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Splatt Gallery's History of Michigan Music Posters
Volume Ten - 1974 - Page Ten
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A pair of full-page ads from Capricorn Records expressing their gratitude to Grand Funk for taking the band Wet Willie as their opening act on their “Shinin’ On” tour, which began on March 22nd and ended on June 7, 1974.
REO Speedwagon with the Michael Quatro Group at the Michigan Concert Palace in Detroit on June 8, 1974.
A full-page ad from Big Tree Records in the June 8, 1974 issue of Billboard magazine, promoting the fourth album by Brownsville Station.
The June 8, 1974 issue of the Fifth Estate newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, with their most devilish cover since the issue on the Detroit Groupies, inset with an ad for the Touch of Satan occult supplies store.
The New York Dolls sixth Michigan appearance, at the Allen Park Civic Arena in Allen Park, June 10, 1974, with Astigafa and Salem Witchcraft.
Newspaper ad for the New York Dolls with KISS at the IMA Auditorium in Flint, Michigan, June 12, 1974.
Poster by Crow Quill for the New York Dolls with KISS at the IMA Auditorium in Flint, Michigan, June 12, 1974. This was the seventh Michigan appearance for the Dolls and the seventh Michigan appearance for KISS, all of the KISS shows in 1974.
Like the earlier ad for Bob Seger, this was also a Brass Ring Production with a strange emphasis on "Suburban Rock and Roll"
An ad for Richards in Atlanta, Georgia with Bob “Catfish” Hodge opening for McKendree Spring, June 13-15, 1974.
An ad for the Raven Gallery in Southfield, Michigan, June 13-16, 1974 with Steve Goodman and Joni's ex, Chuck Mitchell.
The second weekend of rock and roll shows “Downstairs at the Shelby”, at the Shelby Hotel in Detroit, Michigan, with Kramer’s Kreamers starring ex-MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, June 13-15, 1974. Not yet dubbed the “Rainbow Room”, but the flyer/ad by an unknown artist is a Rainbow Production.
Logo for Gasoline Alley in Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 14, 1974, designed by Crow Quill. It appears to be an old gas station that was converted into a pinball alley. At their peak, there were 87 gas stations in Ann Arbor in the 1950’s.
Record company ad for the band Kansas, with announcement of their show at the Wisner Stadium in Pontiac, Michigan with Leon Russell, June 14, 1974, which would be their second Michigan appearance, however, they are not mentioned in an extensive show review and the concert database does not include this show for Kansas, so they may have cancelled.
An ad for the Wide Track Summer Festival at the Wisner Stadium in Pontiac, Michigan, June 14, 1974 with Leon Russell, the Gap Band, Kansas, Fresh Start, and Mary McCreary. The show review also mentioned part of Leon’s ensemble, along with the Gap Band, a four-woman unit dubbed Mother Funk which included Oak Park, Michigan’s Marcie Levy.
The June 14, 1974 issue of the Ann Arbor Sun newspaper in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with cover by Gary Kell celebrating the start of the 1974 Sunday Free Concerts season. The opening concert was on Sunday, June 16, with the line-up of the Mojo Boogie Band, Tate Blues Band, Drivin’ Sideways, and Zoom.
The back cover of the June 14, 1974 issue of the Ann Arbor Sun newspaper in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which apparently upset some of the paper’s readership. In the following issue, the Sun ran this apology”
“The SUN would like to apologize to all those offended by our back cover on David decadent Bowie last ish. We are highly critical of sleazy glitter music like Bowie’s, but are not at a point where we can afford to lose money by turning down ads, except those blatantly sexist or racist in character…”
The Ann Arbor Sun newspaper in Ann Arbor, Michigan was offering the new Bob Seger album as a premium gift for subscriptions in their June 1974 issues, and they were justifiably proud of the hometown boy, calling it “A-Squared’s Favorite New Rock & Roll Record”. We took the opportunity to overlay the centerfold story in the June 14, 1974 issue with some of our favorite Seger posters from past episodes, we ran out of room before we ran out of posters.
Artists represented in this small sample include Peg Tiilikka, Barb(?) Kippola, Mickey Kress, Carol Ann, Al Shamie (Bad Dog), and James Render.
A poster for the Jackson 5ive in Wembley, London, England, June 14-15, 1974.
