, Scotts Valley, CA: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Spirits (Friday)
March 4, 1967 The Barn, Scotts Valley, CA: Peter & The Group/Spirits (Saturday)
The weekend of March 3 and 4 is only known from a long-lost flyer that can't be recovered, so it can't be confirmed. Similar to the previous week, however, there was a San Francisco headliner one night. Quicksilver Messenger Service was headlining at The Barn on Friday night, while the New Delhi River Band was opening for the Loading Zone at the Pauley Ballroom on the Berkeley campus. The next night, Quicksilver would be headlining Pauley Ballroom themselves, leaving The Barn to the local regulars.
Quicksilver Messenger Service was one of the foundational Fillmore groups, so once again their name was familiar to teenagers all over the Bay Area who had seen it on numerous exotic posters. In fact, Quicksilver had not recorded yet, so relatively few of those teenagers would have had actually seen the band, but they had the kind of cachet that comes with being an underground sensation. Anyone who got to The Barn wouldn't have been disappointed. Early '67 Quicksilver was a quintet, whereas the classic version known from the debut album had just four members. Guitarist and singer Jimmy Murray joined fellow guitarists John Cipollina and Gary Duncan, with David Frieberg on bass and Greg Elmore on drums. Murray, Duncan and Freiberg provided the vocals.
The early '67 Quicksilver already had the catchy, jagged sound that would go nationwide in 1968, with Cippolina's shivering guitar setting off the R&B sounds. Yet early Quicksilver was still a little more folk-rock, with shorter, crisper songs and 3-part harmonies. Murray would leave the band in August, leaving the quartet to evolve into the classic form they would assume for their May '68 Capitol debut.
The Animals, with their dynamic lead singer Eric Burdon, were part of the first wave of so-called "British Invasion" acts. The Animals had scored hits in 1964 with rocked-up blues like "House Of The Rising Sun" (1964) and "Boom Boom" (1965), much harder-edged than groups like The Beatles or Herman's Hermits. They had followed up with their own hits, like "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" and "It's My Life" (all '65). The Animals were huge in the States. During the Summer '66 tour, however, Burdon had taken a break from the relentless tour and spent some time in San Francisco, checking out the Fillmore and Avalon. It changed Burdon's whole view of music. He returned to England determined to re-make the Animals.
By late '66, the old Animals had been replaced by a new Animals, and the band was now called Eric Burdon & The Animals. There were two guitarists, the bluesy John Weider and the jazzy Vic Briggs. Only drummer Barry Jenkins remained from the prior lineup, and bassist Danny McCulloch filled out the band. Roughly speaking, Eric Burdon & The Animals sounded like a Fillmore band, but only Burdon had actually been to San Francisco. In February, 1967, Eric Burdon & The Animals began their American tour, leaning on their new single "When I Was Young," recorded in December. Tellingly, the b-side was "A Girl Named Sandoz."
The new Animals played both "teen" shows sponsored by radio stations and hipper gigs at colleges and the newer underground venues. In concert, they played one or two classic hits, but they mostly played newer material. Briggs and Weider were both excellent guitarists with contrasting styles, and they got their share of solos in, too. Hugely popular, Eric Burdon & The Animals was often the first psychedelic band that many rock fans got to see, particularly outside of California and New York.
Easter week came early in 1967. The Santa Cruz Boardwalk. for example, had announced it would be open for the entire week of March 18-26. Thus a Wednesday show at the Monterey County Fairgrounds was directed at out-of-school teenagers, mainly from San Jose. I'm not certain of the building, but in March there wouldn't have been an outdoor concert in the Horse Show Arena, where the legendary Monterey Pop Festival would be held a few months later. Eric Burdon & The Animals would be at Monterey Pop, too (on June 16-18), but none of the Animals seemed to have remembered that they had played the same Fairgrounds three months earlier.
By the time Eric Burdon & The Animals got to the West Coast, they had been touring relentlessly for several weeks. In this week, they would play the San Francisco Civic Auditorium on Tuesday (March 21), Monterey on Wednesday (March 22) and Stockton Civic Auditorium on Thursday (March 23). They would play Fresno on Friday (March 24) and headline a huge show at the new Oakland Coliseum Arena on Saturday night (March 25). The Oakland show turned out to be a debacle, in fact, but it wasn't the fault of the Animals. On Sunday night (March 26), after playing 5 gigs in a row, Eric Burdon & The Animals dropped in at the Avalon, and the Grateful Dead let them take over the stage and play a few numbers.
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| Santa Cruz Sentinel ad for the Quicksilver Messenger Service show at the Civic on March 25 (from the Friday March 24 issue) |
March 25, 1967 Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA: Quicksilver Messenger Service/The Sparrow/Blue Cheer (Saturday)
Rock concerts were common at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium in 1966 and '67. The Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, at 307 Church Street (at Center), had been built in 1940. It was a typical pre-war Civic Auditorium, holding about 2000, and it served the whole city: sporting events, music, trade shows, graduations and all sorts of other events. Most of the rock concerts, however, featured "teen" bands, often with a local hit single on KLIV (1590-am from San Jose). A lot of the bands were from San Jose, and some of them, like the Chocolate Watch Band, were really good.
But there had only been one "psychedelic" concert at the Civic, when the Jefferson Airplane had headlined a concert on May 28, 1966. In 1966, the Airplane had been the only San Francisco band that had any traction outside of San Francisco, since they had a local hit with their single "It's No Secret." By 1967, however, the Fillmore scene was infamous throughout Northern California, even if few teenagers outside of San Francisco and Berkeley had actually heard of most of the bands. The posters were famous, though, and people read about the groups even in the daily newspapers. While relatively few people probably had probably seen Quicksilver at The Barn a few weeks earlier, word might still have gotten around.
