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Splatt Gallery's History of Michigan Music Posters
MC5 - Page Two
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The formation of Trans-Love Energies in March 1967 prompted the creation of official stationary, such as this piece for the MC5. Noting the “Russ Gibb Productions” in the letterhead, the Grande Ballroom had been operation for six months at this point and had put on close to fifty shows, with the MC5 headlining about half of them.
The 25th weekend, March 24-25, 1967, at the Grande Ballroom featured Gary Grimshaw’s twelfth poster for the Ballroom. The bands were the Landeers with the Henchmen on the first night, and MC5 with Born Blues and City Limits on Saturday, March 25, 1967. Along the sides of the image, it’s written, “Good Friday – Easter Celebration both nights”, “Hunt the Prized Easter Eggs Freak Freely”. Grimshaw also signed this one as Warlock Studios.
The Teen Age Fair at Cobo Hall, held from March 25 1967 through April 2, 1967, featured 153 local bands over the nine-day event. This affair was the creation of Hal Sloane, a pioneer in “teen marketing” that had been staging these multi-day events in cities around the country since 1962. He also created the Miss Teen International Pageant and the “Up with People” worldwide youth tours.
The Teen Age Fairs were blatant projects to turn teenagers into good consumers, sponsored by local businesses and national brands, with their goods and services on display in a quasi-carnival setting. Sloane even provided an “authoritative outline” guide to marketers that makes some odd (or not so odd) generalities about the state of the day’s teens:
1 He and she this year will desert the Mod look and fashions and in music taste will soften up the "rock and roll", beat and trend unconsciously toward the megaphone, Rudy Vallee style.
2 He and she are conservative in ethics, morals and political ideology. He and she know well the world issues of the day and accept present and future military duty as an obligation even if distasteful. (Draft -dodging is not "in" and those who protest draft are a minority).
3 He and she are thinking more deeply than adults give them credit for. He deplores teen depiction as immoral, impudent, thoughtless and empty-headed.
4 He and she reject adult dictation and "pushing" into social situations such as mixing with teen-agers older by several years, and he and she condemn country club dances and parties for grade-school-age children.
5 He and she mature rapidly, both emotionally and physically, the latter because of vitamins and better food intake and the former he-cause of intensive exposure to adult-level experiences if mainly through television.
6 He doesn't resist culture but prefers to find it through his own choice of action. In all of the seven arts, he is discerning beyond his age-level and outspoken on what he considers good.
7 She is diet conscious and doesn't want what . mother had (but is beginning to want what grandmother had). In fashions she is a pacesetter and she originates mas5 buying trends that reach the adult market.
8 He and she have a surprising vocabulary in breadth but they like to embellish their prose with group lexicon. They resent adults trying to use teen-age language to communicate and this applies to advertisers.
9 She spends more proportionately on clothes, jewelry, grooming and cosmetics and records; he spends on automobiles, sports and entertainment and by his rising interest in male groom- operate it, sample it, they will sell themselves.
"This has upset the brand-name tradition. Adult buying habits mean nothing. The secret of reaching a teenager is not to try to reach him at all, but to get other members of his group to reach him for you."
As to teen-agers as a market, Sloane says it is "as real as the 22.5 million young conformists who make it." . "Though they protest to the hilt, they are conformists. They travel in large masses to conformist institutions called schools, they all live under similar authority which they resent and they all yearn for freedom. "They are not, as some advertising factions surmise, an uncohesive, tremulous mass, whose motivations are hard to fathom, impossible to analyze and useless to direct."
