1993-1994       

With Jynx Lynx and Kerry Kearney at Manny’s Car Wash.

12 January 1993     Sam Andrew Band Boulder Creek Brewery  Boulder Creek  California     This was one of the great gigs.

James Gurley

Cinnamon Morgan        Cash Farrar

Anthea Sidiropoulos            Bill Laymon.

Bill Ganaye, good friend, a real brother to me.

Joey Edelman, gifted player, fun to be with. When I go see a film I think of Joey because someone in his family is usually writing or performing the soundtrack.

22 January 1993        Phoenix Theatre      Petaluma     California

Greg Anton was on drums.

And then Steve Kimock played guitar. He always surprises me, always has a fresh idea.

Glenn Walters was with us.  He was the principal singer with The Hoodoo Rhythm Devils and The Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra.

28 January 1993     Pahoa       Pahoa is a special place, even for Hawaii.

This is a large egg near Neuss, Germany.

10 March 1993    Stadthalle   Neuss   (rhymes with voice)

Neuss is across the Rhein (Rhine) from Düsseldorf.

Ach, du lieber Augustin, Bonnie Tyler is here in Neuss !   That is so neuss, I mean, nice.   I wonder if I will see her in Moscow when our bus arrives ?

It was great to play in the same band with James Gurley. He was funny, energetic and sharp.

There was only one James.

17 April 1993   Big Brother and the Holding Company    JJ’s     San José

23 April 1993    Big Brother and the Holding Company   Boulder Creek Brewery     Boulder Creek  California

Peter Albin

24 April 1993     Sam Andrew Band   Caspar Inn

Caspar, California, is between Fort Bragg and Mendocino.

30 April-1 May 1993   Sam Andrew Band  Winthrop Washington

When we play here, we look out from the stage at a scene like this.

15 May 1993   Last Day Saloon  San Francisco     That’s John Wedemeyer on guitar, one of the best. John has a little trick of playing an arpeggio one half tone sharper than the target chord and then resolving it, which makes for a lot of tension and interest.

Canned Heat, now we’re talking.

James Gurley singing All Is Loneliness.

19 May 1993   Sam Andrew Band    Horizons   Sausalito

This used to be The Trident, scene of some rather lubricious activities in the late 60s, early 70s.

Gorgeous place.

David Crosby used to sail his yacht right up to the back, tie it up and come on in.

Janis used to hold court at The Trident and drink everyone under the table.

No, I mean literally. Under the table. You’d see people down there talking and carrying on, looking up at the ceiling.

Horizons is the new name for the Trident. I had a great band in there:  Gary Albright, Diane Dutra, Cash Farrar, Snooky Flowers, Bill Ganaye, Dave Getz, Bill Laymon, Cheryl Little Deer, Natalie Martel (above), Cinnamon Morgan, Kim Nomad

Kim Nomad   Anthea Sidiropoulos

My big star from Tokyo Shiho-san, Superfly, at the Trident (Horizons).

28 May 1993     Magnolia’s  Santa Rosa   California         I call it a laminate. My wife Elise calls it a lanyard. We’re both right, but she is more right.

The laminate is the laminated ticket or poster that identifies the particular event (here it is white), and the lanyard is string around your neck that holds the laminate.  On the East Coast, they call the whole thing a lanyard, and on the West Coast, they call the whole thing a laminate.

Above is a laminate, so called because it has a plastic covering on both sides. It’s laminated.

The  laminate is held by this lanyard. The word comes from 15th century French “lanière,” a thong strap apparatus that held any valuable object, such as a sword, close to the body.

In English, probably the closest equivalent is a “tether,” a way of attaching a valuable object so that it not be lost.  Lanière  became lanyard when it crossed the Channel.

In Germany, they call this die Pfeiffenschnur, the whistle cord. It’s a way of keeping a valuable and much used object close to hand. It’s a lanyard.

The poet Sydney Lanier’s name may have come from lanière.

This is my friend Joanne Lasnier (pronounced lanyé).  She may have a lanière or a lanyard hanging somewhere in the branches of her family tree.

29 May 1993    Caspar Inn   Caspar     California     You don’t see “Caspar” spelled with an ‘a’ everyday, or maybe ever.

James Gurley

4 June 1993   Cedar Inn Tavern   Washington      Mark Riley (right) played guitar on this gig. He was so good.  Crosscut Saw.

Lips was the bass player in the Sam Andrew Band, Texas Division.  Gary played guitar with us. We had fun. Can you tell ?

One of those hot nights in Houston.

17 June 1993    The Sam Andrew Band   Houston

This wouldn’t be where we were watching the television during sound check and saw OJ driving in his White Bronco, would it ?

J’Net Ward, one of the owners of Liberty Lunch in Austin when I played there.

Liberty Lunch seemed like a huge tent to me. It was like playing in the circus.

Cowboy jitterbug at Liberty Lunch.

24 June 1993  Liberty Lunch   Austin

Roky Erickson came down and walked around the place during sound check, and I was hoping he w0uld sit in, but he wandered off into the sunset.

Aging hippies?  We were young then.

That was over twenty years ago.  You should see us now.

25 June 1993  Sam Andrew Band  Marble Falls  Texas    It’s true, I’m not big on nostalgia. To be nostalgic, you actually have to remember something.

