FD-69 · Rick Griffin
San Francisco
Quicksilver's Independence Day at the Avalon
On July 4, 1967, Quicksilver Messenger Service headlined a single Independence Day show at the Avalon Ballroom for the Family Dog, with the Siegel-Schwall Band and Phoenix, lit by the North American Ibis Alchemical Company. The poster, FD-69, is a genuine Rick Griffin -- an all-seeing eye, a stars-and-stripes shield, an eagle and banner. Quicksilver were by then one of the great live draws of the San Francisco scene…
Read the full story →Also in the summer of ’67
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 same Independence Day, the Grateful Dead played the first of two nights at the Kinetic Playground in Chicago, with the Buddy Miles Express and the Sir Douglas Quintet -- a song-oriented, country-flavored set in their Workingman's-era transition, and the first known performance of "Let Me In." A …
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