Very nice poster signed by “Snider” for Leon Russell and the Gap Band at Grand Valley State Colleges in Allendale, Michigan, near Grand Rapids, June 15, 1974.
The Gap Band was formed by the Wilson brothers, Charlie, Ronnie, and Robert, and was named after three streets, Greenwood, Archer, and Pine, in their hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. A fully-formed performing band, they also made themselves available for session work, including a significant contribution to Leon Russell’s 1974 album “Stop All That Jazz”. Russell was so taken with the band that he released their own 1974 album “Magicians Holiday” on his Shelter record label and took them on tour as his opening act.
The Gap Band – Backbone (1974)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81czkNpoIds
A 1974 tour blank by an unknown artist for Leon Russell with the Gap Band that could have been used for the two Michigan shows, on June 14th in Pontiac and on June 15th in Allendale.
Two Shelter Records ads for the new albums by Leon Russell and The Gap Band, with tour dates including the two Michigan shows that we posted earlier.
Re-using the poster blank by Gary Grimshaw from the year before, the first Sunday Fee Concert of 1974 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 16, 1974, with Mojo Boogie Band, Tate Blues Band, Zoom!, and Drivin’ Sideways.
The 1974 season marked the eighth year of the Ann Arbor Sunday Free Concerts.
Kicking off the eighth year of the Ann Arbor Sunday Free Concerts, the 1974 season began on June 16, 1974. The Ann Arbor Sun newspaper published the line-ups each week, complete with the listing of band members in short band bios. The opening week included the Mojo Boogie Band, Tate Blues Band, the Drivin’ Sideways band, and Zoom.
Since the Sun was a bi-weekly publication, each issue would need to list two line-ups per issue, something they would get better at, but for this first one, we only got a list of bands, without bios, for the June 23rd concert, the bands were the Scott Morgan Group (with ex-MC5ers Fred Smith and Michael Thompson (sic) - they meant Davis), Uprising, Flat Rock, and one other group yet to be announced. We will continue to post these, with their valuable information, throughout the season.
Gary Kell poster and ad for another Zenta “all the beer you can drink” party at the Labor Temple in Ypsilanti, Michigan, June 16, 1974, in celebration of the kick-off of the Ann Arbor Sunday Free Concerts season, with the Rockets and Zoom!, the latter having also performed at the free concert earlier in the afternoon.
An ad for the Thunder Chicken in Comstock Park near Grand Rapids, June 16, 1974, with Kansas and MSFunk (no periods, no spaces). MSFunk, based out of Chicago, included guitarist Tommy Shaw who will later join the bands Styx and Damn Yankees.
An ad and ticket form for an evening with George Burns, featuring Jack Benny, “And…And…And…Alice Cooper”, at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles, California on June 16, 1974.
After the band’s last-ever show in Brazil in early April, the members scattered off in their own directions. For his part, Alice seemed to be everywhere, popping up in celebrity sightings far and wide. A partial list of the famous folk spotted hobnobbing with the “shock rocker” in 1974 (some prior to the Brazil tour) include: Helen Hayes (Cooper guest-starred on an episode of her “Snoop Sisters” TV show), Liza Minnelli (amid rumors of the two dating but he attended her wedding to Jack Haley Jr later in the year), Helen Reddy (she and Cooper presented a Grammy Award for Stevie Wonder), Milton Berle, Sammy Davis Jr., Janet Leigh, Paul Lynde, Charley Weaver, Lily Tomlin, Dionne Warwick, Vincent Price and the rest of the cast of the “Hollywood Squares” TV game show, when Cooper was among the guest panelists for three shows, Elvis Presley, Colonel Sanders of “Kentucky Fried Chicken”, Aristotle Onassis, Linda Blair (at the UK premier of “The Exorcist” movie), Burt Bacharach, Groucho Marx, Fred Astaire, Charley Pride, Mickey Mantle, Mac Davis, Flip Wilson, Pat Boone, Perry Como, Bobby Goldsboro and the governor of Tennessee, Winfield Dunn (at a celebrity golf tournament in October).
A poster for Grand Funk in Dayton, Ohio on June 16, 1974.
