Palo Alto Psychedelic Rock Shows 1965-66 (Palo Alto I)

The site of The Big Beat, at 998 San Antonio Road in Palo Alto, as it appeared in 2009. The contours of the building were probably largely unchanged since the building was the site of the Palo Alto Acid Test on December 18, 1965

Palo Alto, California, is only a town of about 60,000, about 35 miles South of San Francisco, and yet it looms large in the world, far out of proportion to its modest size. Palo Alto residents, like the residents of most small towns, think the world revolves around itself. The principal difference between Palo Alto and other towns is the tendency to invent or encourage institutions that redound to the importance of Palo Alto--Stanford University, Hewlett-Packard, The Stanford Shopping Center, Acid Tests, The Grateful Dead, Mapquest and Google, for example, just to name a few. All of these institutions re-write history in Palo-centric ways that reaffirms the town's importance. Residents of neighboring communities find Palo Altans self absorbed and self-important, which we probably are, but our next innovation will just reconfigure the past in a way that justifies our own narrative. And so it was with psychedelic rock and roll in the 1960s.

Palo Alto, by its own accounting, played a big part in 60s psychedelic rock and roll. The history of the Fillmore and The Avalon always begins with Ken Kesey at Stanford, and the parties and acid tests that followed. Of course, Kesey's cottage was really next door in Menlo Park, but that sort of detail never interfered with a Palo Alto story. At the same time, Jerry Garcia and other bohemians were hanging out in downtown Palo Alto, even if they often lived in Menlo Park themselves. Certainly, Jerry Garcia started playing live in Stanford and Palo Alto, and he took acid for the first time in Palo Alto, and by the end of 1965 Garcia was the lead guitarist in an electric blues band. The Warlocks--who debuted themselves in Menlo Park--became the Grateful Dead, and the house band of The Merry Pranksters, and Palo Alto's place in the rock revolution was secure.

Yet Palo Alto, as ground zero for the consciousness expansion of rock music, has a rather scattered history of rock and roll events. While some of this had to do with economics, some of it had to do with the very peculiar circumstances of Palo Alto and Stanford, which both favored and discouraged any kind of rock and roll underground. But this peculiarity is perfectly Palo Alto--a story that applies to no other town, which is just how Palo Alto likes it. This post will begin my series on the rock and history of the the second half of the 1960s in Palo Alto.

The Cabana Hotel, at 4290 El Camino Real in Palo Alto, soon after its opening in 1963. Part owner Doris Day said to her husband, "but Marty, it's Palo Alto." So true. Doris also referred to the fountain as having a statue of a Greek whore.

August 30-31, 1965 Cabana Hotel, Palo Alto, CA
The first and most important event in Palo Alto's rock and roll history was it's biggest, and to some extent it has never been topped. 60s rock and roll begins with The Beatles, and when the Beatles played the Cow Palace in San Francisco, they rather inexplicably chose to stay at a hotel in Palo Alto. The town has never gotten over it.

Palo Alto's Cabana Hotel, at 4290 El Camino Real, far South of downtown and the Stanford campus, was built in 1962. South Palo Alto was a casual suburban strip mall at the time, and the opulent hotel was garishly out of place. Conceived by entrepreneur Jay Sarno, with investors who included Doris Day's husband Martin Melcher (Doris was reputed to have said, "but Marty, it's Palo Alto? Who's going to stay at such a hotel in Palo Alto, and without gambling?"), the hotel became the model for the Caesar's Palace resort in Las Vegas. Apparently, Beatles manager Brian Epstein felt that staying in Palo Alto would be less difficult than staying in San Francisco, so for the nights of August 30-31, 1965, The Fab Four stayed at the Cabana in Palo Alto.

Things were different then. Apparently the Beatles only had two rooms (supposedly Ringo did not even spend the night, as he found a friend). Young women from all over the Bay Area persuaded their parents to let them go to the Cabana, and young men tried to dress like journalists in suits and ties, and they all tried to crash the hotel. Many of them succeeded. No other rock and roll event has ever affected Palo Alto so much. The Beatles' rooms are now a special suite.

A 2011 closeup of 998 San Antonio Road, the site of The Big Beat. If these walls could talk, they would probably have said, "I don't remember, man."