The Sparrow, noted as "From Canada," were indeed from Toronto, although they lived on houseboats in Sausalito at this time. They, too, were Avalon regulars. While they had been a fairly disciplined R&B band in Toronto, in San Francisco they loosened up with wild jamming, not always productively. In just a few months, the Sparrow would decamp for Los Angeles, and find a middle ground between rigid Toronto and loose San Francisco and re-combine as the hugely successful band Steppenwolf.
Blue Cheer was another San Francisco band, although most of the members were from the Sacramento area. Their first gigs in San Francisco had been in January of 1967. Initially the group was a six-piece. By early summer, guitarist Leigh Stephens and bassist Dickie Peterson would push out a few of the members, leaving Blue Cheer a trio. At this early stage, however, they still had six members. I'm aware of no Blue Cheer tapes from this era, so I have no idea how different early Blue Cheer might have been from the power trio that became infamous.
One odd feature of Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium shows was that all concerts were advertised with a beneficiary of some sort, such as the Police Athletic League. Of course bands and promoters all got paid, or hoped to be paid, but there seems to have been a requirement that profits go to some local charity. This concert, presented by "Sacred Cow," had small print in the ad that said "Benefit for Episcopal Young Churchmen, Calvary Parrish." A commenter on an old message board included the fascinating detail that there was no such organization (at least not near Santa Cruz), and the promoters kept the money, causing much anger from the City. This is of course unverifiable. Nonetheless, there were no similar concerts at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium for many years, either. Draw your own conclusion.
By the end of March, The Barn was on its last legs. Leon Tabory had spent a lot of money on appealing various court decisions, but time was running out. Tabory was still allowed to put on shows at The Barn, but not to improve the property. It isn't really clear if there were any shows at the Barn after the weekend of March 3 and 4. In any case, Tabory and some colleagues put on a sort of fundraiser at the San Jose Civic Auditorium. In theory, this was a good idea--many, perhaps most of those attending Barn shows were as near or nearer to the San Jose Civic than The Barn itself. Eve Miyasaki did the art for the poster.
The Charles Lloyd Quartet were a hip modern jazz group, but they were pretty much the first such band to play the Fillmore and the Avalon. Lloyd had played tenor sax and flute for Chico Hamilton and Cannonball Adderley, and his newest album was Love-In, recorded at the Fillmore on January 27, 1967. The cover featured a striking color photo of Lloyd's quartet on stage, bathed in the Fillmore light show. Pianist Keith Jarrett lived in the Haight Ashbury at the time. Bassist Ron McClure and drummer Jack DeJohnette rounded out the exceptional group. Regular Barn performers filled out the bill.
It's unclear whether or if the San Jose Civic fundraiser for The Barn was successful. In any case, it hardly mattered. On April 8, the town of Scotts Valley ruled that The Barn could no longer present shows. Tabory remained in control of The Barn for another year, and various bands hung out and rehearsed there. There were some parties there, of a sort, with bands playing, but no admission could be charged. The Barn had been one of the first psychedelic outposts inspired by the Fillmore scene, but it was also one of the first to fold its tent.
When The Barn closed, it wasn't like Santa Cruz stopped rocking. There were still concerts at the Boardwalk on a regular basis, and with UC Santa Cruz growing, the county was getting more psychedelic every day. Yet The Barn had incubated in Santa Cruz because it was so close to the Fillmore, and the proprietors, bands and fans knew what was what. Yet the very forces that would undermine fledgling Fillmores throughout the country in 1969 and '70 were already happening in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County had a tiny population, but it wasn't far from the booming city of San Jose. San Jose wasn't cool, but it had suburbs and teenagers, so that made it a big rock market. By 1967, all the hip Fillmore bands were playing San Jose, and Santa Cruz couldn't compete.
This happened all over the country within a few years, but it happened in Santa Cruz before most other cities even had an underground rock scene. In 1966, Santa Cruz had been a significant satellite of the San Francisco underground rock scene. By mid-67, Santa Cruz was falling off the psychedelic radar. The local longhairs just made the journey over the hill to San Jose to see the famous cool bands, and Santa Cruz venues didn't matter. In the rest of the country, underground psychedelic palaces would arrive in 1967 or 68, flourish for a year or two, and then fade away when the biggest bands moved to college gyms and civic auditoriums. It just happened earlier in Santa Cruz.
There were plenty of local bands in Santa Cruz, and some of them were apparently pretty good. But outside bands didn't come to Santa Cruz, and local bands didn't get heard elsewhere. There were a few more big events coming in Monterey Bay, but the moment was going to pass quickly.
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| Jefferson Airplane returned to downtown Santa Cruz, momentarily linking all the psychedelic threads: the Airplane, UCSC and the Boardwalk |
May 13, 1967 Stevenson College Dining Commons, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA: Jefferson Airplane (Saturday)
May 14, 1967 Cocoanut Grove, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Santa Cruz, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Flowers Of Evil/American Tragedy (Sunday)
UC Santa Cruz wasn't intended to be like Stanford or UC Berkeley, and it wasn't. But before the school went completely to Banana Slugs and Mescaline Tuesday (if you know, you know), there was some semblance of a "typical" University. UCSC had no football team nor fraternities, but at the end of Spring Semester in '67 they had a "Spring Thing" week, with silly events like purchasing a lunch prepared by a "coed," which included having lunch with a coed, like it was a Princeton/Mt. Holyoke mixer.