Nobody ever seems to get this right, the name of the band is Birtha. They performed at the Rock ‘N’ Roll Farm in Wayne, Michigan, June 16-17, 1974, with openers Salem Witchcraft. Salem Witchcraft remained at the Farm, June 19-23 before giving way to Spooky Tooth with the Rockets, June 24-25.
Birtha – All This Love (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C54p1z2onaY
Newspaper ad for a run of shows by Severin Browne at The Stables in East Lansing, Michigan, June 17-22, 1974. The younger brother of Jackson Browne, Severin was an unlikely artist for Motown Records, he had hoped to become a staff songwriter at the company, but Motown wanted an artist in the singer/songwriter genre and after much prodding, Browne found a producer to his liking and released his debut album in 1973.
A follow-up album, “New Improved Severin Browne”, recorded with session musicians who would later form the band Toto, was released sometime after these shows in 1974. Then, as reported, “By the age of 25, with two albums released, and the secretaries at Motown still asking his name when he visited, he made his get-away and swore he would not make another record. He kept that promise for 20 years.”
Here is a track from the first album entitled “Stay”, not to be confused with his brother’s cover version of the Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs hit song of the same name (which, by the way, with a running time of just around a minute and a half, was the shortest song to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart).
Severin Browne – Stay (1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdU94SJ5V6E
Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs – Stay (1960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Z_hskvz1M
A third record company ad with another “partial listing” of 1974 tour dates. It does not list the two Michigan shows in May that we posted earlier and it has just one of two shows in June. It has June 19, 1974 at Ford Auditorium in Detroit (Slade were the openers), it is missing June 3rd at the IMA Arena in Flint, where they opened for Johnny Winter in a Bob Bageris Bamboo Production.
A two-page spread Motown Records ad for Marvin Gaye’s “Marvin Gaye Live” album, released on June 19, 1974. It was the recording of his return to the stage show on January 4th, which we described earlier with the poster of that show. The album reached #1 on the Billboard magazine R&B Albums chart and earned Gaye a Grammy nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, which he lost out to Stevie Wonder.
Fantastic poster for the Grand Opening of the Rainbow Room, the new designation of the downstairs room in the Shelby Hotel in Detroit, Michigan that had begun hosting rock concerts. The official opening week, June 19-22, 1974 featured the Rockets, the Records, and Righteous Bob Rudnick. Poster by J.W. Kelly.
According to a David Bowie tour diary, he spent the evening of June 21st “socializing” “at a small nightclub operated by Sixties activist John Sinclair in a downtown Detroit hotel”.
A promo ad for Warner Bros. Records from the June 1974 issue of CREEM magazine, and ads for the subsidiary DiscReet Records and the Wartoke public relations agency in the June 15, 1974 issue of Billboard magazine.
The Warner Bros. ad featured Bob Seger’s album “Seven”, DiscReet featured the Amboy Dukes, and the Wartoke agency listed the Amboy Dukes, Ted Nugent, and Stevie Wonder among its clients.
Keeping track of the Dogs “Detroit Rock and Roll”, still in New York City, participating in the Coventry club’s First Anniversary Celebration, eighteen days featuring forty of the bands that had performed during the club’s first year, the Dogs appearing on June 20, 1974. We’ve already featured the one video we could find of Teenage Lust & the Lustettes, so here, for your pleasure, is the Harlots of 42nd Street.
Harlots of 42nd Street – Spray Paint Bandit (1974)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOsGDZ6p_90
A bold clean ad for Quicksilver and Roger McGuinn at the Allen Park Civic Arena in Allen Park, Michigan, with “Detroit’s Own” Mike Quatro opening, on June 21, 1974.
How cool would it have been had the Michigan Palace in Detroit produced posters for their shows? The only print promotion we can find for two shows by Aerosmith with Cactus and Elephants Memory, June 21-22, 1974, is in the small print of the Calendar section in the Ann Arbor Sun newspaper, the Detroit paper. The Fifth Estate, had no mention of the shows in their calendar.
David Bowie was scheduled for his fourth and fifth Michigan shows back to back in Detroit, at Ford Auditorium, June 22, 1974, and the following night at Cobo Hall. The Ford Auditorium show was cancelled at the last minute, much to the disappointment of the people that showed up for it. A high school commencement was held the same day at Ford Auditorium which did not leave enough time for the twelve-hour set-up required for Bowie’s stage set. Here is the full concert recording of the Cobo Hall show.
