The Good News-Performance History 1966

(drummer Chris Herold, guitarist Tim Abbott and keyboardist Bob Stephens of The Good News, from Redwood City, CA, playing somewhere on the Peninsula in 1966-photo courtesy of Tim Abbott)

History is written by the winners, and hindsight is always 20/20, so rock history often falls into a tautology: since only famous bands are written about, rock history is shrunk to a tiny roster of famous bands. The reality is messier and way more interesting. The San Francisco Bay Area in 1966 was rightly remembered as a time of great creativity and musical experimentation, as the likes of Ken Kesey, Bill Graham, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead created the blueprint for the modern rock concert as we know it today. A closer examination of the time, however, shows that a lot of interesting things were going on.

In the course of my research, I was fortunate enough to learn some things about a hitherto obscure group called The Good News, from Redwood City, CA. The Good News played heavy Butterfield-style blues, had their own light show and played some hip venues, and some of their members went on to better known endeavors, but they have been all but lost to history up until now. The Good News were interesting and well ahead of their time, and an examination of some surviving evidence gives an interesting picture of bands on the rise in 1966, when the Bay Area was exciting and everything seemed possible.

Redwood City, CA
Redwood City is in San Mateo County, just a few miles North of Palo Alto, but still about 30 miles South of San Francisco. It's a nice little town, but back in the 60s it was just another suburb on the Bay, with no University to make it cool, yet still too far from the City to be hot. There were a few tiny venues in Redwood City, but most of the action, such as it was, could be found on El Camino Real, the main commercial strip that ran from Mission Boulevard in San Francisco to downtown San Jose, touching every town along the way. By day, the El Camino was a commercial district with stores and auto dealers, and at night it was the entertainment district in each of the little suburban communities. In 1965, many entertainers simply played up and down the El Camino. For example, in the Fall of 1965 a Palo Alto blues band called The Warlocks had a lot of bookings in and around El Camino Real.

As to indigenous Redwood City rock bands, however, they were few and far between. I do know of a folk-rock group called The Sit-Ins, but they seem to have been High School students. So far, the first group from Redwood City who played outside of the town that I have been able to discover has been The Good News. One eyewitness describes them as "a Butterfield-style band," which for the early 1966 suburbs is pretty surprising. David Nelson of the New Riders Of The Purple Sage described them as "a Redwood City blues band," which had to be a pretty short list. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band had only released their groundbreaking debut album on Elektra in October '65, showing that it was possible for white boys to play the blues, and it had an electrifying effect on musicians and audiences.

Good News lead guitarist Tim Abbott recalls

The Good News was a group that I joined in about 65 and split up in 66 or early 67 The group went through some changes in personnel over it's time together. It started with 

• Chris Herold-drums, 
• Dan Hess- Bass, 
• Kinkade Miller- Keyboards, 
• Tim Abbott- Lead Guitar and Vocals and 
• Dave Torbert-Lead Vocals and Guitar.

After several months we got Bob Stephens in on Keyboards, Harmonica and Sax (he also did some  amazing Howlin Wolf style vocals) [Stephens replaced Miller]

The timeline fits nicely. The first Butterfield album came out in Fall '65, so it makes sense that it would inspire any just-formed band. The Good News lasted until about the end of 1966, although there seems to have been a few personnel changes at the very end.

Tim Abbott would go on to join the South Bay's finest, The Chocolate Watch Band. Dave Torbert (1948-82) is best known today as the bassist for The New Riders and Kingfish, and drummer Herold was also in Kingfish. Both Torbert and Herold left The Good News in late Summer 1966 to join the South Bay's other psychedelic blues band, The New Delhi River Band. The New Delhi River Band are a fascinating story in their own right. I am working on the definitive NDRB story (and it will be definitive) but it turns out that The Good News were a critical prequel.

 (The Good News perform at a debutante ball, with their strobe-light-ready clothing. The caption from  a forgotten newspaper says "Peninsula Deb Janet Laird, Steve Boyden dance to the Big Beat"--clipping courtesy Tim Abbott)

The Light Show
The Good News were playing some pretty serious blues by early 1966, making them ahead of the curve but not unique. What set them apart, however, was that they appear to have been the first Bay Area band to travel with their own light show. It was pretty simple, but remember that at the time there was no concept of "light shows" outside of a few underground Family Dog events in San Francisco. Almost none of the suburban teenagers who would have seen The Good News would have been to The Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City or a Family Dog dance at Longshoreman's Hall or The Trips Festival.

The Good News basically used a strobe light, which must have been quite a shock to teenagers used to conventional stage lighting. The Good News had special stage clothes that were embarrassingly colorful in true 60s style, but they were designed to look exciting when they jumped around under the strobe. It may seem corny now, but seeing flashing lights jumping around the stage while the band laid it down on "Got My Mojo Working" must have been a surprising moment, and however briefly shown the shape of things to come.

Tim Abbott very kindly sent me the clipping above (and the other visual materials), but he doesn't know where the photo was taken. It was common in the mid-60s at Debutante parties to have two bands, a big band for the adults to dance to and a rock band for the kids. The groups would usually alternate sets. Many famous Fillmore bands actually played Debutante parties, as the money was good and the girls were cute. Abbott recalls playing a Debutante event at San Francisco Airport (of all places) for Bob Weir's sister (update: FOUND! June 24, 1966--see below).

I wonder who Janet Laird and Steve Boyden were (the couple in the photo)? Were they just dancing together, or did they get married and have three kids? Maybe the Internet will work it's magic and they will write in.

Good News Performance Venues
The performance history of The Good News remains murky. Since the band did not go on to subsequent fame, few artifacts of their past remain preserved. Abbott, fortunately, does recall a few events, and it at least gives us a picture of the circuit that was available to aspiring bands. The Grateful Dead had graduated from the El Camino Real by the end of 1965, as their association with Ken Kesey led them to Owsley and then The Trips Festival. Other bands had to keep slugging it out.

(a flyer for The Good News performance at The Bold Knight in Sunnyvale, April 1, 1966-courtesy Tim Abbott)

The Bold Knight, 769 N. Matilda Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA
Abbott recalls "we used to play The Bold Knight a lot." The Bold Knight was in Sunnyvale, a few miles South of Palo Alto, nearer to San Jose (Redwood City was North of Palo Alto). Once a sleepy farm town, after World War 2 it was a booming suburb full of people working for Lockheed and other aerospace companies. It was garage band central, and the South Bay was full of great bands. The local radio station (KLIV-am 1590) liked to play local bands, so groups like The Chocolate Watch Band, The Syndicate Of Sound and The E-Types were making real money playing dances and concerts all over the area, even though the band members were barely out of high school (and in the case of The Syndicate Of Sound, still in High School).

