Fillmore East April 26-27, 1968: Traffic/Blue Cheer/Iron Butterfly

(this post is part of a series cataloging every performance at the Fillmore East)

This was Traffic’s first American tour, which began on March 14 in San Francisco at The Fillmore. The group was originally a quartet, with Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason.  However, the mercurial Mason quit and rejoined the group regularly, and he had apparently left the group prior to their American tour, which had begun in March. Traffic’s current album was Mr Fantasy (UA Dec 67).

Traffic was one of the first groups to emphasize overdubbing as a means of creating different sounds on different songs.  Winwood, Mason and Wood played numerous instruments, and clever use of the studio meant that Traffic songs could be anything from frothy pop ballads with flute and sitar to heavy rock with twin lead guitars and organ. Live, however, Traffic’s sound was very different, as it depended on Winwood’s versatile organ playing (including the bass pedals), and they were more like a typical (if excellent) British R&B combo. For whatever reasons, Dave Mason reappeared in New York and joined the group onstage for at least one of the four performances. He would rejoin the group for the recording of their next album.

Blue Cheer were an SF power trio, backed by LSD king Owsley Stanley, and named after a brand of his acid. Owsley bought the band tons of equipment (supposedly Blue Cheer had 12 Marshall Stacks, 6 each for bass and guitar), and they were famously loud.  Unlike other peace-and-love SF bands, Blue Cheer had a noisy, nasty sound and demeanor.  Their quasi-hit, a remake of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” is a precursor to Heavy Metal.  Their first album (Philips Mar 68) was called Vincebus Eruptum (the underground buzz at the time was that it was Latin for “Throw Up And Live“, although actually it meant nothing). Amazingly, their single got to number 14, and for many out in the hinterlands, it was a hint of something darker and wilder in the world.

Although Blue Cheer is fondly remembered for being ahead of their time as masters of sonic assault, even their fans concede that they weren’t particularly disciplined. This show would have been with the original trio, with Leigh Stephens on guitar, Dickie Petersen on bass and vocals, and Paul Whaley on drums.    

Iron Butterfly were originally from San Diego, and had relocated to Los Angeles in late 1966.  They were touring behind their first album Heavy (Atco Jan 68). However, the album had been recorded in late Summer 1967, and by the time Atco released the album, the band's lineup was somewhat different. Bassist Jerry Penrod had been replaced by Lee Dorman, and singer Darryl DeLoach had departed also, with vocals shared amongst the band. Erik Brann (sometimes spelled Braun) played guitar  along with Doug Ingle on organ and Ron Bushy on drums. According to an internet commentator, Iron Butterfly’s equipment had not yet arrived and they used Blue Cheer’s amps. At this point, the Butterfly were just another psychedelic group from California.

Next: May 3-4, 1968 Jefferson Airplane/Crazy World Of Arthur Brown

Fillmore East April 19-20, 1968: Mothers Of Invention/James Cotton Blues Band

(this post is part of a series cataloging every performance at the Fillmore East)

Although the iconoclastic Mothers of Invention are rightly remembered as an underground Los Angeles band, in fact they had spent the fall of 1967 based in New York City, with residencies in Greenwich Village at the Café Au Go Go and Garrick Theater.  Their revue at the Garrick was called Absolutely Free.  Out of town visitors from, say, Piscataway,  New Jersey were surprised not only to discover that show was not, in fact, free, but that the opening number consisted of surprisingly ugly men with beards, wearing dresses, doing a Supremes medley as a prelude to crazy avant-garde music. 

 The Mothers lineup for this show would have been FZ, Don Preston (organ), Ian Underwood (keyboards, reeds), Bunk Gardner (reeds), Motorhead Sherwood (baritone sax), Roy Estrada (bass, vocals), Jimmy Carl Black (Indian of the group, drums) and Artie Tripp (drums, percussion).  Ray Collins (sometime lead vocalist) had an ambiguous status and may or may not have appeared. Sandy Hurvitz (later known as Essra Mohawk) may have appeared as vocalist, as she often sang at New York appearances.

The Mothers were confusing to follow since Zappa’s complicated sonic productions had little to do with his stage band at any given time.  The current Mothers of Invention album would have been the immortal We're Only In It For The Money (Verve February 68). Albums such as Cruising With Ruben and The Jets and Uncle Meat had largely been recorded, but they would be released until later in the year.

