BG-135 · Lee Conklin
San Francisco
Steve Miller Band
Kensington Market
BG-135
Lee Conklin drew the poster that opened Bill Graham's fall season, and he drew it in skulls. Five of them float in the upper half of BG-135, worked in the same dense pen-and-ink hatching as his lion of the week before, and below them a shrouded, long-limbed figure crouches over a field of flowers rendered with botanical precision. Across the top, in lettering that has to be untangled rather than read: FALL SERIES…
Read the full story →Also on September 5
BG-26 — Fillmore Auditorium
Labor Day itself — Monday, September 5, 1966 — closed out the Fillmore's long weekend with the act that makes BG-26 more interesting than a straight rock bill: Martha & the Vandellas, with Johnny Talbot & De Thangs (the same Wes Wilson poster, wolfgangs.com BG026; trps.org). It's easy to forget how…
Read about this poster →Matrix
Monday, September 5, 1966: the Blues Project and Robbie Basho, still at the Matrix. The listing for this night is two names and nothing else, which is the whole of what survives — but the band it names was weeks from making the record it is remembered for. *Projections* was cut in three days with v…
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BG-190 — Fillmore West
Friday, September 5, 1969 was night two of Santana's stand at the Fillmore West, with Sea Train and Yusef Lateef, under David Singer's orange BG-190. The image deserves describing accurately, and this chronicle previously got it wrong. A hand reaches down into a field of grass and gently places a c…
Read about this poster →Matrix
At the Matrix on Friday, September 5, 1969, Mendelbaum's stand continued with the second act changed for the weekend: Shag replaced Womb. By 1969 the Matrix was booking a different kind of week from its 1966 self. The room that had built Jefferson Airplane four years earlier was now largely a provi…
Read about this poster →Were You There?
Do you have memories of this show, or an original BG-135 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.