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| San Francisco Chronicle, May 7, 1967 |
The big event was a concert at the Cocoanut Grove featuring Jefferson Airplane, then riding high on their album Surrealistic Pillow. RCA had released the album in February, and it would reach #3. "Somebody To Love," the second single (after "My Best Friend"), was peaking in May and would reach #5. The next single, "White Rabbit," would be released in June and would peak at #8. Just like an Ivy, the "Spring Thing" got written up in the biggest paper, the San Francisco Chronicle (above). Historic note: this didn't happen again (ask your local Banana Slug about "Mescaline Tuesday," however).
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| The Cocoanut Grove Ballroom at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk as it appeared in 1949. It's still at 400 Beach Street (at Cliff), and it's not much different today. | |
The Cocoanut Grove was part of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, but had an entrance facing the street. The Cocoanut Grove Ballroom, originally called The Casino, had changed its name around 1929. The arcane spelling was done at the same time as the Marx Brothers movie and the Los Angeles hotel ballroom (at the Ambassador). In the 1930s and 40s, the Cocoanut Grove was a major stop for touring big bands, so the likes of Tommy Dorsey and Harry James had played there regularly.
In the 60s, the Cocoanut Grove had teen
rock and roll dances, too, but that was in fact right in line with its
history--young people dancing and having fun to popular music of the
day. The ballroom was also used for special events, weddings and other
functions that needed a big dance floor and, if necessary, table
service. So a college-sponsored rock concert at Cocoanut Grove, while very un-UCSC, was very much in line with the venue.
UC Santa Cruz had a "college system," modeled on Oxford and Cambridge. Cowell College had been the first one to open in the Fall of 1965. The next year Stevenson College opened. UCSC graduates from The Day are fiercely loyal to their college, and acutely aware of a pecking order that they imagine ranks each college. Cowell and Stevenson College shared a dining hall, so their alumni compete with each other while simultaneously looking down on all other, later colleges. Sometimes there were bands in the Stevenson Dining Commons, and on the Saturday before the Cocoanut Grove show that band was Jefferson Airplane. An attendee recalls Grace Slick singing "Under My Thumb."
Holly Harman recalls that Love Lights did the light show for the Cocoanut Grove show. Of course, the Cocoanut Grove held perhaps 1000, maybe more if they were crammed in. Jefferson Airplane was already getting bigger than any such venue--much less the Stevenson Dining Commons--and they would not play such a small hall again. Flowers Of Evil was a local band, as was American Tragedy, but I know nothing else about them.
May 28, 1967 {city park}, Monterey, CA (Sunday) Be-In and free concert
In his Chronicle column on Friday, May 26, Ralph J. Gleason mentioned that there would be a "Be-In" in Monterey on Sunday, May 28. After the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park on January 14, 1967, industrious hippies held Be-Ins all over North America. There were Be-Ins in San Jose, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Vancouver and even Raleigh, NC, among other places. There was usually a free concert, and sometimes major bands played. Country Joe & The Fish had headlined in San Jose (May 14) and The Grateful Dead would play the Palo Alto Be-In (July 2), for example, but I don't know who played the Monterey event, nor anything else about it. Presumably it was in a city park (like Veterans Memorial Park). Yet the fact that it was scheduled and Gleason heard about it was a sign that Monterey was in the hippie loop.
May 29, 1967 {indoor venue}, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: People!/Mystery Trend (Monday)
There were probably regular rock concerts at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, and we only have records of a very few, where an ad or flyer has survived. This Monday was the Memorial Day holiday. People!--yes, the exclamation point was part of their name--were a San Jose band that had formed in 1965. They would start recording for Capitol Records in 1967, and in June 1968 they would have a fairly large hit with a cover of the Zombies "I Love You," which would reach #14 on Billboard. The band would break up in 1971. Keyboard player Albert Ribisi was the father of the fine actor Giovanni Ribisi.
The Mystery Trend were a hip underground band from San Francisco State, led by future sculptor Ron Nagle. Mystery Trend, infamously named after a mishearing of a Bob Dylan lyric (from "Like A Rolling Stone") are now much-beloved of fanzines, even though they never actually released anything. They would break up shortly after this
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| Eric Burdon and The Animals, down in Monterey, at the Monterey Pop Festival on Friday, June 16, 1967. (L-R), Danny McCulloch (bs), Barry Jenkins (d), Eric Burdon (v), Vic Briggs (g), John Weider (g) |
June 16-18, 1967 Showgrounds Arena, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: Monterey Pop Festival (Friday-Sunday)
The most memorable rock event on the Pacific Coast in 1967, and indeed in any year, was the Monterey Pop Festival. The Monterey Fairgrounds had hosted a jazz festival since 1958, held every September, outside in the arena where the horses were shown during the county fair. The Monterey Jazz Festival was the premier West Coast jazz event, and a major event on the jazz festival circuit. There had even been a Monterey Folk Festival a few times, although it had never caught on. At the 1966 Jazz Festival, at the Saturday afternoon tribute to the blues (September 17 '66), Jefferson Airplane and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band had performed along with Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton. Both groups shined, and a young entertainment executive named Alan Pariser thought there was room for a rock festival. In the Spring of '67, Pariser pitched the idea to producer Lou Adler (of Ode Records), John Phillips (leader of The Mamas And The Papas) and Beatles publicist Derek Taylor. They organized the Monterey Pop Festival as a three-day, outdoor event modeled on the Jazz Festival.