Harmonica master James Cotton had replaced Little Walter in Muddy Water’s band in the late 1950s, and now led his own group, probably featuring Luther Tucker on guitar (Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy, later in The Blues Brothers movie, subsequently replaced Tucker), Albert Gianquinto on piano (who later wrote some songs for Santana), and Francis Clay on drums.  Cotton was already a regular at the San Francisco Fillmore. His mixture of blues classics and bluesy version of R&B hits (like "Turn On Your Lovelight") always went over well.

Some live material recorded in Montreal in 1967, released many years later, gives a good idea of Cotton's sound at the time. To fans at the Fillmore East his current album was probably Cotton In Your Ears (Verve 1967). He did release a 1968 album on Verve, Pure Cotton, but I do not know the exact release date.

Next: April 26-27, 1968: Traffic/Blue Cheer/Iron Butterfly

March 4, 1966 Swarthmore College Rock Festival, Swarthmore, PA Blues Project/Myddle Class

The article excerpted above from the March 2, 1966 edition of the Delaware County Daily Times proudly announces "Swarthmore College To Rock 'n' Roll For First Time." Swarthmore College is an academically exceptional private college about 20 miles West of Philadelphia. As Rock and Roll creeped into serious culture on the Beatles coattails, serious students who hitherto dismissed rock as "dance music" started to get on board. In the 1960s, many colleges had significant entertainment budgets, and if a few shrewd students could get on the appropriate committees, an act thoroughly unacceptable to the college--had they known who they were--could be paid to come on campus and indoctrinate the youth.

At this time The Blues Project were the hippest band in Greenwich Village, playing swinging bluesy versions of classic folk and blues songs. They were perennial regulars at the ultra-hip Cafe Au Go Go, but their first album (Live At The Cafe Au Go Go) had not yet been released. Shortly after this, the band would head West and conquer the Fillmore and Avalon, but all that lay in the future. At this time, the Blues Project was just another Greenwich Village band looking for paying gigs. Since Swarthmore is only about two hours from the Village, and The Au Go Go allowed in teenagers, I have to assume some with-it students knew about the band and got them booked.

In early 1966, there was no concept of a "Rock Festival" as we know it today. The Swarthmore students must have sold it to the college on the grounds of being similar to a Folk Festival, something the school would have been comfortable with. Events consisted of

• 2:00 pm Friday, March 4, Brown Hall: Festival organizer Chris Brown will play his own records and the harpsichord, to introduce the unitiated to rock and roll blues (really, that's what it says)
• 3:00 pm Friday, March 4, Somerville Hall: Record dance, featuring hits of 1965 or before
• late afternoon Friday, March 4, Somerville Hall: screening the "TAMI Show" movie
• 7:00 pm Friday, March 4: Sharpies Dining Hall: The Myddle Class, a New Jersey folk-rock band (students only)
• 9:00 pm Friday, March 4: Clothier Hall: formal concert with The Blues Project
• The Campus will be quiet until Saturday morning classes are finished (yes, children, they had Saturday morning classes, and if you flunked them you were drafted and sent to Vietnam)
• 1:30 pm, Saturday, March 5: Clothier Hall: lecture and demonstration by Peter Schickele and his band The Night People. Shcickele, a Swarthmore alumni, was widely acclaimed for his "PDQ Bach" concerts (too hard to explain). Schickele would create and perform a rock song at the lecture.
• 5:00 pm, Saturday, March 5: Wallingford Arts Center, Nether Providence: cocktail reception for over-21 students
• 7:00 pm, Saturday, March 5: Clothier Hall: concert with Peter Schickele and The Night People, Swarthmore Scruples, The Side Track (from Montreal) and Philadelphia City Hall Singers

This is pretty far from the Woodstock model. On the other hand, if Woodstock had had a cocktail reception for the 21-and-overs on Saturday night, perhaps the event would have been even better, so who can say (the harpsichord thing, maybe not). In retrospect, Peter Schickele, while kind of "hep" at the time, was hardly rock and roll, and chump acts like the City Hall Singers (unnacompanied singers who sang under the arches at City Hall because they liked the echoes) seem like light fare, the Blues Project were the coolest band for 1000 miles (the distance to the Butterfield Blues Band in Chicago, friends and rivals of The Blues Project). Although I know little about The Myddle Class, supposedly they were a cool New Jersey garage band, so it sounds like all the memorable action was on Friday night.

Other than this article, I know nothing about the First Swarthmore Rock Festival. Intriguingly, I am told there was at least a second Swarthmore Rock Festival the next year, either October 1966 or Spring 1967, featuring the Jefferson Airplane and Woody's Truck Stop (with teenage lead guitarist Todd Rundgren). At the very least, it suggests that the first one went well enough to allow the second to happen. I wonder if there was a third one?

Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco April 29-30, 1966: Grass Roots/Sons Of Adam/Big Brother and The Holding Company

This post is part of a series analyzing every concert at the Avalon Ballroom. Above is the Wes Wilson poster for the event (FD6--thanks to Ross for the scan).

For the Avalon's second event, Chet Helms turned to a mixture of San Francisco and Hollywood groups. Given the lengthy pop history of The Grass Roots, with huge AM radio hits like "Midnight Confessions," it seems strange at this remove to see them as regulars of the early days at the Fillmore and The Avalon. In fact, however, the original Grass Roots were a strange hybrid of Bay Area and Southern California, and the little told story of the original band is a protoypical "only in the 60s" tale.

Two LA songwriters, P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, produced and wrote for numerous acts (for example, they wrote Barry McGuire’s hit “Eve Of Destruction”).  Often, when they had a good song, they simply recorded it themselves and simply made up an appropriate sounding group name. They had written and sang on some records as the Grass Roots on Dunhill Records.  When they found some radio success on California AM stations with a song called “Where Were You When I Needed You” in late 1965 , a band had to be created to support the records.  “Where Were You When I Needed You,”  with a lead vocal by P.F. Sloan, strangely, was a radio-station only single and was not for sale.

Sloan and Barri found a San Francisco band called the Bedouins, and sent them out as The Grass Roots. The Bedouins were apparently a pretty good local band, and are known to have won a 1965 Battle of The Bands at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. In about October 1965, Bill Fulton, the new lead singer of The Grass Roots (nee Bedouins) sang lead on the next Grass Roots single, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Ballad Of A Thin Man.” The band was offended that their lead singer merely sang over pre-recorded tracks performed by session musicians, rather than getting to record as a band. 

In late 1965 and early 1966, The Grass Roots (nee Bedouins) played numerous gigs in Southern California, particularly at The Trip in West Hollywood. At The Trip, where they played every night for almost a month, they played their own sets and backed Barry McGuire for his set. McGuire was another Sloan/Barri act, riding high with his folk-rock hit "Eve Of Destruction." The Grass Roots also played numerous TV gigs, often backing other acts like Barry McGuire or The Mamas and Papas. At the same time, the band played County Fairs and other teenage gigs, where besides the Grass Roots two singles, they mostly played the same blues and R&B tunes that they had played as The Bedouins.

By April of 1966, The Grass Roots were actually relatively popular, as “Where Were You When I Needed You” has been re-released by Dunhill Records and was now getting national airplay.  Producers Sloan and Barri had replaced Sloan’s lead vocal with a new take by lead singer Bill Fulton, so there were now two versions of their best known song.  However, while the Grass Roots still only had two singles, The Sons of Adam only had one, which wasn't a hit, and Big Brother hadn't recorded at all. It was a tribute to the thriving underground scene that the Avalon Ballroom could do well for two nights on groups with such a skinny track record.

Sons Of Adam, whose roots lay in Baltimore, MD, were a Yardbirds-style band from Southern California. The Sons Of Adam were extremely popular in Hollywood clubs, and they had a sensational guitarist in Randy Holden, a sonic legend who blew away everyone who heard him. The Sons Of Adam had only released one single in December 1965 (on Decca), but by all accounts they were a smoking hot live band. The band that played The Avalon was the original and by all accounts the best lineup of The Sons Of Adam. Besides lead guitarist Randy Holden (later in The Other Half and Blue Cheer), guitarist Joe Kooken (aka Jac Ttanna, later Lee Michaels road manager), bassist Mike Port and drummer Michael Stuart (later in Love). Supposedly there is an extant live recording of this lineup (albeit not of this show) that will be released someday, at least according to Ugly Things Magazine (Greg Provost's Sons Of Adam article in Issue 26 tells the whole story).

For purely homegrown undergound talent, Chet Helms booked Big Brother and The Holding Company. Chet Helms was the manager of Big Brother, as well as being the proprietor of The Avalon. Big Brother, in various configurations, had began by playing in the basement of 1090 Page Street, where some of them lived, and had performed at what were essentially ‘Rent Parties.’  Peter Albin’s parents owned the rooming house at 1090 Page, and his older brother Rodney managed the building.  Chet Helms had been putting on the Wednesday night events in the basement, so the band of residents played in the basement. Chet Helms subsequently invited neighbor Bill Ham (from 1839 Pine and the Red Dog ) to put on light shows. By early 1966, band had chosen their name and the group's personnel had stabilized: James Gurley and Sam Andrews on guitars, Peter Albin on bass and Dave Getz on drums. The band's public debut under the Big Brother name was at Berkeley's Open Theater on January 15, 1966.
 