Two Los Altos High School graduates, Mike McCluney and Terry Nininger, leased the banquet room of a restaurant in a shopping mall and put on rock concerts. These were mostly directed at kids under 21, although unlike some parts of the Bay Area older patrons were not excluded. The banquet room could fit up to 1000, so it was  relatively substantial place. The Bold Knight put on about one show a week on Friday or Saturday, occasionally both, so it was a regular venue without being full time. With a huge audience of mobile South Bay teenagers and a lot of great bands, so when the Bold Knight opened in early 1966 it was successful almost immediately.

McCluney recalled The Good News fondly, and remembers them mostly playing blues covers but doing some original material as well. This was typical of a lot of bands in San Francisco and elsewhere, particularly those playing blues. Since the Rolling Stones and others had made a lot of blues songs sort of well known, they could play music they liked that audiences knew, and slip in some of their own stuff as they worked it out.

The June 28, 1966 SF Examiner Society Column reports on Wendy Weir's deb party at SFO Airport the previous Friday. 

San Francisco International Airport Ballroom, SFO Airport, San Mateo, CA
Esteemed scholar LightIntoAshes managed to track down the precise reference to Wendy Weir's Deb Party. Bob Weir's mom had an Andy Warhol-inspired theme and a hot local blues band. The date was Friday June 24, 1966--read all about it just above--and Bob did not attend because he had another (as yet unknown) gig.

In the early years of the Jet Age, SFO was a glamorous place. There was an exciting lounge nearby, The Tiger-A-Go-Go, where hot stewardesses hung out, and the ballroom over at the airport was desirable, not least, I assume, because one's rich friends could just fly right in.

The Cocoanut Grove Ballroom, 400 Beach Street, Santa Cruz, CA
The Cocoanut Grove Ballroom is connected to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, a sort of East Coast-style amusement park somewhat out of place on the West Coast. Although it was established in 1907, by the 1960s, the Cocoanut Grove had regular "teen" dances, usually on Friday or Saturday nights, with the local bands who were popular on KLIV. It was part of the same circuit as The Bold Knight. Santa Cruz had nice beaches (if kind of cold), so many families would spend a week or a weekend in town, so there were many more kids available to go to shows at the Grove (capacity 800) than the tiny population of the town might indicate. The Good News played the Cocoanut Grove regularly, just as all the other South Bay bands did. Abbott recalls a number of bookings at Cocoanut Grove with the Chocolate Watch Band, who were the best, best-known and most infamous of all the South Bay bands in that period.

The Spectrum, 1836 El Camino Real, Redwood City, CA
Abbott recalls, "We did several weeks at the Spectrum in Redwood City with what later became Moby Grape (Jerry Miller introduced me to the Sitar and some great guitar licks)." He added "Jerry [Miller] and Don [Stevenson's] group were called The Frantics at the point that they were working with us and Bob Mosley hadn't joined the band yet. Chuck [Schoning] was on bass, and they had a girl who's name I can't remember on rhythm guitar."

The Frantics had relocated from Tacoma, WA to suburban San Bruno. Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson were only a few months away from the roller coaster ride of Moby Grape, but couldn't have known it at the time. Schoning too would go on to a lengthy music career (with AAA and Quicksilver, among others). The "girl whose name I can't remember" was the uber-cool Denise Kaufman, immortalized as Mary Microgram in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and by 1967 the main voice of the great band The Ace Of Cups. So The Good News were bumping into musicians just like them, playing around the circuit and trying to break through.

The Spectrum was at an intersection in Redwood City called Five Points. It had been an Autumn Records-owned place called The Nu Beat, but when Autumn folded in April 1966, the place changed its name to The Spectrum. I have written about the intersection of Autumn Records, The Nu Beat, The Frantics and The Spectrum elsewhere.

The Barn, Granite Creek Road at Highway 17, Scotts Valley, CA
Abbott: "I also remember playing at The Barn at some point, but can't remember if we were sitting in or were on the bill."

The Barn in Scotts Valley was a hippie enclave that started in Spring 1966 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In 1966, the only true "hippie" places were The Fillmore and The Avalon in San Francisco. You could argue that the college campuses of UC Berkeley, San Francisco State and San Jose State were hippie friendly, but those zones didn't extend very far off their respective campuses. For the rest of the South Bay, there was just The Barn. The converted dairy barn, halfway between Palo Alto and Santa Cruz, was an isolated little clubhouse for all the longhairs: hippies, bikers, Merry Pranksters, light shows and psychedelic blues bands were all there at once. Good bands played The Barn, but at the time they played there, they were mostly unknown. The more adventurous of the teenagers going to places like The Bold Knight would find there way to The Barn, so for the South Bay it was a signpost to new space.

I am working on the history of The Barn, and I have a very preliminary version online. The Spring and Summer of 1966 remain very murky, however. Abbott's confusion over whether they were on the bill leads me to think that they played on a Thursday night, but explaining why is too much of a tangent, so you'll have to take my word on that for now. The essential point about playing The Barn was that it was one of the few places outside of San Francisco and Berkeley for longhairs to hangout, so if a band played well at The Barn then the right people heard about it.

Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary Blvd, San Francisco, CA
October 22-23, 1966 Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band/Chocolate Watch Band/Great Pumpkin/Good News
Abbott: "We did one date at the Filmore and were asked back but we had broken up by that point."

Without question, bands made it in San Francisco by playing The Fillmore and The Avalon, and indeed succeeding at The Avalon mainly guaranteed that Bill Graham would steal you from Chet Helms for a more lucrative Fillmore booking. So if The Good News had played The Fillmore and were asked back, things were definitely looking up, yet they did not stay together to make the jump. If the Good News had played The Barn before the Fillmore (not a certainty), the word would have traveled particularly fast. Abbott recalled that Good News manager Denis Minga lined up the Fillmore appearance, but Graham would have asked around about the band.

Shortly after the Good News played the Fillmore, the band broke up. Dave Torbert and Chris Herold became members of The New Delhi River Band, who were regularly headlining at The Barn. While Torbert had played guitar in The Good News, he played bass in NDRB, an instrument he would play for the rest of his career. There is some ambiguity as to exactly when Herold and then Torbert joined NDRB, and either or both musicians may have been members of both bands for a brief while.

It's a little known fact that many bands played The Fillmore who were not "on the poster." In 1966, Graham would advertise two or three bands on his famous posters, usually for three shows from Friday through Sunday. Each advertised band would play two sets. Often, however, another unadvertised group would open the shows on Friday and Saturday night, playing a single set. These were usually called the "audition" bands, and were probably paid union scale. Trying out bands this way gave Graham a look at which groups were worthy of getting on the poster for a forthcoming date. No doubt The Good News acquitted themselves well, as they were asked back, but it was not to be.

