Big Brother and the Holding Company, part eleven. 1998. 17 june

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1998  Kate Russo, Kacee Clanton, Andra Mitrovich, Cathy Richardson, Lisa Mills, Lisa Battle, Kathi McDonald.

23 January 1998   Six Rivers Brewing Company    McKinleyville   California

6  February 1998    Bay Brewing Company     Milwaukee   Wisconsin

7 February 1998   Marquette University  Milwaukee   Wisconsin

Margaret Gurley.

10 February 1998   Tuxedo Junction  Danbury Conneticut     “See ya, James.”   “Not if I see you first.”       Typical Gurley exchange.

20 February 1998    The Emelin Theatre   Mamaroneck     New York

Tom Finch, Carl Peachman, Catherine Cavalieri, Sam Andrew, Lisa Battle, Peter Albin, Dave Getz, Judy & Todd Bolton at The Emelin Theater.

Peter Albin.

21 February 1998    The Call   Providence    Rhode Island

22 February 1998  Bodles Opera House  Chester   New York          ”James, you’re a great guitar player.”   “Takes one to know one.”

26 February 1998  Manny’s Car Wash  New York City    Oh, man, I love being in New York and meeting people like Kate Russo.

27 February 1998  Mexicali Blues  Teaneck  New Jersey    Catherine Cavalieri and Carl Peachman took LSD tonight. That was interesting. We all drove home together. To show you how stoned they were, I was doing the driving. I performed admirably and noticed a still, meditative feeling in the car. Rather different from 99 Bottles of Beer On The Wall.

Having passed her acid test, Catherine begins booking the band.   Typical sweet, helpful note from her.

28 February 1998   Van Dyck    Schenectady   New York             Don Wilcock was a jazz writer attuned to the passing scene.

Lisa Battle.

1 March 1998   Khyber   Philadelphia

2 March 1998   Letter from Jack Ortman.

Jeannie Anderson     James Anderson     Elise Piliwale  Sam Andrew   Margaret Joplin

Dusty Street                Gilbert Klein

7 March 1998                    Bammies

Koko Dree.

14 March 1998  Cocodrie   San Francisco

22 April 1998   Dave’s CC Club   Tallahassee   Florida   This was a real juke joint out in the woods. The owner Dave is a good man.

24 April 1998     Ray’s Downtown Club     West Palm Beach

25 April 1998       Cheers       Fort Lauderdale

26 April 1998     Mr. Pub     Ocala    Florida

 

1 May 1998   Trader’s  Lakeland  Florida   May Day ! May Day !  This pilot’s distress call from World War Two was originally “M’aidez !”  Help Me !

2 May 1998   Sebastian Beach Inn    Sebastian Beach   Florida

12 May 1998

15 May 1998   President Casino   Biloxi    Mississippi

16 May 1998  Tipitina’s      New Orleans

The Mt. Tabor Theater was named after an extinct volcano located within the city boundaries of Portland. The theatre was operating prior to 1941 and was still open in 1950. Although it closed and fell on hard times, it still displayed the name on the marquee and some unique neon tubing. It is situated across and down S.E. Hawthorne Street from the Bagdad, which has fared much better.

12 June 1998     Mount Tabor     Portland      Oregon

The colorful gentlemen wh0 used to build, finance and own these places in the 1950s called them “carpet joints.”

13 June 1998   Reno Hilton      Reno

 

19 June 1998   Six Rivers   McKinleyville     California

Peter Walsh           Sam Andrew       George Michalski

20 June 1998  Altamont  Speedway  Livermore  Caliifornia     Speedway ?

25 June 1998     Manny’s Car Wash   New York City     Look at the people who played here in one month’s time: Kerry Kearney, Susan Tedeschi, Jimmy Vivino.

Talking to Daniel Aloi.

26 June 1998   West Strand Grill   Kingston   New York

Kingston is on highway 87 almost due north of Manhattan.  Woodstock is a little to the northeast of Kingston.

Buffalo is in the western part of the state between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, where the Falls are.

27 June 1998    Mohawk Place   Buffalo  New York   Someone made such a great recording of us here, including a fugue that Tom Finch and I played.

28 June 1998    Stanhope Blues Fest     Stanhope    New Jersey

1 July 1998   Kingsbury’s   Elmira   New York        Mark Twain’s wife Olivia Langdon grew up here.

The Clemens family lived in Hartford, Connecticut, but they summered at Quarry Farm, Elmira, New York.

Livy’s sister Susan Crane built a study in the form of a pilot house for the author. He wrote his best known books here. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and The Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. He would breakfast in the main house and then walk down here to the study to write all day.

…since we have perched away up here on top of the hill near heaven I have the feeling of being a sort of scrub angel & am more moved to help shove the clouds around, & get the stars on deck promptly, & keep all things trim & ship-shape in the firmament than to bother myself with the humble insect-interests & occupations of the distant earth.

Twain’s study in the form of a pilot house out in back of the main house where Susan Crane, Livy’s sister, lived.

3 July 1998   Godfrey Daniel’s      Bethlehem       Pennsylvania

4 July 1998       Burke Estate     Hastings-On-Hudson  New York

19 July 1998   Uncle Henry’s 90th Birthday Celebration   Guerneville   California       Peter played stand up bass, and I sang How Long Has This Been Going On at this event.

 

24 July 1998     Atom Club     Tokyo

26 July 1998   Shizuoka Royal Hotel    Shizuoka    Japan    Our hotel is at the ‘H.’

28 July 1998             Rag Club               Kyoto

31 July 1998     Casanova   Makawao     Maui    Hawaii

1 August 1998      Hapa’s        Kihei                Hawaii

2 August 1998     Anna Banana’s       Honolulu     This is Fort Street, about 1930.

Anna Banana’s.

15 August 1998    St. Paul’s River Feast    St. Paul    Minnesota

16 August 1998   The Twisters    Kenosha    Wisconsin

19 August 1998     Mad Frog      Cincinnati

20 August 1998  Wilbert’s  Cleveland    I liked this place. Friendly people

22 August 1998   B.B. King’s    Los Angeles

23 August 1998            House of Blues              West Hollywood

11 September 1998   Teatro Metopolitan   México, D.F.    One of the best gigs ever. Kate Russo came along and sang and played so beautifully.

I did several interviews in Spanish and they seemed to understand me, which is good, because they often don’t understand me in English.

Danny Uzilevsky came along and played some great guitar.

We were here with Fito de la Parra and his merry men, and that is always fun.

Elise was with me and she made everything so much more memorable, as she always does.

¡ Saludos a México !

Kate Russo.

9 October 1998   The Call  Providence     Geri Verdi sang these gigs with us.

10 October 1998              Harpers Ferry                 Boston

11 October 1998  Consolati Performing Arts Center    Sheffield    Massachusetts

14 October 1998    Ram’s Head   Annapolis    Maryland

15 October 1998      Friar Tuck’s      Norfolk     Virginia

16 October 1998      Jaxx    Springfield    Virginia

17 October 1998      Stanhope House     Stanhope     New Jersey

18 October 1998      The Schoolhouse   Croton Falls  New York

22 October 1998       Milestones      Rochester    New York

23 October 1998    The Van Dyck     Schenectady   New York

24 October 1998      Sandy’s    Glen Falls      New York

25 October 1998                Riverstreet Jazz Café              Wilkes-Barre              Pennsylvania

27 October 1998      Hard Rock Café    Atlantic City   New Jersey

This is when “the Carol guitar” entered the Hard Rock system. She now travels all over the world visiting all the Hard Rocks.

28 October 1998      Khyber                      Philadelphia

30 October 1998    Mexicali Blues Teaneck New Jersey    Kate Russo.

We did these tunes and many others as well.

With Jerry Miller and Bob Mosly at Wetlands, New York City.

27 November 1998  19 Broadway  Fairfax   California      I love the Russell brothers. These guys can burn the house down in fifteen minutes.

5 December 1998   Boulder Theatre   Boulder  California

Part twelve next week. See you then.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part nine. 1993-1994

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 1993-1994         Waiting for a Bus to Russia.

Hey, I have an idea. Let’s play some music until the bus comes.

Hold on !  Let me get my effects board, or, as I call it, my affects bored.

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          Another good one.

Greg Anton was on drums. Always a good thing.

And then Steve Kimock played guitar. He always surprises me, always has a fresh idea. He’s a real original. Steve, Greg Anton and John Cipollina founded the band Zero in 1984 and they’ve gone through the usual permutations since then. Steve lives in Pennsylvania now.

Glenn Walters was in the band.  He was the principal singer with The Hoodoo Rhythm Devils and The Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra.  Glenn has an emotional warm tone in his singing. Very beguiling.

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

10 March 1993    Stadthalle   Neuss   (rhymes with voice)    This is a large German egg near Neuss.

Neuss is across the river 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.

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

Michael Mendelsson took this photograph.

23 April 1993    Big Brother   Boulder Creek Brewery     Boulder Creek  California

Peter Albin is the neussist guy in Big Brother.

24 April 1993     Sam Andrew Band   Caspar Inn   I’m plundering all of the bands. No wonder they stole Cathy Richardson from me.

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.He 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.

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, Karen White,

Kim Nomad   Anthea Sidiropoulos

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

20 May 1993    Big Brother and the Holding Company    Mr. Q’s      Tiburon   California

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

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.

The reverse of a laminate.

James Gurley,  Moto-Man.

Tab Benoit                                     Mark Riley

4 June 1993   Cedar Inn Tavern   Washington      Mark Riley 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 when I was 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.

25 June 1993  Sam Andrew Band  Marble Falls   San Antonio    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 all of us in the last fifty years.

James Gurley’s guitar… one of them anyway

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.

