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| The Gathering Of The Tribes, The Human Be-In, at the Polo Grounds in Golden Gate Park on January 14, 1967 |
January 1, 1967 The Panhandle, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Big Brother And The Holding Company New Year's Day Wail [free concert]
Since the Dead had played a New Year's Eve all-nighter at the Fillmore, and Big Brother had done the same at the Avalon, it's unlikely either band had any sleep. Technically, the Panhandle is not part of Golden Gate Park, but only San Francisco residents care about that.
January 6, 1967 Freeborn Hall, UC Davis, Davis, CA: Grateful Dead/Big Mama Thornton
The Grateful Dead had debuted in the Sacramento area just the week before (December 28, 1966) [update: JGMF on the case]
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| Oakland Tribune jazz critic mentioned the Grateful Dead's appearance as the opening act for the Mamas And The Papas at the Berkeley Community Theater on Friday, January 13, 1967 |
The hugely popular Mamas And Papas were playing two sold-out shows in Berkeley for Bill Graham Presents, but opening act Jose Feliciano was stuck on a plane for the early show. The Dead filled in for him, and then rushed over to the Fillmore for their own show. Oakland Tribune jazz critic Russ Wilson reviewed the early show, and gave a mixed but positive review for The Mamas And The Papas. He dismissed the Dead in one sentence:
The program was opened with a 30-minute set by The Grateful Dead, a Westbay rock quintet that is memorable because two of its musicians (male) have hair that reaches to their shoulders.
January 13-14-15, 1967 Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/The Doors/Junior Wells/Immediate Family
The Doors may have missed a set on one of these nights. The Immediate Family, featuring guitarist Tim Barnes, probably didn't play Sunday (January 15).
January 14, 1967 Polo Grounds, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Charlatans/The New Age/others Human Be-In [free concert]
January 20, 1967 Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA: Timothy Leary/Grateful Dead
January 22, 1967 uncertain venue, Southern California: Grateful Dead
Another researcher has a line on this. I will fill in the blanks when he can confirm them. There are also reported sightings of the Dead playing at the afternoon's Griffith Park Love-In, along with the Airplane.
January 27-28, 1967 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service
January 29, 1967 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Big Brother And The Holding Company/Moby Grape S.F. Krishna Temple Benefit
The Grateful Dead spent the next week at RCA Studios recording their first album. They were booked to play a benefit at the Fillmore on Sunday, February 5, but apparently did not return from Los Angeles in time.
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| The Sopwith Camel were replaced at the last minute by The Gratful Dead for their show at the Santa Venetia Armory, in the unincorporated outskirts of San Rafael, on Friday February 10 1967. |
Santa Venetia was an unincorporated suburb of San Rafeal. The Dead substituted for the Sopwith Camel.
February 12, 1967 Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA Grateful Dead/Moby Grape/Sly And The Family Stone/Salvation Army Banned/Notes From The Underground
February 24-25-26, 1967, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA Grateful Dead/Otis Rush/Canned Heat
March 3, 1967 Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Love/Moby Grape/Loading Zone/Blue Crumb Truck Factory
These shows were promoted by a group called The Love Conspiracy Commune. According to Charles Perry, in his 1984 book Haight-Ashbury: A History, the Love Conspiracy was backed by pot dealers from Chapel Hill, NC.
March 5, 1967 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, CA: Moby Grape/Big Brother And The Holding Company/Country Joe And The Fish/The Sparrow/Grateful Dead
This was a benefit for the Straight Theater, so it could be converted from a movie theater to a concert hall. Only in 1967 San Francisco would one business hold a benefit for a future competitor.
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| A San Francisco Chronicle ad (from March 11, 1967) for the Grateful Dead's weeklong engagement at the long-forgotten San Francisco outpost of the Whisky-A-Go-Go, at 568 Sacramento Street downtown. |
I have changed my mind various times about this. However, I am now certain that the Grateful Dead played this week at the little-remembered San Francisco outpost of the famed Los Angeles nightspot. An eyewitness reports that the shows were thinly attended, and that there were topless dancers on stage. The Love Conspiracy Commune had taken over booking for the SF Whisky from about February 1967 onwards, and the club went out of business by April. Whisky ownership was always suspected of nefarious connections, so the mystery associated with the Love Conspiracy fits in nicely.
March 17-18-19, 1967 Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Chuck Berry/Grateful Dead/Johnny Talbot And De Thangs (March 19 show at Fillmore)
Johnny Talbot and De Thangs, an R&B band from Oakland also backed Chuck Berry for his sets.