December 18, 1965 Big Beat Club, Palo Alto, CA Palo Alto Acid Test The Grateful Dead/The Witches
For most towns, it is hard to identify when the psychedelic rock and roll revolution hit the place. Palo Alto isn't like most towns. There's a date and an address. It was Saturday, December 18, 1965, at 998 San Antonio Road, at a club that had not yet opened called The Big Beat. Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters had an Acid Test--LSD was still legal--at an empty club near the Freeway. The Grateful Dead were there, and they met legendary acid chemist Owsley Stanley, and the world would never be the same. Only a few hundred people, if that, attended the event and partook of the Kool-Aid, but the world found about it from Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. More recently, David Browne's excellent book So Many Roads has an excellent chapter where eyewitnesses recall the event in great detail.

Palo Alto's only rock venue in 1966 was The Big Beat. Although it had hosted the Palo Alto Acid Test before it opened, it was far from downtown and the Stanford campus, and mostly featured a cover band (the ad is from the Stanford Daily of December 2, 1966)

The Big Beat was in the far Southeastern corner of Palo Alto. When it officially opened in early 1966, the club's location actually made it more accessible to people who lived in Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Cupertino rather than Palo Alto. One of many oddities of Palo Alto was that there were no bars downtown, so there was nowhere for Stanford students to drink. This was no accident, as founder Leland Stanford had insisted that Palo Alto serve no liquor as a condition of funding the University. By the 1960s, downtown restaurants near campus served beer and wine, but downtown was still dormant. Other parts of Palo Alto had bars and nightlife, but they weren't near campus. Their clientele often came from towns just south, which was why the Big Beat was located in the far southern corner of the town.

Since The Big Beat served beer, no one under 21 could come--well, except for 18 year old girls on dates, but that's a digression--, and since you needed a car to get there, it wasn't appealing to the downtown bohemians who were Jerry Garcia's old pals. If they were getting into a car, they were more likely to go to San Francisco or the Santa Cruz Mountains than South Palo Alto. The Big Beat was open from 1966 to early 1968, and probably did OK for a while, but it was rapidly outdated. Local combos playing covers were not nearly as hip as underground bands playing their own stuff at the Fillmore, and the Big Beat faded away without fanfare. Otherwise, just about all the meaningful Palo Alto rock and roll in 1966 was at Stanford University.

January 25, 1966 Downstairs Grill Room, Tressider Memorial Union, Stanford University: Lovin' Spoonful
Stanford had always been land-rich yet cash poor, so for its first 60 years of existence, the University was a somewhat threadbare institution for the sons of would-be gentlemen. By 1955, however, Stanford had figured out how to capitalize on its land, and one of the first outdoor malls, the Stanford Shopping Center, was built on its property. Along with the industrial park that would incubate Silicon Valley, Stanford's economic status rose dramatically, and it's academic and cultural profile rose accordingly.

Like all colleges and universities back in the day, Stanford had an entertainment budget for students. Early in the Winter Quarter of 1966, Stanford scored perhaps the hippest band in America at the time. Although the Lovin' Spoonful are now shrugged off as just another oldies act, their late '65 hits like "Do You Believe In Magic" lit up the radio. The Spoonful had headlined the very first Family Dog Dance in October 1965, so they were as cool as could be. The Tressider Student Union was at the center of campus, so this would have been a happening event.

Shortly after this, there was a confirmed  appearance at Tressider by the Butterfield Blues Band, although I haven't been able to pin down the date. I assume this was some sort of show during the time the band had its epic engagement at the Fillmore Auditorium (February 25-27, 1966). At a time when new folk rock bands were just figuring out electric instruments, the Butterfield Blues Band were polished masters. Any Stanford students who wanted to hip in Winter '66 got a good dose right on campus. The Butterfield show was alluded to in the Stanford Daily, and eyewitnesses recalled it as well.

An ad for the Lovin Spoonful at Tressider Union Deck, from the May 13, 1966 Stanford Daily

May 19, 1966 Tresidder Memorial Union Deck, Stanford:  Lovin Spoonful

At the end of Spring Quarter, the Lovin Spoonful returned. Now they were playing outdoors on the back of Tressider, at an outdoor deck which today has long since been turned into another extension of the building. This time, not only were the Spoonful playing a bigger room, but tickets were $2.00 instead of $1.50. They were still piling up hit after hit ("You Didn't Have To Be So Nice," "Daydream," and "Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind") and were bigger than ever. An eyewitness, then in the 6th grade, reported a warm day and a great show. The Spoonful headlined at Berkeley's Greek Theater on Saturday night, two days later, at the time a huge venue for a rock band. The Spoonful were definitely a coming thing.