One of the reasons I started writing this history, in fact, was so that I could actually begin to remember what has happened to us in the last half a century.

James Gurley’s guitar… one of them anyway

I’ve always liked the word serendipity.

Serendip was the old name for Ceylon, which was the old name for Sri Lanka.

Horace Walpole had the happy idea of coining the word serendipity for unexpected wondrous things that could happen.

The Sam Andrew Band does television:    Bill Ganaye, Dave Getz, Ed Earley, Bill Laymon, Kim Nomad.

14 August 1994   Caspar Inn   Caspar  California

6 September 1993   Sam Andrew Band opens for Big Brother and the Holding Company.   Hog Farm  Laytonville    California

Snooky Flowers   Sam Andrew   Kim Nomad   Peter Tork   Bill Laymon

Do you remember the band Spinal Tap? Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean playing Derek Smalls, Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins ? Well, Spinal Tap still tours and they play all those great songs like Sex Farm, Jazz Odyssey, Big Bottom, Hell Hole and let’s not forget Lick My Love Pump.

Spinal Tap’s support band when they tour is the Folksmen, played by Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean.

Often, when the Folksmen are performing, the audience is yelling at them to get off so that Spinal Tap, the same guys, can come on.

I thought maybe this would happen to The Sam Andrew Band while we were opening for Big Brother, but our audiences were more polite or perhaps more stoned, or perhaps more enlightened ? Anyway, we had a couple of encores.

They liked us.

19 September 1993   Greenpeace

1 and 2 October 1993   Smiley’s  Bolinas

Anthea Sidiropoulos at 19 Broadway Fairfax.

We played all of these tunes.

With  Anthea Sidiropoulos and Snooky Flowers.

2 October  1993      Sam Andrew Band    19 Broadway   Fairfax     California

Anthea sings her song.

4 October 1993      The bedroom at the Landmark Hotel, room 105, Los Angeles  California.           Photo:  Howard Sounes.

8 October 1993  Once again the Sam Andrew Band opens for Big Brother and the Holding Company.      Grant’s Pass    Oregon

Michel Bastian

On this tour we stopped in at a radio station with one or two old friends to do some interviews.  Brian Auger, Peter Albin, Rich Kirch.

With Brian Auger and Rich Kirch

20 October 1993   Sam Andrew Band   Last Day Saloon  San Francisco

I played Munchies in Houston with Detroit Dave, Lips and Gloria Meehan.

2 November 1993  Munchies    Houston

There he is again, playing my guitar, always with the pompadour. Richie Kirch, one of the great raconteurs of rock, played with John Lee Hooker for years. Rich has a swinging, relaxed blues style.

18 November 1993

8 December 1994   The Bruce Latimer Show   Pacifica   California    Bruce is a master of graveyard humor.

He has a droll, deadpan delivery that is sepulchral and silly.

Cash Farrar   Kim Nomad   Sam Andrew   Diane Dutra   Debi Romek

10 December 1993    Peri’s Silver Dollar    Fairfax     California

The Sam Andrew Band  December 1993   Snooky Flowers, Aviva, Peter Tork, Sam Andrew, Dave Getz, Kristina Kopriva, Ingo York, Joey Edelman.

11 December 1993   Sacramento    Aviva plays with soul and expertise.

Sacramento, are you ready, ’cause we’re going to tear this building down.

Thank you, Will Gunter. You did a lot of good for a lot of people.

16 December 1993  Munchies  Houston  Hey! Beethoven’s birthday.  If you’re going to be born, don’t do it in December. Do it in May.

Clayton Dyess, real musician, he played guitar with Dizzy Gillespie.

Fraternizing, or is that sororizing?, with Lips who is a wonderful person and a sensational bass player.

17 December 1993      Hoi Polloi     Houston       Hoi Polloi is Greek for the many, the masses.  James Gurley used to use this phrase as a synonym for “the elite.”   He never really believed me when I pointed out that that polloi is like “poly” and means many, as in polygamous or polymorphously perverse.

Both of us were too lazy actually to walk across the room and look the phrase up in the dictionary (but I was right).

19 December 1993    The Boatyard  Houston       Nuri Nuri, DJ in Houston.  Nuri Nuri sat in with us on bass now and again and he did a good job.

23  December 1993  The Continental Club  Austin

Marcia Ball came to see me at this one. I was too shy to ask her to sit in. Dammit.

This didn’t happen, but it was fun talking about it.

5 January 1994     19 Broadway    Fairfax   California

11 January 1994     Jazzed    San Rafael    California

9 February 1994   Last Day Saloon.

2 May 1994   Chet Helms Tribute

        

15 May 1994      Kristina Kopriva and George Michalski were the soundtrack for this Roast.

12 May to 11 June 1994      George Michalski, the Elton John of San Francisco, came with me on this crazy tour.

George Michalski                       Barbara Liu

Photo:   Polly Belinda Rendall

5 June 1994                       Vancouver                  British Columbia

10 June 1994    Redwood Run    Willits    California

4 July 1994                    House of Blues

9 July 1994   Big Brother and the Holding Company     Pozo Saloon   Paso Robles   California

July 1994   Mercury Lounge        New York City      I liked this place. They were generous and smart here.