The Good News-Aftermath
When The Good News broke up, in early November 1966, Tim Abbott became the lead guitarist in a group called The San Francisco Bay Blues Band. The group was not particularly successful, even by local standards. However, in early 1967 lead guitarist Mark Loomis left the Chocolate Watch Band, and bassist Bill Flores asked Abbott to take his place. Although the Chocolate Watch Band members weren't any older than The Good News, they were already hugely successful. By 1967, the group had successful records, and airplay on KLIV insured that they were hugely popular in the South Bay.

Despite many social connections to the San Francisco bands, the Chocolate Watch Band were never able to really break into the Fillmore. The CWB played there a few times, and were well received, but they were one of the Bay Area's best bands, and should have had a much higher profile at the Ground Zero of San Fransicso 60s rock. Different reasons are ascribed for this--competition between Bill Graham and CWB manager Ron Roupe, stemming from Graham's attempt to manage the band may have been a factor, or it may have been that San Franciscans couldn't believe that a cool band could come from San Jose instead of Seattle or London. As a result, while the Chocolate Watch Band belong in the top rank of Bay Area bands from the 60s, they are often given only second tier status. Nonetheless, Abbott joined the group in 1967 when they were hugely popular. His first show with the band, after three days of frantic rehearsal, was at the Mt. Tamalpais Festival on June 10, 1967, as the Chocolate Watch Band went on between The Doors and The Fifth Dimension.

Abbott, however, left the Chocolate Watch Band by the end of 1967 due to concerns about the band's finances. The New Delhi River Band had ground to a halt by early 1968, so Abbott, Torbert and Herold formed a group called Shango with a few other players (Matthew Kelly and Ryan Brandenburg), but that is yet another story that I will tell later. Torbert went on to great success with The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, and then Kingfish, and Chris Herold rejoined Torbert in the latter band. Torbert passed on in 1982, way too early, and is sorely missed by fans and friends alike.

I had thought that the story of The Good News was completely lost, but the former proprietor of The Bold Knight tipped me off to the fact that Tim Abbott owns a recording studio in the South Bay. Tim could not have been more helpful and generous with his memories and pictures, and so a seemingly lost piece of Bay Area rock history as been retrieved.

And who says the past has to be past? Guess what band has Tim Abbott as their lead guitarist? Why, The Chocolate Watch Band, still going strong with members from back in the day, still ready to be there when you make your move (at the Love-In), still the pride of the South Bay 60s. Good News, indeed. The CWB have produced a new album, recorded at Abbott's studio, featuring new and old Watch Band songs. Whether the band will break out the multi-colored Good News stage gear remains to be seen.

November 18-19, 1967, Cow Palace-Hollywood Bowl: Free Concerts

November 18, 1967 Cow Palace, Daly City, CA
November 19, 1967 Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA
The Association/The Animals/Everly Brothers/Sopwith Camel/The Who/Sunshine Company

These two concerts stand out on lists of old rock concerts, for any number of reasons. The 1967 rock market was quite small, and the 11,000 seat Cow Palace (at 2600 Geneva Avenue, just South of San Francisco) and the prestigious 17,000 seat Hollywood Bowl (at 2301 North Highland) was on a substantially larger scale than the Fillmore or equivalent venues. The Association, The Animals and The Who had all headlined the Fillmore, the Everly Brothers, while past the prime of their radio popularity, were still very well known, and Sopwith Camel had had a radio hit ("Hello Hello").

What is particularly different about these rock concerts was that they were effectively free. The article above is from the Oakland Tribune 'Teen Age' section of November 8, 1967, and it says

Tickets to the musical extravaganza are free with the purchase of any one M-G-M or Warner Brothers stereo album at any Bay Area White Front store, sponsor of the event.

White Front was a large department store, like Sears or Macy's, and there were quite a few around the Bay Area. Thus you could have gone into the store and purchased, say, Freak Out by The Mothers of Invention (on MGM), or the first Grateful Dead album (on Warners), and gotten a free ticket. Of course, in those days, the record sections of stores had considerably fewer albums, and you might find yourself having to buy a considerably less attractive album.

The article also says the show was scheduled to run for two and one-half hours. With six acts, even with a shared sound system and rapid equipment changes, bands could be playing for no longer than 25 minutes. The groups who had gotten used to the Fillmore, with its Owsley Stanley designed sound, intimate setting and two hour-long sets, must have found these shows to be trivial and alienating.

Notes on the bands
The Association
The Association were one of the most commercially successful folk-rock bands. While they were all fine musicians, they wore suits on stages, and did coordinated dance steps and little skits between songs, like a Las Vegas act, so they were roundly dismissed by the hip underground. Their big hit in the Summer had been "Windy," and their current hit was "Never My Love." They were on Warner Brothers Records.

The Animals
The Animals had been one of the biggest acts of the British Invasion. However, the "new" Animals were very different creatures indeed than the minimalist R&B combo of the mid-60s. With twin guitarists Vic Briggs and John Weider and Eric Burdon's powerful if histrionic vocals, they had a big hit with the psychedelic "San Franciscan Nights" (how good was Owsley's acid if Eric thought a San Franciscan night was warm?). On stage, the band sounded like a cross between the original Animals and Quicksilver Messenger Service. They were on MGM Records.

Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers had been one of the biggest acts of the early 1960s, and they were a huge influence on The Beatles and many other groups. They were all but single-handedly responsible for showing that the traditional brother harmonies of old time country music (originated by the likes of The Delmore Brothers) could be effectively transposed onto popular rock music, a lesson the Beatles took very well. Although the Everlys were still making fine albums, they were no longer pop hitmakers in America. They recorded for Warner Brothers Records.

Sopwith Camel
The Sopwith Camel had formed at 1090 Page Street, the same hippie rooming house that spawned Big Brother And The Holding Company. Although the Camel was one of the original ballroom bands, they had been signed quickly by Kama Sutra Records, and had an early 1967 hit with their song "Hello Hello." The Fillmore underground rather unfairly dubbed them "sell-outs", and they missed being attached to the underground wave that they had helped begin. Reputedly they were a pretty good live band, with a tough twin guitar sound somewhat at odds with the Lovin Spoonful-ish style of their album.