The Monterey Pop Festival organizers were expecting something like 10,000 people over three days, comparable the Jazz Festival. Yet at least 20,000 people were there, and some think that as many as 50,000 were on the Fairgrounds. These numbers seem trivial compared to events like Woodstock, Altamont or Watkins Glen, but the attendance was unimaginably large for the time. The Fillmore Auditorium held 1500 people, and it was a large venue for the rock circuit of the era. As for the fans themselves, all the long-haired, bell-bottomed, would-be hippies in California found that there was a huge number of people just like them. Most hippies had a few dozen friends in their neighborhood or school--now it turned out there were twenty or fifty thousand of them statewide.
Besides massive press coverage at the time, Monterey Pop Festival has been immortalized by the DA Pennebaker documentary, originally planned as an ABC-tv special, but ultimately released theatrically in 1969. Professional color film of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Who and others in their first flowering are etched in the minds and hearts of people of a certain age. Over the decades, most of the initially un-used video and audio recordings have been issued, so fans can see or hear just about all the music played at the Festival (the Grateful Dead stubbornly refused to let their material be released, but we've heard it anyway).
Monterey Bay was somewhat conditioned for the Monterey Pop Festival by the percolating scene at The Barn, a few Airplane shows in downtown Santa Cruz and regular "teen" rock shows at indoor venues at the Fairground. Nonetheless, there had never had been a music event on the Coast anywhere near as big as the Monterey Pop Festival, nor would there be again. Nothing went wrong--no riots or deaths, no significant drug problems, peace and love were indeed everywhere--but Monterey County didn't think they would get lucky twice. Occasional attempts to revive the Monterey Pop Festival were never encouraged. It was an historic moment that was captured before it was gone.
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| Rhino's 1992 4cd box is an almost complete audio of the Monterey Pop Festival |
June 16, 1967 Showgrounds Arena, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: The Association/The Paupers/Lou Rawls/Beverley/Johnny Rivers/Eric Burdon and the Animals/Simon & Garfunkel (Friday)
June 17, 1967 Showgrounds Arena, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: Canned Heat/Big Brother and the Holding Company/Country Joe and the
Fish/Al Kooper/Butterfield Blues Band/Electric Flag/Quicksilver
Messenger Service/Steve Miller Band (Saturday afternoon)
June 17, 1967 Showgrounds Arena, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: Moby Grape/Hugh Masekela/The Byrds/Laura Nyro/Jefferson Airplane/Booker T. & the M.G.'s with The Mar-Keys/Otis Redding (Saturday evening)
June 18, 1967 Showgrounds Arena, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: Ravi Shankar (Sunday afternoon)
June 18, 1967 Showgrounds Arena, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: The Blues Project/Big Brother and the Holding Company/The Group With No
Name/Buffalo Springfield/The Who/Grateful Dead/Jimi Hendrix
Experience/Scott McKenzie/The Mamas & the Papas (Sunday evening)
All acts in order of appearance
Since the Monterey Pop Festival was uniquely well-covered, thanks to the Pennebaker documentary footage and professional recording, not to mention numerous journalists, I won't dwell on every act that played. There were numerous guests and surprises--Neil Young didn't play with Buffalo Springfield, for example, but David Crosby did instead--and that was part of the excitement. The Festival was also the first time that the "rock royalty," if you will, from San Francisco, London and Los Angeles all met each other. Many backstage photos show remarkable combinations of now-famous celebrities milling about together. Still, there were important implications for the rock concert industry that weren't apparent in the immediate aftermath.
One reason that the Monterey Pop Festival was never repeated was that the event was economically unviable. The Fairgrounds, if strained by up to 50,000 patrons, nonetheless had water, power, parking, bathrooms and food, was physically equipped for a huge crowd of people hanging around for three full days. In the next eighteen months, numerous events were put on at Fairgrounds throughout the United States, but none as diverse and exciting as Monterey Pop and were mostly financially shaky. The economics of the Monterey Pop Festival was based on an economic sleight of hand, one that almost all of the artists would refuse to countenance again.
The Los Angeles organizers (Lou Adler and John Phillips) held the event in Northern California, where bands regularly played for free in the park, and persuaded all the performers that they should play for free. London and LA bands got travel and lodging expenses paid, but they still played for free, because that was, apparently, "how it was done in San Francisco." The San Francisco bands, in turn, got nothing. They were told to play for free because they would get introduced to a larger audience than they would get at Golden Gate Park, and they would make money later. Play for free, in the hopes of an unnamed future payout--that's the internet model, isn't it?
The San Francisco bands went along with it, but they were highly resentful when they found out the organizers were selling the commercial rights to ABC television, and not sharing the money. Many of the San Francisco bands nearly backed out. Ironically, although no one had heard any of the SF bands (save for the Airplane), the Fillmore bands gave the Monterey Pop Festival underground cachet that Simon & Garfunkel or The Mamas And The Papas lacked. Paul Simon had to fly to San Francisco to coax Jerry Garcia and the Dead not to drop out of the festival.
Ravi Shankar was the only act who got paid for his performance. Country Joe & The Fish demanded and received money from the TV production, though not from the organizers. The Grateful Dead refused to sign away their performance rights, so they were not filmed. The Dead, being the Dead, also "borrowed" many of the Fender amplifiers used for the Festival, and used them as their PA for a few free concerts, before returning the amps to the Monterey music store from which they were rented. Fans who might have wondered why their favorite band didn't play Monterey Pop didn't realize that the offer was "play for free, and then sign away your performance rights," and most professional bands won't do that.