15 July 1994     Fez was downstairs from Time, a cool place. Charles Mingus played at Fez.

Lenny Kaye played with Patti Smith, Eric Ambel played with Joan Jett, and I played with Janis Joplin, so I wanted to call this concert The Submissive Dudes.

3 August 1994  Groove Fest Pinellas Parkway   Clearwater   Florida  Where I met the love of my life, Elise Wainani Piliwale.

At this event, Elise was playing violoncello and harp, but at home she played the piano. She is studying some arie antiche now and is trying to find a singer to perform them with.

20 August 1994      Forestville        California

27  August 1994     University of California at Davis  California

15 September 1994      Sam Andrew Band   Manny’s Car Wash   New York City      I played here once a year for five years. Loved the place.

With Jynx Lynx, and I see Jym Fahey back there too.

20 September 1994        Visa for Russia.     They let a guy who looks like this in, so you know things had loosened up a bit.

Believe it or not, this is the way to handwrite Sam Andrew in the Cyrillic alphabet. The printed alphabet is quite close to Greek, but handwriting is something else. St. Cyril was Greek and when he wanted to translate the Bible into Russian he needed an alphabet so he created one from his native language with a few additions for the nonce. This is similar to how Modern German was principally the work of Martin Luther when he translated the Bible into German, and to how Modern English takes its departure from the King James version of the Bible.

3-10 October 1994   Steps To Parnassus   Moscow

Aeroflot… lots of Russian men standing around on the plane chain smoking and drinking glasses of vodka straight down.

Moscow !   We met many musicians from all over Europe, great performers.  This was something like Russian Idol, only not as cheesy, because Rupert Murdoch didn’t have anything to do with it.

Russians are highly intelligent and they know how to party.

See those great looking guys in the back ? They are Bulgarians, Communists. This is what Communists looked like in 1994. They were Communists about as much as we were Capitalists.

We made some good friends in Moscow.

Margarita Perova.

There’s Bonnie Tyler.    I thought she might show up here.

Thank you for the post card. I never dreamed about receiving it. It makes me feel glad. I hope that when you come to Russia you will be in Moscow and it will be possible to see you on the concerts. But if you are going to visit Russia in winter you must take cold weather into consideration. Much snow, ice, so take many warm clothes.

Pravda… Truth.              (All those letters are Greek as well as Russian.  The forms are slightly different.)

Friends and lovers.     Thank you, Russia.

My name C3M in Russian sounds like Sem or even Syem. They palatalize everything. “Not” is “nyet.”

The name of this event, Steps To Parnassus, gave me quite a start when I first heard it. It’s a very meaningful phrase to me.

I talked about this before in part seven of this history. Steps To Parnassus. Gradus ad Parnassum.

This is the title page to my first counterpoint book, a classic. Gradus ad Parnassum means Steps to Parnassus, the name of our event in Moscow.

Palestrina was the master of counterpoint in the sixteenth century, and we have been following him ever since.

Beethoven made many notes in his copy of Gradus ad Parnassum, notes that are still lucid and useful.

Everyone who plays or writes music uses counterpoint whether consciously or not. It’s rather like the man in Molière who was astonished to find out he had been speaking prose all of his life.

The formal study of counterpoint, like that of perspective, is endlessly fascinating.

Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart used the same counterpoint textbook that I did, Gradus ad Parnassum.

So, we are in Moscow at an event that honors Johann Joseph Fux by using the title of his book.

I brought my Gradus ad Parnassum with me to Russia.

When we drove in from the airport to downtown Moscow, James, who was from Detroit, said, “Hey, they have cars here !”

Maybe he was expecting troikas ?

20 November 1994              The Fillmore

Everything but the kitchen sink… oh, wait, no, that’s there too.

16 December 1994      The first of many beautiful letters from Alan Wilson, genius polymath residing in Kyoto.

18 December 1994              Veterans Memorial            Santa Rosa

25 December 1994      Love letters and advice from Russia.

Croton on Hudson   Tom Finch, Bernard Purdy, Halley de Vestern.

Bernard Purdy, master drummer on so many 60′s, 70s sessions, came to see us in Croton, but we were too intimidated to ask him to sit in.

31 December 1994       Eastlake Zoo     Seattle         Happy New Year !

Sam Andrew                  Photo:   Joanne Lasnier

_________________________________________________________

1969 to 1972

Big Brother is watching you.

December 1968   At a Stax/Volt party in Memphis with Janis Joplin, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Al Jackson, Jr., Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Booker T. Jones who is now a San Rafael resident.  

   

2-3 February 1969

9 February 1969    Franklin Pierce College

7 March 1969   Dale Burkhardt attends a Kozmic Blues Band show and snaps this one.

28 March 1969

The Kozmic Blues Band played at The Royal Albert Hall, so to celebrate, I took a bath.

Queen Victoria baptised the Royal Albert Hall in 1871.

The acoustics in this Hall were originally so bad that people said it was the only place where a British composer could be sure of hearing his work twice.

Eric came to see us.

I thought about the people who had spoken and played in this space: Winston Churchill, Wagner, Verdi, Elgar, Rachmaninoff.

