Concert Poster
September 8, 1965 is the quietest date in this window and, for that reason, one of the most interesting: it predates the poster scene almost entirely. There was no Fillmore dance yet (Bill Graham's first was still three months off) and no Avalon (it opened in April 1966). What there *was* was the Matrix — the small club at 3138 Fillmore that Marty Balin had opened on August 13, 1965 essentially as a house room for…
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Matrix
Thursday, September 8, 1966: the Blues Project, second-to-last night of their Matrix week. Six consecutive nights in a hundred-capacity room is a residency, not a booking, and it is the shape the Matrix used almost exclusively. The ballrooms ran Friday-and-Saturday weekends for a thousand people wi…
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BG-82 — Fillmore Auditorium
Friday, September 8, 1967 was night two of the Byrds at the Fillmore Auditorium, with the Loading Zone and the LDM Spiritual Band, on Jim Blashfield's BG-82 — the sheet announcing what it called the "Opening of the Fall Weekend Series." Blashfield made the poster suit the announcement. BG-82 is dec…
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FD-80 — Avalon Ballroom
Friday, September 8, 1967 opened a three-night Avalon weekend on FD-80: the Southside Sound System with Phoenix and Freedom Highway. The poster has a name — collectors call it "The Tea Party" — and it is one of Greg Irons's. The central image is a group of people smoking marijuana, the smoke rising…
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FD-79 — Family Dog Denver
FD-79 is in this chronicle's window but not in San Francisco, and that is the point of including it. On September 8 and 9, 1967, the Family Dog ran a bill at 1601 West Evans in Denver — Big Brother & the Holding Company with Blue Cheer and the Eighth Penny Matter — on a poster by Rick Griffin. Chet…
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FD-136 — Avalon Ballroom
Sunday, September 8, 1968 closed the Avalon's weekend: the last of three nights for the James Cotton Blues Band with the Sir Douglas Quintet, Pulse and Womb, on Roger Weil's FD-136. James Cotton had played harmonica in Muddy Waters's band for a dozen years before forming his own, and by 1968 was he…
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