The Who
The Who hardly need an introduction here. Similar to the Animals, The Who spent 1967 converting themselves from a pop-oriented British Invasion band to a serious Underground band. The band had already headlined the Fillmore (June 16-17, 1967) and played Monterey Pop (June 18), but they had spent the next eight weeks touring America with Herman's Hermits. The band's most recent album was A Quick One, released in America in May 1967 (December 66 in the UK). Their current single was  the great "I Can See For Miles", from their forthcoming classic The Who Sell Out. This show was the beginning of an American tour where The Who still played "teen" venues, but by 1968 they had evolved into serious rock musicians who played the Fillmore East. The Who recorded for Decca Records.

The Sunshine Company
The Sunshine Company played a sort of psychedelic pop music native to Los Angeles, with catchy tunes, nice harmonies and quirky arrangements. They had a modest hit with "Back On The Street Again." They recorded for Imperial Records. The Sunshine Company may not have played the Hollywood Bowl.

Notes On The Venues
The Cow Palace 2600 Geneva Avenue, Daly City, CA
The Cow Palace, originally the California State Livestock Pavilion was built in the depression and completed in 1941. A local politician was quoted as saying "People are starving, and we're building a palace for the cows," and the name stock. With a concert capacity of around 11,000, it was the biggest indoor concert venue in the Bay Area until the completion of the Oakland Coliseum in 1966. The Beatles played there twice, and the Rolling Stones played there as well. Although it became increasingly outdated, many fine rock concerts were held there when better venues were filled up (I saw great shows there by Pink Floyd, Neil Young and Nirvana, to name a few, and a dreadful Iron Maiden/Twisted Sister show). The building is currently slated for demolition.

Hollywood Bowl, 2301 North Highland, Los Angeles, CA
The 17,000 capacity Hollywood Bowl is an outdoor venue carved out of a natural amphitheater on a hillside above Los Angeles. It was used in a basic form for outdoor concerts as early as 1922, but a substantial and distinctive bandshell was constructed in 1929. The Hollywood Bowl has always been a prestige venue in Hollywood, for those acts big enough to play there. It remains an active venue to this day.

San Jose, CA: Outdoor Rock Festivals 1967-69 (An Overview)

San Jose was the fourth largest city in California in the 1960s (it has since passed San Francisco for third). It had a lively and exciting rock scene as well, but the scene has been unfairly lost in the intense focus on San Francisco music in the 1960s. San Jose and its surrounding suburbs had a vibrant live music scene, helped immeasurably by the fact that the local AM station (KLIV 1590) supported local bands like The Syndicate Of Sound and The Chocolate Watch Band. Besides excellent local bands, San Jose was a regular gig for all of the Fillmore and Avalon bands, so San Jose rock fans not only had their own indigenous scene, but had exceptional opportunities to see the best of San Francisco on a regular basis as well.

In recent years there has been renewed interest in the local San Jose bands, and rightly so--Chocolate Watch Band richly deserved to be considered among the best of 60s Bay Area bands, but never got their due until recently--but the constant presence and influence of San Francisco bands has received scant attention. I was doing research for a different project and realized that the small number of outdoor rock festivals in San Jose between 1967 and 1969 offers a nice microcosm of the history of outdoor rock festivals in general during that period. This post does not try to make a claim to be "exhaustive," in the sense that there may be multi-act outdoor events that I am not aware of, but the six events here are the most important ones, all took place within a short distance of each other, and summarize the arc of rock festivals in San Jose and everywhere else.

The six events are

May 14, 1967  City Park at 10th and Alma Streets, San Jose 
      San Jose Be-In

October 8, 1967 Family Park, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds 
       Haight Ashbury Medical Clinic Benefit

May 18-19, 1968 Family Park, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds 
      Northern California Folk-Rock Festival

May 25, 1968 Family Park, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds
      McCarthy Is Happening

May 23-24-25, 1969 Family Park, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds
      2nd Annual Northern California Folk-Rock Festival

May 23-24-25, 1969 practice field, San Jose State College
      Aquarian Family Festival

May 14, 1967   City Park, 10^th and Alma Streets

              San Jose Human Be-In

            Country Joe and The Fish/New Delhi River Band

The park at 10^th  Street and Alma was across the street from Kelley Park. South Alma Street was the same Alma that ran through Mountain View (as Central Expressway) and Palo Alto, basically parallel to El Camino Real.

After the famous Human Be-In in San Francisco on January 14, 1967, there were “Be-Ins” all over the country, particularly on the West Coast. Major Be-Ins or similar events were held in Berkeley (Provo Park),  Los Angeles (Griffith Park), Vancouver (Stanley Park) and New York City (Tompkins Square), with many other cities and towns having smaller events put on by local hippies. The San Francisco bands felt it was there duty to play as many of these events as they could. Country Joe and The Fish, for example, played the Stanley Park Be-In in Vancouver on March 26, 1967, and at least some San Francisco bands seemed to have flown down to Los Angeles the same day to play the Griffith Park Love-In.

The New Delhi River Band were Palo Alto’s leading psychedelic band. They had more or less been the “house band” at The Barn in Scotts Valley, and featured future New Riders of The Purple Sage David Nelson and Dave Torbert. Country Joe And The Fish had also regularly played The Barn, and by this time were regular Fillmore headliners so both bands had a following. CJF's first album had been released the month before, and on top of that, local radio was playing "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine," so it was sort of a local Top 40 hit, so the star power at the Be-In was fairly substantial. I'm not certain of the publicity associated with it--one poster (above) was completely critical, and while another gave the bands and the location and time, I do not know how widely they were circulated.

For all the star power of Country Joe and The Fish, and the local notoriety of the hippie scene, I know of no report, even second or third hand of the San Jose Be-In. Was it well attended? Was there trouble with the cops? Did any other bands play? Did it even happen? Even in the 60s, perhaps because of its proximity to San Francisco, events in San Jose seemed to take place in somewhat of a vacuum.

October 8, 1967 Family Park, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose

            Haight Ashbury Medical Clinical Benefit

Big Brother and The Holding Company/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Mother Earth/Mad River/Freedom Highway/Ace of Cups/Dr. West’s Medicine Show 

Family Park was inside the gates of the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, but it was somewhat separate from the facilities of the Fairgrounds proper. The formal address of the Fairgrounds is 344 Tully Road, but the entrance to the grounds was 1st Street and Tully Road, about 2 miles from the site of the San Jose Be-In.  The roads and the Fairgrounds have changed considerably since then, but the approximate geography is still correct (although if San Jose sells the Fairgrounds, the very valuable site may turn into housing and offices).

