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Splatt Gallery's History of Michigan Concert Posters
Volume Five - 1969 - Page Sixteen
Poster/ad by “Poon Tang” for a three-day Blueberry Jam in San Francisco, California with SRC appearing “Direct from the Fillmore” for two nights, opening for Bo Diddley, August 8-9, 1969.
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Poster for Thee Experience club in Hollywood, California by the Purple Realm art team of Rik Vig and Stevan Kasower, with two Michigan bands making appearances on the schedule, Grand Funk Railroad, August 6-9, 1969, and SRC, August 14-16. The dates were changed later, with GFR, August 7-10, and SRC, August 14-17.
Ad for Thee Experience in Los Angeles, California, with the appearance by Grand Funk Railroad, August 7-10, 1969.
For the 146th weekend at the Grande Ballroom there was only one show, on Friday, August 8, 1969, with Terry Reid and Savoy Brown. There was also another benefit show for Michigan Senator Roger Craig, with the Stooges, Catfish, and Sky at the Grande Ballroom on Wednesday, August 13, 1969.
A Capitol Records ad for Grand Funk Railroad’s first album, published in the August 8, 1969 issue of the Los Angeles Free Press newspaper.
A full-page poster/ad for the Buddy Miles Express in the August 9, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine. Ex-Detroit Wheels guitarist Jim McCarty was in the band, he might be the one in the upper left.
An ad for Diana Ross & the Supremes in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on August 9, 1969.
You may have noticed a name on the poster for the August 3, 1969 Mt. Clemons Pop Festival poster in our previous post that had not been seen at any previous Michigan concert, the Michigan debut of Alice Cooper.
Frank Zappa had signed the band from Phoenix, originally known as the Spiders, then the Nazz, a band name already taken by ToddRundgren, before settling on Alice Cooper, produced their first album, “Pretties for You”, and taken them on tour as the opening act for the Mothers of Invention shows. During the first week of 1969, Alice Cooper played the Whisky A-Go-Go in Hollywood on a bill with Led Zeppelin, both bands were so unknown that they would flip a coin to determine who would headline each night.
Audience reactions and press reviews were generally negative, and legend has it that the band joked that they would move to the first place that could get a standing ovation. That may have occurred at the Mt. Clemons Pop Festival.
Alice Cooper followed up that appearance with two nights at the Eastown Theater in Detroit, August 8-9, 1969. Detroit may have not taken much notice of these Eastown shows, no posters seem to exist, only a simple listing in the “Happenings” column of the Detroit Free Press, but Alice Cooper, who was born Vincent Furnier in Detroit, took notice of Detroit, particularly the Eastown, where they would return many times. This is what Alice had to say about the Detroit audiences: “In Los Angeles, if people are going to see a band, they go to work, they go home, they put on their black leather jackets, grease their hair, wear their torn Levi’s and go to the show. In Detroit, they just come from work and they’re already in their black leather jackets and everything else.”
One of their shows at the Whisky in the first week of January, 1969 was recorded, the set list includes song titles such as No Longer Umpire, 10 Minutes before the Worm, B.B. on Mars, Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio, and this one, which was prescient of today’s headlines:
Alice Cooper – Today Mueller (live at the Whiskey A-Go-Go) (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZbfMQa_Nls
Weekly summer free concerts that mixed music and politics were a fixture in East Lansing, Michigan, just as they were in Ann Arbor, and although not as stridently radical as the White Panther’s events in Ann Arbor, there was a strong anti-war element to the concerts in East Lansing as well, when President Richard Nixon began bombing Cambodia in 1969, Michigan State University closed down in protest with rock and roll rallies.
One of East Lansing’s most popular bands, Plain Brown Wrapper, had become the official campaign band for Pat Paulsen’s quixotic presidential bid the year before, and although that was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Plain Brown Wrapper were active participants in the weekend free concerts at Valley Court Park in East Lansing. The free concerts also featured other local favorites, Ormandy and Universal Family, and were the breeding grounds for new up and coming bands, The Dogs, Magic, Mission, and The Maxx.