Anyway, with 153 bands invited to participate in this nine-day orgy of target marketing, pretty much every band in town took upon the opportunity. So, when the MC5 showed up for their scheduled slot on Friday, March 31, 1967, well, we’ll let you have an eyewitness account:
The first time I ever saw The MC5 was at a "Teen Fair" type event at Cobo Hall in Detroit, sometime during 1967. I was wandering around and saw a band getting ready to start their set, so I wandered over. I got right up close and the guys were just standing there. Many minutes went by.. As they just stood there waiting and waiting, and the crowd just stood there watching and waiting, it started to dawn on me that the guys had a kind of aura about them; they really gave off a vibe, just standing there. After maybe 10 minutes of this heavy anticipation, the lead singer walked back out to his microphone and politely announced to the crowd, "Well I'm sorry folks, but the people in charge of the amplifiers won't let us turn them up past 5. If we can't turn them up all the way, then we can't play our music the way it's supposed to be played, so we'll see you some other time." And they walked off and that was it.
The MC5 – Black to Comm (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew1UygQs930&feature=share&list=PLbRRLqbu7XzENfzBQbTgfgDfoRkQa8Tcl&index=8
On Sunday night, April 2, 1967, Russ Gibb provided the Grande Ballroom for a benefit dance concert for Michigan State Senator, Roger Craig. Craig, who represented the 10th District (Dearborn, Allen Park, Lincoln Park, Melvindale), and shared an apartment in Lansing with fellow senators, Basil Brown and Coleman Young, had just introduced legislation to remove marijuana from the state’s narcotics statues.
On the bill, along with The MC5, were Billy C. & The Sunshine, featuring Billy C. Farlow, a transplant from Alabama that favored a roots-country-blues musical style, and The Seventh Seal, “Ann Arbor’s respected ‘rock and raga’ ensemble”, that featured guitarist, Bill Kirchen. Both Farlow and Kirchen would join Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen.
The poster for the benefit was David Carlin’s seventh poster for the Grande Ballroom, with a stylized "MC-5" across the top.
John Sinclair consolidated all his various activities under a single organization called “Trans-Love Energies”, “a co-operative of artists, musician, craftsmen and hippies in general”. It formally included the bands, the MC5, Billy C. & the Sunshine, the Seventh Seal, the Family Medicine Chest, the Back & Back Boo Funny Music Band, and the Detroit Contemporary 5 (jazz band), as well as the Magic Veil Light Co. light show group that had been started by Gary Grimshaw at the Grande Ballroom.
It also consolidated the Detroit Workshop Press, which was still publishing books, pamphlets and magazines with a new Warlock Studios (posters, handbills and artwork), the “Warlock Studios” that we noted on an earlier posters.
The organization also ran the Detroit LEMAR (committee to legalize marijuana), The Fifth Estate, and The Sun newspapers, Cleage Printers print shop, and three stores on Plum Street - Mixed Media, House of Mystique, and The Skin Shop.
The name, Trans-Love, was taken from the lyrics of the Donovan song ”The Fat Angel”, which interspersed the chorus of “fly trans-love airlines” with “fly Jefferson Airplane”, the title of the song a tribute to Mama Cass Elliott.
A Sunday night benefit concert at the Grande Ballroom on April 23, 1967 was a fund-raising launch for Trans-Love Enterprises. Poster by Gary Grimshaw, also incorporating art by Jerry Younkins. The original handbill was printed on either red (shown above) or yellow (shown below) paper and measures approximately 8½" x 11".
The bands were MC5, Billy C & the Sunshine, and the Back & Back Boo Funny Music Band.
The yellow version of the poster for the Trans-Love benefit at the Grande Ballroom on April 23, 1967. There also appears to have been a version printed on white paper as well.
Here’s the ad in the first issue of the SUN newspaper that Gary Grimshaw made for the Trans-Love Energies benefit concert at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, April 23, 1967. We’d sure like to find out what The Back & Back Boo Funny Music Band sounded like.
Poster by an unknown artist for the MC5 at the Cranbrook Auditorium in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, April 28, 1967. There is no poster on the timeline for this date, but there is a description that reads like a poster, and it is similar, though not exact, to this poster. Both call the event “Jazz Psychedelic”, the headlining acts of the Charles Moore Group and the Joseph Jarman Quartet are the same on both, there is only a slight difference in that the timeline quotes, “The dangerous MC5”, while this poster calls them “Detroit’s New Hit Group”.
