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From the San Francisco Examiner, October 31, 1965: "JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, the folk-singing team which was recently at the Matrix, will be interviewed by Rolfe Peterson (Bay Area Critic and Wit Extraordinaire) on "POW," Sunday at 3 p.m. on Channel 5, KPIX. Left to right are Jorma Kaukonen, Bob Harvey, Marty Balin, Signe Anderson, Paul Kantner and Skip Spence." (note--Jack Casady had replaced Bob…
A 1964 photo of the Whisky A-Go-Go, with a dancer on the raised stage over the crowd ( from the indispensable Alison Martino and her site Vintage LA ) Hollywood likes to style itself as the center of the universe, and when it comes to mass culture that's not far wrong. It's one thing to talk about art and artists and how they form up into a larger whole, when a few creative individuals find…
Gary Wright onstage at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway Grandstand, July 4, 1976, opening for Peter Frampton ( from the Nashville Tennesseean July 5, 1976) The live rock concert business exploded all over America in the 1970s. Rock bands criss-crossed the country, and concerts got bigger than ever. What were once events held in modest ballrooms in bohemian downtowns had became much larger,…
Palo Alto had something going on in the late 60s, with free concerts in the downtown El Camino Park, the thriving Poppycock club and the occasional Stanford rock concert . Yet live rock music had almost evaporated in Palo Alto in the early 1970s. Unlike most towns, Palo Alto had no problem with protest, anti-war sentiment, weed, long hair or the threat of promiscuity. Palo Alto had been a nexus of…
The Whisky A-Go-Go, at 8901 Sunset Blvd (at Clark) on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood The Whisky A-Go-Go, 1972 In the late 1960s, one of the ways for a rock band to get big fast was to play the Whisky A-Go-Go in West Hollywood. True, the little club on the crowded Sunset Strip held 500 patrons at most, and the mini-skirted Go-Go dancers elevated above the floor were often as big an attraction…
An ad for Jefferson Airplane and Poco at University Arena ("The Pit") at the University of New Mexico on September 10, 1972. This was the next-to-last booking of the original Jefferson Airplane. Jefferson Airplane was the first band to surface in the San Francisco rock scene, initially just a local phenomenon that would go National with the Surrealistic Pillow album in Fall 1966. Grace Slick was…
The Barn in Scotts Valley, was open from late 1965 until 1968, and rock shows were put on there in 1966 and Spring '67. The address was 3486 Granite Creek Road. This is the only known photo of the exterior. The site is now a parking lot for a Christian school. What we know as the modern rock concert can be directly traced to Bill Graham's first weekend at the Fillmore Auditorium, when he presented…
The Barn in Scotts Valley, as it appeared in Fall 1966. The given address was 3486 Granite Creek Road, although it apparently faced Club Drive. The site is now a parking lot for the Baymonte Christian School. The modern rock concert industry was invented in San Francisco, when Bill Graham and Chet Helms presented Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service at the Fillmore Auditorium on…
The beautiful North Shore of Lake Tahoe At fifty years and counting, classic rock from San Francisco's Fillmore era remains central to our appreciation of rock music and late 20th century culture. All the Fillmores are rightly celebrated as cornerstones of the evolution of the modern rock concert. Prior to the Fillmores, rock concerts were just entertainment for teenagers, little more than…
260 South California Avenue, the site of the Keystone Palo Alto, as it appeared in the 1990s. At the time it was a nightclub called Illusions. The Keystone Berkeley and The Keystone, Palo Alto Freddie Herrera was a successful rock nightclub owner and operator for over 15 years, from 1968 until about 1985. He ran a number of different nightclubs in San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto and even…