Here is footage, sound overdubbed, of Plain Brown Wrapper in the park, July 1969:
Plain Brown Wrapper – Live in East Lansing (July 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_ck6XUnAdA
Logo and title for Lenny Lipton’s Myths For Sale column in The Berkeley Tribe newspaper from August 1969, designed by Gary Grimshaw in exile.
Joan Baez at the University Events Building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, August 12, 1969. It was her fifth Michigan appearance since her first appearance at the Ann Arbor High School in 1961. It would be five more years before she came back, again to Ann Arbor in 1974.
A second ad for Joan Baez at the University Events Building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, August 12, 1969.
Poster by Jas. R. Hounshell Art Studio for the Carrawee Ballroom in Flat Rock, Michigan on August 12, 1969, with Catfish, Frijid Pink, and the Red, White & Blues Band.
Gary Grimshaw cover for the August 13, 1969 edition of The Ann Arbor Argus newspaper.
Dave Baker’s “Gross-Out Comix” in the August 13, 1969 edition of The Ann Arbor Argus newspaper.
Ads for the Wonderland Pop Festival in London, Ontario, Canada, August 13-14, 1969, with Alice Cooper on both days, “The Funky Parliaments”, and although not listed, Teegarden & Van Winkle may have also appeared.
The poster for the Wonderland Pop Festival in London, Ontario, Canada on August 13-14, 1969 seems to answer the eternal question of: Did George Clinton and Frank Zappa Ever Meet? And indeed, the poster showed Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention on the same bill as “The Funky Parliaments”.
So there is little doubt that they must have met at that show, if not at other times as well, and it seemed to validate the photo above, on the left, that circulates around the internet, but it didn’t look quite right to us because George looks about 20 years too old for it to be 1969.
And then we came across the photo above, on the right, that looks much more plausible, the gentleman with George might be Funkadelic vocalist and musical director Juni Morrison, but some hard-core Funkateer can probably tell us. At any rate, the picture with Frank and George sure looks like someone photo-shopped Frank’s head.
In the course of this investigation, we did come across a humorous story from Alice Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway. They also performed at the Wonderland Pop Festival as they were typically the opening act for the Mothers during this time.
You may have noticed that the August 13-14 dates of the Wonderland Pop Festival were the days just before Woodstock, which started on August 15. Dunaway and Alice were hearing that it was going to be the biggest festival of all time, so they asked Zappa why they weren’t playing “the big festival in New York” that weekend, to which Frank answered, “Because we don’t want to”.
A brochure cover for the Galaxii Exposition in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, a 19 day exhibition which started on August 14, 1969 and ran through September 1st. A showcase for Canadian bands, only two US groups were included, Alice Cooper and SRC, both from Michigan.
Ad from SRC’s West Coast tour with their shows at Thee Experience in Los Angeles, August 14-17, 1969, with the Buddy Miles Express, featuring Detroit guitarist Jim McCarty, following up.
A second Capitol Records ad for the West Coast tour by SRC, picking up with the last six shows, August 14-20, 1969.
One of the East Lansing, Michigan bands of the period was Beast. Although they were short-lived and unrecorded, their bass player, Dennis Preston, was also the artist who had created the cool logo for Tonto & the Renegades that we saw awhile back, and he made this illustration that was used on flyers for shows by Beast. After the band ended, Preston embarked on a poster career that, as we will see, created a body of work that stands at the very top of Michigan rock posters.
This poster for the Union Ballroom in East Lansing, Michigan, August 15, 1969 is Dennis Preston’s first poster for a show other than by his own band, Beast. But it will be a couple of more years before Preston is making posters regularly.
A collection of ads for the Free Spirit community of boutiques in Lansing, Michigan, from August 1969. These may be by an artist other than Dennis Preston, but Preston will become the artist most associated with the Free Spirit ads to come.