Suzy Creamcheese took me out to Hampton Court and gave me the royal tour.

29 June 1969        Terrace Ballroom     Salt Lake City

20 July 1969   Snooky Flowers and I watched this event live on television at the Chelsea Hotel, NYC.

8 August 1969       660 Great Highway        with Tyrannosaurus Rex and Tongue and Groove.

The Palace Hotel still looks much like this.

25 August 1969

27 August 1969     Saratoga

17 October 1969       Austin

On the road again.

18 October 1969   Hemisphere Arena  San Antonio

I’m listed as playing on this recording, but I’ve never heard it.

With Janis and Richard Kermode.

Richard came out of that Hammond B3 jazz scene in Buffalo. He was a good musician.

15 November 1969  This was a huge California demonstration against the war in Viet Nam.

19 November 1969   Fillmore West      Steve Miller had to cancel this show so Big Brother played it billed as Mumble, Fumble, Jumble and Dumble.

Saint Ignatius Church, Fulton & Parker (Stanyan), San Francisco

29 December 1969                  Geary Theatre               415 Geary Boulevard                 San Francisco

I’ve done this many times.  Turning the cable car around so it can head back up the hill.

Janis said, “I don’t look good in this photo, but I’m putting it on the album cover just for you.”

And now begin the 1970s, which Gary Trudeau called “a kidney stone of a decade.”

I used the 1970s to go back to school and learn some technique, but there is no denying that those years were an intermission between the high flying 60s and the conservative, athletic, jingoistic 1980s.   Photo:  Anthony Edman

7 February 1970     Encore Theatre    Burlingame  California

13 February 1970      Pepperland      San Rafael    California

20-21 February 1970   Great Highway   with the Rhythm Dukes       Jerry Miller          Bill Champlin

m

27 February 1970     Alaskaland Civic Center        Fairbanks   Alaska

5-7 March 1970        Keystone Korner    San Francisco

They had some wonderful shows at the Keystone, which was right across the alley from the North Beach police department.

13-14 March 1970   New Orleans House   Berkeley

20-22 March 1970    Family Dog at the Great Highway     Kaleidoscope       with the Devil’s Kitchen

28-29 March 1970      Lion’s Share        San Anselmo     California

Hey, there’s John McFee.

Alex Call was the singer in this band. Huey Lewis was the harmonica player. I always liked John McFee who is now a Doobie Brother.

The owner of the Lion’s Share, Mike Considine, didn’t like to advertise, so there are very few posters and handbills from this venue.

James Gurley

4 April 1970   Fillmore West     Janis joined us for this one.

My overheated imagination sees mistrust here, matters gone awry, loss of faith, paranoia, alienation, loneliness. Am I being carried away ? Probably. Was it a weird time ?  It certainly was.   Richard Kermode  Linda Gravenites  Janis  George Ostrow  Bobby Neuwirth

7-9 April 1970                       Matrix

12 April 1970  Winterland        Kathi McDonald   Mike Finnegan  David Shallock  Nick Gravenites   We had a GOOD band.

Greg ‘Cornholio’ Douglass

23-24 April 1970  Inn of the Beginning  Cotati California.

James Gurley.   He’s big, huge.

1 May 1970      Family Dog      Great Highway     San Francisco       I think this is a Randy Tuten poster.

8 May 1970    Merced Fairgrounds    Merced  California

The 1970s were a time of molting, of lying in wait. There didn’t seem to be any guiding theme, so I kept my head down and studied.

15 May 1970     City Center    Kelowna    British Columbia   Kelowna is a vacation spot in British Columbia, on the east side of the Okanagan Valley.

16-17 May 1970   Strawberry Mountain Fair   Mission    British Columbia

20 May 1970    Pauley Ballroom   University of California      Berkeley

21 May 1970  Pepperland  Bermuda Palms   San Rafael   California    Big Brother   Full Tilt     Grateful Dead     With the amazing Meyer sound system.

The event is memorable for many reasons.

This is a Hells Angels party to begin with, so the money will be straight and the sound system excellent. There will also be more drugs and alcohol than would seem to be prudent.

This will be the first time that Janis’ old band and her new band will be at the same venue, so everyone is a little on edge.

Not exactly a battle of the bands, but not exactly not one either.  Janis gets into a fight with an Angel and he punches her. She breaks a bottle over his head.

This is the peace and love crowd.

22, 23  May 1970    Keystone Korner    San Francisco

29 May 1970   Santa Monica Civic Auditorium

9 June 1970    Diamond Head Crater Festival                 Hawaii

8 June 1970    The Andrews Amphitheater   Hawaii   This place is used for commencement exercises for the University of Hawaii.

My wife Elise Wainani Piliwale is Hawaiian. Here she is with Grant Jacobs, Richard Hundgen, and a photographer who has a lovely smile.

Colin and Wayne, the equipment managers that we had at that time, forty years ago, decided to jump ship and become Hawaiian. They are there still and doing very well.

And of course our President was born in Honolulu in the same hospital, Queens Hospital, as my wife. Either there or in Kenya, I forget which. Depends on whom you ask, someone who actually knows something, or someone who is incredibly ignorant and backward… like Fox News.

President Obama went to Punahou High School.