David Bowie – Live in Detroit, Michigan (6/23/74)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooo8SBifoJE
A full-page RCA Records ad in CREEM magazine for David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” album and tour. The itinerary has two shows in Detroit, Michigan at the Ford Auditorium, both were moved up by one day, to June 22-23, 1974, and the second show was actually moved from the 3,000 seat Ford Auditorium to the 12,000 seat Cobo Arena.
This is the RCA Records modified artwork, with Bowie's doggie nether regions blacked out and with Bowie's name added to the top circle.
Another very fine poster from the promoters at Grand Valley State Colleges in Allendale, Michigan, near Grand Rapids, for Frampton’s Camel, Spooky Tooth, and Montrose, June 22, 1974. An obvious choice of image for Frampton’s band, but it’s an effective classic (the same image was used for the cover of Splatt Wreckchords’ 2001 album “Acidophilus”).
Another variation of the Camel image, used for the album cover of the 1974 album “Mirage” by the English prog rock group Camel.
Poster for Grand Funk with Wet Willie at the Portland Coliseum in Portland, Oregon, June 22, 1974, with photo by Lynn Goldsmith.
A pair of rock and roll movies advertised in the June 22, 1974 edition of the Fifth Estate newspaper in Detroit, Michigan.
The idea for the Pink Floyd movie came about by accident. Film director Adrian Maben was vacationing in Italy when he discovered that he had misplaced his passport. Thinking that he had lost it while visiting the tourist attraction of the lost city of Pompeii, he convinced the guards to let him back in after closing time to look for it. Roaming the deserted amphitheater, he got the idea of filming the band there, with its natural acoustics and haunting atmosphere, and performing a concert without an audience seemed like a unique twist perfectly suited for Pink Floyd.
With a running time of just one hour, the film was released in September 1972. Feeling that the film was too short, Maben added another twenty minutes of Pink Floyd during recording sessions for the “Dark Side of the Moon” album. The extended version premiered in Canada in November 1973 and in the US in April 1974. Somehow, the film got the reputation as being financially unsuccessful, although it reportedly grossed over $2 million by October 1974. And as another indicator of success, the producers wanted Maben to repeat the formula, either with the Moody Blues at Grand Canyon, or Deep Purple at Taj Mahal, thankfully, Maben declined.
Bert Tenzer’s film “Free” was a documentary of the New York Pop Festival at Randall’s Island Stadium in New York City, held in July 1970, which we have covered previously since Grand Funk Railroad was the opening act of the three-day event.
A review from Dangerous Minds describes it well:
“Bert Tenzer’s ‘Free’ is a film of the New York Pop Festival that combines documentary footage with scripted sequences. For instance, DJ Murray The K adds some goofy commentary even though he was nowhere near Randall’s Island at the time. The film was released in 1974 and made little impression. Tenzer even went so far as booking the film with unknown bands performing in the cinema. No one cared.” (The ad in the Fifth Estate mentions that a live performance by North Star featuring Tony Newton accompanied the screening at the Washington Theatre in Royal Oak.)
More from Dangerous Minds:
“Tenzer then re-edited ‘Free’ and released it as ‘The Day The Music Died’ in 1976. Doing what he could to try to recoup his investment, Tenzer added clips of Marvin Gaye, The Beatles, The Doors and more, none of whom were actually at the festival. Archival footage of Angela Davis, The Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and Malcolm X was also tossed in to the mix to give the film some political and sociological context. Still no hit.
“Despite its box office failure, ‘The Day The Music Died’ has a lot going for it, capturing a period of time when doing the right thing often ended up a casualty of good intentions gone bad, a time when revolution often spun out of control because of a failure to see the bigger picture. By 1970 the idealism and hope of the Summer Of Love was replaced by cynicism, weariness and the realization that even the purest of Owsley’s acid wasn’t enough to flush the toxins out of the collective consciousness that had accrued over thousands of years of bad karma. The flower children had gone to seed and our heroes were dropping like flies. Mission aborted. We needed to re-group and think things out. We needed to get real. “You say you got a real solution / Well, you know / We’d all love to see the plan.”