The same date that we find on the first Dennis Preston poster, is the same date for the last poster we can find from the Cavern in Northville, Michigan, August 15, 1969 for a Blues Festival featuring the Red, White & Blues Band, Lawrence Blues, and Chip Stevens Blues. Again, an unknown artist for this final poster, the signature is a small drawing of a flower. It looks like the Cavern continued in operation until at least November of 1969, and since this is the only poster we’ve seen since the one from October, 1968, we have to believe that somewhere, in an attic, a basement, or a garage in Northville, there’s treasure to be found.
All told, we’ve discovered nearly thirty posters from The Cavern, with the earliest dating from April, 1967. One of our greatest discoveries was the May 25, 1967 article in The Northville Record with the interview with Northville student Donald Forsyth who later made posters for the Grande Ballroom under the alias, Donnie Dope (among other aliases) and ultimately as Max Elbo. That same article mentioned his friend Chad Hines as a fellow Grande Ballroom artist, although we only know of the one he made for the January 1969 Amboy Dukes show, so that’s still a bit of a mystery.
A majority of these Cavern posters rank with the greatest Michigan rock posters, many of them by unknown artists, most of them assumed to be Northville high school students, and some of the names, including Mark Butler, Joel Symms, Kippola, Snowflake, Moorehead, and the person most largely responsible for the whole thing, Peg Tiilikka.
A busy weekend for promoter Russ Gibb, with shows at the Grande Ballroom, a Bob Seger concert at the Oakland Mall in Troy, and an upcoming Tim Buckey show at the Meadowbrook Theater. Maybe one reason that we were no longer getting posters for the shows at the Grande Ballroom might be because Gibb’s promotion work was spreading so widely.
This appearance of Bob Seger at the Oakland Mall is not to be confused with the more famous one for the Grand Opening of the mall in October, 1968. At that one, an unexpected 20,000 people showed up, snarling traffic and overtaking the parking lot completely, leaving the merchants with no customers on their big opening day. The mall owner caught a lot of flak for that, so it’s a bit surprising that Gibb got them to do it again ten months later.
The 147th weekend at the Grande Ballroom, August 15-16, 1969, featured Bo Diddley with Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys both nights, joined by Savage Grace on the second night.
This appears to be the fourth, and final, time that Savage Grace played the Grande Ballroom. Here are recordings:
Savage Grace – Live at the Grande Ballroom (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CmNlyp-ywY
And on the same weekend as all that, Dennis Preston’s first poster, The Cavern’s last poster, the encore of Bob Seger at the Oakland Mall, and the aborted Michigan Music Supports John Sinclair Festival of Life, there was something else happening in the state of New York, called “Woodstock”, August 15-17, 1969.
At least one Michigan artist performed at Woodstock, as Tim Hardin’s set was backed by a band that included drummer Muruga Booker. Here is a web site that has a nicely formatted listing of all the Woodstock performers:
https://www.woodstock.com/lineup/
A group of White Panthers, including Pun and Genie Plamondon, drove to New York to attend the Woodstock Festival, and apparently treated Abbie Hoffman to a hit of acid. Unfortunately, the cameras missed it, but Hoffman’s well-known stage invasion, to advocate for John Sinclair’s release from prison, only to be met by the business end of Pete Townshends’s guitar.
The Who – Abbie Hoffman Incident at Woodstock (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8BYgzIEHIY
This is the original poster for the Woodstock Festival by the Fillmore East poster artist David Byrd.
It was scrapped when the location for the festival was changed, and the iconic dove on the guitar version, perhaps the most famous rock poster of all time, was created over a last-minute weekend by Greenwich Village artist Arnold Skolnick.
The standing cherubs on each side of the central image are the same that were used on the back of some Grande Ballroom cards.
Poster/flyer for the Schaefer New York Jazz Festival with Aretha Franklin headlining the first night, August 16, 1969.
Full-page Motown Records ad in the August 16, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine, for the publishing arm of the company, Jobete Music, named after Berry Gordy’s three oldest children, Joy, Berry, and Terry. Celebrating their award for the hottest music publisher for the fifth year in a row.