A recent article has the backstory, but briefly, Dr. David Breithaupt, a volunteer physician at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, organized the benefit concert. Initially he wanted to hold the concert at the nearby baseball stadium (home of the minor league San Jose Giants), but after overcoming some resistance he was allowed to use the fairgrounds. Rock concerts at the Fairgrounds had mostly, if not always, been held in one of the Pavilions or Arenas of the Fairground. In any case, if there had been concerts at Family Park (I'm sure there had been) they had not been all day affairs featuring major recording acts. 

Apparently about 7,500 people attended the concert, a friendly Nun took the tickets, Hells Angels watched over the Nun and a good time was had by all. All of the bands had social and management connections, and had played together many times. One remarkable detail of this event was that someone made a listenable audience tape of the entire show--very rare for the 1960s--and for many decades these recordings were the only circulating live tapes of lesser known Bay Area bands like Mad River and The Ace Of Cups. Dr. West's Medicine Show, incidentally, featured Norman Greenbaum, who later hit it big with "Spirit In The Sky."

The San Jose Be-In and subsequent Benefit concert in Family Park five months later mimicked the arc of the San Francisco Be-In and its more commercial successor, the Monterey Pop Festival (held June 16-18, 1967, 5 months after the SF Be-In). Similar to Monterey, while the show was advertised and tickets were sold, the bands played for free (or close to it, perhaps some expenses were paid), and the substantial crowd was still manageable.

May 18-19, 1968 Family Park, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds 

      Northern California Folk-Rock Festival

May 18, 1968  (Saturday)

Jefferson Airplane/Big Brother and The Holding Company/Grateful Dead/Steve Miller Band/Youngbloods/People/Sons of Champlin/Crome Syrcus/Transatlantic Railroad/Indian Head Band/Mourning Reign

May 19, 1968  (Sunday)

The Doors/Country Joe and The Fish/Electric Flag/Youngbloods/Ashish Khan, Shamin Ahmed, Taranoth Rad/Loading Zone/People/Taj Mahal/Mint Tattoo/Elgin Marble/Omar

Listings from schedule (in reverse running order) on the back of a ticket. Note that many of the scheduled bands from the poster did not end up playing the concert, a cautionary tale about trusting 60s posters.            

The Northern California Folk Rock Festival was an attempt to cash in on the Monterey Pop model with a profitable rock concert. The show was held at Family Park over two days, and it certainly featured a truly all-star cast. The show was also extremely well-attended; supposedly as many as 100, 000 attended the show, and while I think that is an exaggeration--the city of San Jose had a stake in overstating the attendance to prevent the show from happening again--clearly there was a much larger crowd over the two days than anyone anticipated.

The principal aftermath of the concert, however, besides the massive crowds, was the numerous drug overdoses. Apparently the Hells Angels were "marketing" (not a term they would have actually used) PCP under the name "Hog", and it caused numerous people to be treated at the show for overdoses. A few surviving audience tapes reveal some excellent music, but the principal memory in San Jose was a concert that overwhelmed its venue and was quite out of control, which is why the City and County forbade future festivals.

Notes On The Bands

The Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead had nighttime gigs at The Shrine in Los Angeles, and flew down for the shows. The Airplane only appeared at the late show, because they had headlined the Saturday show in San Jose. 

People, Mourning Reign, and Elgin Marble were San Jose area bands.

Indian Head Band were from Castro Valley, and featured future Its A Beautiful Day guitarist Hal Wagenet.

May 25, 1968 Family Park, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds

      McCarthy Is Happening

Jack Jones and Jill St. John/H.P. Lovecraft/Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Clear Light/Flaming Groovies/Crystal Syphon/The Womb/Jimmy Nite and The Nite Caps/Phantasmagoria/The Howl/Anonymous Artists of America/Day Blindness/Shango/many others

Of all the events in this brief chronology, this event is the most obscure and the most revealing. I only know the event from the poster--I have never heard of a review, memory or second hand account. However, the poster itself is very revealing. I have analyzed this event at length elsewhere. Briefly it appears that this was an effort to have a sort of "Hippie Fair."

Eugene McCarthy was running for President on an Anti-Vietnam War platform, and the California primary was June 4. The wording of the ad suggests that it is a pro-McCarthy event, but there is no evidence that its really a fundraiser. The peculiar double headline acts of HP Lovecraft, who headlined the Fillmore a few weeks earlier, and Jack Jones and his new wife Jill St. John, Las Vegas lounge headliners, is a truly headscratching combination. My assumption is that the organizers were trying to appeal to actual hippies and people about 10 years older, and that the effort was a failure.

Of all the many obscure local psychedelic bands playing the McCarthy Is Happening event, one of them, Shango, was the successor to the New Delhi River Band. Thus two members of the group (bassist Dave Torbert and drummer Chris Herold) had played the San Jose Be-In in May 1967, and were back playing a commercialized version of the event (of sorts) just a mile away and a year later. 

May 23-24-25, 1969 Family Park, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds

      2nd Annual Northern California Folk-Rock Festival

Jimi Hendrix Experience/Jefferson Airplane/Chambers Brothers/Led Zeppelin/Eric Burdon/Spirit/Canned Heat/Buffy St. Marie/Youngbloods/Steve Miller/Chuck Berry/Muddy Waters/Taj Mahal/Noel Redding (and Fat Mattress)/Lee Micheals/Blues Image/Santana/Aum/Elvin Bishop/Poco/People/Linn County/Loading Zone/Sweet Linda Divine/Cat Mother/Doc Watson/New Lost City Ramblers

After the drug-addled debacle of the previous year, it was surprising that there was an encore. Supposedly the promoters managed to rent the Fairgrounds on false pretenses, and then started advertising Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, even though they had neither under contract. The festival ended up occurring, and was well attended, but the city and county made sure there wasn't any further events.

Some performer notes:

• The multiple acts were spread out over three days and I do not know the exact running order. Jimi Hendrix closed the festival on Sunday night. 

• Led Zeppelin: The Concert File (Dave Lewis and Simon Pallett, Omnibus Press 1997) quotes Peter Grant as saying that Led Zeppelin had a gig in Chicago all weekend, so they played Friday afternoon (May 23) and the promoter hired a Lear Jet to fly them to Chicago for their Friday Night show. At this time, their first album had just been released, albeit to enormous acclaim, and Led Zeppelin were still trying to make a name for themselves.  

• Eric Burdon did not get to play due to time constraints. 

• At the time of this show, Santana was just another popular local band without an album, although their groundbreaking debut album would be released a few months later. 

