On This Day in Art Rock History

New Band Night

There is no poster for this night. That is the first true thing about it, and the most telling. By October 1969 Chet Helms had been running the Family Dog at 660 Great Highway for four months — a barn of a hall out on the ocean side of the city, across the road from the shuttered Playland at the Beach, as far from the Fillmore's commercial gravity as you could get and still be in San Francisco. The Avalon lease was…