Thus Monterey Pop could never be repeated. A County Fairgrounds festival only worked financially if the bands not only played for free, but if the organizers got paid for TV rights that they did not plan to share. It wasn't a workable model. At least it worked once, anyway. Sic Transit Gloria Psychedelia.
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| A photo of the Holidays Commune psychedelic bus at the Cypress Community College athletic field was published by the Monterey Herald on June 18, 1967. Hippies were camping out in huge numbers at the athletic field. The Grateful Dead and others performed for free during the weekend. |
June 17-18, 1967 Athletic Field, Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, CA: Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Kaleidoscope/Cloud Brothers/unknown others (Saturday-Sunday)
One Rock Festival dynamic that the Monterey Pop Festival foreshadowed was the difficulty for a community to absorb an enormous number of rock fans all at once. Somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 rock fans showed up in Monterey County that weekend--where were they all going to sleep? The Monterey Jazz Festival, besides not drawing as many people, implicitly assumed that many festival-goers would drive back to their Bay Area homes each night, and the rest would check into hotels or resorts. But young rock fans were different.
Many of the hippies who attended the Monterey Pop Festival had shared rides in crowded VW buses and the like, or simply hitchhiked. The Rock Festival ran late each night, and many people were up even later, due in no small part to a certain Mr. Owsley. They couldn't or wouldn't drive back to Berkeley or Santa Clara or wherever, and they weren't checking in to the Del Monte Beach Inn, either. Fortunately, somehow the powers-that-be had the foresight to open the Monterey Peninsula College Athletic Field just across Highway 1 for camping.
Monterey Peninsula College had opened in 1947 as part of Monterey High School, and had split off into a Community College in 1961. The campus was at 980 Fremont Street, about 2 miles West of the Fairgrounds. The athletic field had grandstands, a circular track and a grass football field. The Grateful Dead had showed up in Monterey on Saturday morning (June 17), after a disastrous gig in LA at the Hullabaloo club. Somehow a stage had been constructed, and the Dead borrowed some amplifiers from the organizers, and the Dead played for free. All the hippies with nowhere to stay went and camped at the Athletic Field, listening to the Dead and other bands.
Even in the low-tech 60s, stages, power and amplifiers don't appear from thin air. Someone had the foresight to organize the campsite, get permission from the school to unlock the gates and keep the cops from busting everyone for weed or curfew violations. However it got put together, it also helped that the Grateful Dead played some sets--how many remains uncertain--to ensure that staying at the campsite was attractive enough to draw passing hippies. Since the Athletic Field absorbed thousands of traveling young people, problems between conservative townies and their young visitors were minimized.
The campsite and free stage at Monterey Peninsula College have passed into rock legend. On the last day of the Festival (Sunday June 18), the Monterey Herald printed a picture of the Holidays Commune bus, with its psychedelic paint job (see above). Most chronicles of the Monterey Pop Festival allude to the free stage, asserting that the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service played there. They probably did, of course, but the truth is all the information is second or third hand, from people mostly too high to remember.
Robert Christgau wrote an article about the Monterey Pop Festival shortly afterwards where a young hippie tells him that there was an all-night jam on the athletic field, with all the stars of the show. The hippie describes Eric Burdon of The Animals playing "House Of The Rising Sun" backed by Pete Townshend on guitar. This story, or allusions to it, are also regularly included in any re-telling of the Monterey Pop weekend. I have looked into it, however, and I am sad to report that it is either greatly exaggerated or simply untrue.
When we were researching our detailed concert history of the second, psychedelic Eric Burdon & The Animals, we were fortunate to have the detailed memories of guitarist Vic Smith (later Antion Meredith--RIP and Safe Travels), whose recollections of the 60s were startlingly accurate. First of all, he told me that the Animals spent most of their free time at night watching the other bands. Secondly, he told me that while Burdon very well could have dropped by to join in, Vic said that Eric wouldn't sing his signature song at a jam. Finally, as to Pete Townshend, The Who were playing the Fillmore on Friday and Saturday (June 16-17), so his possible presence would be limited. That being said, Briggs did recall jamming a little, so likely there were other celebrity drop-ins, too.
Kaleidoscope and The Cloud BrothersWe do have some firm sightings, however. The wonderful Los Angeles group Kaleidoscope had been told that they were going to play Monterey Pop, to fill in for a group that had canceled. They went to Monterey, only to find out they were not actually booked. Instead, they played a few songs at the free stage. According to David Lindley, their performance irritated some bikers, so they stopped playing.
Holly Harman's book has a detailed description, however, from her future husband Eric Levin (they would marry twenty years later, and just casually knew each other at the time). In the book, Levin describes his experience playing at the Athletic Field. By this time, his band Spirit (or The Spirits), described above, had split up and had moved out of the Holidays Commune. Levin's new band, The Cloud Brothers, was based in the Haight-Ashbury. The group had come to the Festival and was camping on the Athletic Field when they were offered a chance to play on Sunday night, and an ad-hoc version of the Cloud Brothers took it up.
The Cloud Brothers included Eric Levin on guitar and vocals, David Russek on lead guitar and the truly infamous Curly Jim Stalarow on guitar and vocals. Curly Jim is worthy of a blog post of his own--which I have written--and an episode of Deadcast--which Jesse and Rich have completed. Among many other accomplishments, Curly Jim taught Bob Weir "Me And My Uncle," and claims to have written it, and numerous other strange-but-probably-true tales. Levin doesn't recall if Cloud Brothers bassist Bobby Collins and organist Al Rose played with them, but he does recall that their drummer (Mad Eddy) wasn't available, but that the Animals drummer (Barry Jenkins) sat in. So at least one Animal was definitely around.