March 18, 1967 [venue], Napa, CA Napa Junior Chamber of Commerce dance: Grateful Dead
Yellow Shark reports with a listing in the March 3, 1967 Napa Register, where columnist Ross P. Game says
Napa Junior Chamber of Commerce will be sponsoring another teen-age dance--this one March 18. Music will be provided by the Grateful Dead. It must be deadly music, huh?Now, the Dead were playing Winterland on the night of Saturday, March 18. However, they may have played early at the dance and then gone over to Winterland. We also don't know the venue. A building at the Napa Fairgrounds seems likely.
March 20, 1967 Fugazi Hall, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead
The Dead had an album release party at the tiny Fugazi Hall. The Fugazi housed the show Beach Blanket Babylon for many years.
One night, week of March 17-26, Teenage Fair, Oakland Exposition Center, Oakland, CA
This is something I am working on. I realize the dates would conflict with numerous other dates during the week, but for various reasons that isn't a problem. If the Dead did play the Teenage Fair, they would not have been advertised, per their contracts with Bill Graham and Chet Helms. I have more to say, but this is just here as a teaser (bonus points if you know about the Oakland Exposition Center). What was a Teenage Fair? All will be revealed, sort of, eventually.
March 24-25, 1967 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Johnny Hammond And His Screaming Nighthawks/Robert Baker
It's not completely impossible that on Sunday (March 26), the Grateful Dead flew to Los Angeles for the Griffith Park Love-In, and flew back to the Avalon for their gig. Tickets on Pacific Southwest Airlines were about $20, not much even then. Various eyewitnesses place the Dead at Griffiths Park.
March 26, 1967 Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service
Eric Burdon and The Animals dropped in and performed a few numbers on the Grateful Dead's equipment.
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| The Grateful Dead, The Charles Lloyd Quartet and The Mystery Trend played a week at the Rock Garden at 4742 Mission Street, in the Excelsior District in San Francisco, from March 28-April 2, 1967 |
The Rock Garden was out in the Excelsior District, where Jerry Garcia had grown up. His mother, who still lived nearby, came to one of these shows. Charles Lloyd apparently jammed with the Dead during some of the sets. Lloyd's crack band probably included Keith Jarrett, Ron McClure and Jack DeJohnette. Per Russ Wilson's interview in the March 26, 1967 Oakland Tribune, Lloyd's band also played Sunday, March 26, without the Dead, but did not play Thursday, March 30, when they played Berkeley Community Theater. Wilson also had the group The Virginians opening, rather than The Mystery Trend, and his information was later than the poster.
April 9, 1967 Panhandle, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA [free concert]
Charles Perry reported that the Dead played for free this afternoon.
The Panhandle is a strip of grass between Oak and Fell Streets in San Francisco, bordered by Stanyan and Baker (and bisected by Masonic). Although it abuts the Western border of Golden Gate Park, San Franciscans are very firm about the fact that it is not Golden Gate Park proper. The Dead played their first free concert on this tiny strip on October 6, 1966, to mark the fact that LSD was now illegal in the State of California. The October 6 concert was a seminal event for too many reasons to discuss here, not all of them related to the Grateful Dead.
Since the Panhandle was a two-block walk from the Dead's headquarters at 710 Ashbury, free concerts in the Panhandle have been mythologized all out of proportion. I am largely alone in holding the belief that there were actually very few Grateful Dead concerts in the Panhandle and we know about almost all of them. This too is another topic, but I will say that most assertions for regular Grateful Dead concerts at the Panhandle are simply wishful thinking, supported only by the vaguest claims that disintegrate under scrutiny.
April 9, 1967 Longshoreman's Hall, San Francisco, CA: Quicksilver Messenger Service/Country Joe And The Fish/Big Brother and The Holding Company/Sopwith Camel Week Of The Angry Arts
This event was a sort of kickoff to a week of events protesting the Vietnam War. Note that the best known band on the bill outside of the Bay Area would have been Sopwith Camel, who had scored a hit with "Hello Hello." The Dead were not on the poster, but Ralph Gleason said they were scheduled to perform. I don't take that as a guarantee, but this list is about completeness [update: JGMF confirms, with actual video from the performance. Is technology awesome, or what?]
April 11, 1967 [entrance], San Quentin Prison, San Quentin, CA
Members of the Grateful Dead and Country Joe and The Fish played on a flatbed truck outside of San Quentin prison.