Jonelle DeNike is Hawaiian and she went to a Catholic high school in Honolulu.

10 June 1970    Kahului Armory    Maui   Hawaii

Also called the Pu’unene Armory.

Steve Keyser

13-14 June 1970  Portland Music & Art Fair    Portland Oregon

17 June 1970    Convention Center    Las Vegas

19  June 1970   Terrace Ballroom    Salt Lake City   I have a cassette tape of this gig.  We played a lot of different songs. This was probably our most adventurous period for repertoire.

26 June 1970   Junction Night Club    Kelker   Colorado

3-5 July 1970     Euphoria    San Rafael      California     Another Randy Tuten poster.

11 July 1970  Sports Arena  San Diego with the Full Tilt Boogie Band

It was something else to have Big Brother and Full Tilt in that same small airplane coming back from San Diego.

The airlines used to lay off the flight attendants when they got married or reached a certain age. This was so they wouldn’t have to give them seniority and the pay that goes with it.

17 July 1970  Love Valley Festival   Love Valley  North Carolina

31 July 1970  Phoenix Veterans Coliseum  Arizona

2 August 1970      Lion’s Share      San Anselmo     California

6 August 1970  Peace Festival   Shea Stadium  Flushing Meadows    New York

I need you, darling, like the fish needs the sea.  Please don’t take your sweet, sweet love from me.

George Frayne, one of my favorite people.  Good artist too.

13-15 August 1970   Fillmore West    San Francisco   Commander Cody

18-19 August 1970    The Matrix      San Francisco

26 August 1970       Washoe County Fairgrounds

28 August 1970       Sing Auditorium    San Bernardino      Mary Swope took this photograph.

25 September 1970    Saginaw Auditorium      Michigan

3-5 October 1970               Euphoria            San Rafael           California

4 October 1970   The Landmark Hotel  Hollywood        A British writer, Howard Sounes,  just interviewed me from the very room.  He mentioned all of the scrawlings on the bedroom closet wall.

6-7 October 1970    The  Matrix           Blues for an old friend.

The 1970s began this way. The USA, up to this time a manufacturing giant, always expanding and growing, now became a service economy devoted to finance and collecting information, analyzing, digesting, contracting.  Self help books proliferated, the computer began to become important.

American society turned inward after the tumultuous events of the 1960s.

23 October 1970    Basin Street West

We substituted for Sarah Vaughan ?    I wonder how that worked ?  I can’t remember, but I do know that Combination of the Two doesn’t sound a lot like Over The Rainbow.

26 October 1970   Lion’s Share     The Drinks Are On Pearl.  Janis left $ 2,500, a lot of money then, for us to have a party in her honor. We did it right.  Music and dancing all night.  Lots of stories of past glories.

Margaret Gurley

27-29 October 1970   The Matrix

With James Gurley, David Shallock, Nick Gravenites, Dave Getz and Peter Albin

30 October 1970   46th Street Rock Palace     Brooklyn

Photo:  Baron Wolman

2 November 1970   Harding Theatre     Divisadero Street     San Francisco

6 November 1970

20-21  November 1970   Winterland     San Francisco

5 December 1970  The Birmingham Palladium    Detroit

We looked everywhere for this white SG standard.

We all signed this one.  I was with Carol Cavallon when I bought this guitar on 48th Street across the street from Manny’s in New York. Photo: Anthony Edman

8-9 January 1971   Fillmore East    Buddy Miles    Sweetwater    I loved the way Buddy looked when he played the drums.

All right, we’re heading into the rough waters of the 1970s now.

Strange, hard, weird times.

17 January 1971     Syria Mosque       University of Pittsburgh

18-19 January 1971      Ungano’s

20 January 1971    Capitol Theatre   Port Chester   New York

With Carol Cavallon in Putney  Vermont

29-30 January 1971      The names El Monte and El Segundo always make me think of Reuben and the Jets, Frank Zappa.

4 February 1971    Inn of the Beginning        Cotati            California

13 February 1971   Pepperland    737 East Francisco Boulevard   San Rafael   California

Whitey Litchfield, millionaire construction magnate, created Litchfield’s Bermuda Palms in the late 1940s. This was California’s Las Vegas.

I mentioned before that I had played tenor saxophone in numerous big band rehearsals here, little dreaming at the time that Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton and many other stars of the 1940s had played in that very same room.

20-21 February 1971            Pepperland

23 February 1971    Broadcast of television series The Turned On Crisis including an episode with Big Brother: Why Can’t You Hear Through The Noise in Your Ear.

6 March 1971      Shasta College

12-13 March 1971  Friends and Relations Hall  Great Highway  San Francisco    with Kathi McDonald.

Also on this gig:   Clover       I see    Alex Call   Huey Lewis     John McFee      Sean Hopper

25 March 1971      The New Monk was in Berkeley where Shattuck and University make a T.   2119 University.  It was a funky place.  Freddie Herrera bought it in August of 1971, and it became the Keystone Berkeley in March 1972.

9-10 April 1971    Friends and Relations Hall     Kathi McDonald, one of the best singers ever… and the funniest.