The Lovin' Spoonful, with great songs, huge hits and a nice live act, should have ridden into the Fillmores on a white horse and become monstrously popular. Sometime in 1966 or 67, however, possibly during this weekend, the Spoonful got busted for weed in San Francisco. Spoonful guitarist Zal Yanovsky, afraid of being deported back to Canada, snitched on his dealer, who was the manager of the San Francisco theater group The Committee. The Spoonful were thus ostracized from the San Francisco underground, and were never booked at the Fillmore or the Avalon. While this may have been just a casual inconvenience to their booking agent, the fact that they never played the Fillmore  insured that the Spoonful was remembered as just an old hit single act, and not the underground sensation they truly were.

Jefferson Airplane Takes Off was the band's debut album, released on RCA in December 1965

May 22, 1966 Cabana Hotel, Palo Alto  Jefferson Airplane/others  

Peninsula Volunteers “Step N Time” Gala

The Cabana Hotel, as the Peninsula's most glamorous, was a regular venue for high school proms and debutante balls. Thus it was the site of a charity fashion show on Sunday, May 22. No doubt in an effort to be hip, San Francisco's most prominent rock band The Jefferson Airplane were the headline entertainers. The Airplane had released their successful debut album, and had had a little hit with "It's No Secret," but they were not yet what they would become. Their female lead singer was Signe Anderson, a fine singer, but no Grace Slick.

Another local band was also on the bill, and both bands played around the swimming pool. The local band opened the show, and one of its members reported that the PA was so inadequate that the Airplane borrowed the opening band's equipment, too. Another eyewitness, David Biasotti (the future guitarist of the semi-legendary band Maxfield Parrish), reported that the Airplane simply played instrumentals for much of the show, perhaps as a protest. At the end of the show, drummer Skip Spence threw his sticks in the air and announced he was leaving the band, although Biasotti may be the only one who recalled that (Spence would move on to help found the great Moby Grape).

The approximate site of The Outfit, ca. 2011, on Homer Lane in Palo Alto, behind Town And Country Village shopping center, across the railroad tracks. It is now a parking lot for the Palo Alto Medical Center.

June ?, 1966 The Outfit, Palo Alto, CA The Outfit
There were a very small number of proto-hippie bohemians in Palo Alto at this time. One eyewitness told me that in total, they were just "a few dozen, plus the Kesey people" (this has been informally confirmed by others). The "scene," such as it was, revolved around two crumbling Edwardian houses near downtown. One was on Channing Avenue, and the other was on Waverley Street, near Forest. Jerry Garcia had lived in the Waverley Street house until the Grateful Dead had moved to Los Angeles with Owsley in February 1966. The remaining crew entertained themselves as best they could.

Some people in the Channing house got the idea that they should have their own joint, and the infamous Willy Legate found an old warehouse near Homer Lane, just across the railroad tracks on Alma (now a medical center parking lot). They named their club "The Outfit," and figured that they would have a band and a light show also called The Outfit. A carpenter named Bill Shuman made a little stage, and the gang had a sort of party. It wasn't publicized, because that would attract cops, but it happened. It was a sort of Acid Test--remember, LSD was still legal--and Neal Cassidy even showed up.

For entertainment, there was an ad hoc band with guitarist Pete Schulzbach and singer John Tomasi, who were members of a local group called The Bethlehem Exit, and guitarist David Nelson, an old bluegrass pal of Jerry Garcia. The trio played some rambling electric blues while the light show pulsed. A number of local bohemians showed up, but the idea of The Outfit wasn't sustainable. There wasn't another event.

October 6, 1966  Basketball Pavilion, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Jefferson Airplane/Paul Butterfield Blues Band

By the time Stanford students returned to school for the Fall Quarter of 1966, a lot had happened. The peculiar little "Acid Tests" started by Ken Kesey had become a very big deal indeed, so big that LSD itself was declared illegal in California on October 6. Two underground ballrooms in San Francisco, the Fillmore and the Avalon, were both putting on shows every weekend which were the talk of teenagers and college students in every town of the Bay Area. To memorialize the illegality of LSD, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother had played for free on October 6 in the Panhandle, near Golden Gate Park, and every longhair in the region had showed up. along with then-fugitive Kesey himself. They all had no idea that they numbered in the thousands.