Bill Ganaye, Ed Earley, Bill Laymon, Dave Getz, 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.  Their 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 it.

19 September 1993   Greenpeace

1 and 2 October 1993   Smiley’s  Bolinas    There’s a nice feel to the place, isn’t there ?

Anthea Sidiropoulos at 19 Broadway Fairfax.

We played all of these tunes.

Snooky Flowers.

2 October  1993      Sam Andrew Band    19 Broadway   Fairfax     California

The 19 Broadway in Fairfax was my laughing place, as Brierley Hill in the Midlands was the home place for Robert Plant.

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.  I really am as tall as Rich Kirch, but his pompadour is totally dominating this image.

See?  Richie is just showing off there in the background, pretending he is taller than I am. How annoying.  I notice that Brian Auger is beyond caring about this sort of thing. Oh, well, he’s a genius and speaks French to the audience when he’s in Paris. Plus, he sits down a large part of the time, and so doesn’t have to compare himself to an arrant coxcomb like Richie.

20 October 1993   Sam Andrew Band   Last Day Saloon  San Francisco

2 November 1993  Munchies    Houston   I played this one with Detroit Dave, Lips and Gloria Meehan.

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.

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 in the dictionary.

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.

30 April 1994    Maritime Hall    San Francisco

2 May 1994   Chet Helms Tribute

Barbara Hontalas, beautiful, very feminine, intelligent and capable, helped us coordinate all of these engagements.

        

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

Kristina Kopriva, la magnifica.

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

George Michalski                       Barbara Liu

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. Mingus played at Fez. So did I.

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 Piliwale.

At this event, Elise was playing violoncello and harp, but at home she played the piano.

So, instead of reliving the 60s, I began to live the rest of my life with Elise.

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.

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 have 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.

4 October 1994     Landmark Hotel  Los Angeles     Room 105        The bathroom sink.       Photograph:  Howard Sounes.

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.              (See ?  All those letters are Greek too.  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, yes, he was young once too, 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 found 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, “They have cars here !”  Maybe he was expecting horse drawn 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, Houston Person, 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.  Damn and damn.

31 December 1994       Eastlake Zoo     Seattle         Happy New Year !

Part ten is coming up. Thank you for being here. Yes, thank you always.

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part ten. 1995-1997

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1995-1997     To a person in Japan, California is the Far East.

We went to Japan this year with Michel Bastian.

6 January 1995        My first date with Elise Piliwale.    Sarasota  Florida.   Six January is the Feast of the Epiphany, and was it ever.

7 January 1995   Playing at my old friend Virgil Wilhite’s bookstore in Clearwater.

When Big Brother and the Holding Company couldn’t play, I would tour as The Sam Andrew Band. Trying to make a living.

13 January 1995

19 January 1995     Same photo, but as far as you can get from Sarasota, Florida, and still be in the USA.

27 January 1995   Casanova    A beautiful club in Makawao, Maui.   They used to film westerns in this town and it still has a paniolo (cowboy) feel.

28 January 1995   Pahoa  Hawaii             Pahoa is the Bolinas of Hawaii.

31 January 1995                    Trying to arrange a trip to Japan.

10 February 1995                  Dizzy’s in Houston.              A good band and a good club.

18 February 1995   Big Brother and the Holding Company    Smiley’s  Bolinas  California    Bolinas is like the Pahoa of California.

Expressing our sympathy for Kobe earthquake victims.

     

Early attempt at writing a history of the band.

3 March 1995   Johnny Otis Club     Sebastopol    California

30 March 1995    Paradise Lounge  San Francisco

Jan Kerouac.

Nihon       Nippon      Japan

This character means “sun.”

This character means root or base or origin or bottom.

Together they mean “sun origin,” Japan.   Land of the rising sun.

          

JAPAN !        Plant names vary wildly from country to country.

Notice that the shape of Japan is that of a dragon.

Another interesting aspect is that the south to north latitudes almost exactly parallel those of the USA East Coast.

2 April 1995   Café Kenya                   Hikone               Japan

So close yet so far from my beloved Okinawa.

2 April 1995      Bill Hamm and Mike Wilhelm were with us on this tour.

Ongaku.      Music.

Tower Records Kyoto

4 April 1995   Rag Club       Kyoto           Japan

7 April 1995

8 April 1995   Taku Taku  Kyoto        This is the way they write Kyoto in Kyoto.

9 April 1996      Happy Birthday, Elise !

We traveled in Japan by train and subway, much the best way to go.

12 April 1995                       On Air           Shibuya          Tokyo

Shibuya.

Tokyo to Nagoya.

13 April 1995      Bottom Line            Nagoya            Japan

NA     GO     YA

16 April 1995                 Earthquake Benefit              We played on a dried river bed (Kawaramachi) in Kyoto.

17 April 1995   Quattro     Osaka        ”Osaka” means “big hill,” but the O has to last longer and to be stressed more.  Ooo saka.

19 April 1995   Taku Taku    Kyoto      ”Taku Taku” is not a “normal” Japanese word

I’m looking up “Taku Taku” trying to understand what it could mean. Sometimes you just have to be a native speaker, and even then some things are a puzzle. We have many similar instances in our language. For example, what if you saw a club called Bowbard, how would you translate that for a Japanese person ?  You’d probably say, “Eh, it’s just a name.”  And, yes, it IS just a name. Or, you could look the word up in an archaic dictionary where you would find: Bowbard:   A dastard; a person destitute of spirit. Considered akin to “boobie” and “buffoon.” Perhaps derived from German “Bub,” which first signified a boy, then a servant, and finally a worthless fellow.  In Yiddish inflected English,  ”Bubbi made a kischke” has a rather different meaning, but booby is almost universally understood. Hey, Bub, easy enough, huh ?  Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to get to the meaning of “Taku Taku,” and, you know what? It was time well spent.

Michel Bastian.

21 April 1995                  Taku Taku             Kyoto

23 April 1995  Bar Isn’t It ?  Kyoto      This is the name of the bar in English.   It’s just a name, OK?

Noriko-san is here. James Gurley is here. Michel Bastian is here. Massan, our name for Masuda-san, he is here. I am there somewhere.

Living out my life in stages.    These Eastern perceptions of the ups and downs in our lives remind me of a passage in Shakespeare.

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

25 April 1995      We fly home.

9 May 1995   Hyatt Regency      San Francisco        High Anxiety.

11 May 1995    Good Times    Eugene   Oregon

12 May 1995     Bojangles     Portland

13 May 1995  Ashland  Oregon    Speaking of Shakespeare.

14 May 1995                 University of California             Davis

20 May 1995                   Mr. Q’s              Tiburon           California

Snooky Flowers and Cash Farrar.

9 June 1995   The Sam Andrew Band in Texas.  Dan Electro’s is a great place.

10 June 1995    Big Brother     Seaside             California

Darby and The Slick.

Linda McCartney took this one.

11 June 1995                 Santa Rosa            California

16 June 1995                       Maritime Hall retrospective.

18 June 1995                 Fresno                 California

Rehearsing for Manny’s on the upper West Side of The Rotten Apple, as Tommy Doyle used to call it.

28 June 1995    I loved playing at Manny’s Car Wash. The stage was tiny, the backstage green room almost nonexistent, but the owners were great and the ambience fabulous.

My good looking New York band. Talented too.  This is about as many people as could fit backstage at Manny’s.

Jynx Lynx and Kerry Kearney.

Rita Wiegand took these photographs.

4 July 1995  Aquatic Park  San Francisco  This place reminds me of my “beatnik” days. We used to buy a gallon of Gallo Red Mountain Burgundy for $ 2.89, some avocados and French bread, and then go play guitars and congos, bongos and whatever else we could find.

15 July 1995 with my darling Elise.

29 July 1995    Marin Civic Auditorium    San Rafael      California

6 August 1995    I loved The Ace of Cups.   Diane Vitalich played with me in the Sam Andrew Band a few times. Good drummer. Plus, when Diane was there we got to do Heat Wave and she sang it. Lots of fun.

6-7 August 1995    Moby Grape !

18 August 1995   State Fair              Santa Rosa          California

19 August 1995     Forestville             California

24 August 1995    House of Blues   Hollywood

31 August 1995   Rock & Roll Hall of Fame   Cleveland   Ohio     You can take me higher anytime.

31 August 1995  Peabody’s Down Under   Cleveland

2 September 1995     Nevada City         California

Tony Seldin had a special voice, tremulous and emotional.  Good for his poetry.

9 September 1995    Glendale State Fair     Glendale   California

 

23 September 1995    Fairfax Pavilion   Fairfax   California

9 October 1995                 Golden Gate Park Bandshell                San Francisco

22 October 1995              Mountain Home Garcia Tribute           Livermore          California

Laura Joplin.

Luther Tucker    Rich Kirch    Bill Ganaye

6 November 1995        Freddie Krc, who played drums with Jerry Jeff Walker, will be mayor of Austin one of these days.

6 November 1995         Sam Andrew Band    Last Concert Café      Houston

10 November 1995                   Hank’s               Austin

12 November 1995       The Love Ride    Castaic   California          Jay Leno was the MC at this one.

6 December 1995              DNA Lounge            375  Eleventh Street               San Francisco

15 December 1995          Sam Andrew Band       Peri’s          Fairfax          California

18 December 1995

28 December 1995     Sam Andrew Band    Seattle

31 December 1995            Sausalito Yacht Club            Sausalito         California

20 January 1996     Palookaville          Santa Cruz

In January 1996, Elise and I went to London where I played a few dates. This was the coldest month we have ever spent there. We were stuffing towels under the doors to keep out the cold.

