FD-69 · Rick Griffin
San Francisco
Quicksilver's Independence Day at the Avalon
On Independence Day 1967, the Avalon Ballroom hung a Rick Griffin poster over its doorway and let the Summer of Love keep burning. The show was billed, with a deliberate misspelling that has followed the poster ever since, "Independance" — Quicksilver Messenger Service headlining, the Siegel-Schwall Band beneath them, and a group called Phoenix at the bottom of the card. It was a single night, July 4th, a Tuesday,…
Read the full story →Also on July 4
BG-71 — Fillmore Auditorium
For six nights, July 4-9, 1967 -- the heart of the Summer of Love -- Bill Graham stacked the Fillmore Auditorium with a bill that was an argument in itself: Bo Diddley on top, then Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, then Quicksilver Messenger Service, then the Delta patriarch Big…
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The Kaleidoscope
On Independence Day weekend 1968, July 4th and 5th, the Kaleidoscope at 6230 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood hung a round poster — the venue's signature, printed circular to mirror its rotating theater-in-the-round stage — for a bill that caught two bands mid-ascent. The poster listed Sly and the Fami…
Read about this poster →Atlanta International Raceway
On July 4, 1969, the first Atlanta International Pop Festival opened at the Atlanta International Raceway in Hampton, Georgia -- the first major rock festival in the Deep South, roughly six weeks before Woodstock, drawing toward a hundred thousand people into hundred-degree heat. The Friday bill ran…
Read about this poster →Kinetic Playground
The Grateful Dead played the Kinetic Playground in Chicago on July 4, 1969. The room was the Midwest's answer to the San Francisco ballrooms, at 4812 North Clark Street in Uptown, in a 1928 building that had housed the Rainbo Gardens dance hall and skating complex. Aaron Russo — then in his twentie…
Read about this poster →Were You There?
Do you have memories of this show, or an original FD-69 poster? On This Day in Art Rock History celebrates the people who lived through the psychedelic era. Your stories and collections matter to this archive.