15 April 1971     Inn of the Beginning   Cotati   California

19 April 1971      Friends and Relations Hall         Hubert Sumlin      Snooky Flowers    Rich Kirch   Freddie Roulette

22-23 April 1971    Bimbo’s    San Francisco

24 April 1971    Peace Rally   Golden Gate Park

Think about some of the things that had happened to usher in the 1970s. The Watts riots in 1965, the Republican triumph in the 1966 midterms, the Newark riots, the 1968 campaign, the assassinations, Chicago, Nixon winning by the largest landslide ever in 1972, the Manson family, Kent State, the construction workers’ riot, George Romney, George Wallace, George McGovern, Nelson Rockefeller. The nation was exhausted, afraid and began to retrench and turn to the right.

26 April 1971  Sonoma

7 May 1971   California Hall    San Francisco

17 May 1971       New Monk

21 May 1971   Keystone Korner     San Francisco

28 May 1971     Selland Arena   Fresno    California    with B.B. King and Elvin Bishop

10 June 1971  Fox Theatre   Long Beach

9 July 1971        Harlingen    Texas

August 1971       Release of How Hard It Is.   The title is significant.

We had a great B3 player on this album, Mike Finnegan, who can sing as well as he can play. He recorded Buried Alive In The Blues with us and we should release that someday. It’s definitely the best version of that song.

Mike went on to play with everyone, including Joe Cocker  performing here on American Idol, another of Rupert Murdoch’s panderings to the lowest common denominator. But, as Mike says, “A gig is a gig.”

9 October 1971   Monterey Fairgrounds     with Clover who were lucky enough to have John McFee on the guitar.

7 November 1971    Trying to guard Kathi.   Can you hear me barking ?

12 November 1971       Winterland

9-11 December 1971      Inn of the Beginning          Cotati            California

30 January 1972   Curtis Hall    Tampa     Florida       with  Lee Bittner   Kathi McDonald   Mike Pendergrass   Peter Albin

13 February 1972      Mama Einstein’s    What do you want ?  I was the only one left.

15 February 1972   Valentine’s party    The Boathouse      Harding Road      San Francisco      You know, out by Lake Merced.

19 February 1972   University of Iowa  Iowa City    with the Allman Brothers    Vivid memories of partying with these guys. They had a couple of revolvers from the Civil War. Confederate, of course.

26 February 1972    American Legion Hall     Merced     California

19 March 1972    You have to watch these rock writers all the time.   Kathi was our new singer, not Elvin’s.

13 April 1972

Kathi and I went out partying in an old farmhouse, deserted, crackly, in the middle of a cornfield. It seemed as if we were there for days.

25 April 1972      Iowa Wesleyan   Fayetteville     Iowa

29 April 1972                  Upper Iowa             Mt. Pleasant

1-2 May 1972   Ace Beer Garden  Iowa City

June 1972      Pioneer High School    Whittier   California

2 June 1972       Fort Homer Hesterly Armory     Tampa

June 1972    Schererville     Illinois          with Blue Oyster Cult.    These guys were fun to hang with. They were hysterically funny.

June 1972     Catholic High School          Niles           Illinois

June 1972    Romeoville Roller Rink           Romeoville        Illinois

15 June 1972      Hersey High School       Arlington Heights     Illinois

June 1972     Grande Ballroom              Detroit

June/July 1972     Louisiana

July 1972      Miami            Spirit

22 July 1972   Marine World   Redwood City    California

4 September 1972

         

                          

17 September 1972   A slice of life in the 70s.   If you read between the lines, this pretty much says it all.

9 October 1972   Berkeley Folk Music Festival     with Big Mama Thornton     Earl Collins    Silver String Macedonian Band    Frontier

24 November 1972    Marin County Civic Center Auditorium   Quicksilver      Clover      Yogi Phlegm       A Cold Turkey Rock Party

Clover !     Johnny Ciambotti   John McFee is there.   Mitch Howe   Alex Call   Huey Lewis  Sean Hopper  Good band.   Alex has a beautiful voice and he writes great songs.

And, talking of Marin musicians, this is one who has been an inspiration to me for years:   Terry Haggerty.

Somewhere in my personal effects I have a Local # Six Musicians’ Union directory from the 1950s. Terry’s father is in there along with Paul Desmond and many other noteworthy players from that era. If I can ever find that directory, I’m going to give it to Terry.

Terry and David Shallock came to my house in Fairfax one day, and they did a smokin’ version of Frosty, the Snowman. It was so great to hear that. Especially in August.

It’s the whole person, though, you know ? Terry is a great guitar player, one of the best, but it’s as a human being that he shines brightest.

See you next week?

Sam Andrew

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July-December 1968         Big Brother is watching you.

Watching you.

Thinking about Chet Helms.

5 July 1968    Concord Coliseum     Concord    California

The Concord Coliseum began as a grocery store. Then it was a holy hall of harmony,

and now it has become a Petco.     O tempora, O mores.

6 July 1968   Santa Rosa Fairgrounds    Santa Rosa    California

La Combinación de los Dos

7 July 1968    Golden Gate Park      San Francisco

10 July 1968      Provo Park      Berkeley

12-13 July 1968         Kaleidoscope   Los Angeles

16-18 July 1968   Fillmore   San Francisco

20 July 1968     Lagoon Opera House    Ogden Utah

Combination of the Two

I remember taking rides on these fast little cars that could turn on a dime.