22 March 1996            Keeping it going in the Pacific Northwest.

9 April 1996         Happy Birthday, Elise.

23 April 1996    Narada !    He played Piece of My Heart with Lydia Pense and me.      This is his birthday.

2 June 1996     Maritime Hall    San Francisco       Hey, kids !  Let’s make a film.

Plotting, plodding and plotzing in the green room.

Let’s have a happy ending, even if there wasn’t one. We’ll write it into the script. Nobody wants a downer.

3 June 1996              Domaine Chandon           Napa

22 June 1996    Nudestock    Turtle Lake    Michigan       One of the most incredible gigs ever.   First of all, the entire audience was naked.

Then, we were on the bill with Paul Revere and the Raiders, who antedate even us. Paul had an “act,” a vaudeville act. He fired a pistol to punctuate his jokes which were polished and funny.

This was one of Lisa Battle’s first gigs with us, and she is a suburban girl. We drove across the field to the stage and hundreds of naked people came running toward us. I am sure that it was Lisa’s worst nightmare about being in a rock band.

25 June 1996     Manny’s Car Wash     New York City

27 June 1996    Sam Andrew Band opens for the truly incredible and gorgeous Bud E. Luv at the Paradise Lounge, San Francisco.

30 June 1996    Maestro’s      San Ramon   California

4 July 1996  Fairstock     Del Mar  California

10 July 1996      Trying to get something going, making proposals, waiting for answers.

25 July 1996   Evergreen Ballroom   Olympia  Washington         Duffy Bishop and Chris Carlson.

The Evergreen Ballroom was such a great place to play, and especially fun with Duffy and Chris.

26 July 1996         Detour Tavern     Washington

27 July 1996    Sonoma County Fair   Santa Rosa

31 July 1996

3 August 1996  Concord Elks’ Club     Concord      California

7 August 1996      Moto Rally      Sturgess     South Dakota

10 August 1996       Gathering On The Mountain      Poconos        Pennsylvania

12 August 1996   Iron Horse     Northampton     Massachusetts

13 August 1996   Turning Point   Piermont  New York

14 August 1996       Old Vienna Kafeehaus   Westborough    Massachusetts

16 August 1996     Harpers Ferry     Boston

I have a friend Rob Morse who used to write a column for the San Francisco Chronicle. When I am in Boston, I talk with his brother Steve Morse who writes for The Boston Globe.

18 August 1996    Magic Bag Theatre    Ferndale     Michigan

20 August 1996      Wilbert’s    Cleveland   This was a hot gig.    I still have recordings that we did here and they are superb.

23 August 1996                House of Blues             West Hollywood

Songlist from 1996.

31 August 1996       Rockford              Illinois

7 September 1996  Seafood Fest  Pittsburgh California   This was the first gig where I used my PRS that Paul Reed Smith gave me. She’s a beauty.

7 September 1996     Lost and Found Saloon  1353 Grant Avenue      San Francisco

Elise and I were performing these tunes about this time.

5 October 1996      Field of Screams     Manteca     California

20 October 1996        Peter Lewis and I did a series of gigs together at this time. To me, Peter was the real driving, creative force behind Moby Grape. I mean, I’m in a band. I know that everyone contributes and makes it what it is, but Peter was the mainspring.

26 October 1996    Andrews Hall  Sonoma  California      I sent Peter Albin directions to this place, but he lost them and was very upset when he got there late.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco…

7 November 1996    Roxie Theatre    San Francisco      We showed a couple of our videos here.

Then we talked a bit about our shady past and took questions from the audience.

James Gurley                           Sam Andrew

The Roxie is such a great place. Elise and I have seen the Academy Awards presentation here a couple of times which is a lot of fun South of Market, I’ll tell you.

7 December 1996    Transmission Theatre   San Francisco   I was yelling in James’ ear at this gig. The opening band was loud. All of sudden, wouldn’t you know, and hasn’t this happened to you?, they stopped right on a dime, while I screeched, “She’s a dyke !”  into total silence.  We laughed so hard. The best moment of that night, definitely.  I don’t remember who was a dyke. Maybe me.

29 January 1997     Playing in London with Bob Strano and Billy Ficca from Television.  The Twelve Bar Club is a cool spot and I love Denmark Street, which is a London version of 48th Street in Manhattan.

20 February 1997  Turning Point   Piermont    New York

21 February 1997     Red Creek Inn  Rochester   New York

22 February 1997      Harpers Ferry    Boston   Susan Tedeschi opened for us here and she loaned us her equipment which was very generous.

23 February 1997                 Manny’s Car Wash               New York City              Nice, soulful review from Lenny Kaye.

25 February 1997                 Hard Rock Café                 Atlantic City       New Jersey

7 March 1997  The Ballard Firehouse   Seattle

8 March 1997      Fourth Avenue Tavern   Olympia   Washington

15 March 199

19 April 1997      Eureka             California

20 April 1997     Concord Pavilion                Concord           California

28 April 1997   Fillmore   San Francisco          This was a fun gig. Michael Carabello sat in with us and we had a loose, happy set.

Sam  Andrew                      Lisa Battle

8 May 1997                    The Cabooze           Minneapolis

10 May 1997                Rock and Roll Hall of Fame             Cleveland

Donovan was there too, and it was interesting to talk with him.  I don’t know if you have seen the film Don’t Look Back, the story of Bob Dylan’s first trip to England. Dylan may have seen Donovan as a competitor because he, Bob, savages Donovan and sings It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue at him in a mocking way.  I asked Donovan what he thought about the film. “It was difficult,” he replied, “there were fifteen New Yorkers on speed in that hotel and they were on a rampage, and everything was being filmed by D.A. Pennebaker.”

15 May 1997                St. Petersburg            Florida

16 May 1997              Hilton Hotel           Jacksonville        Florida

17 May 1997            Sebastian Beach Inn           Melbourne Beach          Florida

18 May 1997            Musician’s Exchange Café         Delray Beach        Florida

24 May 1997             Larkspur Books             Larkspur         California          Jack Ortman throws a party.

Rich Kirch     Natalie Martel     Dickie Peterson

25 May 1997   The Crossroads    Yucaipa    California

9 June 1997            Berkeley Community Theatre          Berkeley        California

20 June 1997   Catherine Cavalieri and Carl Peachman began writing to me shortly before this time asking if we could work together booking the band, which I had been doing by myself for a long time. They were good people and I liked getting to know them. This probably isn’t their laminate or slogan, but it certainly could be. Unlimited Devotion.

Tom Finch, Carl Peachman, Catherine Cavalieri, Lisa Battle, Peter Albin.

Catherine Cavalieri

Carl Peachman and George Coleman

I liked all these people from the Blues Review, all of the Colemans, and especially Catherine and Carl, and I owe them a huge debt.

I booked most/all of these shows with Catherine.

5 July 1997           Godfrey Daniels              Bethlehem          Pennsylvania

One of the odder Big Brother images. Lisa Battle and Les Dudek.

6 July 1997            Tinker Street Café            Woodstock            New York

7 July 1997           Stephen Talkhouse           Amagansett           New York

10 July 1997     Manny’s Car Wash    New York City      Vince Martel    Lisa Battle    Mark the Harp

12 July 1997    Stanhope House    Stanhope        New Jersey

13 July 1997   Hungry Tiger             Manchester        Connecticut

18 July 1997            Lark Theatre            Larkspur        California

NAMM Show

Elise Piliwale            Karen Lyberger.

19 July 1997    Forester’s Hall   Redwood City    California               This was a mellow evening.

Elise Piliwale                           Sam Andrew

25 July 1997

7 August 1997             Wetlands            New York City      With Moby Grape.

We did all of these songs and many more.

9 August 1997   Poconos   Pennsylvania

14 August 1997    Swiss Auditorium    Tacoma     Washington

15 August 1997           Crystal Ballroom            Portland          Oregon

16 August 1997     Back Alley  Port Townsend    Washington

17 August 1997           La Conner Blues Fest             La Conner       Washington

20 August 1997    The Yale Hotel          Vancouver         British Columbia

21 August 1997      Evergreen Ballroom            Olympia       Washington

22 August 1997      Cosmos  Bellingham  Washington   Bellingham is a lovely town.

23 August 1997   Doc Maynard’s  Seattle       I have played many times in this historic spot, including once That’s Entertainment came and filmed us.

31 August 1997             Milwaukee

7 September 1997  Seafood Festival  Pittsburgh   California

26 September 1997  Woodacre Improvement Club  Woodacre  California   This nondescript modern structure sits on a lot of history.  For one thing, Mari Mack sang with us here.

And then there is Adolph Maillard who was the son of Louis Maillard and the grandson of Louis’ “natural” father, Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain and Naples.

Adolph Maillard brought his bride Annie to Woodacre and they built a home with eighteen rooms and eleven fireplaces on the site of the Woodacre Improvement Club near Castle Rock.

Castle Rock, Woodacre.   Annie’s sister Julia Ward Howe (who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic) often visited Annie at her Woodacre home.

Charlotte Maillard, seen here with Cyril Magnin, was San Francisco’s Chief of Protocol and she inhabited Herb Caen’s columns quite comfortably for years.

Adolph Maillard sold much of his land to the Dicksons who are still here. Their ranch is dated 1870, but they bought the land around 1850.  I know a couple of Dicksons. One of them, Dan, is a great stride piano player and his brother Walt is a fine musician.

The original Maillard home became the Woodacre Improvement Club in 1924. This is the train station in Woodacre.

27 September 1997   Brookdale Lodge  Brookdale  California     There is a Brookdale ghost. I should know. I’ve seen it on television several times.

4 October 1997     The Landmark Hotel   Los Angeles      Table by the window.            Photo:  Howard Sounes.

9 October 1997  Great American Music Hall  San Francisco

Shana Morrison.