The cat was out of the bag. John Sinclair was front-page news in The Detroit Free Press. And although the article “Hippie Talks about Truth” included the plain fact, “they find us” about the kids being attracted to their growing movement, there was no mention to what Sinclair would later explain, “It was all about acid. Without acid, none of this would have happened”.
Here is yet another poster made for the Bell Isle Love-In on April 30, 1967, presumably again by Gary Grimshaw. Although not listed on the poster, there are photographs of the MC5 performing at the Belle Isle Love-In.
We had a little fun with some photos of MC5 lead singer Rob Tyner taken from his interview in Issue #3 of the SUN newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, May 19, 1967. Although we have not found a poster, and there is no listing in the Database, the Gateway has a show for the MC5 with Billy C. and the Sunshine 'Human Be-in' organizes by Trans-Love Energies at Byram Lake Park in Linden, Michigan on May 21, 1967, their only known show for the month of May.
An ad for a long-winded event title, “The Unified Megalopolitan Piece Pow-Wow”, at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan on June 8, 1967, with the MC5, the Spike Drivers, the Passing Clouds, John Sinclair and others, “culminating in a participatory mass mantra raga”.
The 37th weekend at The Grande Ballroom, June 16-17, 1967 featured Donnie Dope’s fifth poster for the venue. This must have been Father’s Day weekend, as the newspaper ad presented “a dance concert in honor of American fathers” and the admitted free gimmick was for “Good Dads”.
The bands on Friday were Jagged Edge with Shifting Sands, and on Saturday, June 17, 1967, MC5 with Those Guys.
On June 18, 1967 John Sinclair pulled a scoop of his own, bringing his hero, Sun Ra, to the Wayne State Community Arts Auditorium for his first Detroit appearance, with the MC5 opening. The poster by Gary Grimshaw ranks among his finest.
The poster was printed with blue and yellow ink, and the handbill appears in various shades of purple.
The 38th weekend at the Grande Ballroom, June 23-24, 1967, a dance concert “honoring school closing”, featured Donnie Dope’s sixth poster for the venue. The bands were MC5 with Phogg on the first night, June 23, 1967, and Scot Richard Case with the Upset on the 24th.
This image was printed only as a handbill, approximately 8″ x 11″, with black ink on pale blue paper. The one on the gray paper is a forgery.
The building at 3929 Woodward has come into our story before, way back in 1963 when singer Billy Levise (aka Billy Lee, aka Mitch Ryder) joined up with The Fabulous Peps at what was then known as “The Village”. By June, 1967, it was now known as The See Theater and was owned by Gabe Glantz who also owned the Grande Ballroom.
John Sinclair wanted to establish his own Trans-Love Energies venue and he booked The See for the June 23-24, 1967 weekend with The Charles Moore Ensemble and The Spikedrivers both nights and the MC5 on Saturday, June 24, 1967, (being at the Grande Ballroom on the 23rd). The elegant poster by Gary Grimshaw suggested the shows would go from 9pm to Dawn.
Friday, June 30, 1967 was a big night in Detroit as San Francisco’s biggest group, the Jefferson Airplane played at the Ford Auditorium. The Airplane, now being managed by Bill Graham, was flying high, just having released the “Surrealistic Pillow” album, and coming off the Monterey Pop Festival, and had developed a slick presentation and music, just psychedelic and weird enough, but not too much. Our intrepid teen beat reporter for The Detroit Free Press, Loraine Alterman, gushed over their performance, “…almost as if they were making love vocally on stage”, and complimented that despite being psychedelic, “good musical order and structure is maintained.”
John Sinclair wasn’t as impressed. He revealed that the Airplane had been paid $3,500 for the show while his light crew received $10 and the MC5 was paid $5 a man for opening. To add insult to injury, The MC5 had their equipment repossessed backstage for late payment.
The beautiful poster was designed by Carlson. Donnie Dope had also made an incredible poster for the show.