April 12, 1967 Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Moby Grape/Andrew Staples/Loading Zone Mime Troupe Benefit
This was a Wednesday night show
April 14-17, 1967 Banana Grove, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, CA
The Kaleidoscope was a venture by Canned Heat's managers (Skip Taylor and John Hartmann) to open a Fillmore-style venue in Los Angeles. This original weekend was supposed to be at a building on 1228 Vine Street, but a last second injunction stopped the show. For the weekend the show was moved to the Embassy Ballroom in the Ambassador Hotel, at 3400 Wilshire, which also housed the legendary Coconut Grove Ballroom.The ballroom was nicknamed "The Banana Grove" for the shows The hotel briefly considered making a regular thing out of such shows, but ultimately demurred. The Monday night event (April 17) appears to have been a sort of LA event for the release of the first Dead album, and that accounts for the hotel picking up the balance of the shows.
April 28, 1967, Stockton Ballroom, Stockton, CA
There has been some ambiguity about these shows because of an issue with possibly fabricated posters, but I found plenty of evidence that the show occurred (including a quote from Garcia). The event was sponsored by the Student Association of the University Of The Pacific, which was based in Stockton.
April 29, 1967 Earl Warren Showgrounds, Santa Barbara, CA: Grateful Dead/The Doors/UFO/Captain Speed
April 30, 1967 The Cheetah, Santa Monica, CA: Grateful Dead/Yellow Balloon/New Generation [two shows]
May 1, 8, 15, 22, 1967 Rendezvous Inn, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/The Wildflower
In May of 1967, The Dead, largely holidaying and rehearsing at the Russian River, had a regular Monday night gig at The Rendezvous Inn. The Rendezvous was a gay bar on Sutter Street, just above Powell, near Union Square. I don't know for certain the exact days, but McNally says they began "a brief series of Monday nights" (p.193) and the dates listed here are the first four Mondays in May. (the band had a gig on May 29 in Napa, so I have assumed they played the first four Mondays in May). There had been gay bars in San Francisco since at least the 1950s, though they kept a much lower profile than they did subsequently. The Wildflower, an Oakland group, played at least some of the gigs, and their manager was Bill Belmont (McNally, p. 288). Belmont worked for the Dead in late 1969.
May 5-6-7, 1967 Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/The Paupers/Collage
May 12, 1967 Marigold Ballroom, Fresno, CA: Grateful Dead/The Roadrunners [two shows]
I found a review of this show, so that confirms that the date was May 12 (not May 11). The Marigold was at 1833 E. Hedges in Fresno.
May 18, 1967 Gym, Awalt High School, Mountain View, CA
Randy Groenke, a former banjo student of Jerry Garcia's, persuaded the Dead to play Awalt High School in Mountain View on a Thursday afteroon, where he was then a Senior.
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| The Grateful Dead, The Real Thing and Autumn People played the Continental Ballroom (in Santa Clara, a San Jose suburb), on May 20, 1967 |
The Continental Ballroom was a former roller skating rink at 1600 Martin Avenue in Santa Clara, a suburb of San Jose. The Dead had played the Continental as the Warlocks in Fall 1965, back when it was known as the Continental Roller Bowl. It may be that the Continental one of the very few venues where they performed as both the Dead and the Warlocks.
May 28, 1967 Panhandle, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead
For all my reservations about Grateful Dead Panhandle shows, I found a now-departed description of the Grateful Dead playing for free in the Panhandle on May 28, 1967, and I find the date quite convincing. Peter Vincent moved to San Francisco in late May 1967 and very thoughtfully (from my perspective) kept a diary.
Some Napa high school students (with a little help from parents) organized this show, along with bookings for Country Joe and The Fish and Big Brother. At the time, Napa was a largely agricultural community.
May 30, 1967 Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Big Brother and The Holding Company/Big Brother and The Holding Company/Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/The Charlatans HALO Benefit
The Haight Ashbury Legal Organization was run out of 715 Ashbury by lawyer Brian Rohan, and mainly defended hippies busted for marijuana. This Tuesday night benefit featuring all the major San Francisco rock bands also featured a tape-delayed broadcast on KMPX-fm, which I believe is the first such event for a rock band. The Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane tapes circulate. I am pretty much alone in believing that the Dead did not actually play the HALO benefit, but so far no one has yet confirmed their presence beyond seeing their name on the poster.
