The hero of July 19 is a 1968 Friday at the Avalon Ballroom and one of the more art-historically loaded bills of the window: the opening night of FD-128, "In A Woodpile," a Paul Kagan poster, for a run of July 19-21. The bill read Tim Buckley, the Velvet Underground, and Allmen Joy. The Velvet Underground here needs care in the framing, because the easy move is the wrong one. This was the John Cale-era band, well past the Andy Warhol and Nico chapter and past the Exploding Plastic Inevitable - in fact on the verge of Cale's own departure. So resist any temptation to dress this night in banana-and-whip imagery; that's a different band and a different coast and a couple of years gone. What's here is a leaner, harder VU on a San Francisco poster, and the event is unusually well documented - triple-corroborated across chickenonaunicycle, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Smithsonian.

The year before, July 19, 1967 was a Wednesday and the middle night of the BG-73 July 18-20 leg at the Fillmore Auditorium - Sam & Dave, the James Cotton Blues Band, and Country Joe and the Fish, the same configuration that opened the run the night before.

A year after the hero, July 19, 1969 was a Saturday and the middle night of the BG-182 July 18-20 leg at Fillmore West - Country Joe and the Fish, Joe Cocker, and Country Weather, carrying forward the bill that had opened the leg on the 18th.

July 19, 1965 and July 19, 1966 are both honest nulls, a Monday and a Tuesday with nothing documented at the core venues.