Backstage where the magic happens.

22 July 1968        Westbury Music Fair  Long Island

25 July 1968   Columbia Records Convention    San Juan Puerto Rico   Blood, Sweat and Tears were so good that night.

David Richards holding our attention with one of his great stories.  He painted my guitar and Janis’ Porsche.

27 July 1968    Newport Folk Festival  Newport  Rhode Island

John Byrne Cooke took this one at Newport.

We had always dreamed about attending this event…

…and now we’re playing it.

An ad for Cheap Thrills:   Notice the emphasis here on the nonverbal experience. Very interesting for an ad from a corporation. But, hey, it’s the 60s.

2-3 August 1968    Fillmore East with the Staple Singers.   Big thrill for us to be with the Staples.

Gerde’s Folk City

4 August 1968    First Annual Newport Pop Festival   Orange County Fairgrounds   Costa Mesa  California      This was the first music event to attract more than 100,000 people. Trouble is, I can’t remember if we played there or not, and you would think I would remember something that big.

Some of the books say we “may have played there,” but we aren’t on the posters.  We had just played Newport, Rhode Island, only a week before, so the two gigs may be conflated here.

Myra Friedman wrote the first important biography of Janis. She won a New York Times book prize for it.

Some Jewish high school kids in St. Louis, 1949.  Myra Friedman is in the first row left.

One Stop Shopping:    Get your mind expanded and your check cashed.

9 August 1968  Kiel Auditorium    St. Louis

10 August 1968       Forest Park                    St. Louis

14 August 1968      Indiana Beach     Monticello      Indiana

16-17 August 1968   Aragon-Cheetah     Chicago

18 August 1968     Tyrone Guthrie Theatre   Minneapolis

23 August 1968  Singer Bowl  Flushing   Queens     New York City       Singer Bowl  Flushing  Queens…   Now, could you make up a name like that ?

Jimi broke a string right on the first song. He said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to make it up to you in spades.”      He did too.

30 August 1968    Palace of Fine Arts  San Francisco

6 September 1968             Hollywood Bowl

10 September 1968

12-14 September 1968       Their art will last longer than what we did.  We see the aulos player on the Greek vase, but we don’t hear her music.

After we played Pasadena, we hopped in a limousine, and the fans piled on top. I was afraid we would be crushed.

15 September 1968   Rose Bowl    Pasadena

Henry Diltz’ photo of Sally Mann

22 September 1968   Del Mar Fairgrounds     San Diego

27 September 1968          University of California at Irvine

28 September 1968  San Diego      I got a ticket for driving a hundred miles an hour to this gig.  ”The toils of the law,” is such a great way to phrase that.

4 October 1968  Public Hall   Cleveland   Little did I realize then that Cleveland would loom large in the Big Brother legend.  Cleveland was the first place where I was music director of Love, Janis in 1999, and I made a CD there in December 2011 with Mary Bridget Davies, Ben Nieves and Jim Wall, all Clevelanders. And of course the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is there, even if they won’t let us in.

5 October 1968    State University of New York    Buffalo        Monsieur Gurley

10 October 1968   Quaker City Rock Festival    Philadelphia

11 October 1968     War Memorial Auditorium     Syracuse

13 October 1968      Music Hall      Cincinnati

I kissed Susan Ammon, third from left, then, and was lucky enough to kiss her again on Earth Day, forty-four years later.

15 October 1968    Grande Ballroom       Detroit

18 October 1968     Penn State University   University Park

19 October 1968  The Spectrum  Philadelphia

20 October 1968   Alexandria Roller Rink     Alexandria   Virginia

Jeff Beck was supposed to be a terror to work with, the bad British blues boy, but I found him to be good natured and polite. Plus, he played an SG as James and I did.

25 October 1968   Curry Hicks Cage    University of Massachusetts    Amherst

26 October 1968    Worcester Polytechnic institute    Worcester   Massachusetts

1-2 November 1968  Electric Factory Philadelphia

8 November 1968   Rocky Point   Warwick  Rhode Island

9 November 1968     Woolsey Hall    Yale University     New Haven   Connecticut

10 November 1968        White Plains     New York

Very characteristic view of John and Janis.   I can hear them talking.

11 November 1968   Ridge Tech Arena      Braintree     Massachusetts

12 November 1968  Jersey City  New Jersey     Hey, we finally got rid of that messy “Big Brother and the Holding Company” part altogether.

14 November 1968          Hartford     Connecticut       I visit Mark Twain’s very interesting home every time I go there.

15 November 1968    Hunter College   New York City   I was seething with anticipation. I thought maybe Sparta, Corinth, Mycenae and Athens had decided to sponsor us at this Pan Hellenic event.

But, then, I realized. Oh, it’s just Animal House, a lot of fraternities and sororities. Well, OK. It was a fun gig. I love Hunter College.