May 23-24-25, 1969 practice field, San Jose State College

      Aquarian Family Festival

Ace of Cups/All Men Joy/Birth/Beggars Opera/Boz Skaggs/Crabs/Crow/

Cleanliness & Godliness Skiffle Band/Devine Madness/Denver/Scratch/Elgin Marble/Flaming Groovies/Frumious Bandersnatch/Gentle Dance/Greater Carmichael Traveling Street Band/ Glass Mountain/High Country/Jefferson Airplane/Joy of Cooking/Last Mile/Libras/Lamb/Living Color/Linn County/Mother Ball/ Morning Glory/Mad River/Mt. Rushmore/Nymbus/Old Davis/Red Grass, Green Smoke/Rubber Maze/ Rising Tide/Rejoice/Sunrise/Sable/Sons of Champlin/Sounds Unlimited Blues Band/ Sandy Bull/The Steve Miller Band/ Stoned Fox/South Bay Experimental Flash/Throckmorton/Tree of Life/Weird Herald/Womb/Warren Purcell/Zephyr Grove

The Aquarian Family Festival was a remarkable event in many ways. It was a free rock festival in the spirit of a Be-In, nearby and in contrast to the 1969 Folk Rock Festival, very well attended and largely forgotten. Outdoor rock festivals in San Jose started with the free Be-In in 1967, as they did in many cities. Unlike most areas, which gave up on rock festivals in 1969 or 1970 after too many bad experiences, San Jose ended with an odd duality. The 1969 Folk Rock Festival was a full-on festival with Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and others, and less than a mile away there was a free concert with continuous music for 72 hours and comparable attendance. The net result was the same admittedly--San Jose had had it with rock festivals, but it was a unique ending to the narrative.

The story is almost too complex to tell, but fortunately it is well covered elsewhere. The basic overview is on Wikipedia, reflective websites with photos are here and here, and a modern perspective was published in 2009, and there is still plenty to reflect upon this event. The very short version of the event is as follows.

Various parties who objected to the commercialized Folk Rock Festival got permission from San Jose State College to put on the free concert at a football practice field across from the football stadium (Spartan Stadium). The justification was allowing a place for people to rest on their way to and from the Folk Rock Festival. Although I cannot precisely identify the location, as the land usage seems to have changed, it seems that the practice field was on the same intersection as the San Jose Be-In (10th and Alma) but on an opposite block (if anyone who knows 1960s downtown San Jose geography can illuminate me, I would be very grateful). 

Terms of the agreement with San Jose State said that people could only be present while music was being performed, so the organizers arranged for 72 hours of continuous music. An extra large stage was constructed to allow one band to set up while another performed, thus insuring constant music. The extensive list of performers--which even the organizers admit is hard to be certain about--includes a large percentage of the working bands in the South and East Bay in 1969. All of the bands played for free, and here and there are a few surprises. Jefferson Airplane showed up after their Saturday evening set and played an apparently ripping set, and the Steve Miller band dropped by as well. Most famously, Jimi Hendrix finished his Sunday night show and dropped by to do his thing at the Aquarian Fest, but it was Sunday night and the stage was already being broken down and he was unable to perform (for an extensive discussion of the bands that are known to have played, see here). 

The 3-day campout and Be-In was generally well-reviewed by the local papers, and at least 20,000 people--possibly 4 times that number--attended the Aquarian Family Fair. It wasn't without incident: there were 4 stabbings, 15 attempted rapes and one gang rape (by Hells Angels hired for security, a precursor of Altamont), and there were complaints about the decibel level. 

The double whammy of a giant 3-day rock festival with Jimi Hendrix at The Fairgrounds, while a nonstop 72 hour free concert went on a mile away was too much for San Jose. Future concerts were limited to the Fairgrounds proper or the football stadium, and while some good bands played there in the subsequent years, they played regular shows with typical two or three-band bills. The short, peculiar history of Rock Festivals in San Jose was in fact a microcosm of the arc of Rock Festivals in the United States as a whole, from the free beginnings to the commercial overkill to the anit-commercial reaction. While the subject is ripe for further and extensive study, San Jose's brief history tells the whole story in miniature. 

May 25, 1968 Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA: McCarthy is Happening

The 1968 "McCarthy is Happening" event at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose is only known from the flyer (shown above). The event was scheduled for Saturday, May 25, 1968, and probably took place, although I have no direct evidence one way or the other. Nonetheless, there are numerous interesting things about the conception of the event, whether it took place or not.

The Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose, at 1st Street and Tully Road (the formal address was 344 Tully), were regularly used for rock concerts. However, concert events were typically in one of the buildings or grandstands, with a few or several bands, like any typical concert. Sometimes local San Jose bands played--many of them quite popular--and by 1968 bands from San Francisco and even elsewhere had started to play there. This festival event, however, was distinctly different than any event that had happened before or since at the Fairgrounds, including the famous (and infamous) Northern California Folk Rock Festivals of 1968 and 1969. Those events were multi-day rock shows with headliners like The Doors (1968) and Jimi Hendrix (1969), and were organized like The Monterey Pop Festival. "McCarthy is Happening," which although it took place after the 1968 Folk-Rock Festival (which was on May 18-19), had to be planned before hand, appears to be a different animal entirely.

Thanks to correspondent Steve, we have an alternate flyer for the same event

The Name

The "Title" of the festival is "McCarthy is Happening." Senator Eugene McCarthy was the popular anti-Vietnam War candidate, and popular with young people, and the crucial California primary was on Tuesday, June 4.  However, nothing in the flyer says anything about the election, or being a fundraiser, or political speeches. At this remove, it appears that McCarthy is invoked as sort of a talisman of cool, simply a marketing device. Either this is an example of ultra-clever campaign marketing, decades ahead of its time, or its simply a cynical use of a popular politician. It does say "Donations: $2.00" but no organization or cause is cited--many sixties events claimed tickets were "donations" so as not to appear too commercial.

The Event

The flyer says "12:00 Noon Continuously 12:00 Midnight." The Fairgrounds were set up for this kind of arrangement, and indeed the implication is that the event is simply a hippie fair. The circle in the center says "with Arts and Crafts, Pony Rides, Animal Zoo, Food, Games: Peace To You." All of those amenities--well, perhaps excepting Peace To You--were standard at the Fair, and no doubt the same operators managed them. The tickets are "Donations: Big People-2.00, Under 12-50 cents" so children are at least encouraged, if not entirely expected.

I count about two dozen musical acts, at least three dance troupes, one multi-media show and a few more hard to determine performers. Given the vast number of performers, there must have been multiple stages, but of course the County Fair is set up for that as well, and there were plenty of venues. Clearly the intent is to provide continuous entertainment, so that people will stay several hours and buy food or other items, so the economics were probably intended as similar to the County Fair. A detailed discussion of the musical acts is below, but in general only a few of these acts would have been known, and most would have been quite obscure even then. As a result, the performers would not have been particularly well paid, once again similar to County Fair economics.