There is much more to the story of the Monterey Peninsula College stage and campsite, but it will likely never be told. If anyone has any recollections, however vague and acid-tinged, that are not drawn from the internet, please include them in the Comments.
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| A 21st Century view of Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI), just Northwest of downtown. The Navy built the field in 1943 as an auxiliary landing field, and turned it over to the city in 1946. Country Joe & The Fish played a concert in an aircraft hangar on June 18, 1967 |
June 18, 1967 [aircraft hangar], Watsonville Municipal Airport, Watsonville, CA: Country Joe & The Fish/Uncle Ben's Wild Rice/Boston Tea Party (Sunday afternoon)
On the Sunday of the Monterey Pop Festival, Country Joe & The Fish, who had played the Festival on Saturday night, played an afternoon gig in Santa Cruz County. Watsonville is about 15 miles South of Santa Cruz and 30 miles North of the Monterey Fairgrounds. The show was in an aircraft hangar at the tiny local airport, Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI).
Opening the show was Uncle Ben's Wild Rice, a power trio from Santa Cruz. Boston Tea Party is unknown to me.
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| The flyer for the 1967 Big Sur Folk Festival (June 28-29) was very much in the style of a Fillmore poster |
June 28-29, 1967 Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA: Joan Baez/Judy Collins/Mark Spoelstra and The Jade Muse/Chambers Brothers/Mimi Farina/Al Kooper (Wednesday-Thursday) 2pm Big Sur Folk Festival
The annual Big Sur Folk Festival was held a few weeks after the Monterey Pop Festival. The event was always held on weekdays, with limited ticket sales and was intended to be a relaxing break from the busy folk festival summer circuit. Esalen was a sort of "new age" resort in beautiful Big Sur, 50 miles South of Monterey on the Pacific Coast. Esalen (at the address of 55000 US-1) had been founded in 1962. The afternoon concerts were held in front of the Esalen swimming pool, with the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop.
While the Big Sur Folk Festival was still a "folk" event, rock was starting to creep in. Mark Spoelstra, a Greenwich Village folkie from the early 60s, had just released his third album on Elektra, State Of Mind. Now he fronted a sort of folk-rock band called Jade Muse. Jade Muse only played a few gigs, but Big Sur seems to have been one of them. The Chambers Brothers had been part of the Southern California folk scene since the 1950s, but they had gone "full electric" by this time. In 1966, the band had recorded the song "Time Has Come Today," but Columbia only briefly released it. Later, a new version of the song, re-edited with new effects, would be released (in November 1967). It was a massive hit, and everyone's soul became psychedelicized. The versatile Chambers Brothers could have played acoustic or electric at Big Sur.
Al Kooper wasn't a folkie by any stretch of the imagination. Kooper had just left the Blues Project, and had acted as a sort of "musical director" for Monterey Pop, even playing a brief set with a one-off band. At Big Sur, he played with drummer Bobby Columby and bassist Jim Fielder. The trio would then go East and add a horn section, evolving into Blood, Sweat & Tears.
The Big Sur Folk Festival remained at Esalen through 1969, where the headliner was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Some of that show was captured in the 1971 documentary Celebration At Big Sur. It would then move to the Monterey County Fairgrounds for 1970 and '71, by which time it was a low-key rock festival in any case.
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| Some ads from the June 30, 1967 Sentinel. I have heard of The Escorts, but know little about the Poison Spring Lounge save that some Pranksters hung out there in '65 (Capitola is a beach town 5 miles south of Santa Cruz). People! played the Civic again. |
June 30, 1967 Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA: People!/Phoenix (Friday)
The Monterey Pop Festival was the high water mark for Santa Cruz and Monterey County rock music in the 20th century. It was a magic weekend, for so many reasons, amply documented and still nostalgically recalled today. Yet all the elements that fell into place to make the weekend special could not be repeated. Bands wouldn't work for free, all the bands were too famous, there wasn't room for 50,000 fans and so on. The rock concert business was regionalizing, too. Popular bands played the Fillmore, and soon the Fillmore would be too small. An outlying county like Santa Cruz was never going to get the big bands. Santa Cruz fans, in turn, went to San Jose, Berkeley or the Fillmore to hear the bands they would read about in Rolling Stone magazine.
There were still rock concerts in Santa Cruz, however, but they weren't the kind of memorable acts who played the Fillmore or Avalon. I don't know whether there were more concerts at the Santa Cruz Civic than were advertised in the Sentinel. In any case, People! played the Santa Cruz Civic. Opening act Phoenix was probably the newly-formed San Francisco band, linked to the Vipers, who would later move to Santa Cruz themselves in 1970 and re-name themselves Potter's Wheel.
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| Ads in the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Friday July 14 '67) promote a "Teen Dance" at the Civic, as well as nightly shows at the Brunswick Surf Bowl, near the Boardwalk at 115 Cliff. The Sideminders were a Monterey band. The Surf Bowl (a bowling alley, too) ad used the same rock band picture every week--it wasn't the Sideminders. |
July 14, 1967 Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA: Uncle Ben and His Wild Rice/The Jaguars/Stained Glass (Friday)
The Jaguars may have been from San Jose--I'm not certain--but they played Santa Cruz County a lot. In the parlance of the time, The Jaguars were "rivals" with Santa Cruz bands like Korny and The Korvettes, the E-Types (from Salinas) and The Cobras (from Pacific Grove). One of the guitarists from The Cobras was Bob O'Neill, who would go on to lead the band Snail, Santa Cruz County's most popular live band in the 1970s. It goes without saying that all the members of these "rival" bands were friends.