A “Mid-Year Analysis of Billboard’s Soul Charts” in the August 16, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine with the Temptations and the Supremes on the top of the artists list. Motown’s publishing arm Jobete is the top publisher. Aretha Franklin at #3 and the Miracles at #8.
An attractive Motown Records ad in the August 16, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine.
Newspaper ad for Diana Ross & the Supremes with Edwin Starr at the Forum in Los Angeles, California, August 16, 1969. Also on the bill were the Northern California gospel group, the Edwin Hawkins Singers.
Here is a live 1969 performance of their hit “Oh Happy Day”, and a 1970 performance with folk singer Melanie of their hit “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)”.
The Edwin Hawkins Singers – Oh Happy Day (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqACv5ekqzc
Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers – Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) (1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ52lk9wjZI
Two posters for Diana Ross & the Supremes with Edwin Starr and the Edwin Hawkins Singers. One for the show at the Forum in Los Angeles described above and a poster by San Diego Poster Company for a show the next night at the International Sports Arena in San Diego, California on August 17, 1969.
Members of the White Panther Party spent a week building a stage in a farm field in Milan, Michigan, in preparation for an August 17, 1969, “Michigan Music Supports John Sinclair Festival of Life” concert with MC5, Stooges, Amboy Dukes, Gold Brothers, Up, Savage Grace, Tate Blues, Lyman Woodard, and our favorite Toledo, Ohio band, Kraack.
The concert was cancelled at the last minute when the Musicians Union informed the bands that if they performed for free they would be kicked out of the union. It rained that day, which would have ended the performances anyway, but a big wet party took place after which the Monroe County Sheriffs visited the farmer and told him they would never allow the rescheduling of the full event for any future date. And somehow, the stage was stolen.
Motown Records held a special press party at the Roostertail nightclub in Detroit, Michigan on August 18, 1969 to launch their new label, Rare Earth Records. The Rustix from Rochester, New York and the Detroit band Rare Earth performed for an audience of over 400 people.
The new label also distributed a promotional five-LP box set which contained the first five releases on Rare Earth. The red box cover has "INTRODUCING" above a picture of the Rare Earth label with "A VERY HEAVY NEW LABEL" on the white part under the label logo. The spine of the box set has the set's title "An Introduction to Rare Earth Records."
Each of the five records in the set had promotional black-and-white labels and all had the round die cut cover. The box set also contained a letter to disc jockeys, which begins, "Here are your copies of the initial album releases from Rare Earth Records. This special kit features five albums with each group projecting their individual appeal and across-the-board sales potential." This was followed by a promo paragraph on each group. The five records were:
“Blues Helping” by Love Sculpture, of Cardiff, Wales
“S.F. Sorrow” by The Pretty Things of London, England
“Get Ready” by Rare Earth
“Bedlam” by Rustix
“The Messengers” by The Messengers of Milwaukee, Wisconsin
August 19, 1969, a hot dog night at Grandmother’s in East Lansing, Michigan with a fashion show by the foxes from Foxwood Casuals, music by Universal Family, and poster by Terry Sharbach.
An extremely rare poster/flyer for a mid-week show at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, a benefit show for the Biafrian Relief Fund on Wednesday, August 20, 1969. The bands were Frut of the Loom, Flow, and Gold Brothers.
Poster is signed by Duffer, a friend of the band members of Flow. A quite remarkable find.
Cover of the August 21, 1969 issue of The Fifth Estate, using a panel from R. Crumb’s Motor City Comics.
An ad for the Plum Pit shops by Dennis Garascia from the August 21, 1969 issue of The Fifth Estate in Detroit, Michigan.
Poster for Alice Cooper in Eugene, Oregon on August 21, 1969.
An ad for Thee Experience in Los Angeles, California with the Buddy Miles Express, featuring Detroit guitarist Jim McCarty, August 21-23, 1969.