The Friday night Jefferson Airplane show on June 30, 1967 was the start of a long Fourth of July weekend. Gary Grimshaw took a red-white-and-blue Americana approach for his poster for John Sinclair’s second booking of The See Theater, which would also be the last as he and the owner had different concepts of business. It looks like the plan was to have the MC-5 come over after opening for The Airplane, start at midnight and play until 5am, but with their equipment repossessed at Ford Auditorium this probably didn’t happen.
The red handbill version of Gary Grimshaw’s poster for The See, June 30, 1967 through July 4th.
Newspaper ad for the Jefferson Airplane at Ford Auditorium in Detroit on June 30, 1967 with a list of local support acts including the Rationals, the Apostles, Ourselves, and MC5.
A multi-show ad for the Grande Ballroom by an unknown artist, it has the earlier dates for the MC5, six shows at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, starting with Jagged Edge and Shifting Sands on June 16, 1967, a June 17th “homecoming” for the MC5 with Those Guys, MC5 with the Phogg on June 23rd, Scot Richard Case and the Kwintels on June 24th, Echoes From a Broken Mirror and Southampton Rowe on June 30th, and also a July 1, 1967 show by the MC5 at the Grande Ballroom with the English Ryders in their only known appearance anywhere.
This poster (artist unknown) lists the shows at The Cavern in Northville for the month of July, 1967. On July 7, 1967, the MC5 came to town (that must have been a blast), on the 14th there was a battle of the bands, and on the 21st The Southampton Rowe from Plymouth opened for Bob Seger & the Last Heard.
The 42nd weekend at The Grande Ballroom, July 21-22, 1967 featured Donnie Dope’s ninth poster for the venue. It was singer/songwriter Tim Buckley’s debut in Detroit, and it was the first time the Grande featured an artist from outside the region. The newspaper ad was for “a dance concert in honor of the New American Sound” and the admitted-free gimmick was for “All Buckleys”.
Tim Buckley headlined both nights, with MC5 and Ourselves opening on the first night, July 21, 1967, and the Shaggs (not the infamous sisters girl band) and the UP, a band formed by the Grande’s stage manager/announcer Frank Bach, making their debut appearance.
A newspaper ad for the “Buckley” weekend at the Grande Ballroom, July 21-22, 1967, with “The M.C. 5” on the first night.
Wayne Kramer of The MC5 had been at the party at the lake with Tim Buckley on the Sunday that it had started. He rode home with Frank Bach, stage manager at The Grande and singer for the new band, The Up, in a beat-up truck that wasn’t safe for highway travel so they took Grand River Avenue into the heart of the city. The flames in the sky which looked cool from a distance became a close-up horror of madness when they reached their apartments.
Kramer hunkered down for the following days, observing events through a telescope that he had in his home. On Thursday, the final day of disturbances, the Army and State Police noticed the telescope and believing it was an aid for snipers, invaded the apartment and administered some complimentary beatings, arrested Kramer and his roommates, only to release them without charges.
John Sinclair was absolutely gleeful while the ’67 riot was going on. A few weeks prior to the outbreak he had mounted a large “Burn Baby Burn!” poster above the Trans-Love Energies office on John Lodge and Warren.
The “Burn Baby Burn” poster, with a drawing of a black panther, immediately drew the attention of the police when the city actually started going up in flames that Sunday afternoon. Leni Sinclair explained away the poster as “just a design”, but she and John took it down to avoid arrest and retreated to the roof of the building with a TV to monitor the news.
John Sinclair thought his long-vaunted revolution had arrived, “…it was just exhilarating, I thought this was the greatest, right in the eye of the storm”. The MC5 ended up with new stage wardrobes made from looted bolts of cloth.
Moby Grape made their first Detroit appearance on July 27, 1967, making a full day of it with a taping of Robin Seymour’s Swingin’ Time TV show, followed by a show at the Upper Deck of the Roostertail supper club.
According to a story in The Fifth Estate newspaper, Wayne Kramer got busted using Rob Tyner’s ID to try to get into the 21-and-over show and was facing a possible fine and jail sentence.