Bob Mosley     Peter Lewis   Sam Andrew   Jerry Miller   And drummer, do you remember that cab ride in Manhattan ?  Unbelievable, right.   I mean literally.   How did we live ?

12 October 1997     Pozo Saloon   Moby Grape

22 October 1997  Club Metronome   Burlington Vermont

24 October 1997   Dibden Center for the Arts  Johnson Vermont

25 October 1997                   Austin

26 October 1997     Dinosaur Bar-B-Q    Syracuse    New York

2 November 1997    A rather pink letter to Japan.

6 November 1997    Always booking.

So, it finally happens. We go to Japan with Duffy Bishop and Tom Finch.

19 November 1997     Caravanserai Sarai     Kochi    Japan

21 November 1997     Parker House Roll     Kyoto   This was like playing in someone’s living room, very small.

23 November 1997   Jyules  Pimper’s Paradise  Shizuoka  Japan

25 November 1997      Taku Taku     Kyoto         Michel Bastian

27 November 1997 Doshisa University  Kyoto      This is how Big Brother and the Holding Company is written in Japanese katakana. It sounds something like “Bigu Burazaa & za Horudingu Kanpanee.”

28 November 1997   Viva Hall    Hikone   Japan

Street art.

Peter Lewis         Jerry Miller

Peter Albin        Ginger Baker        Sam Andrew

Jerry Miller.

31 December 1997     Brookdale Lodge    Brookdale    California     Back with the Brookdale spirit and happy new year to you.

See ? I have my own ghost.   A much more interesting one.

 

_____________________________________________________________________

Big Brother and the Holding Company, part six. 1969-1972

Posted on by tagged.

1969 – 1972        The Long Slow Slide Down the Other Side.

2-3 February 1969

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.   And now we came to play here almost a hundred years later.

The Royal Albert Hall, or, as the London cabbies call it,  Halibut Oil (‘ albut o’l),  is in the north part of South Kensington.

We had a splendid time here which put me in a party mood.

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.

Bob Seidemann, old friend of ours, who did one of our album covers, plus the magnificent Blind Faith album, was there. He looks like this now. He didn’t then.

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

In 1969, engineers installed sound bafflings that were known as “mushrooms” or “flying saucers,” and the sound was vastly improved.

Suzy Creamcheese was so sweet to me in so many ways. She took me out to Hampton Court and gave me the royal tour. Suzy, thank you forever.

29 June 1969

20 July 1969          Snooky Flowers and I saw this event on television as it was happening.  The Chelsea Hotel, NYC.

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

December 1969   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. Duck Dunn died today, 13 May 2012, in his sleep in Tokyo. He was seventy.

25 August 1969

17 October 1969       Austin

18 October 1969   Hemisphere Arena  San Antonio        Sharrie Gomez and I doing a Macy’s ad.

24 October 1969       I’m listed as playing on this recording, but I’ve never heard it.

Talking god and the universe with Janis and Richard Kermode.

Richard came out of that Hammond B3 jazz scene in Buffalo. A lot of great players including him.

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.

29 December 1969                  Geary Theatre               415 Geary Boulevard                 San Francisco

Janis said, “I don’t look good in this photo, so I’m putting it in just for you.”

Anthony Edman took this photograph of the Carol guitar.

7 February 1970     Encore Theatre    Burlingame  California

13 February 1970      Pepperland

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

27 February 1970     Alaskaland Civic Center        Fairbanks   Alaska

5-7 March 1970        Keystone    San Francisco

They had some wonderful shows here, but the place was right next door to the police station in North Beach.

13-14 March 1970   New Orleans House   Berkeley         Horses in Tiburon.

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

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

4 April 1970   Fillmore West     Janis joins us for this one.                       James Gurley.

This photograph seems to be very heraldic of the 1970s. 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   Nick Gravenites   Mike Finnegan  David Shallock     We had a GOOD band.

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

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       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 May 1970    Keystone Korner    Berkeley

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.  I was proud to play here.

My wife is Hawaiian. More Hawaiian blood, as a matter of fact, than most Hawaiians.  Here she is with Grant Jacobs, Richard Hundgen, and I wish I knew her name, she has a lovely smile.

The equipment managers that we had at that time, forty years ago, decided to jump ship and become Hawaiian. They are there still.

And of course our President was born there 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. President Obama went to Puniho High School, and so did Jonelle DeNike, here with her husband Howard in Paris, old friends from University of San Francisco days.

This proportion may surprise you. It did me, almost as difficult as realizing that the eyes are half way down the head instead of near the top where children draw them.

 

10 June 1970    Kahului Armory    Maui   Hawaii

Also called the Pu’unene Armory.

Maui is the island without a military base, so they just had to build an armory here.

My father was in the Air Force, and so I was raised in places like this. Still, it does seem like a rather Spinal Tap place to have a concert.

Remember in Spinal Tap when the lieutenant (Fred Willard), looking at his watch says, “I make it, oh, 1830 hours now, so why don’t you go on about 1900 ?”

And Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) says, “You mean it’s seventy hours until we play ?”

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 actually played all that music.

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 Full Tilt Boogie Band     I remember flying home with Janis, Nick Gravenites, Mike Bloomfield et alia from this one. Bloomers was on a roll. He was ranting in that special Bloomfieldian style about taping two baloons full of lukewarm water to a bathroom mirror and masturbating into the sink. You know, typical inflight conversation. It was something else to have Big Brother and Full Tilt in that same small tight space. Good thing we all loved each other. Of course, in those days you could smoke and the flight attendants wore miniskirts. If I remember correctly, there was even a piano bar upstairs. Seat belts were only for taking off and landing, and sometimes not even then.

17 July 1970  Love Valley Festival   Love Valley  North Carolina       There was a counterfeit Big Brother running around about this time. Maybe they played this one ?

I always thought, “Why in the world would anyone want to counterfeit us, when they could just go ahead and be themselves ?”

I mean, it couldn’t be for the money, because we weren’t making any, so how could they ?

Might as well be yourself, as Oscar Wilde noted, everyone else is taken.

31 July 1970  Phoenix Veterans Coliseum  Arizona

6 August 1970  Peace Festival   Shea Stadium  Flushing Meadows    New York

13-15 August 1970   Fillmore West    San Francisco   Commander Cody     George Frayne, one of my favorite people.  Good artist too.

18-19 August 1970    The Matrix      San Francisco      No, he wasn’t on the gig, but I love the way he sings, so here he is. Paul supposedly came to the Matrix to see us one time, but when we met him, we asked him about it and he said he wasn’t lucky enough to be there.

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 Motel  Hollywood        A British writer just interviewed me from the very room.  He mentioned all of the scrawlings on the bedroom closet wall.

Swimming in the pool, yelling up to the rooms, “Hey, come on down ! Bring Mary Jane with you, OK?”

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

23 October 1970    Basin Street West    Omigawd, 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.

27-29 October 1970   The Matrix

30 October 1970   46th Street Rock Palace     Brooklyn

2 November 1970   Harding Theatre   San Francisco

20-21  November 1970   Winterland     San Francisco

5 December 1970  The Birmingham Palladium    Detroit

We all signed this one.  I was with Carol Cavallon when I bought this guitar on 48th Street, Manhattan, across the street from Manny’s.

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

17 January 1971     Syria Mosque       University of Pittsburgh

18-19 January 1971      Ungano’s       New York City

20 January 1971    Capitol Theatre   Port Chester   New York             Carol Cavallon    Putney  Vermont

29-30 January 1971      ”El Monte” always makes 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 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    Kathi McDonald.

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

25 March 1971        New Monk            Berkeley

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.   I think that this expression could fairly be called supercilious.   Or even supersillyious.

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

Always a good idea.

26 April 1971  Sonoma    WELL !   We know when we’re not wanted.   We left in a huff.   (Actually, it was a Buick.)

7 May 1971   California Hall    San Francisco

17 May 1971       New Monk

21 May 1971   Keystone            Nick Gravenites

28 May 1971     Selland Arena   Fresno    California     B.B. King  Elvin Bishop    Elvin liked to play poker after a gig.

10 June 1971  Fox Theatre   Long Beach

9 July 1971        Harlingen    Texas

August 1971       Release of How Hard It Is

We had a great B3 player on this one, 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.”    Hey, maybe Kacee Clanton was on this one too ?  I think she was.

9 October 1971   Monterey Fairgrounds     Clover        Jon Sievert took this one.

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

12 November 1971       Winterland

13 November 1971

9-11 December 1971      Inn of the Beginning          Cotati            California

31 December 1971    Many photographs of this guitar because she is gone now, playing the Hard Rock Café circuit.

1 January 1972

14 January 1972

30 January 1972   Curtis Hall    Tampa     Florida      Sam   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    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

22 or 23 April 1972     Dubuque & Court Street Party   Iowa City

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          Blue Oyster Cult.    These guys were great to hang with. Hysterical as a matter of fact.

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         Life becomes quite fuzzy along about now.   Note that there are often no specific dates for these events.

July 1972      Miami            Spirit

22 July 1972   Marine World   Redwood City    California        I love mingling with wild life, marine or otherwise.

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     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, 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.

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.

Thank you for being here, and I’ll see you in a week.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part five. July-December 1968

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July-December 1968                        The top of the mountain.

5 July 1968    Concord Coliseum     Concord    California

The Concord Coliseum began as a grocery store. Then it was a holy hall of music, and now it has become a Petco.

6 July 1968   Santa Rosa Fairgrounds    Santa Rosa    California       Balls and Chains.

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

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

A little hippy humor.

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.

27 July 1968    Newport Folk Festival  Newport  Rhode Island     We had always dreamed about attending this event and now we’re playing it.