June 1, 1967 Tompkins Square Park, New York, NY: Grateful Dead/Group Image [free concert]
The Grateful Dead surprised their hosts at the Cafe Au Go Go by playing for free the Thrusday afternoon that they hit town. The Au Go Go rapidly found out, however, that the buzz it created was enormous.
June 1-5, 8-11, 1967 Cafe Au Go Go, New York, NY: Grateful Dead/Luke And The Apostles
The Grateful Dead began their assault on Manhattan by playing two weeks in Greenwich Village, at the relatively tiny Cafe Au Go Go on 152 Bleecker Street. Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention had a residency in the same building, upstairs at the Garrick Theater. According to Rock Scully, when Zappa caught his Mothers smoking pot with the Dead, they were punished with more rehearsal.
June 3, 1967 [venue], SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY: Grateful Dead
The band played a sort of stealth gig at SUNY Stony Brook. It couldn't really be advertised except by word-of-mouth, because of their booking at the Au Go Go, but the Dead at this point were a word-of-mouth band anyway.
June 8, 1967 Bandshell On The Mall, Central Park, New York, NY: Grateful Dead/Group Image [free concert]
The Dead expanded their horizons and played for free in midtown as well. I'm not aware of rock bands (who had released actual albums) playing for free in Central Park prior to this.
June 12, 1967 The Cheetah, New York, NY: Grateful Dead/Group Image
The Group Image were a rock band/light show/collective, and they organized this somewhat underground event at The Cheetah. The Cheetah was a popular discoteque, but not exactly undergound.
June 15, 1967 Straight Theater, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/The Wildflower [private party]
The Straight was a movie theater that the locals were trying to convert into a concert venue, but they had not yet obtained a permit. The Dead had rehearsed there in late 1966. The venue would not open for a few more weeks. However, a private party was held there to celebrate the forthcoming Monterey Pop Festival, and the Dead were the headline act. Also apparently present was Jimi Hendrix, who was still unknown, although that would change dramatically by the end of the weekend.
June 16, 1967 The Hullabaloo, Los Angeles, CA; Grateful Dead/Yellow Payges/The Power
The Hullabaloo, later the Kaleidoscope, was a "teen" club sponsored by a radio dj. The Dead probably played two sets, and Phil Lesh got his bass stolen.
June 17-18, 1967, athletic field, Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, CA [free concert]
The Dead flew into Monterey for the Pop Festival on Saturday morning. Disliking what they considered the "commercial" atmosphere of the event, they set up shop at the college across from the fairgrounds where people were camping. Although events have been somewhat blown out of proportion, the Dead and other musicians definitely performed at the athletic field during the festival itself.
June 18, 1967 Horse Show Arena, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: The Mamas And The Papas with Scott Mackenzie/Jimi Hendrix Experience/The Grateful Dead/The Who/Buffalo Springrield/The Group With No Name/Big Brother And The Holding Company/Blues Project
The Dead played a short, uneventful set at the Festival, setting in motion the ongoing theme in which they would always blow the big ones.
June 21, 1967 Polo Grounds, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Quicksilver Messenger Service/Mad River Summer Solstice "Do-In" [free concert]
The Grateful Dead and their crew had "liberated" some of the equipment rented for the Monterey Pop Festival and played a few free concerts. This event, styled as a "Do-In" rather than a "Be-In," took place on the Summer Solstice and featured two stages at opposite ends of the Polo Grounds. I believe the Dead shared a stage with Quicksilver and Mad River, while Big Brother, The Jefferson Airplane and The Phoenix were across the way, but I may have the combinations of bands wrong.
June 28, 1967 Oakland Auditorium Arena, Oakland, CA: Young Rascals/The Grass Roots/Country Joe And The Fish/Grateful Dead/Sons Of Champlin
The Grateful Dead played the very first of a great many shows at the Oakland Auditorium Arena.
July 2, 1967 El Camino Park, Palo Alto, CA: Grateful Dead/Anonymous Artists of America/New Delhi River Band/Solid State/The Good Word Palo Alto Be-In [free concert]
For many years I thought this show was on June 24, which is why I am including it here. However, it actually occurred on Sunday, July 2. The Dead played for free on the Palo Alto/Menlo Park border, within walking distance of both Magoo's and The Tangent. I attended the show (I was 9). There are numerous photos of this event.
For a more detailed analysis, if now somewhat outdated, see my tour itinerary pages here
Grateful Dead Tour Itinerary January-April 1967
Grateful Dead Tour Itinerary May-June 1967
4/9/67 video: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/11/dead-in-panhandle-sunday-april-9-1967.html