Albin, Andrews and Gurley had all been folkies, and did many of the typical bluesy songs that other bands did (like “I Know You Rider”), but Big Brother’s music featured loud and jagged improvisations.  Lead guitarist James Gurley had been a fine fingerpicking folk guitarist, but the addition of an amplifier and LSD made Gurley into one of the first ‘psychedelic’ guitar players.  Sam Andrew and Peter Albin sang some songs, but many Big Brother numbers were instrumentals with Getz’s jazzy drumming anchoring the self-procalimed Big Brother ‘freak rock’ sound. In this early period, Big Brother’s show-stopping set closer was an instrumental version of Grieg’s  “Hall Of The Mountain King.”

Next: May 6-7, 1966: Daily Flash/Rising Sons/Charlatans/Big Brother and The Holding Company

Avalon Ballroom April 22-23, 1966: The Blues Project/Great Society

This post initiates a series analyzing every rock concert at the Avalon Ballroom. Above is the Wes Wilson poster for the event (FD5--thanks to Ross for the scan).

April 22-23, 1966 The Blues Project/Great Society

Transplanted Texan Chet Helms had started informally promoting shows in the basement of an old Victorian (by then a boarding house) on 1090 Page Street. He had taken over The Family Dog name from Luria Castell and others in early 1966, and initially he went into a partnership with Bill Graham. From February through early April of 1966, Graham and Helms alternated promotions each weekend at the Fillmore. Disputes rapidly arose between the two entrepreneurs, and Helms, realizing he would never co-exist with Bill Graham, found his own venue.

Helms took over the lease on The Avalon Ballroom, opened in 1911 as The Puckett School of Dance, for 800 dollars a month.  It was on 1268 Sutter (at Van Ness), 8 blocks nearer to downtown than the Fillmore, but just as far away from North Beach or the Haight Ashbury. The Avalon was somewhat smaller than the Fillmore, and was always a looser, wilder scene, remembered fondly by everyone who went.  As the evening wore on, the Avalon staff typically joined in the dancing and carrying on, and no one took tickets.  Over time, the hippie style of management meant that bands sometimes didn’t get paid (or on occasion were just given a kilo of weed).

The Avalon and The Fillmore summed up the dichotomy of the ballroom scene.  Bands and fans preferred the Avalon, but it was ultimately too disorganized to survive.  The implicit commercialism of the Fillmore guaranteed a level of professionalism that allowed bands to persist.  Most big cities and college towns soon developed a psychedelic ballroom scene, based on what little information could be gleaned from rumors and Life Magazine. Most of these scenes were like the Avalon:  fun, economically unsound, and unable to survive.  The Fillmore took the parts of the ballroom scene that were good for the music and injected enough commercial sense to insure survival.

For its opening weekend, the Avalon booked The Blues Project, the hippest band in New York.  Blues Project played extended blues like every band in this era, but they came at it from a more musical, up tempo New York style, doing relatively jazzy versions of blues songs, or bluesy versions of folk songs. Danny Kalb, though unknown beyond Greenwich Village, was one of the best electric blues guitarists outside of Chicago, and Al Kooper’s organ was well-known for his seminal playing on Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone.”  Unlike any of the San Francisco bands, guitarist Steve Katz, bassist Andy Kulberg and drummer Roy Blumenfield could play a fast blues shuffle and still swing.  Although vocalist Tommy Flanders, who appeared on their soon-to-be released album Live At The Café Au-Go-Go (Verve May 66), had already left, Kooper, Katz and Kalb were adequate vocalists.

The Blues Project, already popular in Greenwich Village and the East Coast College circuit, were making their first trip West. The Avalon wasn't their Bay Area debut--they probably played The Matrix the week of April 12-17, and definitely played the San Francisco State Folk Festival (the weekend of April 15-17)--but the Friday and Saturday night shows were the highest profile gigs for the band in the area. Chet Helms was well known in the underground, and the opening of the Avalon was a big deal, and the Blues Project's hot swinging blues put the San Francisco bands on notice about how good a band could be. After this weekend, The Blues Project were extremely popular in San Francisco for the life of the band, and the Avalon was off to a roaring start.