Baron Wolman took this one at Newport.

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.

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.

9 August 1968  Kiel Auditorium    St. Louis

10 August 1968       Forest Park                    St. Louis

14 August 1968      Indiana Beach     Monticello      Indiana

When my wife Elise first saw this photograph, she said, “You look mental. Is everything all right?”   (She’s a nurse, OK?, so it was a professional question.)

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     Rick Griffin  Wes Wilson  Bonnie MacLean  Mouse and Kelley     Their art will last much longer than our music.

15 September 1968   Rose Bowl    Pasadena    We hopped in a limousine after the gig, and the fans piled on top. I was afraid we would be crushed.

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.

4 October 1968  Public Hall   Cleveland

Little did I realize then that Cleveland would loom large in the Big Brother legend. We will play in Italy in June 2012, and two of the band members will be from Cleveland. 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

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

Janis and Peter, all dressed up with everywhere to go.

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. 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    We met a man in a gorilla suit here who became the “big brother” in Big Brother and the Holding Company.

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

In Hartford, I visited Mark Twain’s very interesting home as I do 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.

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, rehearsals of The Kozmic Blues Band with Michael Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites presiding.

Mike was a consummate musician, gifted and highly intelligent.

Next time you’re in a restaurant, turn over the salt or pepper shaker and take a look. Very often there’s a tiny B there, B for Bloomfield. Mike’s father was a multimillionaire.

Al Kooper and Mike had a great idea. They would make an album and hire Norman Rockwell to do the cover. I wish I would have thought of that.

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. Well, maybe next time. Anyway, I loved working with Michael and Nick 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 main man. One of the great scholars of the guitar. What can I say ? I miss the guy.

In the 1950s, the Cedar Tavern in Manhattan was the artists’ watering hole.

The drinks were cheap and it was close to 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 once 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 actually lived in 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.

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 notorious as these characters below. 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 Rughers, I believe, and is just an all around good man.

Danny Fields, an “executive at Elektra,” as he is often billed, has been 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 from The Velvet Underground.

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.

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.

And now a thank you to Donna Patterson and Anthony Edman for your help on this history. It is much appreciated. Donna is trying to be anonymous, so don’t remember her, OK?

Ant Knee, thank you always for being a good friend.

Part Six next week.         See you then.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part four. January to June 68

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This is the story of Big Brother and the Holding Company. This is the part where we go up, up, up.

               

January to June 1968

Linda McCartney took this photograph when she was Linda Eastman and a dear friend of mine.

 

We became vegetarians together. That way we wouldn’t eat each other.

Not for our health, as Isaac Bashevis Singer might say, but for the health of the chickens.

5 January 1968   Rainbow Ballroom    Fresno     California

6 January 1968      Sacramento State College       Steve Brown captured this lovely image of Janis.   I think she liked him.

12 January 1968           Shrine Auditorium      Los Angeles

13 January 1968       Barnes Park Bandshell         Monterey Park          California

16-21 January 1968     Golden Bear Club    Huntington Beach    California     I always liked playing here.

25 January 1968      Fillmore Auditorium     San Francisco

26-27 January 1968  Winterland  San Francisco    John Byrne Cooke, son of Alistair Cooke, Spanish major at Harvard, was our estimable road manager and good friend.

I don”t want to say that John is tall, but here he is hovering over Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Mimi Fariña and Joan Baez.

John writes western novels, he’s a photographer, and he introduced us to a whole new world when we went East in 1967.

He is now writing a book about his days with Janis in Big Brother, the Kozmic Blues Band and Full Tilt.

John took this photograph of Debbie Green and Mimi Fariña.

Albert Grossman, the schvitzing Svengali, our manager, the gray cloud, and now he’s gone.

28 January 1968       Avalon Ballroom     San Francisco

Chet and Lori Helms with Bill Graham.   Bill is doing the talking. Imagine that.

2 February 1968     The Cheetah    Los Angeles

3 February 1968     Earl Warren Showgrounds     Santa Barbara

9 February 1968      Santa Clara County Fairgrounds        Santa Clara      California

10 February 1968       Community Concourse Exhibit Hall  San Diego

16 February 1968  Palestra  Philadelphia    A “palestra” was originally a wrestling school in Greece (palaistra). In Italian, the word now means “gymnasium.”

17 February 1968   Anderson Theatre  New York City

Elliott Landy took some very sweet photographs of nearly everyone at that time.

The lower East Side was a magic place to be in those days.

This restaurant was right next door to where we played.

Colors, smells, enthusiastic people who were personal, direct and kind, rather the opposite of the stereotype of New Yorkers.

Ukrainian easter eggs, Afghan coats, secondhand shops, it was like a giant bazaar.

23-24 February 1968   Psychedelic Supermarket Boston     I walked into a store in Boston, asked for yoghurt and the grocer almost spat at me.

25 February 1968  Rhode Island School of Design  Providence  Rhode Island       Yes, folks, there was a time when yoghurt was seen as exotic.

I lived in Paris 1962-1964 and a friend there was feeding yoghurt (“yaourt”) to his baby. First time I tasted it. Delicious. Tastier then… and there.

1-2 March 1968      The Grande Ballroom    Detroit   Michigan

Back in New York, in Albert Grossman’s office listening to what we did at The Grande. One of those moments of truth.

Bill Graham becomes the king of New York.

8 March 1968   Fillmore East opens.   Linda made this poster.

We were living in the Chelsea Hotel, once home of Mark Twain, Eugene O’Neill, Thomas Wolfe and many other heroes of our youth.

William Burroughs lived there. So did Brendan Behan, O. Henry, Virgil Thomson, Larry Rivers, Charles Bukowski, Patti Smith and let’s not forget Sid and Nancy.

Jane Fonda lived there. So did Julie Christie. I visited each of them there. We were just friends. Coworkers, really.

9 March 1968      Wesleyan University     Middletown   Connecticut       Janis is playing Combination of the Two.

15-17 March 1968   Electric Factory   Philadelphia      I always loved Philadelphia. The people I met there seemed very soulful. Still do.

Visiting the Columbia Records vault, New York City. Lots of treasure there.

And recording at the Black Rock.  Columbia Recording Studio.  I once did a session here at seven in the morning.

The Black Rock is at 52nd Street and Sixth Avenue.

I was very excited to be on this street and I walked west at night, hearing the ghosts of Monk, Bird, Diz, Bud Powell, Bill DeArengo, Milt Jackson, J.C. Heard, Ray Brown.

I walked 52nd Street whistling the tune they wrote and played here. That middle part is something else.

22-24 March 1968     The Cheetah       Chicago

2-6 April  The Generation  New York City     B.B. King inspired us this night with his sacred words and music.

7 April 1968  Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, Joni Mitchell.

10 April 1968             Anaheim Convention Center

Tuning, always tuning.  In the Renaissance they said that if a lute player lived to be eighty, he would have spent sixty years tuning. That’s about right

11 April 1968       We play Summertime on ABC-TV Hollywood Palace.

11 April 1968             Fillmore Auditorium with Booker T and the MGs and Iron Butterfly.

12-13 April 1968     Winterland    San Francisco    Now we’re home with our friends, practiced, proficient, professional and prone to perilous propensities.

Don’t ask me what that means. Well, actually, I know what it means, but am loathe to elucidate.

This gig at Winterland was recorded.

14 April 1968             Carousel Ballroom

19 April 1968                   Selland Arena             Fresno

20 April 1968    University of California     Santa Barbara

24 April 1968            Straight Theatre          San Francisco

26 April 1968      Foothill College      Los Altos      California

27 April 1968     San Bernardino    California

1 May 1968   College Field   Chico State College   Chico  California    Chico is close to Paradise. I bet Donna Patterson can come up with a better line than that.

2 May 1968                 Carousel Ballroom                San Francisco

1968 3-4 May   The Shrine Expo Center      Los Angeles

3-5 May 1968

3-6 May 1068

10 May 1968       Cal-Poly State University     San Luis Obispo     California

11 May 1968

12 May 1968    San Fernando Valley State College     Northridge    California

15 May 1968

Fairly typical set list at this time.

16 May 1968    This doesn’t look like one of James’ usual guitars.

17 May 1968    Freeborn Hall   University of California at Davis

18 May 1968   Santa Clara County Fairgrounds  Santa Clara   Northern California Folk Rock Festival

This was a special gig, quite memorable.

Sunny, beautiful day, Janis relaxed and happy, sitting in the grass with me and the other children.

19 May 1968      Civic Auditorium  Pasadena   James singing Easy Rider.   “And I will even buy you some cardboard fruit.”

21 May 1968        Bermuda Palms     San Rafael    California  I used to play saxophone in this building with a big band.

24-26 May 1968   Carousel Ballroom with the Clara Ward Singers.     Five errors ?   Dave, Janis, Sam, James and Peter.  That was easy.

31 May 1968

9 June 1968   Whisky-A-Go-Go    Hollywood

Always so much going on at The Whisky.

13 June 1968     Fillmore Auditorium

14-15 June 1968     Winterland      San Francisco

16 June 1968      Fillmore            Matrix Benefit

22-23 June 1968        Carousel Ballroom

Owsley Stanley put us on tape many times. SONY has just released his recording of this engagement.

24 June 1968      Burlingame Country Club     Burlingame  California

26-29 June 1968                   Denver

Part five next week.   I love you all, you know that, right ?  OK, just making sure.

Sam Andrew

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part three. July to December 1967

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Well, hello, everybody !

July to Decmber 1967

This is the continuing story of Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The third of twenty-five chapters.

1 July 1967     Avalon Ballroom    Quicksilver      Mount Rushmore      Horns of Plenty

“Big Brother and the Holding Company ?”        How did you get a name like that ?