The Butterfield band, who had played Tressider a few quarters ago, were now booked as headliners for three weekends at the giant Winterland arena, joined by the Dead and the Airplane. On this Thursday night, as a prelude to a weekend featuring Butterfield, the Airplane and the Dead, just the Airplane and Butterfield played the Stanford basketball Pavilion. Before NCAA Basketball became a proverbial ‘big deal’, the Stanford basketball team played in a 1200 seat auditorium built in 1921, on the corner of Serra and Galvez. The gym was just a few short miles from the Perry Lane house where Kesey’s LSD quest began. 

An eyewitness reported that Mike Bloomfield played Jorma’s Guild instead of his customary Fender, and various people also report Jerry Garcia attending the show. The Pavilion was superseded as the basketball venue by the nearby Maples Pavilion in Spring 1969, but it remains in use. It is now known as Burnham Pavilion. 

 

[update 20260609] thanks to Lachlynn Dodson, whose father preserved some flyers from back in the day, we have an additional flyer for the Airplane/Butterfield show at Stanford. 

October 14, 1966 Tressider Memorial Union Deck, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA  Grateful Dead/Wildflower

The Grateful Dead finally got their chance at Stanford a week later. Although the Dead had left Palo Alto for underground success earlier in the year, they still hadn't played back in Palo Alto, because there was nowhere for them to play in town. However, with Big Mama Thornton joining the Airplane and Buttefield at Fillmore this weekend, the Dead were free to play over at Stanford. After the Grateful Dead show on Friday, October 14, there was never another concert at the Tressider Deck again. Damn, it must have been fun.

 

[update 20260609] thanks again to Lachlynn Dodson, and her father, we have a hitherto unseen flyer for the Grateful Dead at Tressider Deck. It turns out that The Wildflower opened the show. Wildflower guitarist Stephen Ehret was an old pal of Garcia's from the folk scene. The Wildflower had gotten together in Oakland at the California College of Arts & Crafts.

 

Apparently, Ken Kesey and the Pranksters were at the show, and the infamous Further bus was parked outside Tressider. Nothing could have frightened Stanford admin more than such an invasion, so it's no surprise that the Dead were banned (for the first time).  An eyewitness reported ecstatic dancing, of the sort done by Deadheads unto this day, but at the time a shocking new thing.

November?, 1966 Experimental Building, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA New Delhi River Band

We have a poorly scanned handbill for an event at Stanford on April 10, 1967. My two eyewitnesses were very vague (I wonder why?), but both thought that there were two events, one in the fall and one in the Spring. The event or events, whether one or two, were some sort of "happening" put on by The Experimental Group

The Experimental Group, sometimes known just as The Experiment, was a group of Stanford students and faculty who were interested in reforming education in various progressive ways. They would eventually merge with a similarly minded civilian group called The Mid Peninsula Free University (known locally as Free U). That story is peripheral to this one, except that The Experiment and MPFU put on a number of free rock events in Stanford and Palo Alto. The 1967 handbill locates the event at "The Experimental Building." I'm not even clear where "The Experimental Building" was, although I think it was one of the then-new buildings near Serra and El Camino Real. 

The New Delhi River Band were Palo Alto’s second psychedelic blues band. The NDRB was an outgrowth of The Outfit, which had opened and closed in June. At this time, the band lived on Channing Avenue and featured Jerry Garcia’s old pal, and future New Rider, David Nelson on guitar, along with bassist Dave Torbert, from Redwood City, and also a future New Rider. Lead singer John Tomasi and lead guitarist Peter Schulzbach were from a Cupertino  band called Bethlehem Exit, and drummer Chris Herold rounded out the group.  Although no tapes survive of the group, they apparently aspired to sound somewhat like the Butterfield Blues Band. 

By this time, the NDRB were already the “house band” at The Barn, a psychedelic outpost in the tiny town of Scotts Valley, about 37 miles southwards, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Barn was a self-contained mini-Fillmore, the remarkable story of which we have detailed elsewhere.   The late Russell (Rusty) Towle, the band’s roommate, soundman and sometime Light Show man recalled the Stanford event in a personal email, and thinks it may have been two nights rather than one, although he couldn't recall if they were on consecutive nights or not (for the time, that was still a pretty clear memory). At this time, proto-hippies were trying to distinguish “Fillmore” type events from regular teen dances.

A 2011 aerial view (from Hoover Tower) of the Wilbur Hall Commons area at the Wilbur Hall dorms on the Stanford University campus.