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| The cover of Stained Glass' first album, Crazy Horse Roads, released by Capitol in 1968, has fairly unsettling cover art. |
Stained Glass had arisen from a Mill Valley band called The Trolls, but I think they mostly played the San Jose area. Stained Glass included bassist/singer Jim McPherson, who would go on to play with John Cipollina (in Copperhead), Robert Hunter (in Roadhog) and Mickey Hart (in High Noon). Stained Glass would actually release two albums on Capitol, but their popularity in the South Bay would have stemmed from constant performing.
August 25, 1967 Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, Santa Cruz, CA: People!/Stained Glass/Psycadelic Sounds (Friday)
People! and Stained Glass returned to the Civic the weekend before Labor Day. The opening band Psycadelic Sounds wasn't even that psychedelic, apparently, but the fact that they thought it was a cool name was a sign of changing times. The indispensable Garage Hangover site has a great post about the Santa Cruz 60s local scene, with pictures of bands and 45 rpm singles from that time. There is a great, extensive Comments Thread with memories from many of the participants. The bands were hardly known outside of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, but they meant a lot to the people who were there. The Comment thread hints at long-lost venues and events, too small to make this blog post but probably lots of fun.
September 2-3, 1967: Cabrillo College Stadium, Cabrillo Junior College, Aptos, CA (Saturday-Sunday) Magic Music Festival Benefit for SCA at Santa Cruz canceled
Grateful Dead/Canned Heat/The Leaves/Andrew Staples/Sons of Champlin/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/The Other Side/E-Types/Mourning Reign/Imperial Mange Remedy/Omens/Ragged Staff/Talon Wedge & Others.
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| Cabrillo College, from just above the parking lot. Did your college have this view? |
For devoted 60s rock fans, the most heralded event seems to have been the two-day "Magic Music Festival" advertised for the Labor Day weekend, to be held on the football stadium at Cabrillo College Stadium. Cabrillo Junior College had opened in 1959, and was the first higher education establishment in Santa Cruz County. It preceded UC Santa Cruz by six years. The school was located in the unincorporated town of Aptos, about six miles South of downtown Santa Cruz. Cabrillo College is on a coastal hillside, with a view from the parking lot that would be the envy of any million dollar resort. Cabrillo, junior college though it may have been, was a significant cultural influence on Santa Cruz County once it opened.
In 1987, author Paul Grushkin published an elegant book called The Art Of Rock, with beautiful reprints of famous '60s posters. The book was essential in re-kindling interest in classic Fillmore posters, even before the internet. For '60s rock fans, and particularly poster aficionados, every poster in the book is somewhat famous in its own right. Thus the September 2&3, 1967 flyer from the book (shown just above) instantly made the show a legend. Since the bill included the Grateful Dead, the Cabrillo event also appeared in every list of Grateful Dead concerts. Besides the Grateful Dead, there were lots of cool bands, a number of which I have mentioned in this post.
The handbill itself said
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
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| The Santa Cruz Sentinel of Tuesday, August 29 reported the cancellation |
On August 29, the Tuesday before the show, the Santa Cruz Sentinel had a brief article that explained
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 had not been authorized by the college, according to Cabrillo officials.
So Santa Cruz County's biggest rock event in the 60s was just a wish, a handbill for an event that didn't happen. It remains unclear who was actually trying to produce the show, even though it didn't happen. More's the pity. Santa Cruz County had followed the lead of San Francisco and San Jose in 1966 for booking rock concerts, but by late 1967 it was out of the picture.
September 16, 1967 Showgrounds Arena, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: Big Brother & The Holding Company/BB King/T Bone Walker/Richie Havens/Clara Ward Singers (Saturday) Jazz Festival afternoon showThe Monterey Jazz Festival returned in September, as it would continue to do through 2024 and beyond. For the now-traditional "Tribute To The Blues" on Saturday afternoon, Big Brother & The Holding Company were booked along with BB King and T-Bone Walker. Muddy Waters had been booked, but apparently had to cancel. However it may have been seen at the time, with respect to putting a white rock act with blues legends, and given fifty years to reflect, BB, T-Bone and Janis are a pretty good snapshot of post-war blues. Here's to hoping the three of them hoisted a flask together before or after the show.
Monterey County did not want a repeat of the Pop Festival, and Santa Cruz County didn't want to turn over the Junior College football field, either. Significant rock shows largely disappeared from both ends of the Monterey Bay for the next several years. The Counties were probably wise. Both Counties were small, and would have been overrun with excited young swarms of teenagers. Woodstock, NY and other such places would find that out soon enough. The Monterey Bay found out first, had some great moments, shut the door and moved on. It was fun while it lasted.
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| The Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, at 307 Church Street (at Center), as it appeared in July 2010 |
Aftermath
In the 1970s, the live rock concert business exploded, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. As if that wasn't enough, Silicon Valley bloomed as well, so San Jose and its surrounding towns grew not only larger but wealthier.