2 July 1967         Mount Tamalpais          Marin County, California.

I remember I had a hard time driving down off that mountain after this gig. We had a 1955 Cadillac hearse which was unwieldy anyway, and I didn’t know Marin County yet, and especially Mount Tamalpais, so I had a fun time negotiating all those curves, peaks and valleys.

Anyway, on a beautiful spring day in 1965, Chet Helms held in his hands two legal tablets full of quirky, eccentric, purposefully puerile names.

Names like Tom Slow and his Sarcastic Grand Mo. Or Big Bother and the Folding Company. Or Country Schmo and The Knish. Or Quicksliver Military Service.

4-6 July 1967         Fillmore              Bo Diddly        Big Joe Williams

7-8 July 1967    Circle Star Theatre     San Carlos    California

Theatres in the round can be quite tricky. Westbury Music Fair on Long Island is another one. When they begin revolving there is a slight jerk that you should be ready for.

On one legal tablet, Chet had the name “Big Brother,” no doubt prompted by a recent reading of  Orwell.

14-15 July 1967               Continental Ballroom grand opening.

20-21 July 1967  Avalon Ballroom  Mount Rushmore   On another legal tablet page, Chet had the words “The Holding Company.”

Holding ? Why Holding ?

23 July 1967   Straight Theatre    San Francisco  Grand Opening  Freedom Highway    The Phoenix    Wildflower    Grateful Dead

Mount Rushmore  Quicksilver Messenger Service   New Salvation Army Band   Mother Earth  Country Joe and The Fish   The Charlatans   Blue Cheer

28-30 July 1967     California Hall      San Francisco

“Holding” was slang at that time for “possessing,” as in, “Hey, man, are you holding any drugs ?”

31 July 1967                     Haight Ashbury Free Clinic Benefit

8 August 1967  Denver Dog   Denver    Colorado  A band at this event played Bye, Bye, Baby. The guitar player even copied my mistakes. First time I heard that.

10 August 1967  Kaiser Dome San Bernardino   So, on one yellow tablet Chet had “Big Brother” and on the other he had “the Holding Company.”

11-12 August 1967  Continental Ballroom   Santa Clara   California          ”Big Brother ?”         “Holding Company ?”

13 August 1967  Avalon Ballroom    ”Big Brother” was big government. “”Holding Company” was corporate government. Corporations weren’t people yet.

16 August 1967  Golden Gate Park       The Supreme Court was still an honorable institution.

Sharrie Gomez and I doing a Macy’s ad.

24-27 August 1967           Avalon Ballroom              Bo Diddly        Bukka White        The Salvation Army Banned

28 August 1967  Lindley Meadow   Golden Gate Park          ”Big Brother ?”     “Holding Company ?”      Very political.

Country Joe and The Fish were a political group, but their name was non political. They should have had our name and we should have had theirs.

Country Janis and The Fish would have been perfect.

We were not “political” at all in the Berkeley sense. We were political just by being who we were. Our politics were non proselytizing, spiritual, private.

Joe MacDonald had a difficult time understanding this then and he may still.

So…       “Big Brother ?”      ”The Holding Company ?”  For a group of people like us ?

We had a shoot in Sausalito at the Heliport with Irving Penn, master of photography, another not overtly yet intensely political artist.

This is the way Irving Peen’s portrait of us and the Grateful Dead looks on the walls of The National Portrait Gallery, London.

1-3 September 1967     Straight Theatre    Haight Ashbury             San Francisco.

4 September 1967   La Dolphine Estate  Debutante Party   Burlingame  California

6 September 1967

8-9 September 1967  Family Dog  Denver

You probably cannot see that Janis and I are committing some kind of nefarious act over there under the tree.

Talk about truth in advertising.

15 September 1967  Canceled.      Anyway, so Chet put the names together. Big Brother and the Holding Company.

James Gurley said, “Hey, how is a name that long going to fit on a marquee or a record label ?”

And I thought, “You mean there’s going to be a marquee… and a record label ?”

September 16, 1967     Monterey Jazz Festival     T-Bone Walker   B. B. King   Richie Havens   The Clara Ward Singers    Afternoon Blues Show

T-Bone Walker was my guitar hero when I was 14, him and Charlie Christian, so I was very excited to see him here.

19-24 September 1967       Golden Bear       Huntington Beach   California with Big Mama Thornton.

5  October 1967   The Matrix  San Francisco     James Gurley’s question was prescient. Big Brother and the Holding Company has always been a difficult fit.

On marquees, on record labels, on book titles, philosophically, spiritually… a difficult fit.

6 October 1967  The Ark   Sausalito   California

7 October 1967      Avalon Ballroom             See ?  The version below might fit us a bit bother, I mean, better.

8 October 1967             Santa Clara Fairgrounds              Santa Clara          California

13-14 October 1967     Eagles Auditorium      Seattle   This engagement was also canceled, I believe, and we played at The Ark instead.

To make the name Big Brother and the Holding Company fit on a poster, we have to squeeze it, so that our name is smaller. Boo, hoo.

15-16 October 1967                Avalon Ballroom

20 October 1967           Contra Costa College     San Pablo    California

27 October 1967   Cal State    Hayward    California

28 October 1967        McNear’s Beach             San Rafael         California

28-29 October 1967       Peacock Country Club            San Rafael

31 October 1967   Trip Or Freak  Hallowe’en Ball    Winterland    San Francisco

2-3 November 1967      Fillmore          San Francisco            Richie Havens

?  November 1967           Golden Bear Club            Huntington Beach          California

4 November 1967           Winterland             San Francisco           Richie Havens    Pink Floyd

4 November 1967    The Ark          Baltimore Steam Packet       Moby Grape

13 November 1967         Avalon Ballroom             Grateful Dead        Quicksilver Messenger Service

16 November 1967           Cubist stock certificate.

Lisa Law took this one in San Geronimo Valley not far from where I am sitting now.

This event never happened.  In any year.      I wish it would have.

23-25 November 1967     The Family Dog presents Thanksgiving Turkey Strut and Trot at The Avalon.

24 November 1967   California Hall           San Francisco

25 November 1967          Avalon Ballroom           Mount Rushmore

1 December 1967   The Matrix    San Francisco    Sandy Bull    Dan Hicks

2 December 1967

14-17 December 1967                      Whisky-A-Go-Go                    Hollywood

17 December 1967

18 December 1967             California Hall

19 December 1967       Shrine Auditorium      Los Angeles    We became acquainted with Connie and Renee Pappas somewhere along here.

They were good friends and the next time we played the Golden Bear or the Shrine, they had a party for us at their house.

20 December 1967            Whisky-A-Go-Go              Hollywood

22 December 1967             Turlock Fairgrounds             Turlock           California

25 December 1967                   Sokol Hall                Christmas Party

26-31 December 1967                    Winterland              San Francisco

31 December 1967

Happy New Year !

Part four next week. See you then.

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company   Alain Bertrand painted this.   Notice the billboard down the street to your left.

     Alain, je te remercie mille fois. My good friend.

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part two. January to June 1967

Posted on by tagged.

January to June 1967

     I found this photograph tacked to a telephone pole. By whom? Why ? I have no idea.

     Palais des Beaux Arts.   San Francisco.

A lot of our inspiration was coming from KMPX radio. They had a beautifully adventurous playlist which was the soundtrack to our lives at this time. Erik Satie, then Quicksilver, then Telemann, then Mississippi John hurt, then, well, it could go anywhere.

     Howard Hessman didn’t only play a DJ on TV. He was one in real life, and a good one too.

    Chet Helms about the time that we shared a house in Bernal Heights, San Francisco.

1 January 1967            Golden Gate Park             “New Year’s Day Wail” with the Grateful Dead and the Orkustra

     Fayette Hauser’s Cockettes in the Panhandle, Golden Gate Park.

     The Panhandle in the 1890s.

Diane Vitalich playing in the Park, probably with the Ace of Cups, a good band.

The Wizard Martoon, Martin Gorak, artist, gentle soul, great human being, soul brother. He taught me a lot about how the stars move across the sky. Great painter.

9 January 1967              Straight Theatre

     Rehearsing with James Gurley.

We took an early group photograph in Golden Gate Park by one of these windmills out near the ocean.

       A very appropriate symbol come to think of it.

12 January 1967

13 January 1967     Santa Venetia Armory      San Rafael     California       Ralph and Al Pepe presented Moby Grape, Morning Glory and us.

     I remember John Cipollina at this one, talking my ear off , explaining what Leos and Virgos were. Full speed. Quicksilver.

     Hey ! It’s Janis ! In San Rafael.

   This is Peter’s school. He majored in photography here. Light is faster than sound.

14 January 1967             Human Be-in                Golden Gate Park             San Francisco

15 January 1967                   Shrine Auditorium                     Los Angeles

     The Merry Pranksters were along for this one.

17-22 January 1967                      The Matrix                              San Francisco

       Amazing what happened in this tiny room.     Steve Miller was also on this bill.

24-26 January 1967                       Soul City Club                           Dallas                Texas

28 January 1967       Continental Ballroom      Santa Clara, Calilfornia.

How it felt, how it looked.

29 January 1967                    Avalon Ballroom                  San Francisco

     Allen Ginsberg, Grateful Dead, Moby Grape.

Chet Helms, the high priest.

31 January to 5 February 1967          Matrix

     I’ve noticed that a lot of really good singers have very wide, generous mouths.

3 February 1967  A Benefit for Hairy Harry       California Hall           Head Lights does the light show.

4-5  Feburary 1967                                     Matrix          Where did they go ? All those sounds we played in that small room ?