A half-page illustration in the August 22, 1969 issue of The Berkeley Barb newspaper in Berkeley, California that sure looks like the work of Chris Frayne, aka Ozone. It is not that far-fetched since his brother George’s band, Commander Cody & his Lost Planet Airmen, were playing some extended gigs at Mandrake’s in Berkeley at the time, these shows are said to have led the band to being signed by Paramount Records.
With both Carl Lundgren and Gary Grimshaw now living in San Francisco, and both on the staff of the Berkeley Tribe newspaper, they were able to occasionally collaborate, such as this cover for the August 22, 1969 edition. This is the first of two covers for the Berkeley Tribe that will feature their collaboration.
Gary Grimshaw is listed as part of The Berkeley Tribe newspaper staff in issues from August, 1969 through December of that year. There is a lot of his wonderfully recognizable art throughout these issues, much of which we will continue to present here, such as these regular-feature column headers. “George” was the free section of the classified ads.
Story headlines and column logos in the Berkeley Tribe, August and September 1969 by Gary Grimshaw in exile.
Gary Grimshaw art in exile, from the classifieds section of The Berkeley Tribe newspaper in Berkeley, California, August and September, 1969.
The eleventh Michigan pop festival of 1969, in Midland, near Bay City, August 22, 1969. The show was hosted by WTAC DJ Peter C. Cavanaugh and Johnny Irons, listed as the producers of “Wild Wednesday” on this poster by an unknown artist. Performers were Amboy Dukes, Red, White & Blues Band, Plain Brown Wrapper, Unrelated Segments, The Ones, Frijid Pink, Third Power, All The Lonely People, and the Rationals.
The first Wild Wednesday had just occurred about a month earlier, on June 21 (or 25), 1969, an event that WTAC sponsored to promote local farmer Don Sherwood’s fledgling enterprise he called “Sherwood Forest”, a tract of land that had a barn that had been used as a dancehall with plenty of space for booths, tents, and the semblance of an amusement park. Sherwod was also in the process of constructing a larger dancehall with an attached outdoor stage.
Wild Wednesday, supposedly named after a popular carbonated beverage, although we can find no evidence of that, was planned as a family-day event with local vendors ranging from jewelry to auto parts, food, rides, and almost as an after-thought, a patio with live bands. Reports from this event tend to get confused with “the first” Wild Wednesday that launched the rock and roll spectacular it was to become in 1971, and we cannot find a poster or other announcements from the 1969 event, even though it reportedly was “heavily promoted” for months on WTAC.
The Mid-Michigan Midland Pop Festival also appears to have been the final appearance of the band The Unrelated Segments, at the end of their three-year run, from having an instant hit out of their first rehearsal in 1966, to multiple TV appearances on Robin Seymour’s “Swingin’ Time”, to releasing only two more records over a career that could never regain the heights of “The Story of my Life”.
It’s a shame the band never recorded an album since their live set was full of original compositions, with intriguing titles such as “Chocolate Graveyard”, “It’s All Right Mr. White”, and “War in Vietnam”. This final Unrelated Segments entry in our soundtrack may have been recorded when the band was briefly attempting to resurface under the name, The U.S. in early 1969, it went unreleased.
Unrelated Segments - Hey Love (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjtPcwNrkm0
This looks like an early version poster, by an unknown artist, for what became the Mid-Michigan Pop Festival on August 22, 1969 near Bay City. Only two of the bands listed here performed at the Bay City festival. Nothing appears to have happened in Traverse City.
A color Elektra Records promotional tour blank poster with the dates for the Stooges at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, August 22-23, 1969. The Stooges opened for the Jagged Edge the first night and headlined the second night with Frost and All The Lonely People as the opening acts.
We believe this to be authentic, or at least we hope so for the person that paid $7,770 for it at auction (it is).
Earlier in the week, on Wednesday, August 20, the Frut, with the Flow, and the Gold Brothers played at the Grande.
Volume Five - 1969 - continues - HERE
A WKNR radio weeky Music Guide with an ad for the free concert at the Oakland Mall in Troy, Michigan on August 17, 1969, featuring Bob Seger, Savage Grace, Thrid Power, and Sky.