December 2, 1966 Wilbur Hall Dorm, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Big Brother & The Holding Company/San Andreas Fault Finders “A Happening In The Wilburness” 
Wilbur Hall, at 658 Escondido Drive on the Stanford campus, was the anchor of a quartet of dormitories. At the time, and perhaps still, Wilbur housed mostly freshmen. I believe Wilbur Hall was the dining commons and admin offices for all four dorms. Based on an obscure flyer, some sort of end-of-term event was held that featured no less than Janis Joplin and Big Brother. No such thing seems to have happened again.

 

An ad from the December 2, 1966 Stanford Daily (thanks Cleuci!)

Update: Correspondent Cleuci found an ad and some articles in the Stanford Daily. The Avalon Light Show was there (with Gary Ewing), the Chloe Scott Dancers, two bands--it never happened again. 

Remarkably, the Janis Joplin appearance was not the hippest bit of 60s rock trivia associated with Wilbur. Back in May 1961, the lounge of Arroyo Hall (one of the Wilbur dorms) featured a folk night with "Bob and Jerry," the first paid professional performance of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. Whoever was a freshman that night in Arroyo lounge can now say "so when did you first see Jerry?" and know that he cannot ever lose.

Rock in Palo Alto after 1966

Psychedelic rock bands had come from Palo Alto in 1965, and some had even returned. But just about all the rock shows in 1966 were at Stanford University. However, after 1966, there were almost no significant rock shows at Stanford for the next several years. A Fall quarter with the Airplane, the Dead, some sort of Experimental Event and Big Brother seemed to be enough for Stanford. For 1967, the action would move away from campus and across El Camino Real to Palo Alto itself, and we shall start to see that in the next installment. 

The Psychedelic Supermarket, Boston, MA 1967-68 Performance List (Work In Progress)

Boston, Massachusets in the late 1960s had a thriving rock scene, which was not surprising for a major Northeastern city with numerous colleges in the city itself and the nearby suburbs. However, while there are various overviews of the Boston scene available on the web, I know of no complete and accurate chronology of rock shows in the Boston area available in print or on the Web. As a result, performances for many groups have fallen under the radar.

While the famous Boston Tea Party is fairly well represented on the Web, The Psychedelic Supermarket, an obscure and unloved venue on Kenmore Square, remains shrouded in obscurity. There are a variety of impressionistic memories, but this post is an attempt to collect the available information about performances at Boston's Psychedelic Supermarket. This is a work in progress, with a considerable number of gaps, but it is the only attempt I know of to accumulate all the performance dates at the venue. There is considerably more information to be uncovered, but I am hoping to use this post as a starting point.

The Venue
The street address of the Psychedelic Supermarket was 590 Commonwealth Avenue, but actually the venue was in an alley behind Commonwealth Avenue, near Kenmore Square and backing onto Boston University. The "street address" made it easier to find. The venue was a converted parking garage, with acoustic qualities to match, and it was not remembered fondly by bands or patrons. Supermarket Promoter George Popadopolis had run a Boston coffee house called The Unicorn since the early 1960s, and by the mid-60s he was booking electric blues bands as well as folk music.

Boston's first and most famous psychedelic venue was the Boston Tea Party (at 53 Berkeley Street) and the second was The Crosstown Bus at 337 Washington Street in suburban Brighton. The Crosstown Bus ran afoul of the city and the police, however, apparently over licensing (the J. Geils Blues Band managed to get their equipment out just before the place was padlocked), just as the hottest band in the country had a booking there.

The Psychedelic Supermarket appears to have debuted with Cream from September 8-16, 1967. It appears that George Popadopolis seems to have hastily created this venue to facilitate Cream, in order (apparently) to cash in on the dates dropped by the hastily closed Crosstown Bus.  Memories of the club's debut suggest that it was not ready. It seems possible that a plan by Popadopolis to create a club was abruptly accelerated to cash in on the availability of Cream. Apparently, the venue was initially a parking garage during the day, and then the lower floor of the garage was converted to a concert facility for the evening. Eyewitnesses recall little more than cold concrete, no amenities and poor sound. There was some suggestion that an effort was made to make the venue more palatable throughout 1968, but it was never a comfortable facility.