10-11 February 1967                                 Golden Sheaf Bakery                Berkeley

12 February 1967                      California Hall

14 February 1967

         We played with Moby Grape and Jack the Ripper.

15 February 1967                     California Hall

     Papa made the set list. Mama read the papers.

17-18 February 1967        Avalon Ballroom            Tribal Stomp

     Bob Seideman took this photograph of James.

19 February 1967                        Matrix

Mojo Navigator           There is a beautiful magazine now in the UK called MOJO. I wonder if they ever give any props to their ancestor ?

21 February 1967                          California Hall

23 February 1967                              The Ark

24 February 1967                          Glide Memorial Church                San Francisco

25 February 1967                       The Barn                   Scott’s Valley              California

     This was a most interesting scene down near Santa Cruz in the magical town of Scott’s Valley. The Hershey Gumbo played downstairs at the same time as we did upstairs, and they were attracting a large audience. Janis and James and I went down to see what was going on. Ralph Saunders, a steel guitar player, was holding forth and there seemed to be some kind of intrigue in the air. Scott’s Valley has now become a wealthy enclave, in places a gated community seemingly unaware of its exotic past.

26 February 1967                          Glide Memorial Church              Sunday morning service

          The Reverend Cecil Williams was a hero to us.

Then, that evening, we drove to Merced and played at The  American Legion Hall.

2 March 1967

4 March 1967                 Steininger Auditorium            University of California Medical Center          San Francisco     with Steve Miller.

      I loved this gig. I was fascinated by Steve, already a great player and very advenurous.

5 March 1967                        Avalon Ballroom    A Benefit for Newstage & the Straight Theatre   Moby Grape     Country Joe and The Fish      The Sparrow

 

10 March 1967                Chessall High School Gymnasium            Ukiah            California

12 March 1967                      Fillmore Auditorium         San Francisco

14-16 March 1967                   The Matrix

17-18 March 1967             The Avalon

     Charles Lloyd            The Sir Douglas Quintet

 

21-26 March 1967                     The Rock Garden         San Francisco

 I was talking to Arthur Lee, “Boy, that was a great set you did !”   He replied, “Who you calling boy ?”

31 March to 1 April 1967       Avalon Ballroom      Charlatans    Blue Cheer

     Herb Greene took this beautiful photograph of these beautiful people, The Charlatans.

8 April 1967                    Mount Tamalpais Outdoor Theatre           Marin County

     Quicksilver Messenger Service           The Sparrow           The Charlatans

9 April 1967                     Longshoremen’s Hall                     San Francisco

10-11 April                     Fillmore Auditorium                    San Francisco         We played that afternoon 10 April on Mount Tamalpais.

12-13 April 1967                  Winterland and the Fillmore

15 April 1967      Spring Mobilization            Kezar Stadium         San Francisco

16 April 1967                      Stockton Civic Auditorium             Stockton          California       The New Breed played on the bill with us.

21 April 1967                           In Athens there was also counter revolution and questioning of authority.

       There was a wave of protest washing over the world. Even the Red Guards in China, misguided as they were, were part of this.

We must all stand together or surely we will all hang separately.   Benjamin Franklin.

21-22 April 1967        Fillmore Auditorium           with the mighty Howlin’ Wolf

23 April 1967

     The light show was Aurora Glory Alice.

The Diggers. There were two leaders of this organization. One died of a heroin overdose in the 1980s. The other became a leading man in films. It seems like every documentary voice over I hear is by Peter Coyote.

25 April 1967             Live in studio performance at KQED “Come Up The Years”                  San Francisco

When Janis saw this shot she said, “Gosh, Sam, you are such a fan.”

      Hey, I knew where the camera was at all times… and so did she.

25-27 April 1967                    Matrix

28-29 April 1967                California Hall                 with Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton          The Weeds

5-7 May 1967                          Avalon Ballroom

11 May 1967                        The Fillmore        Vanguard Records throws a party for the release of an LP by Country Joe and the Fish.

12-13 May 1967                              California Hall

25 May 1967                         Carousel Ballroom                 San Francisco

26-27 May 1967                  The Fillmore              with Steve Miller

30 May 1967              Haight Ashbury Legal Organization Benefit                Winterland

      Jefferson Airplane   Quicksilver Messenger Service   The Charlatans     Grateful Dead

31 May 1967              Filming   Petulia              The Fairmont Hotel                   San Francisco

Peter auditioning for Hard Days Night, part two.

It was fun getting to know Julie Christie and Richard Chamberlain who turned out to be a decent man and not at all “plastic,” deadly term of opprobrium in those days.

We filmed right in the Fairmont lobby.

     The theme in the film for this event was driving safety, so we performed Road Block.

The director was Richard Lester. He had worked with other musicians, so he knew what to expect.

2-3 June 1967                             California Hall

8-11 June 1967                               Avalon Ballroom

        Canned Heat, still a great band. We play with them frequently.

One of my favorite phoographs of Janis.

10-11 June 1967

17-18 June 1967                               The Monterey Pop Festival

     I was so in love with Rita Bergman. She was the flower in the sun. She was the one to call on me. She was the farewell.

Singing Road Block.

What a thrill this was.

Some guys will do anything to get a little reverb.

Ravi Shankar, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix were the people I wanted to see and they didn’t disappoint.

Janis was great. We all felt good and happy to be there.

21 June 1967                      Polo Field                 Golden Gate Park            San Francisco           Summer Solstice Festival        Embarcadero & Lombard Streets

24 June 1967                   The Avalon

25 June 1967                        The Fillmore                      with Gabor Szabo and Jimi Hendrix

27 June 1967            Benefit for Lick-Wilmerding School        Avalon Ballroom

28 June 1967               Western Front         San Francisco

29 June 1967               California Hall

29 June-2 July 1967           Avalon Ballroom

30 June 1967             Napa Fairgrounds               Napa          California

        James Gurley, one of the most interesting people I have ever known.

Next week part three. See you then.

Sam Andrew

      Ooops, there I go again.

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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Big Brother and the Holding Company, part one. 1965-1966

Posted on by tagged.

1965 – 1966

Since I was 14 or so, I have been in one kind of a musical group or another. Guitar groups.

Vocal groups.

The Cool Notes              Okinawa                  Japan.

At the University of San Francisco I played trumpet, saxophone and a lot of typewriter, because I edited the literary magazine.

Things were coalescing.

We were listening to Skip James, Ma Rainey, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Victoria Spivey, Mance Lipscomb, Bessie Smith, Mississippi John Hurt, LaVern Baker, Joe Turner.

           And Peter Albin was playing like John Lee Hooker.

Big Brother and the Holding Company             1965-2012    …and counting…                Golden Anniversary soon.      This is our history.

Peter and I started playing as Big Brother in this house… 1090 Page Street          San Francisco.            1965.

The image below might be the earliest photograph we have of all of our friends. See anyone you know there ? If you know everyone there, call me immediately.

People I know in this photograph: Peter Albin, Sam Andrew, Rita Bergman, Mike Ferguson, Dave Getz, Martin Gorak, Hongo Gurley, James Gurley, Nancy Gurley,  Phil Hammond, Chet Helms, Lori Helms, Dan Hicks, David Homage, George Hunter, Janis Joplin, Alton Kelley, Mortimer Lindner (veterinarian),  James Moylanin, Richie Olsen, Paula Preston, Sancho (the family dog), Mike Wilhelm.

Chet Helms, our big brother.

Our first promotional photograph. We are in the cable car barn.       San Francisco, 1966.

        Chet Helms, Sam Andrew, Peter Albin, Chuck Jones, James Gurley.

November 1965               We play a gig on Clement Street, but we are not called Big Brother yet.

Later in November 1965           We play in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park as Big Brother and the Holding Company.

     Mike Ferguson and Lynn Hughes.

10 January 1966                We held auditions at The Matrix on Fillmore Street, San Francisco.

15 January 1966             Our first public performance.        Open Theatre              Berkeley.

      Lynn Hughes actually auditioned for us at one point. Here she is with Jesse Cahn.

21-23 January 1966             Longshoreman’s Hall               San Francisco

12 February 1966                Fillmore Auditorium              San Francisco

19 February 1966

     George Conger, Ritchie Olsen, George Hunter.

26 February 1966                  The Family Dog at the Fillmore.

Darby Slick wrote this. I was TEACHING the lesson. Jerry Garcia and I were both guitar teachers at this point.

Chet Helms and James Gurley in one of Herb Greene’s beautiful photographs.

One of our glamour poses. Not glamor, glamour, please.

1=6  March 1966                The Matrix      Chet was our brother and the Matrix was our mother.

12 March 1966                    The Matrix

18-20 March 1966                Fillmore Auditorium        San Francisco

     

19 March 1966         The Firehouse

     James Gurley.

1 April 1966          Harmon Gymnasium           Berkeley          Delano Grape Strikers Benefit

2 April 1966

2 April 1966                  Geary Temple

4-6 April 1966                  Matrix

9 April 1966                                       Longshoreman’s  Hall.

       

29-30 April 1966                     Avalon Ballroom

Peter Albin learning his craft.

6 May 1966

6 May 1966

It was a big thrill to see our name in the San Francisco Chronicle.

13-14 May 1966                 Red Dog Saloon                  Virginia City             Nevada

21 May 1966                  Muir Beach                 Marin County

That was fun, to be finding our way, not sure of where we were going.

Janis was a trouper. She was a real musician and she supported the band as much as we supported her.

         

21 May 1966                     Avalon Ballroom

27-28 May 1966                Red Dog Saloon            Virginia City               Nevada

Hairy ?

30 May 1966                  Winterland                San Francisco

3-4 June 1966            Avalon Ballroom

10-11 June 1966                  Red Dog Saloon                  Virginia City

     Janis and Dorothy Joplin.