16 November 1968     State University of New York     Stony Brook

23 November 1968      Houston Music Hall    Houston   Texas

24 November 1968       Coliseum     Dallas

26 November 1968     Denver Auditorium        Denver

29 November 1968    Eagles Auditorium     Seattle

30 November 1968     Pacific Coliseum   Vancouver     British Columbia

1 December 1968  Family Dog Benefit      Avalon Ballroom      San Francisco

2 December 1968

Bobby Neuwirth, serious artist, good songwriter, fellow traveler, intelligent, witty court jester. He wrote Mercedes Benz with Janis and Michael McClure.

18 December 1968     One of the first, if not THE first rehearsal of The Kozmic Blues Band with Michael Bloomfield as music director.

Mike was a consummate musician, gifted and highly intelligent.

Al Kooper and Mike had an idea. They would make an album and hire Norman Rockwell to do the cover. I wish I would have thought of that, but I would have tried to come up with a story in the image, since that’s the way that Norman Rockwell works.  Al and Michael were just portrayed as a duo in the final cover. Rather static and not taking advantage of Rockwell’s brilliant narrative painting style. They should have tried for some kind of story.

Robert Crumb did our Cheap Thrills album cover, of course, but, then, for our other albums we could have had Mr. Rockwell do one, Al Hirschfeld (the line king) do another, and David Levine do a third. These guys were all for hire, just as I was/am.  They would have felt proud and connected to do a Big Brother cover, and we would have felt even more proud and connected to be associated with such great artists.

Well, maybe next time.  Anyway, I loved working with Michael at those early Kozmic Blues Band rehearsals.In fact, when I did the guitar part on Little Girl Blue at the Black Rock in New York, Michael was right by my side guiding me through the chord changes.

He was always helpful, lavish with praise and very supportive. Mike did the slide solo on One Good Man, but didn’t credit himself. Maybe because of contractual obligations elsewhere ?

When Dylan went electric at Newport, Michael Bloomfield was the Electric.

In the 1950s, the Cedar Tavern in Manhattan was the artists’ watering hole. The drinks were cheap and it was close to the lofts and studios. Jackson Pollock was there. Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, everybody from that abstract expressionist scene was there, really.

I was in the Cedar Tavern one time and said  the word “divisive,” rhyming it with “dismissive,” and the most beautiful woman whirled around on her stool and said, “That’s the first time I ever heard any one pronounce that correctly.” (To this day, I’m not sure how to pronounce “divisive” and say it differently each time, but each time, you may be sure, I think of that beautiful woman.)

Le Roi Jones, as he was known then, and Diane Di Prima, probably my favorite beat poet, in The Cedar Tavern.

Carl Solomon, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, typical denizens of The Cedar Tavern.

Mickey Ruskin founded Max’s Kansas City at 213 Park Avenue South (Seventeenth Street) which, despite the higher prices and the greater distance from the painters’ lofts, became the artists’ locale for the 1960s as The Cedar Tavern was for the 1950s. Big Brother and the Holding Company went often to Max’s and I practically lived there in the 1970s, because I had a loft quite close by on Twentieth Street, just down the block from Danny Fields. Mickey cashed my checks and put up with a lot of nonsense from me. I used to sit at the bar and draw the sculptures. Here is Mickey Ruskin (right) with John Chamberlain.

Dorothy Dean always sat by the door at Max’s. She was the guardian of the gates. She told me once or twice that she had danced The Tennessee Waltz in Tennessee with Tennessee Williams.  Too bad Tennessee Ernie Ford wasn’t involved, then they could have had a Tennessee to the fourth power.

Dorothy was once a fact checker at The New Yorker, a fact that impressed me greatly. She hung out with a lot of gay men, but she hated the term ‘fag hag,’ so called herself a ‘fruit fly.’

Dorothy was one of The Factory people and she was in several Warhol films. Here she is inspecting Norman Levine while being serenaded by Eric Anderson.

I liked the clientèle at Max’s, even the ones who weren’t as glorious as these characters. Andy Warhol held court in the back room of the restaurant. Tim Buckley was a great guy, just like his son in many ways.

Debbie Harry, already quite beautiful, was frequently our waitress and she was a good one.

Lenny Kaye did his time at Max’s. He had roughly the same relationship with Patti Smith that I had with Janis Joplin.

Lenny is soulful, very intelligent, writes books, teaches at Rutgers, I believe, and is just an all around good man.

Danny Fields, an “executive at Elektra,” as he is often billed, was a kind of  PR man for Max’s since it opened. Danny brought Jim Morrison to the restaurant, and he introduced Iggy Pop to David Bowie there. Here Danny is with Tammy Faye Starlight.

And somewhat earlier with Nico.

Many people at Max’s were quite well known and many were not, but all were interesting. It was quite a scene. Some of the people in this photograph are: David Bowie, Danny Fields (hey, Danny, where are you now?), Robert Mapplethorpe, Jim Morrison (peeing in a bottle), Lou Reed, Patti Smith. I’m there too. I think I see Lenny Kaye. We’re not posing. This is a typical Max’s scene out on the sidewalk on a summer night. David Bennett Cohen is there. We used to rush out on the sidewalk to see whose limousine was arriving.

It’s funny what you remember about a place. I’ll bet that everyone who went to Max’s remembers the little bowls of dried garbanzo beans (chick peas). Everyone ate them like candy while they talked.

Very salty, so of course they needed washing down with something.

See you next week?

Sam Andrew    James Gurley   John Byrne Cooke

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