The Unicorn, Popadopolis's other club was a coffee house with folk music on 815 Boylston Street (h/t The Funky Judge for the exact address). Now an Apple Store, it was near Boston University and Commonwealth Avenue, just across the Charles River from Cambridge and all its college students. As music evolved, some electric groups started to play The Unicorn as well. A Butterfield Blues Band performance from the Unicorn in 1966 has been widely circulated (for more about Popadopolis and the Cambridge folk scene, see the fine 1979 book Baby Let Me Follow You Down by Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney). Thus Popadopolis's move into rock promotion, while sudden, was consistent with his prior businesses.

The Supermarket does not appear to have had much in the way of collectable or interesting handbills or posters, so the shows are somewhat lost to history. Some handbills are around from the 1967 era, but they seem based on blank format with an inserted photo and dates (a common practice at the time).

A veteran Boston commentator has unfond memories of the venue;

“The Psychedelic Supermarket (located where Kix and the Nickelodeon Cinema in Kenmore Square are now) was a blatant attempt by George Popadopolis to cash in on a trend. He had run the Unicorn, a Boston folk club, for some years before deciding to expand in early 1968. Seating of 300 was in the lower tier of a garage that was completely concrete, except for the stage. Cream played a memorable gig there in February '68 (sic—actually September 1967)not to mention Janis Joplin and the Holding Company. Stories of Popadopolis' financial finagling are a legend.. . groups would cancel contracts and leave because they would be paid less for long stands. The exposure was supposed to make up for the lesser pay!! One out of two bands would leave a gig after one set for various reasons and regular club-goers remember him raising ticket prices from $4.50 to $5.50 when he knew that a show was going to sell out.”

List of Known Performances at The Psychedelic Supermarket

Anyone with corrections, additions or new information, please Comment or email me. There are many blank spots in the schedule. Numerous local and regional bands acknowledge performing there, such as Tangerine Zoo or Crow (with a teenage Donna Summer as lead vocalist), but I have not been able to identify any dates for those groups. The Tom Swift Electric Band was apparently the "house band" and played many of the shows at the Supermarket as an opening act, but that too has been very difficult to pin down. I also do not know if the Supermarket was open only on weekends, like the Boston Tea Party, or all days of the week. I will be appreciative if anyone can comment on the general schedule of the place.

(Thanks to some useful correspondence, I have updated the list since the original post--new or changed dates are shown as added or updated)

September 10-16, 1967 Cream 
Cream was on their first American tour, and had just finished an exciting run at San Francisco's Fillmore. While they may not have played all seven nights, they played most of them, and by all accounts Clapton absolutely tore down the house.  They apparently played Brandeis University one night (Saturday September 9), and and some eyewitnesses allude to "six nights," so perhaps Cream played from Tuesday September 11 through Saturday September 16. In any case, although the club was not ready for prime time, it was a memorable event (updated).

A photo survives.

October 24-29, 1967  Chuck Berry
The Massachusets Institute of Technology in Cambridge has every surviving copy of its newspaper scanned into an archive, befitting the legacy of a top-flight Engineering school. The Tech is a fantastic resource for the Boston and Cambridge rock scene in the late 1960s. This set of shows was advertised in The Tech. The ad in The Tech (10.24.67) says “for benefit of Multiple Sclerosis.”

Its impossible to know how many shows were actually held at The Psychedelic Supermarket. Were there shows every night, or every weekend? Were there only shows when there was a headline act? I have never found a definitive answer to that question, particularly in the early days. 

October 31-November 13, 1967 Electric Flag/Blues Children/The Illuminations

The Electric Flag, Mike Bloomfield's newly minted "American Music Band," after debuting for two weekends at the Fillmore (some with Cream), played two full weeks at the Supermarket. A flyer survives, although I am not entirely certain about the dates. The engagement may have begun on Friday November 1. The J. Geils Blues Band, then a local group, may have opened some of the shows (updated).

November 15-16, 1967 The Yardbirds (CANCELED show)

November ?-, 1967 Procol Harum (updated)
 
November 24-25, 1967 Mothers of Invention

December 8-9, 1967 Grateful Dead
I have written about the Dead at the Supermarket elsewhere. There is an extant flyer, which has the same format as other flyers. Steve Grant's review of The Dead at the Pscyhedelic Supermarket in the Tuesday, December 12, 1967 edition of The Tech (Volume 87, issue 52, page 6).

December 29-30, 1967 Grateful Dead
It is an apocryphal Dead story that the Dead played Boston on December 30 and flew home to San Francisco the next day, expecting to jam with Quicksilver at Winterland on New Year's Eve. However, a potent batch of brownies--no doubt filled with chocolatey goodness--caused many  of the exhausted band members to fall asleep and miss the jam. Regardless of whether you believe the brownie story, it does confirm that the Dead were on the East Coast so I am inclined to believe they played Psychedelic Supermarket two weekends of December 1967.