The Headliners

The headline acts are HP Lovecraft, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Jack Jones and Jill St. John. HP Lovecraft, while not major, were a unique Chicago psychedelic band with enough of a following to headline the Fillmore Auditorium. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a Long Beach "folk-rock" (later country rock) band had released two albums and had a Top 40 hit with "Buy For Me The Rain," so while they were perceived as a bit slicker than a Fillmore band, they would have had a following too. Jack Jones and Jill St. John are the only act with a listed start time (1:00 pm), and they would have been considerably better known, and considerably less hip, than anyone else on the bill. Jack Jones and Fillmore bands on the same bill, and at an outdoor concert, is a surprising and even curious combination.

Jack Jones (born 1938) was one of the more popular singers in the 1960s, but he sang in an "Adult Contemporary" style that was typical of Frank Sinatra and Las Vegas lounges. Modern readers will probably only recall that he sang the theme from "Love Boat." Jill St. John, then a rising actress, was his wife at this time (they were married from 1967-69). I do not know what their act was, but it was probably a very professional Las Vegas-style revue, quite a bit different than the bluesy psychedelic stylings of many of the bands. Jack Jones remains a popular performer, although obviously his schedule is reduced. Jill St. John went on to become a famous Bond Girl ("Tiffany Case" in Diamonds Are Forever) and remains a working actress.

The Acts

Of the 32 acts listed, I recognize 13 of them as rock bands, and all but HP Lovecraft, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Clear Light are local (see below for a more extensive analysis). There are three acts identified as dance troupes, and several acts with names that seem vaguely multicultural rather than psychedelic (like Ruiz De Luzuriaga), some that I can't say for sure whether they are bands I haven't heard of or some other act (Azziza, The Anatolians and Rikudom), and several 'regular' names. I think the names like Chloe Scott and Vickey Drake are local "Contemporary" performers, like Jack Jones. Since they are near "George Gershwin", who died in 1937, I think the lower semi-circle of acts are local performers intended to appeal to older people who will like Jack Jones (mind you, even these people wouldn't yet be 40, as Jack Jones himself had just turned 30).

Based on the acts I recognize, and some assumptions about 60s naming conventions, the appeal is at the two types of "McCarthy Voters"--young people, who were actual or aspiring hippies, and 30-40 year olds, probably with families and jobs, who didn't hate rock music but liked something more refined. Given that I can think of no outdoor festival that attempted this mixture, I highly doubt that this was a good idea, but that is one thing that makes this event so interesting.

Stewart Brant's Wargod

"Stewart Brant's Wargod" would actually be Stewart Brand's "War: God", a multimedia presentation. Brand was a remarkable figure, a pioneer in multi-media presentations and computers, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, co-conspirator of Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters and organizer of the legendary San Francisco Trips Festival (January 21-22-23, 1966), upon which all Fillmore and Avalon concerts were modeled thereafter. War: God would probably have been running continuously in a special room, once again a need that the Fairground would have met very well (the presentation was probably a mixture of slide shows, lights, music and movies). Brand would have been a known quantity amongst the hip and forward looking, and his presence indicates that at least some aspect of the organizers plans were not directly commercial.

Speculative Conclusions

This event seems so unique that I suspect it was a commercial disaster. I say this not just because no one seems to remember it, but because if the peculiar mixture of an all-day hippie fair with kids rides and lounge music was a winning combination, it would have happened again. This event seems such an odd mixture of performers--Stewart Brand and Jill St. John, to name two--that it was fated to either be a success or failure but not inbetween.

The fact that a huge two-day rock festival had taken place on the same site the previous weekend, whose 20 performers included The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Electric Flag and numerous other fine groups must have made the event seem anticlimactic in any case. The Eugene McCarthy phenomenon, well outside the scope of this blog, was also a rare event, so the conditions that made this event seem plausible were not likely to be repeated in any case.

Its also possible that this event was so peculiarly conceived that it never took place. Many sixties events are "obscure" because while the flyer exists, the event was canceled, and nobody publishes a flyer to announce a cancellation. Anyone with any knowledge (real or imagined) about this event is encouraged to Comment or email me.

Notes On The Bands

May 25, 1968 Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA
McCarthy is Happening (Noon til Midnight)

Jack Jones and Jill St. John/HP Lovecraft/Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Clear Light/Flaming Groovies/Stewart Brand's War: God/Marion Andus Jazz Ballet/Crystal Syphon/The Anatolians/Le Aloha Dancers/Ruiz de Luzuriaga/Azziza/The Womb/Jimmy Nite and The Nite Caps/Phantasmagoria/LA Bloth Feeling and Center/Anonymous Artists of America/The Howl/The Ching/Day Blindness/Paul Curtis Ballet/Shango/Randy Conger/The Great Darv/Chloe Scott/George Gershwin/Big Mike Dinga/Rikudom/Vickey Drake/Peter Donner/Dave Gabe

Notes on bands familiar to me: 

HP Lovecraft: HP Lovecraft was a Chicago group, and they had been billed at the Fillmore as recently as May 9-10-11, 1968, sharing with Loading Zone and Seattle's Crome Syrcus, the last show (May 11) of which was released in 1991. In mid-1968, they had probably just released their second and last album.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: A Long Beach group, initially a jug band, they evolved into folk-rock and eventually country rock. In 1967 they had a Top 40 hit, "Buy For Me The Rain" and they also released two albums. In 1968, multi-instrumentalist Chris Darrow would have just joined. The group has had a long career, and are still active today.

Clear Light: A psychedelic rock group on Elektra, Clear Light were one of many bands that ought to have made it but didn't. They only released one album, in 1967. This event would have been near the end of the band's career. Bassist Doug Lubahn played with the Doors, and drummer Dallas Taylor ended up with CSNY. Danny Kortchmar may have been the lead guitarist by this late date.

Flamin Groovies: The Flamin Groovies were a British Invasion style band from San Francisco, the Groovies were never very popular in the psychedelic era.

Crystal Syphon: Crystal Syphon were a Merced band, who played a little in the Bay Area.

The Womb: The Womb were a San Francisco band who were somewhere between psychedelic and progressive rock. The lead singer was Rory Butcher, previously of The Hedds. The band released two albums on Dot Records in 1969.

The Nite Caps: Based on ads I have seen, The Nite Caps seemed to be an East Bay bar band.