The Great Society came out of the Film and Art world, and had never been folkies.  They were interested in improvised music and (for lack of a better term) Performance Art.  Grace Slick and her husband Jerry had seen the Airplane perform in August 1965, and felt inspired to form a rock band. Grace played keyboards and sang, Jerry played drums, Jerry's brother Darby played lead guitar, and David Miner played guitar and sang. Their inability to find a bass player in 1965 had led them to hire one Bard Dupont, after a chance meeting in the post office, because he had long hair and hip clothes.  The Great Society's public debut was at the first Family Dog event on October 16, 1965 at Longshoreman's Hall, although they did a brief unpublicized performance at a coffee shop the night before.

Great Society’s record company, Autumn, supposedly released a single of “Someone To Love” in March, written by Darby Slick, and later to become the legendary “Somebody To Love” when performed by The Jefferson Airplane.  The 45, while actually pressed, was never apparently distributed, as a result of Autumn Records’ financial difficulties.  Also, despite Dupont’s desire to be in a band, he didn’t play an instrument and his inability to play bass was holding up the band. By the time of the Avalon debut in April, Dupont had been summarily fired (he made the band promise to tell everyone he had quit) and replaced by Peter Vandergelder, a saxophonist who--while not a bassist either--was at least an actual musician.

The Great Society, who styled themselves jazzy improvisers, were humiliated by the musical sophistication of the Blues Project.  The Society decided to rent a house in Mill Valley, live communally and rehearse twice a day.  At this time, the Great Society were David Miner (guitar, vocals), Grace Slick (vocals, guitar, sometimes doubling on bass), Darby Slick (lead guitar), Peter Vander Gelder (bass, saxophone) and Jerry Slick (drums). While unsophisticated, The Great Society were neither blues nor folk, and didn't sound like anyone else playing live or on the radio, and Grace Slick was always a major presence, so while The Blues Project were the musical highlight, the Great Society were also memorable performers for the lucky attendees of the Avalon's first nights.

UPDATE: A knowledgeable Italian pointed out that in Spring 1966, the lead singer for The Blues Project was Emmaratta Marx, who was in the band for about two months. Although she only performed with the band for a few months, her presence with the Blues Project's stunning debut must have helped confirm the notion to the San Francisco underground that successful bands had female lead vocalists (or "chick singers" as they were called then).

Next: April 29-30, 1966 Big Brother and The Holding Company/Grass Roots

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

Fillmore East April 4-5, 1968: The Who/Buddy Guy/Free Spirits

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

The Fillmore East generally planned to have an early (8:00pm) and late (11:30pm) show for both Friday and Saturday night for each engagement. However, Martin Luther King had been assassinated on April 4th, and many New York nightspots were closed.  The Fillmore East remained open, but instead staged one long show each night.

The Who had been a hugely popular Mod group in England, but had never been particularly successful in America.  However, their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival and the SF Fillmore suggested that the Who were merely ahead of their time.  The Who had already headlined the SF Fillmore in June 67 and February 68. Their booking agent was Frank Barsalona of Premier Talent (about whom more later). The Who’s current album was The Who Sell Out (Decca Jan 68). The Who had played at the venue in its prior incarnation as the Village Theater (November 25-26, 1967), and had mentioned from the stage that at that time, prior to Graham’s refurbishment, the venue was a “pisshole.”

Both nights were recorded for a possible live album, and many rarely performed numbers were played. A professional recording of The Who’s April 6  show was widely bootlegged.  Most famously, it was on a TMOQ (Trademark of Quality) bootleg lp, usually called Fillmore East.  It features a driving 60-minute set that includes the complete “A Quick One While He’s Away” and a tough cover of “Fortune Teller.” Kostelanetz’s glowing review mentions how since many in the crowd had seen the Monterey Pop movie, they expected The Who to smash their equipment, but when they did it was still stunningly theatrical to watch.

Buddy Guy was the sensational Chicago blues guitarist, who had often toured with harmonica player Junior Wells.  Guy had been on Chess Records for years, but had recently changed record companies, as rock labels were trying to capitalize on the new popularity of bluesmen. Buddy Guy’s current album was A Man And The Blues (Vanguard Feb 68). For at least one of these shows, Buddy Guy came on after The Who, and it was apparently an anticlimax. In the earlier years, Fillmore East shows were less rigid about headliners appearing in the correct order.  Travel schedules and other factors often caused bands to be presented in a different order than the one they were billed. On the first night, B.B.King sat in with Buddy Guy for two numbers. B.B. was probably playing another club in the area (such as The Generation).

Free Spirits was an attempt by producer Bob Thiele to have jazz musicians play rock.  Their album Out of Sight Out of Mind (ABC 1967) was interesting, but they had no real songs. Guitarist Larry Coryell, who played on the album, had left the group by this time.

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