19 June 1966               Timothy Leary Benefit at the St. Francis Hotel             San Francisco

24-25 June 1966  Avalon Ballroom  Janis Joplin’s first engagement with Big Brother unless Chet made a special place for her at the Avalon on 10 June. I can’t remember.

We did all kinds of gigs. This one was for our friend Dennis Nolan.

Dennis drew this poster.   One of my favorites.

I’ve done a few paintings of this band.

1 July 1966                            Fillmore Auditorium               San Francisco

Rodney Albin, another big brother. Rodney once asked us to turn down… at gunpoint. The only way you can make guitar players turn down, despite an old joke that says otherwise.

2 July 1966              Monterey Fairgrounds

8-9 July 1966                   Red Dog Saloon            Virginia City

14 July 1966                  Fillmore

15-16 July 1966                This one didn’t happen.

                          

Nancy Gurley and her son Hongo who grew to be a fine man. Nancy was a free spirit.

22 July 1966

Lisa Law did some plein air photography of  Big Brother out in the San Geronimo Valley of Marin County.

                

28 July 1966                 California Hall                   San Francisco

29-30 July 1966                Garden Auditorium          Pacific National Exhibition         Vancouver       British Columbia

29-30-31 July 1966

Ken Babbs in control at The Trips Festival.

Playing in Golden Gate Park.     It always seemed to be sunny and blue.

2-3-4- August 1966                    Losers South

5-6 August 1966        Avalon Ballroom

       Sancho, often misspelled “Soncho,” put his pawprint on this poster.

Keeping an eye on things at The Mojo Navigator which was the first psychedelic rock magazine.

7 August 1966               with Grateful Dead, Grass Roots, Sunshine, Jook Savages, PH Phactor, Si Perkoff Jazz Quintet, San Francisco Mime Troupe.

                                 

12 August 1966    afternoon show in the Park.

12-13 August 1966           Avalon Ballroom

Figuring out what we’re going to do when we sign with Mainstream Records.

Chicago !                 Our first big road trip. We were there from 25 August to 19 September 1966.

16 September 1966      Chicago Sun Times

I saw Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, Muddy Waters, and a lot of other good people up close and personal. Wolf said to me, “You have more soul than I have on my shoe.” First time I heard that expression.

                                    

19 September 1966

Stanley Mouse did this beautiful work on my guitar.

23-24 September 1966              Avalon Ballroom.        Wolf canceled this gig, so Grass Roots replaced him.

Another beautiful work by Dennis Nolan.

6 October 1966        The Ark      Sausalito, California.       We also played in Golden Gate Park that afternoon.

The Ark              Sausalito, California

The Charles van Damme, alias, The Ark a few years later.

7-8 October 1966             Avalon Ballroom          Sutter and Van Ness, San Francisco, California.

13-14 October 1966

15-16 October 1966

Backstage in our elegant dressing room.

22 October 1967                  Winterland              San Francisco

On one of our pilgrimages to Fritz Maytag’s Anchor Steam Brewery in San Francisco.

We played 1-6 November 1966 at The Matrix.

and 4 November 1966 at The Ark, Sausalito.

Drinking Champagne and being happy backstage.

The artists then were so exuberant and industrious that they would often do two, three or four posters for the same event. The creative juices were flowing.

11 November 1966               We taped a “POW” TV show in San Francisco and played the Trip Room in Sacramento.

We always had a lot of fun at Sokol Hall which was right down the street from 1090 Page where Peter and I started the band.

12 November 1966          Sokol Hall       739 Page Street         San Francisco.

Peter Albin wears satin.

13 November 1966   Avalon Ballroom

19 November 1966               The Barn          Scotts Valley            Santa Cruz

23 November 1966          California Hall    625 Polk Street       San Francisco, California.

                                   

25-26 November 1966            The Avalon Ballroom             Isn’t this a beautiful poster ?

3 December 1966                  Wilbur Hall       Stanford University      A Happening in the Wilburness

9-10 December 1966            Avalon Ballroom

 

16-17 December 1966              Winterland          San Francisco

18 December 1966           We played the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

25 December 1966               We had a Christmas party at our house in Lagunitas. Lisa Law took this photograph of us by the kitchen door.

26 December 1966                The Ark          Sausalito

27 December 1966                  Avalon Ballroom

31 December 1966              Kezar Pavilion        Golden Gate Park

Next week, part two. See you then !

Sam Andrew

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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April Fools.

Posted on by tagged.

1 April 2012

But if you had been able to anticipate the grand march of human progress and poetic feeling by fifty years, and asked her to sing

You made me love you, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it,

she would have asked a policeman to remove you to a third class carriage.      (George Bernard Shaw, writing about his mother).

 

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

     1090 Page Street         San Francisco

     This was what it cost to see Peter Albin and me play in 1965.

When I first walked into 1090 Page Street in the spring of that year, these are the lines that I declaimed from the staircase down into the Victorian gloom of the foyer:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,

And smale fowles maken melodye,

That slepen al the night with open ye,

So priketh hem nature in hir corages:

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

What do you want ? I had been an English major and was now studying linguistics in graduate school at UC Berkeley.

When this prologue is pronounced more or less the way it would be spoken in the fifteenth century, the rhythm and the music of the lines can be overwhelming.

In 1582, Charles IX, king of France, introduced the Gregorian Calendar into his country, and New Year’s Day was moved from 1 April to 1 January.

Many people, even in France, only learned of this change years later. Some are still not sure about it.

The first day of April seems like a far better time to start a new year than the first day of January.

Actually, to me, the first day of September would be best. This is the beginning of the year in many cultures.

The people who were too ignorant or too stubborn to accept 1 January as the  new new year were labeled “fools” by everyone else and were mocked with fool errands, fool invitations and fool parties.

The butts of these pranks were called “poissons d’avril,” April fish.

A young fish is easily caught.

So, on the first of April, it was common to hook a paper fish on the back of someone as a joke.

  You think he noticed it ?

In the 18th century, this lovely custom reached England, and was introduced into the American colonies by the English and the French. Here is a visual and literal pun on “poison” (poison) and “fish” (poisson).

Below is a ticket to see the “washing of the lions,” something that never happened, so this is an April fools trick in earnest.

In Scotland they take “butts” of jokes literally, so April Fools is devoted to spoofs involving the buttocks and is called Tally Day.

The origins of the “Kick Me” sign can be blamed on the Scots.

In Rome, this holiday was called Festival of Hilaria and it celebrated the return of the god Attis on 25 March, which was also called Roman Laughing Day. Hilaria was also called Cybele.

Another Hilaria in South America: OK, children, tell this pupil Aldo what are the requirements for being a congresswoman? To be Peruvian by birth and older than 25.

The Huli Festival in India comes on 31 March and is a celebration of Spring. People play jokes on each other and smear colors on their friends.

Perhaps because the cold winter is ebbing and the beautiful spring is springing, in many cultures there are lighthearted feasts around this time. One of them is the Jewish Purim which fell on 7 March this year at sundown.

Queen Esther Palin… April Fools !

Japanese style:

Things that happened on April first:

On 1 April 527, Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Justinianus became the emperor of Byzantium (Constantinople, Istanbul), the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

In 1578 on April first, William Harvey discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was born.

The ruins of Pompei were found on 1 April 1748.

On April Fools Day 1778, so the story goes, a New Orleans businessman Oliver Pollock created the $ symbol.

Another possible and much more interesting and ancient origin of the dollar sign is a kind of map made by the Phoenicians of the Pillars of Hercules. This was the Greek name of the promontories on the entrance to the straits of Gibraltar. When the Lebanese traders sailed by these eminences on their way out into the giant Atlantic ocean, the map they made of their threading the pillars was like a dollar sign. The Phoenicians were nothing if not a commercial race, so they took this map to heart.

King Ferdinand was able to make Gibraltar part of the Spanish estates in 1492 and he adopted the symbol of the pillars of Hercules. Later, King Charles V used it in his coat of arms and the symbol in combination with two hemispheres was printed on coins made of the silver and gold that was brought from America by the counquistadores. These coins then spread to America and Europe and the symbol adopted as a currency symbol.

Edmond Rostand who wrote Cyrano de Bergerac was born 1 April 1868.

Paul Gauguin the painter left Marseilles for Tahiti on 1 April 1891.

One fool that should have been kept in jail: 1 April 1924 Hitler was sentenced to five years labor, but General Ludendorff, a coconspirator in the Munich Putsch was acquitted. Herr Schickelgruber used his jail time to write a book.

Louis Marx introduced the Yo-Yo on April Fools 1929, the same day that Luis Buñuel released Un Chien Andalou. By the way, “yoyo” spelled backwards is “oyoy.”

Some other YoYos.

On 1 April 1930, the film Der Blaue Engel (Blue Angel) premiered in America.

Jimmy Cliff first saw the beautiful light of Jamaica on 1 April 1948.

 

Hey, it looks as if he is playing my Hummingbird… and right handed too.

Big Brother and the Holding Company played a Delano Grape Strikers Benefit on 1 April 1966 with The Great Society and Quicksilver Messenger Service.

     Three Slicks.

1 April 1967, we played at The Avalon Ballroom with The Charlatans and Blue Cheer.

April Fools Day 1973, John and Yoko perpetrate the hoax that they are having dual sex change operations.

2003, April first, Big Brother and the Holding Company play at Musiktheater Rex, Lorsch, Germany.

The President playing Peoria.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.                   George Bernard Shaw.

I will see you again on 8 April when the first chapter of my history of Big Brother and the Holding Company will appear.  All the best to you.

Sam Andrew.

Big Brother and the Holding Company

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