Anonymous Artists Of America: The Anonymous Artists of America lived in a commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and they basically took over from Ken Kesey's Pranksters when Kesey left for jail and Oregon. They were a real hippie organization, and played their share of Be-Ins, but they did make a stab at being a real rock band. Jerry Garcia's ex-wife (Sara Ruppenthal) had been an early member, but she was surely out of the group by this time. The organist was Chuck Schoening (aka Chuck Steaks), previously in The Frantics and Luminous Marsh Gas, and later in Quicksilver Messenger Service.

The Howl: I have seen traces of The Howl in the Bay Area in 1967--apparently a psychedelic rock band.

Day Blindness: Day Blindness was founded at Jefferson High in San Mateo in 1968. The group had probably just formed. The band did release an obscure album in 1969. The group evolved into Fox, and guitarist Gary Pihl went on to play with Sammy Hagar.

Shango: Shango was a successor band to The New Delhi River Band, and apparently played very few gigs before they were signed and taken to Los Angeles to record under the name Horses. Shango's membership was Matt Kelly (vcls, harmonica), Tim Abbott (ld gtr), Dave Torbert (bs) and Chris Herold (drums).

June 24, 1967 El Camino Park, Palo Alto: "Palo Alto Be-In" Grateful Dead/Big Brother And The Holding Company/Anonymous Artists Of America

[update: I have since found out that the correct date for the event was July 2, 1967]

References to this concert have appeared off and on in Deadbase over the years, and sometimes in other lists (such as Dead.net) as “undated June 1967.” I have seen a grainy photo from the event, but on the whole this show has slipped through the cracks of Grateful Dead scholarship. As the last of the 1967 “Be-Ins,” and the Grateful Dead’s first concert in the town where the band was formed, the El Camino Park Be-In deserves a higher profile.

El Camino Park was an athletic field across from both The Stanford Shopping Center and ‘El Palo Alto’ (the tall tree that gave the city its name). The Park (at 100 El Camino Real) was at the intersection of Palo Alto Avenue, Alma Street and El Camino Real at the Palo Alto/Menlo Park border, and within easy walking distance of downtown. It is Palo Alto’s oldest park, first open in 1914.

After the initial “Human Be-In” in Golden Gate Park (on January 14, 1967), The Diggers, the Grateful Dead and other like-minded souls were holding Be-Ins in the Bay Area and around the continent. There were Be-Ins (or similar events) in Los Angeles (Griffith Park), New York (Tompkins Square) and Vancouver (Stanley Park), for example, and around the Bay Area in Berkeley (Provo Park), San Jose (10th and Alma) and finally Palo Alto. The Palo Alto event was the last of these events, and while no one has ever specifically claimed responsibility for its organization, it does seem that it was intended to cap a brief era that had begun only a half-mile away at Perry Lane.

The date is not an absolute certainty, but can be triangulated from the Dead’s schedule (eyewitness David Biasotti saw Jimi Hendrix in Golden Gate Park the next day, so the event was on a Saturday). It was a nice day, and there were a few thousand people present, but it was not a large crowd. While Palo Alto’s leading hippies were migrating North to San Francisco or West to the Santa Cruz Mountains, the scene’s beginnings were still present. Palo Alto, while unhip, was a tolerant town and seemed perfectly willing to allow revelry to take place in a city park on a weekend afternoon. My father, not interested in rock music per se, but having the foresight to recognize cultural touchstones when they occurred in his town, took his whole family—I was nine years old. I mainly recall Bill Kreutzmann’s psychedelically painted drum set, and my younger sister getting her face painted by nice hippie girls. My older sister recalls the Dead playing “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.”

Woodside High School graduate David Biasotti recalls that The Sons of Champlin played with a horn section, rare for them at that time. Other witnesses recall Tim Leary’s presence. The Anonymous Artists of America lived in a commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains, near the notorious Kesey spread, and the Pranksters had willed them the famous “Thunder Machine.” The AAA were a loose aggregation, and one of the members was Jerry Garcia’s ex-wife, Sara Ruppenthal Garcia (although she may have left the group by this time).

For those familiar with the saga of the borrowed amplifiers used for Monterey Pop (a story retailed by Joel Selvin and Rock Scully in their books, among others), this was almost certainly one of the events where the “borrowed” equipment from the Festival was used before it was returned. Ken Kesey’s parties on Perry Lane (today the site of Oak Creek Apartments) had begat psychedelia, and The Warlocks performances at Magoo’s Pizza had begat the Grateful Dead, and just a few years later, the former Palo Alto band anchored what may have been the biggest concert in Palo Alto up to that time.

Palo Alto continued to have a number of free concerts in El Camino Park through the next 18 months, although none of the groups were as high profile as The Dead or Big Brother. At least two were headlined by the Steve Miller Band (in Fall 1967 and August 1968), then a popular regional group, but hardly underground legends. After 1968, Palo Alto pretty much gave up concerts in El Camino Park, and save for one Jerry Garcia/Kingfish/Rowans gig on June 8, 1975 (not a free show), the park has been rock-free ever since.

Crossposted at Lost Live Dead.

The San Francisco Pop Festival, Searsville Lake, San Mateo County, CA October 5-6, 1968 (rescheduled)

A brief but intriguing listing in the September 7, 1968 ‘Teen Age’ section of the Oakland Tribune (left) indicates plans for a San Francisco Pop Festival at Searsville Lake. Searsville Lake was near Palo Alto, though several miles West of Stanford University. It was apparently to feature Traffic, Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, Country Joe and The Fish and the Steve Miller Band. Needless to say, this event didn’t happen.

A San Francisco Pop Festival was held in October (on the 27th and 28th), but the venue was the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, and none of the above named groups were present (Johnny Rivers, Eric Burdon, Canned Heat and Procol Harum were among the acts).

I would have been 10 years old, and although I would not have been interested in the event at the time, it would have been a big event in Palo Alto. I recall Searsville Lake quite clearly, and I doubt it could have taken on a big rock festival. The lake had been formed by the damming of San Francisquito Creek in 1889, inundating the little town of Searsville. Stanford University had taken over the dam and the land in 1919, promptly leasing the area to a series of recreational operators. The little lake was a pleasant swimming area with a little beach and hiking trails. While the operators were presumably free to run their business, Stanford had been suspicious of rock shows since 1966 and must have had ways to block the event.

Searsville Lake had been a regular site of Stanford Fraternity parties, and an early 60s Palo Alto band called The Zodiacs had played them regularly, sometimes with stand-in bassist Jerry Garcia. Bill Kreutzmann’s group The Legends probably played there as well.

Searsville Lake is now part of the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Searsville Dam had never worked properly, and Searsville Lake had silted up significantly throughout its existence, and will eventually disappear. Stanford bought out Searsville Lake in 1976, closing the recreational area and making it part of the preserve.