A flyer for a free street dance with the MC5 and Billy C. & the Sunshine on July 23, 1967, which was probably cancelled due to the riot that broke out on 12th Street that morning.
“The Summer of Love never made it to Detroit” – Wayne Kramer, guitarist MC5.
The 47th weekend at The Grande Ballroom, August 25-26, 1967 featured Donnie Dope’s 13th poster for the venue.
The poster is co-credited to Alice Cow, who may not be a real person (?) and gives the theme as “a dance concert honoring Alice in the Looking Class”. In contrast, the theme in the newspaper ad is “in honor of the Cave People” and the admitted-free gimmick is “Spelunkers Admitted Free”.
The bands in the ad were listed as Thyme with the Apostles and Our Mother’s Children, and Scot Richard Case with the MC5 and Certified Chalk Cyrcle. Although the MC5 is not found on the poster, the newspaper ad lists them for the August 26, 1967 show.
Earlier in the month, the Grateful Dead had made their first Michigan appearance, at the Grand Ballroom August 11-12, 1967, followed by a free concert in Ann Arbor on August 13th . John Sinclair was a big admirer of the band mainly because “they didn’t kiss anybody’s ass”. During the shows at The Grande, Sinclair got to know The Dead’s managers, Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin, and concluding that they were “just as nuts as I am”, Sinclair made the decision to become the formal manager for the MC5.
A Sunday night benefit show for Trans-Love Energies on August 27, 1967 at the Grande Ballroom saw the return of Gary Grimshaw with his 20th poster for the venue, following a 12-week run of posters by Donnie Dope. The bands at the benefit show were the MC5, Billy C & the Sunshine, and the Spike Drivers.
There was also a newspaper ad for the Sunday benefit show (with the wrong date) that is signed by Gary Grimshaw.
An ad in the Fifth Estate newspaper in Detroit, Michigan for several shows at the Grande Ballroom, beginning with the Chambers Brothers, MC5, Thyme, and System(?), September 1-2, 1967. A really sweet image, undoubtably by Gary Grimshaw, who was on the Fifth Estate staff, credited as “Art” in the staff box.
The 48th weekend at The Grande Ballroom, September 1-2, 1967, featured Gary Grimshaw’s 21st poster for the venue, with the Chambers Brothers headlining both nights, the MC5 opened the first night, September 1, 1967, and Thyme opened the second night.
Issue #4 of the SUN, September 1967, had a subscription form for the high school underground newspaper DEVA next to an ad by an unknown artist for the Grande Ballroom that listed seven weeks’ worth of upcoming shows, starting the 49th weekend, September 8-9, 1967,
The MC5 are listed for shows at the Grande Ballroom on September 15, September 23, September 24, and opening for Cream for three nights, October 13-15.
The 50th weekend at the Grande Ballroom, September 15-16, 1967, featured Donnie Dope’s 15th poster for the venue. It was a bit of a departure from his usual style in that it was a collage instead of a drawing, a brilliantly simple Beatle Paul as Mouseketeer and he signed his real name, Forsyth.
The bands were MC5 with the Gang and Ourselves on September 15, 1967, and the Pack with the Ashmollyan Quintet on the following night. The newspaper ad also had the band Odds & Ends on the second night, as well as the week's gimmick, "in honor of zoo people", zoo employees admitted free.
The 51st weekend at The Grande Ballroom, September 22-24, 1967 (which included a Sunday night benefit show) featured Gary Grimshaw’s 22nd poster for the venue. Performers included Southbound Freeway with Billy C & the Sunshine and Our Mother’s Children on Friday, MC5 with the Buoys and the F.D.A.on Saturday, September 23, 1967, and, on the Sunday night benefit show for the Warren-Forest SUN newspaper, September 24, 1967, it was MC5 with Charles Moore and UP. The week's gimmick was "in honor of education", with "gentle teachers" admitted free.