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| Warner Brothers scored a big hit with Harpers Bizarre from Santa Cruz (formerly The Tikis). Their cover of Paul Simon's "59th St Bridge Song," arranged by Leon Russell, would reach #13 in Spring 1967. Future producer Ted Templeman is at left. |
Musicians still came from Santa Cruz, but few of them stayed local. The biggest act ever to come out of Santa Cruz County remained Harpers Bizarre, with their 1967 cover of "Feelin' Groovy." Bandleader Ted Templeman, who had gone to San Lorenzo Valley High School, became one of the most successful rock producers ever (most prominently Van Morrison's Tupelo Honey, the Doobie Brothers, Montrose, Nicolette Larson and Van Halen).
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| Snail had been formed in Santa Cruz in 1967 as Talon Wedge, a blues trio. It took until 1978 for the quartet to release their debut album on Cream Records. |
The 1967 psychedelic trio Talon Wedge would evolve into Snail in 1968. Talon Wedge guitarist Bob O'Neill teamed up with guitarist Ken Kraft, and Snail became popular in the South Bay and then throughout Central California. Fine players passed through the band, including Larry Hosford and the legendary Howard Dumble. Snail would release two good albums on Cream Records, but ground to a halt when Kraft got had a brain hemorrhage in 1980. Snail drummer Don Baldwin (ex-Elvin Bishop Group) would then join Jefferson Starship, bringing along bassist Bret Bloomfield. Later Baldwin would join the Jerry Garcia Band (1994-95), so Snail's musical qualities are not in doubt. Kraft and O'Neill re-activated Snail for a popular reunion in 2007. Snail released an album as recently as 2022.
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| Nashville producers heard Santa Cruz songwriter Jill Croston's debut album on Harbor Records in 1978, and made her a big star as Lacy J Dalton. |
Jill Byrem, from Pennsylvania, was the lead singer of the psychedelic blues band Office in the late 1960s. She would marry the band manager, who unfortunately had a tragic swimming accident in 1971. Jill Croston was a single mom and "singing waitress" for much of the 1970s, but managed to put out a self-released album of her own country-rock songs in 1978. She was heard by Nashville producers, who loved the music and her sound but wanted her to change her name, so she became famous as Lacy J Dalton.
Drummer Johnny Craviotta, from Korny and The Korvettes ended up drumming with some newer local residents in The Ducks. The Ducks played Santa Cruz dives unannounced around 1977, with Bob Mosley (bass) and Jeff Blackburn (guitar) from Moby Grape joining Craviotta and Neil Young.
Organist Cornelius Bumpus (1945-2004) joined the Doobie Brothers, brought in by Doobies producer Templeman, on the condition that he not be called "Corny." He also toured with Steely Dan for much of the 1990s.
The new rock venues in the South Bay, such as the San Jose Center For The Performing Arts (first rock shows 1975) and then the massive Shoreline Amphitheater (opened 1986) drew fans from all over the Bay. Santa Cruz was too small to compete with that, and Santa Cruz rock fans got used to going over Highway 17 for concerts.
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| A John Liberatore poster for The Bubble at the Cabrillo Campus Center, September 21 '68 |
The Barn was prevented from putting on concerts after April 1967, but Tabory remained in control of the building. There were parties there, and bands rehearsed there. Guitarist Ken Kraft had a band called The Bubble that got together at The Barn. The Bubble played around until Kraft joined Talon Wedge and they became Snail. Tabory lost control of The Barn in April 1968. It became a musical theater for a while in the 1970s, then a warehouse. It was finally torn down for the Baymonte Christian School parking lot.
The Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium (capacity 2000) remained the county's largest rock venue until the Kaiser Permanente Arena (capacity 2500) opened up in 2012 to house the Santa Cruz Warriors. In the 20th century, back when it was still profitable for rock bands to tour, the Santa Cruz Civic got a lot of bands with an extra date to fill between San Francisco and LA. I saw the Tubes there (July 11 '75), The Band tried out their new horn section (Aug 20 '76), my future wife saw Jackson Browne (1977), the Jerry Garcia Band played there many times, I saw a great REM show on a Tuesday (Jul 23 '85) and that's just my personal recollections. As the economics of touring have changed, both Kaiser Permanente and the Civic are now mostly too small for touring bands.
Patti DiLudovico, who had performed at The Barn back in '65, founded The Catalyst coffee shop as a co-op with her husband Al in 1966. It rapidly became a folk music club, then a rock club, got sold, and moved down Pacific Avenue, ultimately to an old bowling alley. Again, when touring was profitable, some great bands played the Catalyst (at 1011 Pacific Avenue) in the 80s and 90s. It's still open, but just a friendly ghost now.
The Monterey County Fairgrounds remain open, and the Monterey Jazz Festival largely thrives, but rock concerts there are few and far between. Ironically, the people who want to see classic rock bands in concert can now all afford Monterey hotel rooms, and enjoy golf and fine restaurants.
The nearest homage to the Monterey Pop Festival was two decades later, at two weekend concerts at Laguna Seca Raceway, a few miles East of the Fairgrounds. For two consecutive Summers, the Grateful Dead played multiple shows at Laguna Seca (May 9-10 '87 and July 29-31 '88), with multiple supporting acts. Fans were able to camp out at the racetrack all weekend, and everyone had a great time. Ironically, although there was never a re-play of the Monterey Pop Festival, the county essentially re-upped the 24/7 campout and party at the Monterey Peninsula College instead, this time with 20,000 Deadheads. David Lindley and El-Rayo X were one of the supporting acts in 1988 (along with Los Lobos)--Lindley had been in Kaleidoscope when they had played the Athletic Field back in '67. This time, they didn't get run off by bikers.
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| The Grateful Dead at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey County, July 30, 1988. The stage backs on to turn 3. The Andretti hairpin (turn 2) swoops in behind it |
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