“Towering over all the bullshit that happens in the ‘The Day The Music Died’ is Jimi Hendrix who started a revolution without dogma, without arrogance and without rules. But he did have a plan and it was called music. There’s an argument to be made that rock and roll did more to positively change the world than any political movement, radical or otherwise. I may be wrong, but it’s an argument worth having. Whatever the case, I ain’t interested in any revolution that doesn’t include a sense of humor and monster guitar licks.”
Fifty years later, we agree that the best that endures from that time is the music, and in particular, the music of Mr. James Marshall Hendrix. In the comments below is another poster for the movie “Free”, which inaccurately claims to have “Priceless footage of Hendrix’s final public appearance”, inaccurate in that he performed at least another near-dozen shows after the New York Pop Festival, although they have the “priceless” part correct, as can be seen in the clip linked below.
There is additional audio beyond the filmed segments, and according to a website blog, Hendrix’s rendition of “Red House” from that night is “some of the best guitar soloing I’ve ever heard in my friggin’ life”. A commentator adds, “The only version that rivals this one is from Fillmore East, May 10th, 1968, late show, that clocks in at approx. 16 minutes”. You can hear both on the second link.
Jimi Hendrix – Foxy Lady (live New York Pop Festival) (7/17/70)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OENIuUYstbY
Jimi Hendrix – Red House (live New York Pop Festival) (7/17/70)
http://headthegong.com/red-house-jimi-hendrix-new-york-pop-randalls-island-1970/
A very inviting ad for a “School’s Out Dance” in St. Paul, Minnesota, featuring Brownsville Station, on June 22, 1974.
The first “World Series of Rock” show was held at the Cleveland Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio on June 23, 1974. No Michigan bands were in this first show, but the “series”, sponsored by Cleveland radio station WMMS-FM (“The Buzzard”), proved to be a popular concept and lasted for six more years, so they will be coming up.
The schedule, by an unknown artist, for the Underground club in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with the band Witch beginning on June 23, 1974, and upcoming shows by Apple Core and Woorleybird.
An ad for another Guitar Battle show between Ted Nugent and Mike Pinera, in Asheville, North Carolina on June 23, 1974. Bob Seger opened the show. It looks like they have two pictures of Nugent and none of Pinera.
Poster by an unknown designer, possibly Greg Sobran, for the Rock & Roll Farm in Wayne, Michigan with the Rockets opening for Spooky Tooth for two nights, June 24-25, 1974, and upcoming shows by Bob Seger and Tim Buckley.
Dennis Preston poster for Peter Cavanaugh’s first Wild Wednesday of year at the Sherwood Forest in Davison, Michigan, June 26, 1974, with Montrose, Spooky Tooth, Bob Seger, Rock & the Sharks (still not yet Moose & the Sharks), Salem Witchcraft, Skyhook, Sweet Mama Shakeup, Possum Creek, Ceyz, “and others”.
A two-page spread in Billboard magazine from Asylum Records for the release of Bob Dylan’s first live album “Before The Flood” on June 26, 1974. The tour had included a show in Ann Arbor, Michigan on February 2nd, about two-thirds of the way through the tour. The tracks selected for the album came from the tour finale shows in Los Angeles on February 13-14, with one track from a New York Show on January 30th.
A long promo poster from the Grateful Dead for their seventh studio album “From the Mars Hotel”, released on June 27, 1974, with artwork by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley. The working title for the album was "Ugly Roomers", the back cover depicting the band as the ugly roomers of the hotel, but not wanting to offend the actual roomers of the actual hotel in San Francisco, California, they adopted a pun to call the album “Ugly Rumors”.
Ultimately, the title was changed to “From the Mars Hotel”, but Mouse & Kelley put the “Ugly Rumors” title in the final cover art, just upside down and backwards (see picture below).
The title “Ugly Rumors” also inspired a group of college students at St John's College in Oxford, England to start a band called Ugly Rumors, the band included future UK prime minister Tony Blair.
Upside down and backwards, the “Ugly Rumors” working title by Mouse & Kelley.
The “Guitar Battle of the Century” show made its way to Rockford, Illinois on June 8, 1974.
Poster for the Supremes tour of Australia with six shows beginning on June 12, 1974.
Volume Ten - 1974 - continues - HERE