The 52nd weekend at The Grande Ballroom, September 29-30, 1967 featured Gary Grimshaw’s 24th poster for the venue, (with a photo credit to Leni Sinclair). The poster is titled “Black To Com” which was the name of the freak-out jam that was typically the MC5 set-closer.
The bands were the Apostles with Eastside Orphans and Happiness Tickets on the first night, and MC5 with the Spike Drivers on September 30, 1967. The week's gimmick was "in honor of The Equus Caballus" (a horse) with free admission for "Equestrians in Full Habit",
John Sinclair encouraged and supported the emergence of underground student newspapers in the surrounding high schools. Cass Tech High had “Yellow”, originally called the Southampton Ulus-trated Times, or South Hampton International Times (SHIT), Grosse Point High had “Kulchur”, Cooley High had “The Truth” and “The Daily Planet”, and Mumford High had “The Elevator”.
A particularly ambitious project was formed by fourteen-year-old journalist, Dick Schloss, to pool the resources of three papers in the Birmingham and Berkeley high schools into a combined tabloid publication called DEVA. On Sunday, October 1st, 1967, a benefit show for DEVA was held at the Grande Ballroom.
The long list of performers was MC5, Thyme, the Rationals, Children, the F.D.A., the Gang, the Hearde, Ourselves, Period, and the Poor Souls.
The one-year anniversary of the Grande Ballroom on October 6-7, 1967 featured Gary Grimshaw’s 24th poster for the venue. Bands were Scot Richard Case with Billy C & the Sunshine on Friday night, and MC5 with the Gang and Odds & Ends on Saturday, October 7, 1967. The poster featured a photo by Leni Sinclair of Grimshaw’s hand reaching around a marble sculpture at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Over the course of the first year of the Grande Ballroom there were 114 shows. The MC5 were the most frequent act with 41 shows, followed by the Southbound Freeway with 15, Thyme with 13, and SRC with 11. The Jagged Edge and the Rationals had 9 and 8, respectively.
The booking of national acts had started in the last three months, with Tim Buckley in July, followed by the Grateful Dead and the Chambers Brothers.
Over the course of the first year, with the 114 shows, there were 50 posters, Grimshaw had 23, Donnie Dope had 15, David Carlin had six, and Rob Tyner had five. Add to those, the one poster by Schriter, Nova Express and you have the 50.
There had also been some very nice ads, from hand-drawn text to detailed images that rivaled the posters. Gary Grimshaw had five, Rob Tyner had four, three were by unknown artists, and, one of the best, was done by James Montgomery.
On October 11, 1967, the MC5 made their first Ann Arbor appearance since the shows at Mother's in March 1966, with this show at the Canterbury House. The artist for this “Stoned Power” poster is an unknown artist.
The 54th weekend at The Grande Ballroom, October 13-15, 1967 (three shows) featured Gary Grimshaw’s 25th poster for the venue. One of his most popular posters, it is known as the “Creamsicle”.
A pre-show blurb in the South End newspaper at Wayne State University in Detroit does a great job of explaining the line-ups for the three nights, and mentions the show gimmick of free admission for "milkmen" (get it? cream)
The supporting bands were MC5 and Thyme on Friday, October 13, 1967, Saturday with the Rationals, and Sunday, October 15, 1967, the Rationals and MC5 "again", and the Apostles.
The 55th weekend at The Grande Ballroom, October 20-21, 1967 featured Gary Grimshaw’s 26th poster for the venue. The bands were the Pack with Gold and Our Mother’s Children on Friday night, and MC5 with the Gang and Billy C & the Sunshine on Saturday, October 21, 1967. Grimshaw signed the poster as Pisces Eyes Poster Co.
The newspaper ad was for “a dance concert in honor of the Upright People” and the admitted-free gimmick was for “People over 6’5””.
The central image is a painting titled “Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror” by 16th century Italian painter and printmaker Parmigianino.
A newsprint version of Gary Grimshaw’s poster for the Grande Ballroom, October 20-21, 1967 in The Fifth Estate newspaper uses a mirror-image of the central figure in the poster.