January 5-6 1968 Moby Grape



January 12-13, 1968 Chuck Berry(added)

January ? 1968 The Fugs
An article in the February 23, 1968 edition of the MIT student newspaper (The Tech) mentions previous gigs at the Supermarket by Moby Grape, The Fugs, Spirit, Procol Harum and Electric Flag, but these could have been at any time from September 67 thru February 68. There is a circulating audience tape of The Fugs at The Psychedelic Supermarket from some time in 1968, so it is probably from one of these shows. Moby Grape was touring the East in January and February 1968 (updated).

Februrary 16-17, 1968 Colwell-Winfield Blues Band
The Colwell-Winfield Blues Band were a progressive blues band featuring two saxophones. The band released a 1968 album on Verve, and broke up in 1970. Horn men Colin Tilton (tenor sax) and Jack Schroer (alto) went on to become Van Morrison’s horn section during the Moondance period.

February 23-24, 1968 Big Brother and The Holding Company/Blood Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears, still featuring founding member Al Kooper, were touring in support of their recently released debut album. A well-recorded audience tape circulates of the band’s first night performance, the only known live tape of the Kooper-led B, S& T.

March 1-2, 1968 Charles Lloyd (added)

March 8-9, 1968 Country Joe and The Fish
The Friday night show (March 8) is reviewed in the Harvard Crimson (March 16, 1968), including an interview with Joe McDonald. Barry Melton is referred to as “lead guitarist Barry Nelson.”

On March 15, 1968, at 10:30 pm, Boston classical music station WBCN-fm begins broadcasting ‘underground’ rock on the overnight shift.  WBCN transforms the rock music scene in Boston and the Northeast, as fm rock stations did all over the country. The midnight-7am shift is handled by “The Woofuh Goofuh. ” The Woofuh Goofuh is Hallucinations lead singer Peter Wolf, who handles the overnight shift for the next year (unless he has a gig). He becomes an underground legend as a dj in Boston before he ever becomes famous as singer of The J. Geils Band in the 1970s.

March 15-16, 1968  Psychedelic Supermarket, Boston, MA Eden’s Children (updated)


March 22-23, 1968 Butterfield Blues Band
An audience tape circulates from March 23, featuring guitarist Elvin Bishop and saxophonist David Sanborn.

March ?, 1968  Mothers of Invention
According to the most informed Zappa chronologies, The Mothers played a weekend in March as well as the November, 1967 shows.

April 19-20, 1968 Tim Hardin (added)

May 10-18, 1968 First Annual Boston Pop Festival
This is mentioned in the “Making The Scene” column of The Tech. The “festival” was hosted by the Boston Arts Project, and the acts “include Colwell-Winfield Blues Band, Eden’s Children, Faith and others.”
>May 10, 1968  Listening/Hedge & Donna/Miss Lark/Freeborne
>May 11, 1968 3rd World Rasberry/Dave Morgan/Megan

May 24-25, 1968 Canned Heat (added)
Contributor Adam found an ad for these Canned Heat shows in the paper Boston After Dark.

June 3-6, 1968 Electric Flag (added)


June 25-29, 1968 Walk On Water (added)

July 25-26-27, 1968 The Fugs (added)

September 27-28, 1968 Traffic (added)

October 4-5, 1968 Colwell Winfield Blues Band
An enthusiastic review in The Tech (October 8, 1968) fails to say where the band was playing, but I am inferring it was at the Supermarket.

October 11-12, 1968 Blood, Sweat & Tears/Tom Swift Band
 The October 12 (Saturday) show is known from a review in The Tech (Oct 15 '68)), and the Friday night show was confirmed by Billboard magazine. The Tom Swift Electric Band featured guitarist Billy Squier (who had many hits in the 1980s) and keyboard player Barry Flast. The implication seems to be that The Tom Swift Electric Band was performing regularly at the Supermarket through much of its brief lifetime.

Billy Squier has said that The Tom Swift Electric Band was the "house band" at The Psychedelic Supermarket, and opened many shows there, including the Moody Blues and Steve Miller Band.  I don't know exactly when Squier's band became regular performers at the venue.

November 1-2, 1968  Moody Blues/Tom Swift Electric Band

There used to be a lengthy and amusing online description of seeing the Moody Blues at the Supermarket, but I can't find it any more.

