On This Day in Art Rock History

A DAILY CHRONICLE

SAN FRANCISCO · THE PSYCHEDELIC ERA · 1960s

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FD-80

September 8, 1967
FD-80

FD-80 · Greg Irons

Catalog Number
FD-80
Series
Family Dog
Venue
Avalon Ballroom
San Francisco
Date
September 8, 1967
Poster Artists
Performers
Southside Sound System
Phoenix
Freedom Highway

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 to become the lettering that carries the bill. It was printed on uncoated white index stock at roughly 14 by 20 inches, with the Family Dog's three postcard varieties including one mechanically addressed to the mailing list.

Irons is among the more consequential names in the series. He drew for the Family Dog through 1967 and 1968 and then moved into underground comix, working for Last Gasp and others, before dying in Thailand in 1984 at thirty-seven. His poster work is more graphic and more caricatural than the Mouse-and-Kelley or Wilson lineage — closer to comics than to Art Nouveau — and "The Tea Party" is a clean example of the joke-in-the-image approach that distinguished him.

The bill itself is a study in how the ballroom economy worked. All three acts had spent the preceding weeks circulating through the Straight Theater's rotating bills underneath Big Brother; a weekend headlined by the band that was third-billed elsewhere seven days earlier was entirely ordinary. Position on a bill was a function of the week, not a fixed rank.

Verification Notes

COAU FD index: 'September 8-10, 1967 / Avalon Ballroom / South Side Sound, Phoenix, Freedom Highway / FD-80'. Opening night. Canonical name 'Southside Sound System' reused (COAU abbreviates to 'South Side Sound'). DEEPENED 2026-09-03 (pass 5). Bill per COAU Family Dog index (Hannan/Arnold): 'September 8-10, 1967 / Avalon Ballroom / South Side Sound, Phoenix, Freedom Highway / FD-80'. Opening night. The 'Tea Party' name, Greg Irons attribution, the smoke-becomes-lettering description, stock and dimensions from classicposters.com product page (browser session 2026-09-03). The Straight Theater rotation is this chronicle's own 09-01/02/03-1967 pages.

Were You There?

Do you have memories of this show, or an original FD-80 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.

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