The 56th weekend at the Grande Ballroom, October 27-28, 1967 featured Gary Grimshaw’s 27th poster for the venue. The bands were MC5 with the Rationals and the Prime Movers on Friday, October 27, 1967, and the James Gang with UP and Stuart Avery Assemblage on the 28th.
This was the first Detroit appearance of The James Gang from Cleveland, still slightly prior to Joe Walsh joining the band, having up to that time well over twenty members that had passed in and out of the band, including members from Detroit’s The Case of E. T. Hooley, leaving drummer K. J. Knight to concentrate his own band, The Knightriders.
The newspaper ad for the “Great Pumpkin” weekend at the Grande Ballroom, October 27-28, 1967. The ad was for “a dance concert in honor of the Great Pumpkin” and the admitted-free gimmick was for “All Charlie Browns”.
Poster History of the MC5 - continues - HERE
Newspaper ads for Cream at the Grande Ballroom, October 13-15, 1967. Do not see a mention of the gimmick, but the South End got "milkmen" from somewhere.
A second ad for “The Unified Megalopolitan Piece Pow-Wow”, at Wayne State University in Detroit on June 8, 1967,
Print ad, presumably by Gary Grimshaw, for the MC5 with the Spikedrivers and the Charles Moore Ensemble at The See in Detroit, June 23-24, 1967.
Newspaper ad, presumably by Gary Grimshaw for Sun Ra and MC5 at the Wayne State Community Arts Auditorium on June 18, 1967.
Illustration of the MC5 “Stone Power” by an unknown artist, possibly Gary Grimshaw, from Issue #2 of the SUN newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, April 21, 1967.
The Grande Ballroom was notoriously a steam bath on a hot summer night and after closing, the staff and bands usually took to the roof of the building to hang out and chill. As the sun was coming up on Sunday morning, July 23, following Tim Buckley’s second night, the party decided it would be a good day to hang out at the Kensington Metro Park and as they got into their cars to make the hour-long drive out of the city little did they know that just two miles down Joy Road in the opposite direction a disturbance outside a blind pig had been roiling for a few hours and was just about to get out of hand.
The group spent the day at the park in blissful oblivion and it wasn't until they returned to Russ Gibb's home in Dearborn that night that they turned on the TV and saw the city was in flames. Tim Buckley had left his guitar at The Grande and wanted to get it, and Gibb was worrying if the ballroom was even still standing. They took Buckley's drummer, a black man, Carter Collins, along who kept crouched in the back seat until they crossed the police line, then switched places with Collins driving while the two white guys hid in back as they traveled through streets of war zone level destruction, a few isolated remaining buildings still standing with hastily scrawled "Soul Brother" signs as a plea to spare black-owned businesses. When they got to the Grande it was remarkably undamaged although looters were streaming past. In a story that has become mythical, Gibb asked a passer-by why the building had been left untouched and the kid said. "They got music in there, man".
On Sunday night, October 29, 1967 there was yet another Trans-Love benefit show at the Grande Ballroom with MC5 and Gold, and this one introduced a new poster artist, Carl Lundgren. Earlier, we recounted how Lundgren helped found The Detroit Triple Fan Fair in 1965. We also encountered Lundgren when it was mentioned that he was a roommate of Jerry Younkins at John Sinclair’s “Castle” commune and that the two had left Detroit for San Francisco immediately following the ’67 rebellion.
While in California, Lundgren had stayed with Stanley Mouse and discovered the world of rock posters in that city. Still hoping to work in book cover illustrations, Lundgren returned to Detroit to be closer to the East Coast publishing houses, where he met Gary Grimshaw, who was overwhelmed with work and enlisted Lundgren to create posters for the Grande.
The poster is attributed to Pisces Eyes Poster Co. next to Lundgren’s name, which is also the name of the light show company for the concert.
The photo is a 1916 photograph taken for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institute showing anthropologist Frances Densmore sitting with Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot Indian tribe, while he interprets a song in Plains Indian sign language.