November 8-9, 1968 Blue Cheer (added)
Blue Cheer had just completed a European tour. Guitarist Randy Holden had replaced Leigh Stephens just before the tour.

November 15-16, 1968 Sly And The Family Stone (added)

November 22-23, 1968  Psychedelic Supermarket, Boston, MA Procol Harum/The Spikes
 Reviewed in The Tech (12.6.68).

December 6-7, 1968 Steve Miller Band (added)

January 10-11, 1969 The Unicorn, Boston, MA Iron Butterfly
The Unicorn, also called The Unicorn Coffee House, took over the site of the Psychedelic Supermarket at 590 Commonwealth.  The Unicorn had been a smaller, folk-oriented venue in Cambridge that moved to the larger site. I'm not sure if the Unicorn in Cambridge was still open by this time, but since George Papadopolis owned both venues, this would have been a merger of sorts.

March 28-29, 1969 The Unicorn, Boston, MA Joni Mitchell/James Taylor (added)
An eyewitness in the Comments recalls Joni Mitchell being an hour late due to snow, but sounding all the better for it.

Nonetheless, other than the Iron Butterfly poster, I have seen little other evidence of the Unicorn as a post-1969 venue, so I think this was a late effort to lend some credibility to the venue that seems not to have succeeded. As the rock business got bigger after 1968, many small to medium sized venues faced great difficulties, and it is no surprise that a highly competitive market like Boston would have some casualties.

Aftermath
The building later became a movie theater (initially called the Nickelodeon), and was eventually torn down to provide a new science building for Boston University.

I am hoping that enough additional information will arise that I can significantly update this list (thanks to those who have already contributed additional dates and corrections).

Fillmore East April 12-13, 1968: Butterfield Blues Band/Charles Lloyd/Tom Rush

 (this post is part of a series cataloging every show at The Fillmore East)

April 12-13, 1968  Butterfield Blues Band/Charles Lloyd/Tom Rush

The Butterfield Blues Band had come out of Chicago in late 1965 as America’s premier white blues band.  They featured guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop.  Bloomfield had moved to San Francisco and started the Electric Flag by this time, but Bishop was still in Butterfield’s group. The group had just released The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw (Elektra Feb 68) heralding Bishop’s newly-prominent role. However, rather than the guitar-oriented Chicago style blues of the first two albums, Butterfield’s new sound was closer to soul, with a three-piece horn section.

Elvin Bishop would leave the Butterfield band within two months of this show, and he too would move to the Bay Area and start his own band. Mark Naftalin, the group's original keyboard player, was also still with the band, but he too would leave shortly after this and move to the Bay Area. The other members of the group were probably Bugsy Maugh on bass, Philip Wilson on drums and Gene Dinwiddie (tenor sax) and Keith Johnson (trumpet) on horns, possibly with Dave Sanborn (alto). Sanborn had toured with the group in late 1967 and early 1968, but I don't know how long he stayed.


The Butterfield Blues Band already had a lengthy and fruitful relationship with Bill Graham at the Fillmore, but it is worth noting that this is the third act managed by Albert Grossman that headlined the theater in  its first six weeks of operation. That being said, the original powerhouse Butterfield Blues Band, with Mike Bloomfield in his prime, had played some seminal shows at the original Fillmore, helping to make both the venue and the band, so they were a great choice to help establish the Fillmore East.

Charles Lloyd, a tenor sax player, was a regular at the SF Fillmore.  His group, playing undiluted modern jazz in the style of Miles Davis, may still have included Keith Jarrett, Ron McClure and Jack DeJohnette. Lloyd was the first jazz act to become a regular in the hippie ballrooms around the country, and while his jazz remain undiminished he found himself a whole new audience that served him well. He even recorded an album at The Fillmore, a fine record called Love-In, released in January 1967. His current album was In Europe (Atlantic 1968).

Tom Rush was a popular Cambridge, MA folkie.  He had signed to Elektra and started to make folk-rock albums  His 6th album, The Circle Game (Elektra 1968) featured two songs by Joni Mitchell as well as songs by then-unknowns Jackson Browne and James Taylor.  Although he is largely forgotten today, Rush was instrumental in bringing attention to these writers. Kostelanetz reports that the light show was halted for ‘serious’ folk performers like Tom Rush or Richie Havens.

next: April 19-20, Mothers of Invention/James Cotton Blues Band